Research highlights

Some examples of our work

• Launch of Faculty Research theme

• The Faculty Research theme, Minority Identities: Rights and Representation, led by Alison Donnell (English), had its launch event on March 1st. A paper on 'Caribbean Queer' by Alison Donnell was responded to by Julia Waters (French). A paper on 'Queering American Social Politics' by Jon Bell (History) was responded to by Catriona McKinnon (Politics).

• Please visit the theme website for details of future events and projects

• Researchers' Night

• In 2011, Reading was one of four UK universities to open its doors to the public in order to allow them to find out more about the research that is taking place.  The focus of the event was 'Language, Text, and Power', one of the Faculty's research themes.  Please visit the Researchers' Night website for more information.
  
  

• The Faculty of Arts and Humanities best research output prize 2011 was recently awarded to Dr Rebecca Bullard, English Language and Literature, for her work on 'Dorothy Browne – dissident and dolphin-dresser'

• Sir Thomas Browne was one of the most celebrated doctors and writers of the seventeenth century. Knighted by the king in 1671, he decided to express his gratitude by sending Charles II the meat of a dissected dolphin. He tells us that his wife, Dorothy, had 'an art to dresse & cooke the flesh so as to make an excellent savory dish'! We don't know what the King made of Browne's gift and, until now, we haven't known anything much about Dorothy - apart from her culinary abilities where large sea mammals are concerned. But a recent discovery by an academic in Reading's Department of English Language and Literature has revealed another side to this apparently quiet, domestic woman. Working in the archives at the Cambridge University Library, Rebecca Bullard uncovered a previously unknown cache of Dorothy Browne's writings. They reveal that Dorothy Browne attended illegal Christmas Day church services (after Christmas had been banned by Oliver Cromwell), that she was well versed in the works of difficult classical scholars, and that she admired the writings of contemporary poets like John Donne. Although hers was a busy household -- she and Thomas Browne had twelve children -- domestic concerns rarely surface in her manuscripts. Browne's writings represent for her a personal space apart from domestic affairs, where she could contemplate God and undertake intellectual pursuits. Dorothy Browne's spidery handwriting affords us extraordinary insights into the political and mental world of a highly intelligent early modern woman.

• The full citation for Rebecca Bullard's article is: Bullard, R., '"A Bright Coelestiall Mind": a new set of writings by Lady Dorothy Browne (1621-85)', The Huntington Library Quarterly, 73:1 (Spring 2010), pp. 99-122.

• Matthew Nicholls,Department of Classics, has been selected for a prestigious AHRC and BBC-sponsored programme to discover the next generation of public intellectuals in the UK. The scheme, called New Generation Thinkers, aims to recruit emerging academics with a passion for communicating the excitement of modern scholarship to a wider audience and who have an interest in broader cultural debate. Those chosen for the scheme will be invited to a workshop at the BBC to work with experienced producers on developing their ideas for the wider public. Up to ten will then be asked to develop their own programme for broadcast on Radio 3. Dr Nicholls was chosen among 57 successful applicants from a field of well over a thousand, on the basis of an application that referred both to his work on creating a digital model of ancient Rome, and to his main area of research in ancient books and libraries. He says 'I am delighted to have been chosen for this scheme, especially as Radio 3 is one of my favourite channels. I am looking forward representing the Department of Classics at Reading, to working with the people responsible for programmes like Night Waves, and to continuing my work in bringing Classics to a wider audience'.
  

• New grant for medieval studies

• Dr Catherine Leglu (Modern Languages) has been awarded a two-year research grant by the Leverhulme Trust. She will work with two Research Fellows, Dr Nick Chare and Dr Alex Ibarz. The project consists of the edition (using digitised images) and study of MS London British Library Egerton 1500. This is a world history by the Franciscan diplomat Paolino da Venezia that is told almost entirely through genealogical images. One version was translated from Latin into Occitan, possibly for a prominent figure in the Avignon papacy between 1313 and 1323. The project analyses the manuscript's importance in terms of medieval translations into the vernacular, as well as of conceptions of time and history.

• Theatre writing of Gertrude Stein

• Lib Taylor directed Counting Her Dresses and other plays, a performance based on the theatre writing of Gertrude Stein on 8, 9, 10 December. The event is a mixed media, promenade performance, which lasts about an hour. 

• Gertrude Stein was an American writer who lived in Paris for most of her adult life and was a significant figure in the development of early twentieth century modernism. She was an artists' patron and one of the first collectors of paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne and others. She wrote novels, short stories, poetry and criticism, as well as a number of very short 'plays' and opera libretti. Even though her plays are very rarely performed they have been very influential in the development of avant-garde theatre.

• Lib Taylor's performance juxtaposes a soundcape of voices, live performance, an 'exhibition' of paintings and mediated images projected onto and across the space to evoke Stein's sense of theatre as a place of experience and emotion, not as a place of story and action. The performance comprises five of these theatre fragments which have been combined in a collage that alludes to the experimental art that Stein promoted.
  

• Isotype revisited

• This three-year project (2007-10) is funded by a major grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and will use as its core archive the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection housed in the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication. Isotype revisited website

• War Gender and Visual Culture Network

• Led by Dr Sue Malvern, Department of Art, the War, Gender and Visual Culture Network is an alliance of scholars working on the visual cultures of twentieth and twenty-first century wars. It aims to disseminate new research on war and visual culture and to promote collaborative work through symposia, projects and publications.War Gender and Visual Culture Network website
  

• The Clergy of the Church of England Database

• Professor Stephen Taylor, Department of History, is a Director for this AHRC project. Its objective is to construct a relational database of clergymen of the Church of England between 1540 and 1835, and it is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board. The database will fill a major gap in our knowledge of one of the most important professions in early modern England and Wales, and will take advantage of new technology to provide an invaluable research tool for both national and local historians who often need to discover biographical information about individual clergymen.The Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540 -1835 website
  

• Italian Academies

• A research group led by Professor Jane Everson (Royal Holloway, University of London) with co-investigators Dr Lisa Sampson (Italian Studies, University of Reading) and Denis Reidy (British Library) has recently been awarded £780,690 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for a four-year continuation of the major research project 'The Italian Academies 1525-1700: the first intellectual networks of early modern Europe'. Italian Academies project detail (pdf 272kb)