By Professor Sarah Street, Professor of Film and Foundation Chair of Drama, School of Arts
From October to December 2023, the British Film Institute (BFI) curated a special UK-wide season of screenings and events to celebrate the work of visionary British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. In a partnership spanning thirty-three years and twenty-four films, Powell and Pressburger transformed cinema with their bold storytelling and vivid cinematography, most notably in The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus. As an academic specialist on British cinema history, Professor Sarah Street participated in several of the events and here tells us about her contributions.
To mark the opening of the Cinema Unbound season, the BFI published The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger, a superbly illustrated book co-edited by Nathalie Morris and Claire Smith. This includes a chapter by Sarah Street on the filmmakers’ extraordinary use of Technicolor which draws on research arising from several major projects on colour films led by Sarah Street and funded by the AHRC and Leverhulme Trust. It was also informed by her in-depth study of Black Narcissuswhich featureswith a link to a chapter in the BFI/Bloomsbury’s Screen Studies online publication on Powell and Pressburger.The Cinema of Powell and Pressburgerincludes many sumptuous imagesshowcasingan extraordinary range of original set and costume designs, photographs and objects, many of which are in the BFI’s own archives. The book was launched at the BFI Southbank in conjunction with the opening of a major exhibition on The Red Shoes. A special cake was made to mark the occasion.
As part of the Powell and Pressburger season the BFI held several discussions on fascinating dimensions of their work. Sarah Street contributed to ‘Centre Stage: The leading women of Powell and Pressburger’, appearing alongside Professor Lucy Bolton (Queen Mary, University of London), critic, writer and historian Pamela Hutchinson and writer Lillian Crawford. The second panel discussion was ‘Queering Powell and Pressburger’, with Dr Andrew Moor (Manchester Metropolitan University), Emma Smart, Director of Collections, Learning and Engagement at the BFI, and Zorian Clayton, Curator of Prints at the V&A and BFI Flare programmer. Each panelist chose extracts from a selection of Powell and Pressburger’s films which illustrated many key themes. These included queer perspectives on the films, offering fresh understandings of iconic performances by well-known actors such as Anton Walbrook and Ruth Byron, and British character actors such as Charles Hawtrey and Judith Furse.
Professor Sarah Street (third from left) participates in a panel discussion on the theme of ‘British Blonde’
Sarah Street is currently collaborating with Claire Smith, Senior Curator of Special Collections at the BFI and Professor Melanie Bell, University of Leeds on a three-year research project, ‘Film Costumes in Action’, funded by the AHRC. She also recently contributed to a panel discussion held at the V&A in connection with a series of lectures by art historian Professor Lynda Nead, Birkbeck, University of London, funded by the Paul Mellon Centre. These were on the theme of ‘British Blonde’, focusing on four celebrated, notorious blonde women: Diana Dors, Ruth Ellis, Barbara Windsor and Pauline Boty. Filmmakers Catherine Grant and John Wyver made four video essays in response to the lectures which were discussed in the last session of the series by Sarah Street and Professor Melanie Williams, University of East Anglia.
By George Thomas, Faculty of Arts Research Events and Communications Coordinator
As 2023 draws to a close, we caught up with some of our Faculty Research Centres and Groups to learn about their highlights from the academic and calendar year, as well as activities they are particularly looking forward to in 2024. To find out more about our Faculty Research Centres and Groups and how to get involved, please see contact details and website links provided at the end of each entry.
Centre for Health, Humanities and Science:
The Centre for Health, Humanities and Science (CHHS) and its c. 200 members have been busier than ever this term and are looking forward to a number of exciting events in the new year. This academic year was inaugurated with a workshop organized by Dr Dan Degerman, a Leverhulme early-career fellow in Philosophy, on ‘Silence and Psychopathology’; this was followed by a colloquium organized by Kathryn Body, PhD student in Philosophy, on Loneliness and Shame in Health and Medicine, with speakers from the US, Hong Kong, Ireland and the UK. An event in November, co-hosted with the Wellcome-funded Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare project, brought together psychotherapists, doctors, and academics in Medicine and English Literature to talk about Trauma. The final event of the year, held in December, was an online colloquium on Modernist Literature and the Health Humanities organized by Dr Doug Battersby, a Global Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow in the English Department.
The Sensing Spaces of Healthcare showcase takes place on 14 February 2024
Highlights for Spring 2024 include a showcasing of Dr Victoria Bates’s UKRI-funded Future Leaders Fellowship project on Sensing Spaces of Healthcare, taking place on 14 February, followed by an early-career event on ‘Narrating Public Health Taboos’, a practice-based workshop with the artist Hannah Mumby, scheduled for 20 February. A talk on epistemic injustice by Professor Havi Carel and Dr Dan Degerman will be taking place in March. The annual Art Exhibition organized by Dr John Lee, featuring art works by students from the Intercalated BA in Medical Humanities, will be held at People’s Republic of Stokes Croft in May. On 11-12 June, the CHHS will also host a grant-writing workshop and retreat at Hawkwood College in Stroud. Last but not least, the new year will see the publication of Key Concepts in Medical Humanities (Bloomsbury Academic), a collection of essays on topics such as ‘health, ‘illness’, ‘neurodiversity’, ‘disability’, and ‘death and dying’, as well as approaches including ‘narrative medicine’, ‘graphic medicine’, ‘medicine and the visual arts’ and ‘’the Black health humanities’. The book is authored by members and affiliates of the Centre for Health, Humanities and Science.
The Centre for Creative Technologies has had a successful year, forming a community that brings together creative practitioners, academics, and researchers. Our Alternative Technologies Workshop Series offered a great chance to reflect critically on developing technologies within the Metaverse, Blockchain, AI and Mega-engineering, and connect University of Bristol academics with Pervasive Media Studio residents.
Dr Paul Clarke presents on the Centre’s panel ‘Affective Relations’ at the Zip-Scene conference in Prague
From these connections, we saw some successful applications that blossomed into projects from our Creative Technologies Seedcorn Fund; VR games and storytelling, platform cultures, mixed reality experiences of futures in Colombia, and creative skills in animation and co-production in Amazonia. The Future Speculations Reading Group has grown, and we will be expanding the sessions with the Centre for Sociodigital Futures with a focus on community and creative technologies. The summer term ended with our keynote speaker, Dr Eduard Arriaga-Arango, sharing his research on Afrolatinx digital culture and data decolonisation. Our July event, Queer Methodologies in Creative Technologies, has developed into a two-day event in November consisting of artist workshops and an open forum; Queer Practices and Creative Technologies. The Centre curated a panel, ‘Affective Relations: Empathy, imagination and care in immersive experiences’, at the Zip-Scene conference in Prague, one of the leading international extended reality (VR/AR/MR) and interactive storytelling conferences, which was also an opportunity to network with related Centres, academics and artists in this field.
Dr Francesco Bentivegna presents on the Centre’s panel ‘Affective Relations’ at Prague’s Zip-Scene conference
The Concept Game Jam, run with Bristol Digital Game Lab and sponsored by MyWorld, opened up conversations around Algorithmic Bias related to co-director Professor Edward King’s UKRI Project ‘Contesting Algorithmic Racism Through Digital Cultures In Brazil’. We plan to organise events to share this project’s progress, and are currently building the project page on our website with regular blogs for members to follow. Our Friday Lunchtime talk series at the Watershed will continue, as well as further collaborations with the Pervasive Media Studio. Our membership and scope have grown, and this year we hope to solidify connections between academics and PM Studio residents and develop our connection with Knowle West Media Centre by focusing on community technologies. We plan to organise a workshop series run by PhD and ECR centre members at the Pervasive Media Studio in the run up to our final summer event on community and creative technologies, with a keynote speaker.
2023 has been a busy year for the Centre for Environmental Humanities. Our first major event was a workshop in February on ‘the Future of the Environmental Humanities’, which brought together around 30 people from across the Faculty and beyond, together with Melina Buns from our partners at the University of Stavanger’s Greenhouse Center, and Michelle Bastian from the University of Edinburgh. This was a valuable opportunity to reflect on our existing strengths and think about strategies for the centre to develop and grow.
Thanks to the vagaries of the academic calendar, 2023 also saw two annual lectures! In June we hosted Professor Gisela Heffes from Rice University, who spoke on the aesthetics of toxicity in contemporary Latin America, and in November we welcomed Professor Imre Szeman from the University of Toronto, who discussed the future of clean energy and gave us a literary analysis of the environmental writings of Bill Gates…
Alongside these major events, we’ve been continuing with our usual programme of seminars, and have also introduced a weekly tea/coffee catch up, which has proved a valuable and relaxed space for the sharing of ideas, reading recommendations and plans. We’ve been delighted to welcome our first cohort of students on the MA in Environmental Humanities, who are already proving a lively addition to the CEH community.
We’ve begun a collaboration with a curator, Georgia Hall, on working with artists in the environmental humanities, thanks to a grant from the Faculty’s AHRC Impact Acceleration Account. We look forward to continuing this collaboration in 2024. We are also hard at work, alongside other research centres in the Faculty, on a bid for one of the AHRC’s new ‘doctoral focal awards’ on the theme of ‘arts and humanities for a healthy planet, people and place’.
The American Studies Research Group experienced an amazing 2023! Membership increased to include over forty staff and graduate students from across the Faculties of Arts and Social Sciences and Law. Beyond our steering group, we have established three sub-committees to advance strategic goals, including partnerships, funding, and events. Our graduate training initiative, led by Dr Thomas M. Larkin and Dr Darius Wainwright, was well attended and provided important support for our PGR students. Our regular speaker series garnered positive feedback through presentations by such scholars as Ian Tyrrell, Dr Lorenzo Costaguta, Dr Erin Forbes, Dr Kate Guthrie, and Beth Wilson. We also helped to organize and host the British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists (BrANCA) 6th Biennial Symposium, which drew scholars from across the world to share their latest research. Our partnership with the American Museum (Bath) inspired additional consultations and collaboration, while the strengthening of our research environment contributed to new publications, including articles by Jim Hilton, Paula K. Read, Victoria Coules and Professor Michael J. Benton, and Dr Thomas M. Larkin.
We are excited by our plans for 2024. We will be hosting Professor Vanessa N. Gamble (The George Washington University) as the Bristol Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor. She will work closely with our group on funding and partnership development, as well as deliver four research presentations. We are pleased to continue hosting a range of external seminar speakers, including Nathan Cardon, Sharon Monteith, and Thomas Arnold-Foster. We are grateful for the financial support of the Faculty and the British Association for American Studies (BAAS).
The Early Modern Studies research group has had a very productive 2023. In May 2023, EMS organised the ‘Place and Space in the Early Modern World’ workshop (already reported on the Arts Matter Blog). In the summer we held our annual Summer Symposium featuring 4 panels of two speakers each, with papers ranging from early music to Anglo-Dutch identities; from stage corpses to Venus and Adonis; and from Philip Sidney’s translation of a devotional work to Shakespeare’s history plays and his will. The start of the new academic year (TB1) saw the occasion for a research celebration: many good news stories, research updates, and a celebration of two first monographs published by Dr Dana Lungu and Dr Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer. EMS will soon hold their annual ‘conversations’ event (Dec 2023); and for 2024 has further early modern events lined up.
Dr Sebastiaan Verweij opens the ‘Place and Space in the Early Modern World’ workshop
Since its inception, the Drinking Studies Faculty Research Group has been running a research seminar series with local, national, and international speakers to bring together local members and spark productive conversations. We have had flash talks from PhD students and local academics to get to know each other better as a group, and talks from experts in the wider field of Drinking Studies. Dr Deborah Toner (University of Leicester) joined us in June to talk about her experience of collaborative work and bringing history and policy together with international partners in South America. Dr Susan Flavin (TCD) joined us in September to talk about her interdisciplinary project on early modern brewing techniques including an exciting authentic brew which was tasted by the members of the project and examined by chemists and nutritionists to investigate much discussed questions around the ABV and nutritional qualities of these early brews. In the coming year, we are hosting the Drinking Studies Network conference at Bristol (March 2024) which will bring together local, national, and international researchers to discuss writing about alcohol.
The Screen Research group had a very successful 2023. We ran a series of workshops on video-essay making, which allowed participants to develop key technical and analytical skills related to video-essay production, and to gain insight into best practices when it comes to integrating video-essays as unit assessments. The sessions were delivered by leading experts in the field, including Prof. Catherine Grant. 2023 also saw the publication of Dr Miguel Gaggiotti’sNonprofessional Screen Performance (Palgrave Macmillan) and Professor Catherine O’Rawe’sThe Nonprofessional Actor: Italian Neorealist Cinema and Beyond (Bloomsbury), two monographs greatly shaped and informed by Screen Research events, sessions and partnerships. The short films Nothing Echoes Here (Hay, 2023) and Pouring Water on Troubled Oil(Massoumi, 2023), directed by group members, also had their festival premieres in 2023. We hope to continue this success into 2024.
Dr Miguel Gaggiotti’s new monographProfessor Catherine O’Rawe’s new monograph
We will be running further events and training sessions on video-essay production, an area group members have shown a particular interest in, which has led to an ongoing series of monthly video-essay work-in-progress sessions where members share their work and receive peer feedback. The video-essay is now being adopted as a form of undergraduate assessment in the Faculty, so we are also working on best practice for assessing it, and have invited Dr. Estrella Sendra of KCL to talk to members about using the video-essay as a pedagogical tool. We will also be running a one-day practice-as-research symposium in collaboration with UWE (in June 2024) as well as a joint book launch for Catherine O’Rawe’s and Miguel Gaggiotti’s monographs in early 2024, among other activities!
The Bristol Digital Game Lab showcased a vibrant array of events throughout 2023, providing a platform for scholars, students, and enthusiasts to delve into the multifaceted world of digital gaming.
The Lab initiated the academic year with a thought-provoking online roundtable on October 24, where experts and major UK game lab leads gathered to discuss the implications of the Video Games Research Framework (launched by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in May) on individual research, and how game labs, centres, and networks could support its aims. The event featured two esteemed keynote speakers: Prof. Peter Etchells, who was involved in drafting the Framework, and Dr Tom Brock, the Chair of British DiGRA.
‘Music and Sound in Games’, a collaborative event between the Game Lab and Digital Scholarship @Oxford
Following this, on October 31, the Lab collaborated with Digital Scholarship @Oxford and organised a hybrid panel and roundtable titled “Music and Sound in Games”. Expert speakers from both industry and academia dissected the impact of music on gaming narratives, characters, and emotional engagement. The digital roundtable facilitated by Dr Richard Cole further delved into critical conversations surrounding this fascinating aspect of game design.
November brought a Research Seminar in collaboration with the Department of Classics and Ancient History. Dr Dunstan Lowe, Senior Lecturer in Latin Literature at the University of Kent, presented on “History is not the Past”: Videogame Design and The Ancient Mediterranean. The seminar explored how video games portray ancient history, emphasising the diverse ways in which different genres and playstyles influence the conceptualisation of ancient worlds within digital games.
Towards the end of November, the Lab hosted an exciting inaugural event, the ‘Concept’ Game Jam, co-organised with the Centre for Creative Technologies and sponsored by MyWorld. The Game Jam challenged the 40 participants to explore how gaming mechanisms could shed light on the biases embedded in algorithms, especially in the realm of machine learning and AI. It stimulated creative thinking about the intersection of gaming and algorithmic bias and some teams came up with innovative working prototypes.
Bristol Digital Game Lab has expanded to over 150 members, gaining increasing international recognition
December will start with the Antiquity Games Night, a novel monthly online meetup organised by Dr Richard Cole and Alexander Vandewalle (University of Antwerp/Ghent University). Scholars, students, and designers will gather to play antiquity games, fostering an engaging space that blends academic discussions with gaming experiences.
Closing the year on a festive note, the Lab will bring back the “Festive Gaming” event on December 14. This event will invite participants to join in for an evening of social gaming, featuring the latest releases and playtests of upcoming games. The lineup included contributions from Catastrophic Overload, Meaning Machine, and Auroch Digital, providing a platform for networking, exploration, and celebration within the gaming community.
In summary, the Bristol Digital Game Lab’s 2023 events were a testament to the diversity and richness of the digital gaming landscape. From scholarly discussions on research frameworks and ancient history to hands-on game jams and festive gaming, the Lab succeeded in creating a dynamic space that catered to a broad spectrum of interests within the gaming community. The Lab has expanded to a network with more than 150 members, gaining increasing recognition internationally.
Looking ahead to 2024, we will be hosting an ECR/Postgraduate work-in-progress event in January, followed by a series of industry talks with a headline from Ndemic Creations, a roundtable on accessibility, as well as a conference on New Directions in Classics, Gaming, and Extended Reality. We look forward to seeing you there!
By Professor Samir Okasha, Professor of Philosophy of Science, School of Arts
Professor Samir Okasha tells us about Representing Evolution, a £1.4m ERC Advanced Grant currently underway in the Department of Philosophy. Led by Samir, the five-year research project in the philosophy of science aims to deepen our understanding of how evolution is, has been, and should be represented.
A central part of scientific enquiry involves constructing representations of the world, or more accurately of those objects, events and processes in the world that the science in question is concerned with. Representations can take many forms, including diagrams, taxonomies, verbal descriptions, physical models, and abstract mathematical models. Thus a diagram of the solar system, a taxonomy of Alpine flora, a ball-and-stick model of a chemical substance, and a mathematical model of the spread of a disease are all examples of representations. Different though they are, each of these scientific constructs aims to represent some system in the world (the “target system”) and can be assessed for how well they achieve this aim.
The aim of Representing Evolution is to examine how biological evolution has been represented – diagrammatically, verbally and mathematically – in the scientific literature, past and present. A further aim is to examine representations of evolution in the context of pedagogy and science communication. “Biological evolution” is taken to include the process of descent with modification that Darwin described; the mechanisms that drive the evolutionary process such as natural selection; and the products to which the process has given rise, such as organic adaptation and diversity. Scientists have constructed representations of each of these elements in their quest to understand how evolution works. The project will offer a systematic study of these representations, the concepts from which they are built, and the associated inferences, from an overarching philosophical perspective.
The project has six work strands:
The first strand examines diagrammatic representations of evolution, such as trees, landscapes and causal graphs.
The second examines linguistic representations, particularly the use of metaphors and analogies to describe the evolutionary process.
The third examines mathematical representations, as found in the abstract models that evolutionary theorists develop.
The fourth strand examines “ways of thinking” about evolution, that is, fundamental cognitive styles that scientists and laypeople alike use to think and reason about evolutionary phenomena.
The fifth strand considers the communication of evolutionary ideas, in particular how evolution is represented in science education and non-specialist fora.
The sixth strand examines the project of generalizing evolution to the non-biological realm, a project whose feasibility depends in part on which representations of evolution are treated as canonical.
The importance of the project lies in its integrative ambition. The project will bring together philosophical ideas about the nature of representation and idealization, linguistic ideas about metaphor and analogy, psychological ideas about reasoning and cognitive biases, and educational ideas about science communication. By drawing on such a diverse range of ideas, the project will deepen our understanding of how evolution is, has been, and should be represented. The results will be of interest to both philosophers of science and scientific practitioners alike.
By Professor Havi Carel and Assistant Professor Ian James Kidd (University of Nottingham)
To mark World Philosophy Day, Professor Havi Carel and Assistant Professor Ian James Kidd (University of Nottingham) provide an update on their Epistemic Injustice in Health Care (EPIC) project. Havi first introduced us to EPIC back in April and with the project now underway, it’s wonderful to see the progress that has been made.
Serious illness can seem extraordinary in the suffering and pain it inflicts, the losses it causes and its role as a premonition of death. It marks human life as vulnerable, limited, subject to contingency (such as a genetic mutation leading to cancer), and, of course, as finite. Project EPIC, a Wellcome Discovery Award, was launched in September, to study a particular aspect of this vulnerability. It focuses on a set of injustices – called ‘epistemic injustices’ – that can affect ill persons when they are not listened to, ignored, or their needs and wants overlooked. This is an injustice meted out to a person who is already ill and vulnerable, a vulnerability on top of the vulnerability all humans share as flesh and blood creatures whose bodies are susceptible to injury and disease.
Illness is a sign of our mortality and hence a human universal. None of us can avoid it indefinitely and it touches on every human life at some point. Everyone is, was, or will be, ill. Even if, miraculously, one does avoid serious illness, we will experience illness in the lives of those we love and care for. Illness is a fact of our humanity and of our membership in the animal kingdom.
Despite that, within philosophy, the profound significance and impact of illness has so far not received its due place. Language, mind and other aspects of human existence are philosophically well-studied. But illness is not. In most cases, illness is seen as a set of pragmatic and scientific questions – about the definition of disease or allocation of healthcare resources. These are the concerns of the sub-fields of philosophy of medicine and philosophy of science, as well as political philosophy and bioethics. But illness raises philosophical concerns that fall outside the scope of those sub-disciplines.
Consider the existential complexities of serious illness. A serious illness is one of the most profound and life-changing events in one’s life. It changes the ill person’s body and agency. Illness alters our ability to do things – from the mundane (carrying your shopping home) to the most significant (being around for your children). Such temporal changes also shape our sense of possibility, finitude, and our sense of the certainty of death.
“Humans seek knowledge, offer testimony, and work to understand their own and others’ experiences. When our epistemic efforts come to be unfairly obstructed, one suffers an epistemic injustice”
We believe that for all these reasons illness ought to be a central topic in philosophy. Moreover, illness cuts across some of its fundamental areas. Ethics, metaphysics, ontology, and social and political philosophy are all importantly informed by the ‘facts of life’ made salient by illness. What are these ‘facts of life’? That we are mortal, embodied, fragile, vulnerable, temporally finite, and existentially self-concerned. Our existence is conditioned by the changing state of our body.
One aspect of illness takes on particular importance: the vulnerability and dependence on others that arise from one’s body or mind being ‘diseased’. Vulnerability is morally relevant. It can be recognised, attended to, and invites care, compassion and protection. Dependence tells us something crucial about human life. We live and develop with others, who can support or obstruct our development. Our connections to others could be nurturing or oppressive. This whole nexus of dependence, connection, and vulnerability ought to guide our philosophising. Many feminist philosophers, for instance, explore these themes in relation to specific issues like justice, fairness, and social inclusion.
Within this nexus, and within the context of illness, one important area to study is that of the relationships within health care. These caring relationships involve multiple dimensions: scientific and biomedical, existential-personal, professional, and institutional-hierarchical. These relationships are often complex and played out during times of great distress and strain on ill persons and their families. They also take place within healthcare institutions, often characterised by their vastness, structural complexity, stubborn institutional constraints (time! Money!), and often changing institutional goals. It is important to note that individual ill persons can get lost within such structures and can find themselves unfairly treated by healthcare professionals or others (for example, social workers, insurance companies, and hospital clerical staff).
These social realities can give rise to what Miranda Fricker named ‘epistemic injustice’, an injustice relating to someone’s epistemic capacity. Humans seek knowledge, offer testimony, and work to understand their own and others’ experiences. When our epistemic efforts come to be unfairly obstructed, one suffers an epistemic injustice. Varieties of epistemic injustice are consistently reported by persons with somatic and psychiatric illnesses. Patients might, for instance, find their testimonies unfairly deflated due to racist biases and stereotypes. Questions about treatment options can be ignored or dismissed. If a patient reports severe pain, their testimony might fail to receive the uptake and response it merits. Fricker also describes kinds of ‘hermeneutical injustice’, unfair and harmful failures of understanding. One needs the right concepts, terms, and language to explain certain experiences. Fricker offers the example of the concept of ‘sexual harassment’. If the necessary concepts and language are either unavailable or ruled out as ‘unacceptable’, one suffers a hermeneutical injustice.
A main theme of contemporary work in the philosophy of illness is the epistemic injustices reported by persons with chronic illnesses. The new project – EPIC: Epistemic Injustice in Health Care will study these injustices. What are their forms, what causes them, how do they aggravate the sufferings of ill persons and what can be done to redress them? These aims combine many kinds of philosophy; there are moral issues of justice and fairness, social and political questions about the proper organisation of our shared world, and epistemological questions about credibility, testimony, understanding and the obstacles to our individual and collective epistemic life. There are topics in the philosophy of science and medicine, too, as well as phenomenological investigation into the experience of somatic and psychiatric illness.
“It is important to note that individual ill persons can get lost within such structures and can find themselves unfairly treated by healthcare professionals or others (for example, social workers, insurance companies, and hospital clerical staff)”
In addition, project EPIC will, for the first time, offer a systematic empirical study of epistemic injustice within a range of health care settings, from maternity care and vaccination programs to mental health and cancer. It will deploy diverse research methods from a variety of disciplines, including medical history, qualitative health research, legal studies, discourse analysis, and philosophy.
At the background of this project are also existential questions about what it means to live a human life, what it means to understand and connect meaningfully with other human beings. What starts as reflections on the kinds of epistemic injustice reported by ill persons within healthcare institutions and the social world can inform our thinking about the human condition itself—mortal creatures whose life is conditioned by contingency, vulnerability and dependence.
By George Thomas, Faculty of Arts Research Events and Communications Coordinator
The Autumn Art Lectures are here again and this year we are on the move!
2023 marks the 118th anniversary of the Autumn Art Lecture series. Conceived as a platform for Art and Art History in what was then University College Bristol, the series has remained a highlight in Bristol’s cultural calendar. Over the course of its lifetime, the series has explored themes ranging from the monstruous to the celestial, and hosted such luminaries as Kenneth Clarke, EH Gombrich, Toshio Watanabe, Laura Mulvey and David Olusoga. More recently, a commitment to making space for artists to discuss their own practice has added Paul Gough, Richard Long and 2022 Turner Prize shortlisted-artist Ingrid Pollard to the series’ list of prestigious alumni.
Last year to mark the centenary of modernism’s annus mirabilis, the series sought to challenge the concept of modernism as a monolithic entity. By paying particular attention to Blackness, Asian-ness, difference, and decolonisation, the series toppled the notion of a Euro-American Modernism which leaves the non-Western world out in the cold. Talks by Professor Simon Shaw-Miller, Professor Kenneth David Jackson, Jane Alison and Hammad Nasar from the 2022 series are available to listen back to on the University of Bristol’s SoundCloud.
Our theme this year coincides with Bristol 650, the year-long celebration that marks the anniversary of the 1373 royal charter, and will focus on some of the historical, cultural and conceptual spaces of Bristol. AAL2023 will be an opportunity not just to talk about Bristol and its (in)visible histories, but also to step into the city itself. Events will be hosted in venues that span Bristol – from the Cathedral at its heart on College Green, to Spike Island in the midst of the river that defines the city’s cosmopolitan past and present. Our speakers include curators, artists, and academics, who together will take us on a journey through both familiar and unfamiliar aspects of the city’s history, including its place in the wider world.
The event series is open to all, and we look forward to welcoming you to the University of Bristol for these engaging talks.
By Dr Eleanor Rycroft, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theatre, School of Arts
Dr Eleanor Rycrofttells us about her project which explored attitudes to women walking, from the Renaissance period to the present day. The workshops piloted during the project aimed to collect women’s contemporary experiences of walking, especially by night. The project recently received an AHRC Impact Acceleration Account award and is yet another example of how arts and humanities research can address societal challenges.
‘Women, Walking and Performance’ was an Impact Acceleration project which explores gender and pedestrianism using theatre methodologies. Theprojectwas based on my historical research into walking and performance, particularly my insight that afundamental shift occurs during the early modern period (c.1500-1700),at which point discourses of walking begin to exclude certain groups and individuals from the activity. The importance of this argument concerns theongoingreverberation of these exclusions, especially how inequalities of class, race and genderof walking in the past continue to inform the unequal distribution of the health and social benefits of walking today. Given that walking is a free and effective form of both transport and exercise – theoretically accessible to all able-bodied individuals – it is important to discoverthe historical roots of attitudes which mean that not all individuals feel free to walk.
This seems most particularly to be the case with women: the growing social and sexual control of women during the Renaissance continues toimpact women walkers today. The tragic deaths of Sarah Everard, Zara Aleena, Sabina Nessa and Ashling Murphy are just the most recent in a long line of women who have been murdered whilst going on–foot.
Alongside Co-Investigator, Dr. Jess McCormack, we hope to explore these gender inequalities through a verbatim playasan element of a larger research bid. This playwill tell the walking stories of women, to be staged or read in educational settings and beyond.The IAA funding enabled us to pilot a workshop format for collecting these stories. Facilitated by Breathing Fire theatre company, we usedplayback theatre techniques to test the practical and ethical scope for collating the experiences of walking women. Playback theatre encourages people to share their life stories which are then ‘played back’ to them via theatrical means.These workshops provided a safe spacefor the women to speak back against the prohibitions placed upon their movement through the world.By using playback theatrewe honoured and affirmed women’s experiences of walking, as well asidentified and investigated the barriers which preclude women from walking feely today.
“The IAA funding has provided an invaluable means to collect women’s stories together, with the aim of helping to spread this message”
The first workshop was produced as part of International Women’s Day in March 2023. Many ofthe stories which emerged concerned walking at night, and what was most telling from the IWD workshop was the common set of experiences thatsolo women walkers shared. Women spoke of insisting their daughters get taxis, forking out for taxis themselves, walking with keys between their fingers, adjusting their routes around men on the street, re-tracing known journeys, searching for exits and escape routes, as well as a number of other modifications they made to their behavioursimplyto get from A to B.
Women spoke of feeling ‘on edge’when walking at night, and spoke of feeling angry about the sexual attacks that women (primarily) suffer. They spoke of changing their gait: “I have a night walk” said one. Many womendo, and given that victims have been shown to be selected on the basis of how they walk, this is not a frivolous idea (Book et al 2013, Gunns et al 2002). The reality of (primarily) mens’ attacks on women excludes half the population from a whole realm of sensory and physical experience. As one participant lyrically put it, “As a girl on a moonlit night with fireflies, I loved walking with my mother and sister and seeing Jupiter.” As a woman she felt unable to enjoy such freedom. Another said, “I like the idea of walking in the dark in theory. If there were no men on the planet.” Another added, “I feel that we are owed much more safety at night.”
Our research suggests that one way to tackle this societal issue is through education. One participant spoke about how angry she got with men walking behind her at night, saying that they “should KNOW not to do that.” But do boys and men know not to do that? And how can that message and knowledge be effectively communicatedif not?The IAA funding has provided an invaluable means to collect women’s stories together, with the aim of helping to spread this message. My co-researchers and I believe thata verbatim play weaving togetherwomen’s common experiences across time will show the extent to which they have had to altertheirbehaviours because of the threat that some men pose to walking women – and will encourage both knowledge transmission and discussion about how boys and men can help other genders in their quest to feel safe when they walk.
Dr Eleanor Rycroft is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theatre and is involved in the Early Modern StudiesResearch Group, which consists of scholars from the Arts, Humanities and Modern Languages, active in the Renaissance and early modern periods. To find out more about Eleanor’s research, please email e.rycroft@bristol.ac.uk.
To celebrate American Independence Day, we caught up with Dr Stephen Mawdsley and Dr Sam Hitchmough, Co-Directors of the Faculty of Arts’ American Studies Research Group, to find out more about the Group, its activities, successes and plans for the future.
What is the American Studies Research Group?
The American Studies Research Group is an interdisciplinary collaborative partnership based in the Faculty of Arts, which brings together PGRs and academic staff members from History, English, Creative Writing, History of Art, Music, and Liberal Arts, as well as researchers from other allied programmes, including Geography, SPAIS, and Education.
What are the key objectives of the American Studies Research Group?
Our group has a broad and inclusive programme of events and activities designed to strengthen local research culture. We nurture not only existing staff, but the next generation of researchers by supporting the graduate student experience through colloquia, workshops, and funding initiatives. Our group not only draws on well-established academic communities and programmes, but also contributes to a range of national and global networks. We maintain a shared research agenda around a set of core themes: Race, Gender, Protest, Health and Medicine, and Decolonisation. These themes encourage and maximise opportunities for collaboration, impact, and grant capture, working together in creative ways, and alignment with university goals.
What successes have the American Studies Research Group had?
We had an extremelyproductive first year. Our group is helping to make Bristol an importantplayer in academic publishing, postgraduate recruitment, grant capture, and impact on topics related to America. Our members have fosteredAmerican Studies networks and collaborative initiatives, attracted external funding from the British Association for American Studies, establishedan external partnership with a local museum, the American Museum in Bath, held a series ofstimulatingspeaker sessions, and organized training sessions for our graduate students.
Could you tell us a little more about your partnership with the American Museum?
Last autumn two members of the American Studies Research Group were invited to join a new consultation group. A small group of experts in Native American history, American literature, museology and decolonisation, were invited to join museum staff and consider how to rethink and reframe the permanent exhibitions as well as engage with planning for future exhibitions. This work has included editing existing museum literature, text accompanying artefacts and rooms, layout, and website material and commentary.
What plans do the American Studies Research Group have for the next 12 months?
We have a dynamic set of plans for next year. In addition to continuing our regular initiatives, some of our members will continue to work closely with the American Museum in Bathas part of the consultation group reconsidering current and future exhibits.We are excited to grow our membership – please do get in touch if you’d like to join or have ideas that you’d like us to engage with.
What research have members of the American Studies Research Group recently produced?
By Professor Havi Carel, Department of Philosophy, School of Arts
A fellow patient was talking about a consultation that followed an examination, when she was still wearing the hospital gown. She felt that it was hard for her to offer her opinions, say what she wanted, and ask questions about her condition, because, as she poignantly put it, ‘it’s hard to think without your pants on!’.
How do we think, speak, ask questions and convey our views in different situations? This brief account opens questions about how patients are listened to, and how we can work together with health professionals to ensure that they are not only listened to but that what they say plays a key role in decision making processes in healthcare contexts.
Some patients have reported that their testimonies and perspectives are ignored, dismissed, or explained away by the healthcare profession. These experiences are classified by philosophers as ‘epistemic injustices’ because, in some cases, they are based on prejudice and can jeopardize patient care and undermine trust in healthcare staff and systems.
A new project I am leading with collaborators from the universities of Nottingham, Birmingham, and Swansea – ‘epistemic injustice in healthcare’ (EPIC) – will study this problem is its general form: why some patient voices are ignored and what healthcare systems can do to overcome this problem. The project is funded by a Wellcome Discovery Award, and will run for six years, with a budget of £2.6 million.
The project will include case studies from a range of illnesses, theoretical research, events, focus groups, the creation of a network with patients and health professionals, postdoctoral positions, summer schools, and publications. The project aims to identify practical measures for the benefit of patients and healthcare practitioners alike.
The core team also includes Professor Sheelagh McGuinness (Bristol), an authority on gender and the law in relation to healthcare, Professor Lisa Bortolotti (Birmingham), an expert in philosophy and psychiatry, Professor Matthew Broome (Birmingham), an academic NHS psychiatrist, and Dr Ian James Kidd (Nottingham) whose joint work with me pioneered the study of epistemic injustices in healthcare.
The EPIC team will be completed by eight postdoctoral researchers and a range of other researchers and collaborators from Swansea, City and Aston Universities, and the Universities of Bologna and Ferrara in Italy, making a team of around 30 researchers.
The six case studies will include labour pain, vaccination in immigrant children, young people and mental health, neurodiversity, cancer and depression, and dementia.
Professor Broome will lead a case study on youth mental health. He said: “This project will help young people with psychosis develop better relationships with clinicians, and to gain agency in determining their treatment, and ultimately improve outcomes.”
EPIC will also work closely with patients and service users. Professor Bortolotti added: “It is especially important for people with a mental health diagnosis to contribute to shared knowledge concerning their symptoms and treatment. We will challenge the assumption that they are irrational or disconnected from reality, and so not worthy of being listened to.”
Dr Kidd said: “EPIC will also involve theoretical work elaborating on the concept of epistemic injustice. We have greatly expanded resources for conceptualising the variety of epistemic injustices. EPIC will contribute to that enrichment as well as benefitting from it.”
The project will begin in September 2023 and we wish Havi and the rest of the team every success.
By Professor Ulrika Maude, Director of the Centre for Health, Humanities and Science
The Centre for Health, Humanities and Science (CHHS) focuses on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research at the intersection of the humanities, health, medicine, and science. The CHHS was inaugurated in 2017 and it has almost two hundred members from across Bristol University’s six Faculties and from the NHS. It runs a regular research seminar with speakers from across the UK as well as from abroad, and hosts workshops, an annual lecture, public debates, mentoring lunches, funding workshops, postgraduate-led activities, and university-wide networking events.
CHHS members are at the forefront of developments in medical humanities research, disseminating their results through academic publications, events and public engagement activities. With the support of the Wellcome Trust and the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute, the CHHS has provided seed-corn funding for a diverse range of research projects, including grief and mourning; the senses; chronic conditions and their narratives; and health and illness in colonial film archives.
One CHHS seedcorn-funded project, Becoming Elizabeth Blackwell, centres on the Bristol-born doctor and social campaigner Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) – the first British woman to be registered as a doctor by the General Medical Council, in 1859. The project has brought together Bristol academics, a playwright and theatre director, medical students and others to produce a playscript that will re-tell and celebrate Blackwell’s life and achievements.
Several CHHS members are currently involved in collectively writing a book on Key Concepts in Medical Humanities (forthcoming, 2024), which will provide a critical introduction to concepts such as ‘health’, ‘illness’, ‘contagion’, ‘feeling’, ‘neurodiversity’, ‘disability’, and ‘dying’, as well as offering chapters on key methodologies such as ‘Black Health Humanities’, ‘Graphic Medicine’, ‘Medicine and the Arts’ and ‘Narrative Medicine’. ‘Health’, for instance, is by no means a transparent concept, and the CHHS’s former Benjamin Meeker Professor, Alexandra Parvan, argues that ‘health cannot be taken merely as the outcome of biological tests or a clean medical sheet, nor should it necessarily be understood as a state restricted to the those designated as clinically healthy.’ Rather, Parvan argues for a nuanced conception of health, one that is ‘accessible to all’.
Current large-scale research initiatives at the CHHS include Sensing Spaces of Healthcare, led by historian Victoria Bates. Poor hospital design has a negative impact on healthcare outcomes, and the project seeks to rethink the NHS Hospital through the body and the senses, focusing on the lived experience of patients, visitors, and hospital staff with the aim of improving hospital design. And a multidisciplinary team led by philosopher Havi Carel has recently won Wellcome Trust funding for a six-year project on Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare (EPIC), which aims to address inequalities. Havi says,
‘Some patients have reported that their testimonies and perspectives are ignored, dismissed, or explained away by the healthcare profession. These experiences are classified by philosophers as ‘epistemic injustices’ because, in some cases, they are based on prejudice and can jeopardise patient care and undermine trust in healthcare staff and systems.’
EPIC aims to identify practical measures that can be taken for the benefit of patients and healthcare practitioners alike.
The Good Grief Festival, inaugurated in 2020, focuses on supporting those affected by the shared experience of bereavement and grief – topics that have for too long been considered taboo. Led by Lesel Dawson (English) and Lucy Selman (Bristol Medical School), ‘Good Grief’ regularly organises talks, interviews, webinars and workshops for the general public concentrating on the ways in which the crushing experience of grief can be shared and managed.
Notable projects from recent years include The Heart of the Matter exhibition, which toured the UK in 2018. The exhibition grew from artist Sofie Layton’s residency at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and was co-organised by CHHS Advisory Board member and bioengineer Giovanni Biglino. The artworks in the exhibition were inspired by young patients with heart conditions – as well as their families and doctors – and it invited visitors to discover the extraordinary complexity, intricacy and beauty of the heart as an organ.
For many years now the Centre has been involved in medical education through the Intercalated BA in Medical Humanities, an optional one-year degree for students of Medicine and Veterinary Science, taught jointly by English and Philosophy and directed by Advisory Board member, John Lee (English). With a wide range of international collaborators and an International Advisory Board, our members are also active in public engagement work through collaborations with the NHS, patient groups, and charities as well as museums, public gardens, libraries, and other cultural organisations.
For more information about the CHHS, please contact the Centre’s administrator, Elizabeth Gourd (e.c.gourd@bristol.ac.uk).
Professor Ulrika Maude, Centre for Health, Humanities and Science Director
By Professor Ad Putter and Professor Kathleen Kennedy, Co-Directors of the Centre for Medieval Studies and Professor Marianne Ailes, former Co-Director of the Centre
The Centre for Medieval Studies is a leading centre for research and training in all aspects of medieval studies, providing an ideal research environment for staff and graduate students in an area that is inherently interdisciplinary. With more than 30 Centre staff members from across the Faculty of Arts and beyond, we have an exceptionally broad range of specialists learning from the different methodologies of our individual disciplines.
Internally, the Centre nourishes excellence in research, promoting interdisciplinary research and training in medieval studies, facilitating grant capture, and providing a network for mutual support and exchange of knowledge and expertise. Lecturer, Dr Steve Bull, comments:
‘As an ECR still finding my place in the wider academic community, the advice, support, and connections that I have gained through the CMS have been invaluable. There is a genuine feeling of collegiality amongst the centre’s members.’
We are raising the profile of Bristol’s medieval research community nationally and internationally. We have an extensive network of partners, including local heritage organisations, facilitating impact, and offering student placements (e.g., Bristol Cathedral and Berkeley Castle), and national and international research partners. Professor David Wallace (University of Pennsylvania), a frequent visitor to the Centre, comments:
‘Bristol’s Centre for Medieval Studies has great medievalists across the range to sift the secrets of Bristol (a great medieval city), of Europe, and of the global Middle Ages. A truly exceptional centre for student education and international scholarly collaboration.’
We lead several externally-funded projects. A recent project we initiated is the Marie-Curie Doctoral Training Network ‘Re-mediating the Early Book: Pasts and Futures’ (REBPAF); it will support 13 PhD researchers at the universities of Bristol, Galway, Antwerp, Alicante, Vienna and Zürich, enhancing our already strong postgraduate cohort and international reach. PhD applications for the REBPAF project close on 10 January.
We offer exceptional support to our postgraduates, integrating them into our research community with regular social events and research seminars, some tailored to meet their needs, including seminars on ‘what every medievalist needs to know about…’ (useful for us all, but especially early career researchers) and an annual ‘student choice’ seminar with a speaker nominated by the students. We also host on our Blackboard site a constantly upgraded ‘training hub’ with online resources and run a range of reading groups, notably for medieval languages, such as Old French and medieval Latin. Our successful MA in Medieval Studies, with its unique placement unit, attracts students from different disciplines and diverse backgrounds with a high conversion rate to postgraduate research, here and elsewhere.
A highlight is the annual postgraduate conference, the longest-running of its kind; this brings to Bristol, and now also online, an international group of postgraduates. PhD student Maria Rupprecht, from Germany, who chaired last year’s organising committee, notes:
‘It is the perfect environment for postgraduates to present their research in progress and connect with medievalist peers and leading scholars from Bristol and beyond in a most benevolent, constructive, and supportive framework. The conference is an absolute highlight in the CMS. It is conceptualised, organised, and managed by Bristol’s postgrads and with this approach allows for discovering and developing organisational and managerial skills as well as teamwork in a committed and friendly environment.’
In the year ahead, in addition to our regular programme, we look forward to strengthening local ties through the research of our BA Global Professor, working with Bristol Central Library on their early books, including a planned public workshop. Visiting professors enrich our research environment: we are currently hosting a specialist in Old French from Stockholm, and we look forward to welcoming a Newton International Fellow next year. Our research into the past always looks to the future.
Professor Ad Putter and Professor Kathleen Kennedy, Co-Directors, and Professor Marianne Ailes, former Co-Director, Centre for Medieval Studies
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Our theme this year coincides with Bristol 650, the year-long celebration that marks the anniversary of the 1373 royal charter, and will focus on some of the historical, cultural and conceptual spaces of Bristol. AAL2023 will be an opportunity not just to talk about Bristol and its (in)visible histories, but also to step into the city itself. Events will be hosted in venues that span Bristol – from the Cathedral at its heart on College Green, to Spike Island in the midst of the river that defines the city’s cosmopolitan past and present. Our speakers include curators, artists, and academics, who together will take us on a journey through both familiar and unfamiliar aspects of the city’s history, including its place in the wider world.
