Celebrating the work of our LAHRI Postdoctoral Visiting Fellows
Five LAHRI postdoctoral visiting research fellows have been showcasing their latest works across the academy and beyond.
Five of LAHRI’s postdoctoral visiting research fellows Hazel Brooks, Milena Schwab-Graham, Tamanda Walker, Victoria Vargas Downing and Wei Zhou have been showcasing their work through conferences, public engagement, lifelong learning, field trips, and publications.
Milena Schwab-Graham and Wei Zhou co-organised the 2024 Conference of the British Association for Modernist Studies (BAMS), together with Tracy Hargreaves and Charlotte Makepeace from the School of English and the BAMS committee. The conference brought together 180 speakers in person and online over three days, and involved a range of external stakeholders, including Edinburgh University Press, Bloomsbury Academic, the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds City Gallery, and Stanley and Audrey Burton Galleries.
Tracy Hargreaves said that Milena and Wei “worked, unflappably, at every stage of the conference from creating the initial call for papers to reading proposals, allocating panels to rooms, booking rooms (patiently and creatively!), organising food, coffee, and a wine reception as well as contributing papers. Basically, they facilitated and participated in the smooth running of an amazing conference with reliable professionalism and reliably good humour!” Wei added, “I found the experience “challenging sometimes, especially when working out the logistics at a complex organisation and responding to changes. However, it was hugely rewarding. I was lucky to work with supportive and friendly colleagues, and it was a delight to see every delegate have a great time!”
In addition to the conference, Milena collaborated with colleagues from the universities of Loughborough and Galway on a panel focusing on Ephemeral Labour: Locating Care in Creativity, during which she presented on: ‘Crip Time and disabled women’s subjectivities in Dorothy Richardson’s short fiction’. In a second conference on Modernism, Wei presented on the topic of 'F.M. in 1924: Vivien Eliot, The Criterion and Autobiografiction', at the Modernism in 1924 Online Conference organised by the Centre for Modernist Cultures, University of Birmingham on 17 July 2024. Meanwhile Hazel Brooks attended the Symposium of the Forum for Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Music at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, in July where she presented a lecture-recital with Federico Lanzellotti titled, ‘Attribution and Authorship in Selected Works from Violin Collection P206(59) of the Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven’. Most recently, Tamanda Walker presented at the MPower conference, as part of a panel on Navigating Diversity and Inclusion spaces effectively, drawing on her PhD research.
Victoria Vargas-Downing recently participated in a research trip to Yungay, Peru, as part of Rebecca Jarman’s AHRC-funded project Moving Mountains, where, Victoria explains, they “delivered a series of workshops around the commemoration of the 54th anniversary of the Yungay earthquake and landslide. The workshops were multilingual, making use of English, Welsh, Spanish and Quechua.”
Tamanda Walker is involved in two projects. She leads on the qualitative research and evaluation associated with The Black Systemic Safety Fund, explaining, “the project has been implemented as a partnership between Impact on Urban Health, The Ubele Initiative, and Reos Partners.” You can read more about the project, watch the webinars and download the reports on the project page. Tamanda also contributes to Project Natura: Reading TRIYBE, a UKRI-funded British Science Association and University of Reading Community Research Pilot, which has included participating in community events and working alongside TRIYBE, the Reading-based anti-racism group, who are examining chemicals in commonly used black hair products and their impact on health and cultural identity.
Several of our postdoctoral fellows are engaged in community-based work and public engagement. Tamanda is working with Maternity Engagement Action, a Black-led organisation providing perinatal healthcare services in Birmingham, in collaboration with Connected By Data.
Meanwhile Wei has joined the Cultural Institute’s Smeaton 300 project, working on the ‘Roots and Journey: Finding Your Way Home’ strand. This is a collaboration between John Whale and Matthew Howard (Leeds Poetry Centre), Yvonne Barnard, Paul Timms and Erik Thomasson (Institute for Transport Studies) and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, bringing together poets, school, and community groups in poetry creation.
Focusing her attention on international students, Milena recently facilitated a field trip to Haworth and the Parsonage Museum for participants on the Leeds International Summer School 2024’s ‘British Literature and the Brontës’ course. In addition, she created two online modules, ‘The Urban Wanderer in Literature’ and ‘Modernist Women Writers and the Short Story: Woolf, Mansfield, Sinclair’, for lifelong learners at the Centre for Lifelong Learning at the University of York.
Our fellows are also to be congratulated on their latest publications:
Milena Schwab-Graham, ‘Suffrage and subjectivity: reassessing May Sinclair’s feminist writings’, Feminist Modernist Studies, 2024, 17-30.
Victoria Vargas Downing, ‘’On Speaking’ in Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies, ed. Rachel King and Trinidad Rico, UCL press, 133-136.
Victoria Vargas Downing, 'Reweaving from the future: Patricia Domínguez and Victoria Vargas-Downing in conversation' in Parallax, 29 (2023), 210-228.
Wei Zhou, ‘XIV Modern Literature. 6(a) British Poetry Pre-1950: General’, The Year’s Work in English Studies, 103 (2024), 71–78
Wei Zhou, ‘T. S. Eliot’s Sartorial Imagination: Poetry, Fashion and Culture’, The Journal of T. S. Eliot Society (UK) (2024), 1–31