From Margins to Centre?
An undergraduate conference on marginalised histories and literatures
Keynote Speaker
Professor Sanjoy Bhattacharya
Sanjoy Bhattacharya is Co-Director of the York History Department’s Centre for Global Health Histories, Professor in the History of Medicine, a Welcome Trust Senior Investigator and the Head of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Histories at the University of York. Sanjoy specialises in the health, medical, political and social history of nineteenth and twentieth century South Asia, as well as the history and contemporary workings of international and global health organisations, and their programmes around the world.
Sanjoy has always worked in inter-disciplinary ways and within inter-sectoral settings, and remains actively involved in health policy research and evaluation work in national and international agencies.
Interpreting Medieval Sexuality and Gender
Professor Katherine Lewis
My research focuses on later medieval gender history (especially masculinity) and religious and cultural history. I have published on female saints, especially St Katherine of Alexandria and other virgin martyr saints, as well as on Margery Kempe, and Chaucer's Prioress. My current research continues to examine later medieval intersections between kingship, masculinity and chivalry, with a particular focus on crusading activity. I also work on modern representations of the Middle Ages and have recently published an essay on depictions of masculinity in the tv series Vikings and another on the function of crusading themes in the video game Dante's Inferno.
Exploring the Medieval Middle East
Dr Shazia Jagot
Shazia’s research brings together her training in both English literature and Near and Middle Eastern Studies in order to explore the connections, both entangled and diffuse, between Western literary culture and the Islamic world during the medieval period. She is interested in the cultural dissemination of ideas, narratives and visual and material culture and ways of approaching the dynamics of engagement with the broadly defined ‘East’ through historical and intellectual contact. Her research takes a multilingual and interdisciplinary approach, working across late medieval English literature, the history of science, art and religion and emphasizes an engagement with Arabic, Latin and vernacular literature, Middle English in particular. Shazia is also interested in modern and contemporary literature on Europe and the Muslim world and ways of working across both medieval and modern contexts and critical frameworks on orientalism, postcolonialism and global literature.
The Modern Medical World
Dr Lena Wanggren
Lena's main research concerns questions of gender in late nineteenth-century literature and culture. She has worked specifically on gender and technology and the figure of the New Woman, focusing on authors such as Grant Allen and H. G. Wells, examined in the larger context of late-Victorian fiction.
She is currently researching figurations of the Scottish New Woman, specifically focusing on early female doctors.
More broadly, Lena's research interests include literary and critical theory, specifically gender and feminist theory and the works of Michel Foucault. She also works on pedagogy, intersectionality, contemporary feminist practice, literature and technology, and the medical humanities.
Investigating Classical and Medieval Asia
Professor Imre Galambos
Following my graduation I started working for the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library and became involved in the study of Dunhuang manuscripts and the manuscript culture of medieval China in general.
I have been President of the European Association for the Study of Chinese Manuscripts and am sub-editor for medieval China for the Encyclopedia of Manuscript Cultures in Asia and Africa compiled at the University of Hamburg.
Research Interests: Medieval China; Dunhuang studies; history of Chinese writing; Chinese manuscripts and epigraphy; contacts between China and Central Asia; Tangut studies; history of the exploration of Central Asia.
My current book project is on the codicology of Dunhuang manuscripts from the 9th-10th century, focussing on the influence of non-Chinese written traditions on Chinese manuscript culture.
Narratives of Migration
Professor Miles Larmer
My research focuses on southern and central Africa, specialising in the modern history of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, analysing how local historical agents have engaged and intersected with global historical dynamics, and challenging the 'methodological nationalism' of much modern African historiography. I have written on social and political change; labour and social movements; extractive communities; military conflict amid Africa's Cold War; nationalism, migration and urbanisation; and, more recently, environmental history and intellectual history, particularly focusing on the relationship between social history and knowledge production.