Our Visiting Fellows
SIAH was delighted to welcome its first cohort of International Visiting Fellows to the university in 2024. The fellowships culminated in a series of shared residencies and workshops. These were held across our campuses in June 2024.
The fellows represented a wide range of disciplines and career stages. They were united by a shared interest in heritage and communities.
Elisabeth Becker-Topkara
Elisabeth is a research fellow in cultural sociology at the University of Heidelberg. She is currently leading the Freigeist project “Invisible Architects: Jews, Muslims and the Construction of Europe.”
During this fellowship Elisabeth has strengthened the connections between the Parkes Institute and the Department of Art and Media Technology (AMT).
She is working with Dr. Sami Everett to establish a Europe-wide research approach on Jewish-Muslim relations. Dr. Everett is a member of AMT and The Parkes Institute.
She also collaborated with artists and filmmakers at the University of Southampton. They focused on plural intercommunal belonging and critical studies in Jewish heritage. This included exploring its links to French postcolonial dynamics and reparations in Germany.
Gauri Bharat
Gauri is a senior associate professor at CEPT University Ahmedabad, India. Her research is on situated histories. She explores spatial practices and subjectivities. Her work draws on her experience personally, and as an architect and educator.
She brings interest and expertise in the relationship between spatial experience, gendered and subaltern subjectivities, and built environments in South Asia.
During her SIAH Fellowship, Gauri worked with colleagues on developing a shared framework. The framework helped examine issues around heritage and conservation. It also enabled study of qualitative approaches to place, and tangible and intangible heritage. In particular, she focused on new and old housing developments.
Jay Stock
Jay is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Western Ontario, Canada. During his fellowship he brought together archaeologists, ethnographers, and human biologists. Their work involved theorising ways to study and interpret the impact of human cooperation on human populations in the past. This included Neanderthals and early modern Humans.
Together, they explored crucial questions, including:
- how we can move from single individual models to group level dynamics in behavioural interpretations of the past?
- how would these models integrate demographic variation within communities?
- the impact of impairment and differences in ability on group dynamics
- the role of cooperative labour, technology, and food sharing on group-level energy flow.
Stacey Copeland
Stacey is an assistant professor at the Research Centre for Media and Journalism Studies in the University of Groningen, Netherlands.
Her SIAH Fellowship focused on her research on activating queer archives. This research used critical and imagined listening practices. She drew on archival materials of queer history, including popular cultural artefacts such as fan magazines.
Her work focused on exploring gaps in archives and creatively re-imagining them. She did this by developing and ideating sonic memories.
Stacey also contributed a scholarly podcasting masterclass. This complemented workshops delivered by Digital Humanities. Additionally, it supported growing interest in working with podcasting equipment at the University. Podcasting has become an important tool for research, knowledge exchange, and education.