Alex Bamji - New LAHRI Director (effective from January 2024)

The new year brings with it a new LAHRI director. Dr Alex Bamji, Associate Professor of Early Modern History, will be taking over from Prof Jamie Stark on 1st January 2024. The LAHRI team asked three key questions so you can get to know more about Alex and her plans for LAHRI going forwards.

Alex, what can you tell us about your academic background?

I’m a social and cultural historian and much of my research has focused on Venice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when it was one of Europe’s largest and most diverse cities and a major cultural and economic hub. I’m especially interested in lived experience, including illness, death and religious practice. I’ve always been excited by interdisciplinary methodologies, and find approaches from the medical humanities, urban humanities and material culture studies really useful for my research.

What are you looking forward to in the role?

Interdisciplinary research in the arts and humanities is thriving at Leeds. I’m looking forward to showcasing the ground-breaking research, which is ongoing already, and to supporting colleagues as they develop new projects and partnerships. The University’s four new Futures Institutes offer exciting possibilities for AHC researchers to contribute their expertise to collaborations which address global challenges and genuinely make a difference.

What are you hoping to bring to the role?

I have a lot of experience of peer review and assessment of grant applications, including as a member of the Wellcome Trust’s Early-Career Award Interview Panel. I hope this can feed into the support that LAHRI offers to researchers at all career stages with developing funding applications so they have the strongest chance of success. I’m passionate about equity, diversity, and inclusion and aspire to encourage participation in LAHRI’s activities from the widest possible range of researchers, and to be sensitive to the impact of career stage, contract status, and protected characteristics on how people engage with collaborative and interdisciplinary research.