Institute of Humanities and Creative Arts

Research news

Summer 2011 Research News

The Early Modern Research Group’s second annual St Swithun’s Lecture was given by Dr Jerome De Groot of the University of Manchester on 22nd June. The St Swithun’s Lectures are public lectures held at St Swithun’s Church in Worcester; Dr De Groot’s presentation, Welcome to Babylon, explored how the English Civil War has been represented in film, television, drama and the novel form over the past fifty years, and was promoted as part of this year’s Worcester Festival.

Worcester hosted the Second Biennial Meeting of the Defoe Society, ‘The Culture of Grub Street’, from 14th to 16th July. This international conference included keynote lectures by Prof Pat Rogers of the University of South Florida and Prof Paula McDowell of New York University, and a President’s Roundtable on ‘Defoe bibliography’ with distinguished participants from the UK and USA.

Prof Suzanne Schwarz (Professor of History) has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to conduct her research project, An Early African Colony: Contested Freedom, Identity and Authority in Sierra Leone. Prof Schwarz will take up her Fellowship from January 2012 and will conduct her research at the Public Archives of Sierra Leone, the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull, the National Archives at Kew, the Universities of Illinois and Birmingham, and the National Maritime Museum. Her article exploring late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Methodism in Sierra Leone, originally presented at the 2009 meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Montreal, has recently been published in the peer-reviewed journal Wesley and Methodist Studies.

Postgraduate research student Anna Stenning presented her paper, Edward Thomas and Urban Ecology: “Lucidity in the Arms of Gloom” at the 2011 Literary London conference, ‘Representations of London in Literature: An Interdisciplinary Conference’ hosted by the Institute of English Studies, University of London, 20th- 22nd July. She curated a display on the Dymock Poets for this year’s Ledbury Poetry Festival, presented at the Weavers’ Gallery, Ledbury 27th June-13th July and reviewed Faber Poetry Editor, Matthew Hollis’s Ledbury Poetry Festival talk on Edward Thomas for the Summer 2011 edition of the Friends of the Dymock Poets Newsletter.

Prof Jean Webb (Professor of Children’s Literature) presented her paper, Shadow of Asylum: refuge under siege at the Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference, ‘Revolt, Rebellion, Protest: Change and Insurrection in Children’s Literature’, held at Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia, 23rd-26th June. Prof Webb and Dr Alysa Levene of Oxford Brookes University made a virtual presentation of their paper Nothing Wrong With us Brits! The Repression of Mental Health Problems in English Texts post WW2: an interdisciplinary approach at ‘Fear and Safety in Children’s Literature’, the International Research Society for Children’s Literature 20th Biennial Congress, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 4th-8th July.

Dr Andreas Mueller (Senior Lecturer in English) saw publication by Cambridge Scholars Publishing of his co-edited book Positioning Daniel Defoe’s Non-fiction: form, function, genre in June. Dr Mueller’s co-editor, Dr Aino Mäkikali, is Research Fellow in Comparative Literature at the University of Turku, Finland and spent the academic year 2010/11 as a visiting research fellow at Worcester.

Postgraduate research student Sharon Young convened the one-day BSECS Postgraduate and Early Career Scholars’ Conference on ‘Sense and the Senses’ held at the English Faculty of the University of Cambridge on 6th July. Sharon is currently a postgraduate and early career scholars representative on the Executive Committee of BSECS (The British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies).

Dr Jane George (Senior Lecturer in Drama) presented her paper, A Stroll Down the Valley with Roland Barthes and Reckless Sleepers at the Central School of Speech and Drama’s ‘Authoring Theatre’ conference, 14th-15th July.

At the end of June, Dr Neil Fleming (Senior Lecturer in History) saw publication of his book Charles Stewart Parnell and His Times: A Bibliography; co-edited with Alan O’Day it is published by Praeger Press. Dr Fleming presented his paper Power, crowds and the landed élite: Rosslea, 1883 at ‘Irish Elites in the Nineteenth Century’, the 17th International Conference of the Society for the Study of Nineteenth Century Ireland held at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool, 30th June-1st July.

Postgraduate research student Dilip Sarkar’s thirty-first book, Spitfire Ace of Aces: the true wartime story of Johnnie Johnson has just been published by Amberley Publishing.

Postgraduate research student and Senior Lecturer in Education Branwen Bingle presented a seminar paper, Miss Honey and Miss Trunchbull: images of teachers in children’s literature and their messages for ITE at the UKLA 47th International Conference ‘Empowerment Through Literacy: Literacy Shaping Futures’ at the University of Chester on 17th July.