13.02.08
Paper 08/RC/11
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
Report for College Research Committee, 13 February 2008
1.
IASH Activities: December 2007 – February 2008
Copies of the Institute’s Spring Programme, giving details of the STAR meetings and the
Enlightenment and Life Writing workshops, will be tabled at the meeting, for information. We
continue to have weekly Work-in-Progress seminars by our Visiting Fellows which are open to
all (February’s list attached as Appendix A). In addition the following events have been/are
being held:
12 December
The roundtable session on 'Idealism and Theology in NineteenthCentury Scottish Literature', arranged by two of the Institute’s
Postdoctoral Fellows, Dr. Timothy Baker and Dr. Tom Toremans, was a
well-organised and successful event. A further meeting on the topic is
being planned for later in 2008.
13 December
An afternoon workshop on “Biography, National Narratives and History”,
organised by Professor Liz Stanley (Sociology), attracted a large number
of people. The event coincided with a short visit to Edinburgh of a group
of scholars from the Department of Humanities at the University of
Örebro, Sweden, who were interested to learn about the work of IASH.
10/11 January
The second two-day workshop of the “Embodied Values and the
Environment” Research Project (funded by the British Academy), on
“Environmental Aesthetics and Ethics”, was held in the Institute. It
brought together speakers from a number of disciplines – English and
Creative Studies, Philosophy and Public Policy, Geography, European
Culture and Language, and Social Anthropology – and UK universities.
The third and final workshop will take place in June.
18 January
Members of the Renaissance/Early Modern Studies Group met in the
Institute for the first of a series of fortnightly lunchtime discussions,
organised by Dr. Jill Burke (History of Art). These interdisciplinary
meetings are well-attended from across the College.
8 February
The first of this Semester’s Speculative Lunches is on the topic of
“Decadence”.
11 February
As part of the Institute’s research theme “The Humanities in the 21st
Century University”, Professor Andy Clark (Philosophy) is organising the
first CHAT (Conversations in Humanities, Arts, and Technologies)
session with guest speaker Professor Catherine Wilson (City University of
New York). On the model of the Café Scientifique, these informal
occasional discussions are dedicated to exploring the interface between
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humanities, arts and sciences in the 21st century. The topic on this
occasion is “What does Biology have to do with Morality?”. The CHAT
is being held in the Filmhouse Bar/Café and it is hoped will attract
participants from both inside and outside the University.
2.
Future Activities
In addition to the third “Embodied Values and the Environment” workshop (referred to above),
the Institute will be hosting two other events in the next few months. On 27 March there will be
a one-day symposium on “Transatlantic Ideas of the American Founding”. This event is being
jointly organised with Professor Paul Kerry (Department of History, Brigham Young
University; Visiting Fellow, Princeton University) and will include a number of speakers from
the US: Colleen Sheehan (Villanova), David Armitage (Harvard), Elige Gould (New
Hampshire), Paul Rahe (Hillsdale), Richard Beeman (University of Pennsylvania), Vikki
Vickers (Weber State), Pamela Joan Edwards (Syracuse) and Craig Yiroush (UCLA). An IASH
application to the British Academy for a conference grant for this event was unsuccessful, but
Professor Kerry has managed to raise sponsorship in the US to cover the costs of bringing the
speakers to Edinburgh.
The first of a series of three one-day symposia organised by the Centre for the History of the
Book on “Transnational Histories of the Book” will be held in the Institute on 30 May. This
project, funded by the British Academy, seeks to provide an infrastructure in which to explore
and to develop new methodologies for the analysis of transnational material culture.
3.
Other Meetings
I attended a meeting of Directors of UK and Irish Institutes for Advanced Studies, hosted by
Professor Sir Roderick Floud, the Director of the School of Advanced Study, The University of
London, on 18 December. This was the third meeting of this group which is seeking to create a
Consortium of Research Institutes. Sir Roderick undertook to produce a consultative document
on membership criteria, administrative arrangements and a draft constitution for the Consortium
to be discussed at the next meeting in early May.
4.
Fellows and Fellowships
The Institute is delighted to have been awarded funding under the Leverhulme Trust Artist-inResidence scheme to bring the internationally renowned Ong Keng Sen to Edinburgh. He is a
leading interdisciplinary performance practitioner, theatre director, curator and researcher of
artistic process, and has been Artistic Director of TheatreWorks, Singapore since 1988. In
Edinburgh he is doing research into the Scottish diaspora which will result in a commissioned
work for the 2009 Edinburgh International Festival. He will be at the Institute for three periods
of one month (February, May and October 2008) and is keen to talk to appropriate colleagues in
the College.
The Institute has also been successful with two applications for European funding under the
Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships scheme. Dr. Jochen Petzold from the English
Department at the University of Freiburg has been awarded a two-year Fellowship at IASH from
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January 2009 to work on “Scientific Discoveries and the Public Debate on ‘The Human
Condition’ in Victorian Britain: An Analysis of Periodicals for Young Readers, 1850-1900”. Dr.
Silvia Sebastiani, a recent post-doctoral Fellow, has been offered a Marie Curie Fellowship at the
Centre des Hautes Etudes in Paris, with IASH acting as a secondary host institution.
Dr. Rajesh Kumar from the Department of Political Science, PPN College, Kanpur, has just
arrived to take up this year’s Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship at the Institute, in
association with the Centre for South Asian Studies. He will be at IASH for three months.
We have recently been contacted by the American Philosophical Association seeking to revive
their scheme to nominate an APA Fellow at IASH. They invite and receive applications for the
Fellowship and forward a nomination to the Institute for approval. They have set a deadline of 14
February 2008 for applications for 2008-9 and we look forward to receiving a recommendation
from them.
A list of current Fellows is attached (Appendix B).
5.
Timetable for Fellowship Elections in 2008
Applications are currently being received for the next round of Visiting Research Fellowships
and Mellon Fellowships at IASH. We would be most grateful for your assistance in grading
these applications as in previous years. The timetable for this is as follows:
12 March
28 March
Applications to be sent to Heads of Research for grading
Deadline for the return of gradings and comments to IASH
We would propose to send the relevant applications to you on CD, unless you prefer paper
copies.
Could you please let Anthea Taylor know (a.taylor@ed.ac.uk):
a) if you will not be available in the period 12-28 March to look at the applications. If this is the
case, we would be most grateful if you could nominate a colleague in your School who would be
willing to do this; and
b) if you would prefer to receive paper copies of the applications
Dr. Karina Williamson
February 2008
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APPENDIX A
Work-in-Progress Seminars
February 2008
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
Hope Park Square
Wednesdays at 1 p.m.
6 February
Dr. Genevieve Warwick (Department of Art History, University of
Glasgow)
Bernini: Art as Performance
13 February
Dr. Mateusz Borowski (Drama Department, Jagiellonian University,
Krakow)
Stories to Share. Storytelling as a Means of Redefining Stage-Audience
Relationship in Contemporary Scottish Playwriting
20 February
Dr. Ovidiu Verdeş (Department of Literary Theory, University of
Bucharest)
The Study of Autobiography in Post-Communist Romania
27 February
Dr. John Docker (Humanities Research Centre, Australian National
University)
The Scandal of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe in Nineteenth Century British
Culture
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APPENDIX B
IASH Fellows in Residence: February 2008
NAME
Dr. Dorothy Alexander
Dr. Timothy Baker
Professor Desmond
Bell
Dr. Mateusz Borowski
Dr. James Clapperton
AFFILIATION
Freelance writer and
creative writing tutor,
Borders College
English Literature,
University of Edinburgh
Film Studies, Queens
University, Belfast
Drama Department,
Jagiellonian University,
Krakow
Russian, University of
Edinburgh
Ms Kristin Cook
English Literature,
University of Edinburgh
Dr. John Docker
Australian National
University, Canberra
Dr. Abbie Garrington
English Literature,
University of Edinburgh
Political Science, PPN
College, Kanpur
Artistic Director,
TheatreWorks, Singapore
Divinity, University of
Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
Dr. Rajesh Kumar
Ong Keng Sen
Dr. Suzanne Owen
Dr. Roxana Preda
Dr. Mandy Treagus
English, University of
Adelaide
Dr. Ovidiu Verdeş
Literary Theory,
University of Bucharest
Art History, University of
Glasgow
University of La Laguna,
Canary Islands
Dr. Genevieve
Warwick
Ms. Aishih WehbeHerrera
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RESEARCH PROJECT
The Border Ballad into the 21st Century:
applying experimental poetics to
contemporary narratives in Borders Scots
The Reception of German Idealism in
Scottish Literature, 1830-1900
Diaspora, autobiography and selffashioning: a documentary case study of
navvy poet Patrick MacGill
Staging Testimony: Storytelling and
Identity Construction in Contemporary
Scottish Playwriting
Collection and Analysis of personal
testimonies of the siege of Leningrad
(1941-44)
Jefferson, 18th Century Literary Studies
and Transatlantic Performativity; STAR
Research Officer
The Rebecca File: The Strange Afterlife
of Ivanhoe’s Rebecca in the Nineteenth
Century
Touching Texts: The Haptic Sense in
Woolf and Richardson
Revisiting Kargil: Was the
Stability/Instability Paradox at Play?
Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence
Self-Disclosure in the Study of
Indigenous Religions
American Gothic fiction in the 20th
Century
Maggie Papakura: Constructing Self and
Iwi in Performance, Photography and
Anthropology
Autobiography in a Post-Communist
Context
Art as Performance in Bernini’s Rome
(De)Constructing Chicano
Masculinity(ies): Crossing Borders, remapping the self, transforming the world