皇家华人

PhD / MPhil students in SELCS / CMII

Please use听UCL Directory听to access our students' contact details.

Comparative Literature

Buket Boz -听On Night: Darkness in Vulnerability and Transgression.

Supervisor(s): Prof. Florian Mussgnug (principal) and Dr Emily Baker (subsidiary)

Investigating the visual and spatial connotations of night, my research connects darkness with vulnerability and transgression. At the turn of the twenty-first century, night has come to be acknowledged by scholars and writers for being a space of freedom for the marginalized Other, and a shelter from the anxieties triggered by day鈥檚 penetrating light. My project speaks to this relatively recent approach that reinforces the multifaceted qualities of night.听

Through the novels I analyse, which problematise reality by creating 鈥榠rrealities鈥�, I hope to emphasise night鈥檚 role in challenging the dependency on visual and spatial perception. Drawing on the (anti)ocular and spatial theories namely that of Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Juhani Pallasmaa and Judith Butler, I demonstrate how night influences one鈥檚 (self)perception, and I argue that darkness, by stimulating vulnerability and transgression, subverts totalitarian notions about 鈥榮eeing鈥� which emphasise surveillance, homogenisation and discipline. I explore vulnerability and transgression in terms of the activities that are traditionally dedicated to night-time (sleeping, dreaming and having sex) and metaphorically nocturnal faculties (imagination and memory). Through this analysis, I aim to bring various aspects of night to forefront to accentuate the value of the invisible, intangible, and the irrational.

Serena (Qihui) Pei -听Contemplation on the conceptual affinities and historical convergence between Chinese Daoism and British Romanticism.听

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听Prof. Stephen M. Hart听(辫谤颈苍肠颈辫补濒),听Prof. Peter Swaab听补苍诲听Dr Xiaofan Amy Li (subsidiary)

In his article 鈥楥oleridge鈥檚 Daoism?鈥� (Wordsworth Circle 2020), Chris Murray traces the historical evidence of Coleridge鈥檚 reading on Daoism. When he was a student at Jesus College, Cambridge, in June 1793, Coleridge borrowed the second edition of A Collection of Voyages and Travels (1732). According to the library register account, Coleridge was the first person to borrow this edition, and after him, no one else withdrew this book for a decade afterward. This book contains an English translation of An Account of the Empire of China (1676), including sections on Daoism written by the Spanish Dominican, Domingo Fern谩ndez Navarrete (1618 鈥� 1689). Navarrete鈥檚 missionary work remained the only serious treatment of Daoism in Europe until 1823, when Jean Pierre Abel-R茅musat published a French translation of five chapters from Daodejing. My research is a further study on both conceptual affinities and historical convergence between British Romanticism and Daoism.

Based on philosophical and literary texts as well as archival materials, I investigate, for example, the philosophical affinities between Coleridge鈥檚 鈥榙ynamic polarity鈥� in his Theory of Life (1816) and Daoist cosmology; as well as the possible historical convergence between Daoism and Romanticism via Schelling and Thomas Manning, who was a close friend of Charles Lamb, and had obtained first-hand knowledge of Chinese culture during his stay in China between 1807 鈥� 1817. This comparative study can contribute to a wider rethinking of Sinological influence on the Romantic Circle, and it also highlights the broader complexity of cultural exchange between Georgian Britain and China at the dawn of the Opium War.

Jiang Yishan -听Rethinking Chinese Modernity: A Comparative Literary Study of Chinese Kinship as Cultural Discourse (1900鈥�1949).

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听Prof Stephen M. Hart (principal) and听Dr Xiaofan Amy Li (subsidiary)

Kinship is typically discussed in the anthropological and biological domains in terms of various definitions that rely on direct or indirect connections to reproduction and genes, or blood-based relationships. However, this comparative literature dissertation, Rethinking Modernity: A Comparative Literary Study of Chinese Kinship as Cultural Discourse (1900鈥�1949), focuses on demonstrating the transformation of Chinese kinship as a cultural discourse that helped to shape the emergence of Chinese modernity during the period from 1900 to 1949. This study, therefore, goes beyond those previous studies that have exclusively emphasised the role played by two parameters 鈥� individualism and nationalism 鈥� in their assessment of modernity.

By drawing upon twentieth-century Chinese and American novels; historical materials, including influential magazines and newspapers; gender and post-colonial theories, and translation studies, this project takes a different tack from those studies that focus exclusively on individualism and nationalism as the parameters used to understand modernity. My project argues that the Chinese jia (family), as one character of the word guojia (state-family), was a central space for intellectuals and writers to envision twentieth-century China and its emergence into modernity.听

Bee Sachsse (Elizabeth) - Evolving Representations of Fatness in Anglophone and Francophone Prose Fiction.

Supervisor(s): Prof. Patrick Bray (principal) and Dr. Leah Sidi (蝉耻产蝉颈诲补颈谤测)听听

My research focuses on fatness in anglophone and francophone fiction, weaving together existing scholarship on the history of the novel form and the history of fatness and anti-fat bias. This will be one of very few literary studies of fatness to meaningfully engage historical, sociological, scientific, and art historical studies of fatness. 听

One part of my research will develop a theory of the obscurity of fat characters in twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels, building on previous work in queer and affect studies. This research will stem from close readings of fat characters in key texts, with particular attention paid to the ways that texts leverage certain affects to create the sense that fat characters lie outside prose fiction鈥檚 representational capability. In considering the flatness or sheer unintelligibility of certain fat characters, my research will present an opportunity to extend and refine previous thinking on disability, abjection, and affect as they intersect in literature.听

The other part of my research will seek to understand how the parallel developments of anti-fat bias and the novel form in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries resulted in fat characters鈥� obscurity in later novels. My readings of British and French novels of the period will be informed by existing historical research, with particular attention paid to racial and scientific discourses on fatness in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I will examine how evolving literary, medical, economic, and philosophic discourses on the body and the individual to create the figure of the fat person as the perfect anti-novelistic subject鈥攁 being governed by type rather than individual circumstance or will. In reading novels from the period, I will chart the relationship between body size and the degree to which a character is presented as an individual, or as socially or naturally determined. 听

My readings of fatness in British and French novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will also draw from previous scholarship on interiority in novels. By comparing the use of free indirect style in portrayals of fat and thin characters in nineteenth-century novels, I will look for stylistic antecedents of the contemporary novel鈥檚 reluctance to imagine fat characters鈥� interiority. 听

My work advances literary studies by bringing together several strands of literary and social scientific inquiry: novel history and theory, feminist and queer theory, disability studies, the history of race and empire, and the history of science. Studying fatness in prose fiction allows us to probe the limits of the vivid interiority and individuality often taken as a defining feature of the novel or short fiction. In doing so, my research will illuminate how social and scientific history and norms shape imagination itself, as traceable in literature. 听听

Stephanie Ng - On Compromise: Neoliberalism, Feminism, and the Disappointed Promise of Personhood.

Supervisor(s): Dr. Hans Demeyer (principal) and Dr. Kevin Inston (蝉耻产蝉颈诲补颈谤测)听

My project starts from the observation that women in the contemporary present are, by all legal accounts, full-fledged citizens, yet they must nonetheless encounter themselves as nonsovereign. I read twenty-first century, Anglo-American fiction through a psychoaffective and largely reparative lens, focusing on the strategies enacted by women who pluck up the courage to live differently 鈥� outside the bounds of a generic femininity 鈥� only to encounter the necessity of yielding to others for the sake of ongoingness and belonging.听

Morgan Lewis - Foreigners, outlaws and gendered terrors: monstrosity and the abject in Icelandic and Japanese fiction.

Supervisor(s): Dr Cristina Massaccesi (principal) and Dr听Helga L煤thersdottir (subsidairy)

My research focuses on the abject and the monstrous as represented in the fictive traditions of Iceland and Japan. I am especially interested in abject or monstrous characterisations of 鈥榝oreignness鈥�, criminality, gender and kinship in the cultural products of these externally exoticised island nations. In examining such characterisations contextually and from an intersecting psychoanalytic, nissological and monster theory-based perspective, I aim to contribute to existing understanding of the semiotic functions performed by the monstrous and the abject in human storytelling.

Emily Moore - Jazz and Blues in the work of Gayl Jones.听

Supervisor(s): Prof Paul Gilroy (principal) and Dr Christine Yao听(subsidairy)

This project will explore Jazz and The Blues in the work of Gayl Jones, seeking to discern precisely how Jones translates or transcribes musical techniques into literary ones and renders her written texts distinctly oral. My central research enquiry is to decipher the aesthetic and political purposes Jones' musical techniques serve. In answering this, I will explore the way in which they can facilitate psychological recovery from trauma, assert individual, national and racial identity and absorb and confront the enduring legacy of slavery in modern America. This study seeks to redress an imbalance by attending to the work of a much neglected author and taking account of her entire oeuvre, including her later novels and poetry collections that have received startlingly little attention. In considering Jones' musical techniques, this project will acknowledge and investigate Jones' innovation and experimental formal skill that has been submitted by critical attention, often hostile to her work's thematic content. Timely with the recent republication of some of Jones' novels, the project hopes to amplify a significantly aural, but often over-looked voice.

Oliver Eccles - Customs and Duties: Importing the Detective Across Networks of World Literature.

Supervisor(s): Prof. Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen听(principal) and Dr听Xiaofan Amy Li (subsidairy)

My research is an original comparative study of crime fiction in Japan and Argentina, from the mid-nineteenth- until the early-twentieth-century. This study will reframe our understanding of world literature and reveal surprising parallels in global responses to European modernity. Crime fiction鈥檚 popularity, at a time of growing international networks, is an essential case study for literature鈥檚 role in the spread and reception of cultural ideas. Despite their geographic separation, both Japan and Argentina were involved in nation-building projects modelled on European notions of modernity. Yet contrary to Eurocentric scholarship to date, Japan and Argentina were not passive recipients of European storytelling; building upon local traditions, their innovative literary developments challenge our assumptions about cultural influence and the nature of authority, both narrative and political. 听

My project draws upon literary, media, legal and criminological sources to examine the movement of ideas surrounding crime and transgression. In doing so, it will re-evaluate the roles of translation and adaptation, together with the foundation of modern newspaper cultures and law enforcement structures. Working with primary and secondary texts in Spanish, Japanese, French and English, it will spark interdisciplinary conversations between hitherto separate scholarship in Latin America and Japan Studies, whilst also reaching beyond academia.

Yichun Zhang -听History as Fiction, or Fiction as History? - Gothic Waterscape and Cityscape in Neo-Victorian Novels.

Supervisor(s): Dr James Kneale听(principal) and 听(蝉耻产蝉颈诲补颈谤测)

My thesis examines the representations of literary cityscapes and waterscapes in the late-twentieth- and twenty-first-century Neo-Victorian fiction, with special emphasises on their spatio-temporal structures and features. To contribute to knowledge, I aim to demonstrate the value of reading these spatialised texts through ecocritical, postcolonial and cultural theories, arguing that an examination of time and space is central to our interpretation of 鈥渉istoriographic metafiction鈥� (Hutcheon 1989).

Bringing together literary studies, geocriticism, and urban studies, my quest is to answer: Why space, or spatial factors are important in analysing a text? Can the setting of a text, or a physical/geographical place be a text? What transgressive spaces and places does Neo-Victorianism offer to challenge our preconceived notions of place and space? How do Neo-Victorian texts form or investigate the spatial configurations of Victorian as well as contemporary cities? What interesting relationship do these Neo-Victorian texts bring time and space into? These Neo-Victorian texts portray liminal spaces, including dockside slums, opium dens, and underground rivers and sewers depicted in Neo-Victorian fiction set in London. 听Highlighting these marginal but transgressive places, it will uncover the complex tensions between imperial anxieties, marginal urban topographies, class inequality, and discourses of contagion.

This will be achieved through an examination of London cityscapes and waterscapes in Neo-Victorian fiction by authors such as Iain Sinclair, A.S. Byatt, Matthew Kneale, Clare Clark and Dan Simmons. / Since space and place are the key concepts that I will define through a spatially inflected reading of Neo-Victorian fiction and dialogue with scholarship in spatial literary studies, the idea of travel is central to my enquiry. This is because travelling has both spatial and temporal aspects in its nature. In each chapter I will address different versions of it, ranging from journeys through geographical, social or physical places to imaginative, metaphorical journeys. I hope to argue that through writing, reading, and interpreting Neo-Victorian fiction, our relationship with the past, and with the process of writing history, is spatial.

Haizhi Wu -听Pandemic Narratives between Personal Experiences and Public Crises: (Re) Imagining Geographies of Survival in U.S.听- American Novels, 1980s-2020s.

Supervisor(s): Dr James Kneale听(辫谤颈苍肠颈辫补濒), Dr Lara Choksey听(蝉耻产蝉颈诲补颈谤测) and听Dr Leah Sidi听(subsidiary)

My thesis focuses on contemporary pandemic narratives in American novels since the 1980s, examining the roles spaces have played in connecting personal experiences to public crises. My discussion sketches out the historical evolution of pandemic narratives at the turn when literary representations of the HIV/AIDS, pandemic apocalypse, and COVID-19 proliferated. The historical and thematic reading of the pandemic narratives has informed the opportunity to establish dialogues between American novelists鈥� spatial imaginations and cultural geographical discourses. In this sense, I propose a model of geographical reading to illustrate the power of spaces that radiate from the centre of the fictional texts and literary history to broader contexts, including epidemiology, urban studies, and postmodern geography. My central interest is in the conceptualization of and division between 鈥渋nside鈥� and 鈥渙utside,鈥� something that relations between the private and public derive from and go beyond. My thesis provides a critical intervention in literary-historical scholarship and spatial medical humanities by foregrounding the phenomenology of pandemic survival in contemporary American novels.

Early Modern Studies

Anna Schiffer -听Sir Philip Sidney鈥檚 European Tour (1572-75); its influence on his An Apology for Poetry and on later English poetry.

Supervisor(s): Prof.听Edward Chaney听(principal) and Dr听Alexander Samson听(蝉耻产蝉颈诲颈补谤测)

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) was an Elizabethan courtier, diplomat, soldier and later poet. My research examines how, and the extent to which, An Apology for Poetry (and its impact on English literature) resulted from the tour of Europe that he had made between June 1572 and May 1575. It analyses this link in a way that has not been done before by connecting the biographical detail of the tour with the concepts underlying An Apology for Poetry. This detail will include the experiences of the tour, its locations as well as the confessional, artistic and political influences on Sidney of the range of individuals and groups that he met in continental Europe. The argument is that without the tour An Apology for Poetry would not exist in the form that it does.

Samantha Brown -听English Encounter and Engagement with the Arabic Language, 1524-1635.

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听Dr Robyn Adams (principal) and Dr Matthew Symonds (subsidiary)

Previous scholarship on the early modern study of Arabic has predominantly focused on the pioneering 鈥楢rabists鈥� of mainland Europe, whose success is measured in terms of books printed and institutional positions held. England lagged behind, only producing scholars of note in the seventeenth century, and little is known about engagement with the language in its earliest period of study. Through surveys of marginalia, manuscripts and formative library collections, my thesis will shed new light on the earliest period of Arabic studies in England, arguing that no history of the field is complete without an understanding of linguistic encounter and engagement at every level: from the 鈥榰nlearned鈥� and enthusiastic dabblers, to overlooked experts and sought-after teachers.

After gaining a BA in Arabic & Islamic Studies from SOAS I spent almost a decade producing documentaries for the BBC and other major UK broadcasters. In 2018 I returned to academia to pursue my love of history, and UCL鈥檚 MA in Early Modern Studies introduced me to the world of manuscripts, archives and early printed books. In 2020 I co-founded , an online community for ECR early modernists engaged with book history. From 2022-3 I was a research assistant on David Pearson鈥檚 听project. From April to October 2024 I will undertake a doctoral fellowship investigating the provenance of Arabic manuscripts in the collections of the National Trust and the British Library.

European Studies

Gabriel Wartinger -听Ontological Sovereignty and the Ontology of Suspension.

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听Dr听Kevin Inston (辫谤颈苍肠颈辫补濒),听Dr听Hans Demeyer (subsidiary)

My research project evaluates the notion of sovereignty within Western philosophy and political thought. In political theory, sovereignty is interpreted as a historical event signifying the transition from divine authority to secular rule. Philosophically, it can be provisionally interpreted as an originary force, autonomous and impervious to external influence.

This project examines sovereignty from the perspective of political philosophy, a discipline marked by the fragile boundaries between 'philosophical' and 'political' thought. To trace these complexities, I propose the framework of ontological suspension. 听 听

Ontological suspension is conceptualized as a state where political entities, norms, and practices exist in a precarious equilibrium鈥� neither fully consolidated nor completely dissolved. This state, characterized by conditional and exceptional phases, offers a nuanced understanding of how political authority, legitimacy, and sovereignty are constructed, sustained, and potentially subverted.
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Film Studies

Thomas Greggs -听Cinema and the Nationalised Coal Industry: Media, Energy, and the Political Economy of Britain, 1947-1994.

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听Prof. Lee Grieveson (principal) and听 (subsidiary)

Cinema and the Nationalised Coal Industry explores how the National Coal Board (NCB) used media, principally cinema, to facilitate and mediate the management and operation of the British coal industry in the era of public ownership. It uncovers a vast, decade-spanning corpus, testament to the vigorous and enduring commitment of an elite state institution to the production and circulation of moving images. It examines the media produced by the NCB (latterly the British Coal Corporation) as well as the way it circulated in Britain and abroad. Cinema as a didactic and persuasive form of mass communication, used in theatrical and nontheatrical settings, and for a wide range of internal and external purposes, is an important part of this media history. Equally important are the broader histories with which NCB media intersects: the history of national energy supply (the transition from British coal to foreign oil and natural gas); and of British politics and economics (from a planned economy with industrial production at its core to the rise of neoliberalism, the free market, and the deindustrialisation of Britain). Cinema and the Nationalised Coal Industry investigates the relationship between cinema and the NCB for what it reveals about British energy history and the political economy of Britain in the mid-to-late twentieth century and, more specifically, the ways media was shaped and used to supplement the political and economic policies and practices of both an extractive industry and the state.

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Shiyi Jiang -听Kitchen modernisation and useful media in the U.S., 1915-1959.

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听Lee Grieveson (principal) and Claire Thomson (subsidiary).

Electrification not only illuminated homes, it importantly re-shaped the domestic space. Technology companies, as major home appliance manufacturers, worked to modernise domesticity and transformed the kitchen into a modern technology-testing laboratory. My research focuses on how institutions such as corporations and government agencies shared in the capitalist revolution to transform the kitchen in the United States; with General Electric, Westinghouse and the Bureau of Home Economics coming to use media to shape peoples鈥� understanding of technology and everyday life. I examine useful media in the form of promotional, educational, and industrial films as well as television advertisements and explore how media were used to facilitate or supplement institutional directives from 1915 to 1959-bookended by the earliest filmic demonstration of home appliances in the Panama-Pacific Expositions and the celebration of the kitchen modernisation as key to the distinction between liberal capitalist and Soviet communism in the famous 鈥淜itchen Debate鈥� in 1959.

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Christie Cheng -听Migrating Optics. Radical documentaries on labour.

Supervisor(s): Prof. Lee Grieveson (principal) and 听(蝉耻产蝉颈诲颈补谤测)

Accessible digital media and screening circuits have enabled activist filmmakers to document more intimate and grounded perspectives on migrant struggles and amplify their demands for better labour and living conditions. These shifting documentary visibilities also attest to concurrent developments of precarious migration taking place beyond the excessively mediatised scenes of crisis migration in Europe and the US. My research examines the rise in radical documentaries on migrant labour that emerged during this post-2015 context of precarious migrant hypervisibility and how they provide alternative optics to understanding the ways in which migration and border regimes have intensified. It looks at documentaries on Syrian migrants who wind up rebuilding post-war Lebanon; deportee labour in Tijuana鈥檚 growing call centre industry; 鈥渋llegalised鈥� sex workers and their demands for the autonomy to migrate and work in Europe and so on to understand how these regimes are set up to govern mobile subjects as racialised labour rather than their violent expulsion from the sovereign territories of a nation state.

Maria Laura Sciascia -听Refashioning Italianess: the role of costume in contemporary Italian cinema.

Supervisor(s): (principal) and Prof. John Dickie (subsidiary)

My research would explore the often neglected role of costume designers and the importance of costumes in Italian cinema, from the period defined as the economic boom up to nowadays. Costumes are a subtle language in cinema and can say much about 听a society, Cinema has been and still is one of the main means to discover Italy and Italians by Italian themselves and by strangers. Talking about Italy, is not easy to define the prototype (or stereotype) of Italian man or woman, because in Italy many differentiations coexist and traditions also in dressing identify variation of Italianess: the Neapolitan, the Roman, the Milanese and the Sicilian are the most displayed on the screen.听

The 听work would intersect two prominent field听of Italian culture: fashion and cinema, where in Italy fashion two products covered an important role in making Italy famous.

Ludwig Wagner -听Queer South African Cinemas: A Critical Analysis.

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听Dr H茅l猫ne Neveu Kringelbach (principal) and Dr Keith Wagner (subsidiary)

Rather than celebrate their freedoms, South African queer filmmakers and their films instead have to contend with religious and cultural opposition, censorship, and public persecution. Whether examining themes at the forefront of public discourse鈥攕exual violence, crime, and toxic masculinity; or exposing past shames鈥攎ilitary torture, state-sanctioned child abuse, queer films place subjects which few want to engage with under a spotlight. My research is to investigate how queer South African films have prompted a cinematic revolution by confronting and exposing South Africa鈥檚 blindspots.

Lakkaya Armahn Palmer -听Ferocious Fatherhood: A Crisis in Fatherhood and Masculinity in American Horror Film, 1970s - present.

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听 (principal) and听Dr Cristina Massaccesi (subsidiary)

Developing 鈥楾he Ferocious Father鈥� as a new theoretical concept, my research aims to explore the masculine identity as it was constructed in resistance to a newly emerging liberal society and with nostalgia for traditional heterosexual masculinity. There was an abrupt shift in the identity of the monster in horror films: from the external 'outsider' in films such as Dracula to ferocious fathers in the 1970s and beyond. 听For the first time, horror films portrayed fatherhood in peril and the destruction of families due to a fault of the fathers, such as Jack Torrance鈥檚 deteriorating mental health in The Shining.听

My research is both a historical analysis of cinematic portrayals of men in the American family and an intervention into how these images relate to real life narratives of fatherhood and masculinity from the 1980s to present. Examining the crisis of fatherhood in horror film offers a new perspective on transgressive fatherhood and masculinity and advances understanding of unruly fatherhood in resistance to broader socio-political landscapes and, at times, in conjunction with them.

Yixuan Wu -听Les Films et Les Choses: Objects in the French Cinema from the New Wave through the 1970s.

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听Dr Jann Matlock听(principal) and听Prof. Jo Evans听(蝉耻产蝉颈诲颈补谤测)听

My PhD project will focus on cinematic objects that no one has discussed in a systematic analytical way. I will delve into three categories of objects on-screen: the planar such as paintings, photographs, and maps; the spatial that are carriers of movements like automobiles, stairs, and bridges; and the triaxial that includes all the everyday objects in between. My research will base on the close analysis of film texts, combined with multidisciplinary methods, including theories of the space and the senses, theories of everyday life, and the new historicism as developed by Stephen Greenblatt and Roger Chartier.
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Julia Ryng - Can documentary films challenge Polish homophobia?听Fostering understanding through documentaries between rural Poland and the LGBT+ community.

Supervisor(s): Prof. Richard Mole (Principal) and Prof. Stella Bruzzi (Subsidairy)听

This project aims to provide a unique insight into the impact of documentary films. The uniqueness lies firstly in the study of impact on publics ideologically opposed to the specific message of a film. Secondly, it will combine the theories and methodologies of two disciplines that study the impact of film, namely political cinema scholarship and media and communications. Finally, the specific subject of study will be communities in rural Poland and their views on LGBT rights. Altogether, the investigation will produce a contextualised understanding of the changing nature of Polish socio-political landscape and shed light on the power of documentary films as tools of resistance on one hand and of fostering community understanding on the other.

Qionglin Lou - Visualise the Invisible: Ageing Women in the Sinophone Cinema

Supervisor(s): Prof. Claire Thompson (Principal), Dr Tom Cunliffe (Subsidairy) and Dr Stefano Rossoni听(Subsidairy)

Ageing, as a multifaceted phenomenon, intersects biological, social, and cultural dimensions, exhibiting mutable and performative characteristics that complicate signification and identification processes. In Western academia, the gendering of age has become crucial, particularly concerning how older women are discursively constructed under the broad term 鈥渁ge.鈥� Despite significant developments in ageing theories, there remains a conspicuous gap in the systematic analysis of ageing women in greater China, a region experiencing economic volatility and political turbulence alongside a growing older population. Hence, this research seeks to address this gap by focusing on the depiction of older women in Sinophone cinema, a cultural domain deeply interwoven with the ideologies of capitalism, post-socialism, and neoliberalism, all influenced by historical layers of colonialism and neo-colonialism. The research aims to investigate and interrogate the notion of 鈥渁geing鈥� and demonstrate how the cinematic discourse manipulates the gendered ageing body, using it as a tool to implicate and signify the complexities of transcultural modernity and shifting identities.

French听Studies

Lucile Richard -听From body to text: on the uses of voice in contemporary francophone women鈥檚 writing.

Supervisor(s): Prof. Mair茅ad Hanrahan听(辫谤颈苍肠颈辫补濒), Dr Jane Gilbert听(蝉耻产蝉颈诲颈补谤测)

My AHRC-funded research focuses on the notion of voice and how it is used by contemporary francophone women writers. My thesis attempts to look at women鈥檚 writing from a new angle, resonating with the values of contemporary feminist thought, and anchored in the postcolonial francophone world. The notion of feminine writing, since it was introduced by H茅l猫ne Cixous in her 1975 essay The Laugh of Medusa, has kept a central position in the study of women鈥檚 writing. Affirming the existence of gender-marked writing, this notion is very much anchored in second-wave differentialist feminism and has not been consistently challenged by later strands of feminism, in which the question of women鈥檚 writing as a whole has often been overlooked. With the recent emergence of movements aimed at breaking the silence on sexist and sexual violence, the idea of speaking up seems to have reached the very heart of feminist thought ; as women鈥檚 voices are conquering public space, the posture of women writers deserves renewed attention. My thesis examines how contemporary theoretical redefinitions of voice, and especially the works of Adriana Cavarero, can enlighten literary works produced from a minoritarian position, and attempting to give an existence to under-represented people. The concept of voice allows me to examine the ethical dimension of such texts, and explore notions of flexibility, relationality, proximity, and uniqueness. My thesis is currently focused on works by Assia Djebar, H茅l猫ne Cixous and Monique Wittig.

Gender and Sexuality Studies

Mie Jensen -听Being Queer and Jewish: a Cross-Cultural Study of Ethno-Religious Experiences and Divides.

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听听(Vice-Chancellor and President of Sussex University) and听听(subsidiary)

Religious and LGBTQ+ identities have often been seen as conflicting and contradictory identities. In fact, many LGBTQ+ people experience at some point that they are faced with an ultimatum: to be secular and LGBTQ+ or to be religious and repress their sexuality. This binary persists despite socio-cultural changes in both the secular public sphere and within religious institutions. While there has been conducted research on religious institutions鈥� stance on LGBTQ+ matters and heterosexual religious people鈥檚 views and attitudes, LGBTQ+ people themselves, and especially women, have received less scholarly attention. Furthermore, scholars of religion and sexuality have rarely considered that Judaism and Jewishness are not only religious but also ethnic and cultural identities. Mie is, therefore, interested in non-heterosexual Jewish women鈥檚 sexual and Jewish identities. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to bring together queer, feminist, and religious theories.

Mie鈥檚 doctoral research, which is funded by the ESRC, is focusing on how non-heterosexual Jewish women in England and Israel navigate, express, explore, sustain, and negotiate their sexual and Jewish identities in the 21st century. In addressing this aim, Mie (i) maps non-heterosexual Jewish women鈥檚 lived experiences and practices in their own words to provide more nuanced insights into contemporary lived experiences; (ii) presents the first empirical research on non-heterosexual Jewish women in the UK; and (iii) demonstrates the complex and dynamic interplays between the personal, socio-cultural, and national by paying particular attention to understandings and experiences of Jewishness and queerness, the procreative-norm, the couple-norm, and trauma.听
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In it, she argues that the negotiation, experience, and expression of non-heterosexual women鈥檚 sexuality is deeply rooted in their Jewish identities. While previous studies and scholarship has explored LGBTQ+ identities to various religious traditions, she argues that cultural and ethnic Jewishness influence non-heterosexual women as well.听In addition to her PhD research, she is, among other things, interested in LGBTQ+ Holocaust Studies, antisemitism from a gender and sexuality perspective, and trauma research.听

Mie earned her MA in Sociology (First Class Honours) and MRes in Social Science (Distinction) at the University of Aberdeen.听For more information on Mie鈥檚 work please see:
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Arthur Davis (they / them) -听Temporalities in Tension: Reimagining the 'Sexual Migrant' from a Temporal Standpoint.

Co-Supervisors: , , .听

During my undergraduate studies at 皇家华人, with a year at Sciences Po, Paris, I followed an interdisciplinary course-load, focusing on Political Science, Philosophy and French. After teaching English in Madrid for a year, I commenced a Master's in Multi-disciplinary Gender Studies at Cambridge. Following this, I worked with the NHS Leadership Academy, before starting my PhD studies with UCL and Wellcome this September.听

My research, which lies at the intersection of Sociology, Anthropology, Epidemiology and Sexuality Studies, seeks to introduce a "temporal" dimension to epidemiological research on "sexual migrants" in the UK. A central assumption of this project is that sexual migrants 鈥� whether from the UK or abroad 鈥� traverse temporal, as well as spatial, boundaries, and that sexual wellbeing and risk cannot be holistically understood without taking these temporal migrations into account. Through ethnographic research in a London sexual health clinic, I seek to uncover the extent to which abrupt shifts between timelines, such as "coming out of the closet" or transitioning, contribute to sexual risk. This research will have several policy implications, including a potential recalibration of eligibility criteria for targeted risk reduction interventions and an identification of further training needs for sexual health staff working with "temporal migrants".

German听Studies

Les Newsom -听British and German Children鈥檚 Informative Introduction to Racism, Nationalism, Militarism, and Colonialism Through Education and Play, 1871-1918.

Supervisor(s): Mark Hewitson (principal), Jeff Bowersox (subsidiary)

My research project is a comparative study of British and German childhood at the height of European Imperialism (1871-1918). The project will look at how children from both nations were exposed to racist, nationalist, colonial and militarist ideologies through toys, games, and children鈥檚 literature. Sources will include cultural artifacts such as the toys and games, children鈥檚 books, periodicals, and schoolbooks. Also, documents relating to official and unofficial polices of using these artifacts as direct and indirect propaganda, as well as personal recollections of childhood in diary or autobiographical form.

The main questions that my research will investigate are around the active use of childhood items to promote these ideas and the implications of that promotion in adult life. To what extent was the sale and publication of material designed for the consumption of children organised for propaganda reasons? Can the influence of childhood education and play be seen in their adult lives? Does the research demonstrate differences in the form and concentration of material between Britain and Germany and how does this relate to established historiography around imperialism, racism, and militarism? The research will also ask how these themes are still relevant today, with their legacy still debated and problematical in society today.

Health Humanities

Janina Klement -听Mapping Psychiatry Critique: A Transnational Study of Psychiatry Critique and its Reception in Western Europe and the US since ca. 1965.

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听Prof. Sonu Shamdasani (principal)听and (subsidiary)

My research investigates the history of psychiatry critique in Europe and the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Psychiatry critique has been marked by a close interlocking of intellectual and practical endeavours that triggered a range of developments: critiques both from within and outside of the discipline led to comprehensive reforms and deinstitutionalisation of psychiatric practices, formation of patients鈥� collectives which abolished hierarchies in the relationship between psychiatrists and patients, experimentation with psychedelics and unconventional group settings, as well as psychiatry鈥檚 foray into the political sphere.听

My project constitutes the first attempt to reconstruct the history of psychiatry critique from a transnational perspective. This approach allows for new epistemes of psychiatry critique and its (neglected) legacies: I consider psychiatry critique as a critical psychiatric movement that was successful in establishing new routes of knowledge transfer and exchanges of subversive practices despite internal disagreements. By considering psychiatry critique as an eclectic movement whose aspirations went well beyond the demand for psychiatric deinstitutionalisation (which has so far been held to be critical psychiatry鈥檚 sole legacy) my approach challenges existing historiographic narratives.听

My project draws on untouched archives and interviews with contemporary witnesses that have so far been excluded from the historical record. These new historical perspectives on currently unrealised alternatives to orthodox psychiatry will allow for a range of policy implications for the permanently evolving and much disputed field of mental health care.听

This project is funded by a doctoral studentship from the Wellcome Trust.听

I hold degrees in history, politics, and cultural studies from University of Bonn and UCL. I am a teaching assistant at SELCS and affiliated member at the .

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Luisa听Bayona - The place of musicality in psychic development.听

Supervisor(s): Professor Sonu Shamdasani and Professor Lionel Baily

The thesis proposes that musicality plays a crucial role in early psychological development and explores how early musical interactions pave the way for cultural expressions of music. This interdisciplinary study centres on the process of self-development and the not yet thoroughly studied importance of innate human musicality in facilitating the developmental trajectory of becoming oneself and the relevance of the musical aspects for creativity, socialisation and emotional sharing.听

Dr Roghieh Dehghan - The concept of 鈥榤oral injury鈥� and its association with mental health and trauma in Iranian torture survivors in the UK 鈥� a Phenomenological study.

Supervisor(s): Prof James Wilson (principal) and Dr Jenevieve Mannell (蝉耻产蝉颈诲补颈谤测)听

There are strong indications of unmet mental health needs in traumatised refugees - torture being one such trauma. Yet, our current understanding of the psychological sequelae of trauma is epistemologically limited. As a result, some scholars and practitioners have developed moral injury as a recent concept in trauma discourse, with potential relevance to tortured refugees.

Moral injury, a concept for survivors鈥� responses to the transgression of their moral beliefs, seeks to address trauma鈥檚 lasting impacts. However, this concept has to date been solely based on Western military personnel, making its recent application in refugee research ethically and epistemically problematic. If moral injury is to serve the needs of traumatised refugees, a non- Eurocentric understanding of the concept is needed, its epistemic parameters grounded in lived experience.

The need for culturally appropriate notions in trauma discourse is also consistent with my clinical experience of working as a GP with traumatised refugees in the UK. That is why I hope that this project will contribute to a culturally sensitive approach to therapy for torture survivors.

Since Iranians comprise the largest number of asylum seekers in the UK, with some having experienced torture, my study focuses on this cohort of trauma survivors. I first undertake a theoretical investigation of the concept of moral injury before conducting a phenomenological study to explore the impact of morally injurious events in Iranian torture survivors in the UK. This will be followed by focus groups with healthcare professionals and support workers to determine the clinical and policy implications of moral injury.

Italian Studies

Elinora Lane -听The Use of Emblems by Women in Sixteenth-Century Italy.

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听Dr Lisa Sampson (principal) and Dr Rembrandt Duits,听Warburg Institute (subsidiary)

The aim of my research is to analyze how aristocratic women in the first half of the sixteenth century employed the emblem as a means to express their emerging gendered identities. Currently my analysis focuses on possible patterns among the emblems associated with female and male adopters, as well as to explicate role hierarchies and interaction networks that structure target audiences. I study how women exploited the emblem鈥檚 inherent ambiguity to play with multivocal interpretations and to respond to their interlocutors鈥� reactions. In addition, I plan to investigate how women鈥檚 production and reception of emblems reflect broader societal changes in attitude about women鈥檚 roles, characters and abilities.听

Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies

Sophie Chauhan - Dis/Assembling White Racial Power: 鈥楢sian-white Mixedness鈥� and the Regeneration of Race.

Supervisor(s): Dr. Xine Yao (Principal) and Dr. Victoria Redclift (Subsidiary)听

Characterisations of post-racial 鈥榤ixedness鈥� and economically potent 鈥楢sian-ness鈥� significantly shape Western thinking about the future of race. This two-part thesis argues that, where these categories converge, 鈥楢sian-white mixedness鈥� holds a vital stake in the growth or decline of white racial power. Section one analyses the cultural production of Asian-white mixedness to detail its entanglement in anti-Black and settler colonial racial projects. Section two presents a comparative ethnography of (mixed-race) Asian activists in Melbourne and NYC who refuse the solicitations of whiteness in favour of anti-racist coalition-building. Overall, this interdisciplinary, transnational and intersectional study explores how those made covertly complicit in white racial power can become active agents in its undoing.

Lewis Barnes - Automating the Crisis: Algorithmic Statecraft, Racialisation, and Economy.

Supervisor(s): (Principal) and Dr Luke de Noronha (Subsidiary)

Automating the Crisis addresses the use of algorithmic technologies by states. Focused on a set of case studies in border security, policing, and welfare benefits administration, the project asks how algorithmic decision-making technologies are affecting 鈥渟tatecraft鈥�, the way states manage their citizens and non-citizen populations. In particular, it builds on existing analyses of algorithmic racism to ask what algorithmic statecraft has to do with 鈥渞ace鈥�.

My PhD project asks how technologies of automated statecraft should be understood in relation to the convergence of racism and capitalist economy. Through interviews and commercial, parliamentary, professional and academic sources, I am analysing UK and EU case studies, such as Durham Police鈥檚 reoffending prediction tool and a welfare fraud detection algorithm used by the French government. I will theorise how these technologies introduce qualitative changes in the practices of the state, asking how, for example, the automated state reasons, or how it sees. I look at these changes in relation to the historically developed logics of "racial capitalism".

Scandinavian Studies

Georgia Gould - Tablets and Trade: how trade, migration and social status influenced motif and technique in Medieval Scandinavian tablet-weaving.听

Supervisor(s): Dr Haki Antonsson (principal) and (University of York)听

Tablet-weaving is a form of loom weaving in which a yarn warp is threaded through tablets, also known as cards. The tablets can be turned forwards and backwards, either as a full pack or each turned individually, with a weft yarn passed through the warp at each completed turn of the pack. In this way, the yarn warp becomes a textured band. From these twisted threads a sophisticated pattern or motif can emerge on the surface of the textile.听My thesis analyses how human migration and the expansion of international trade networks influenced the way in which the motifs and techniques of tablet-weaving evolved within Scandinavia and Northern Europe during the Middle Ages. The elaborate tablet-woven textiles within the ninth-century Oseberg ship burial provide a framework for this study. In addition, the investigation of textiles from the British Museum, Kulturhistorisk museet in Norway, Nordiska museet in Sweden and more brings to light the significance of the textile fibres and weaving techniques which shaped the narrative history of tablet-weaving. Using fresh data collected from an array of international textual and archaeological sources, my thesis aims to provide a new perspective on the story of textile production and trade across Medieval Northern Europe.

Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies

Victoria Rasbridge -听Intersecting Identities: Representing Queenship in the Golden Age comedia.

Supervisor(s): Dr Alexander Samson听(principal) and Dr Lisa Samson听(蝉耻产蝉颈诲颈补谤测)

My AHRC-funded research explores the representation of queenship on the early modern Spanish stage, focusing specifically on听the听depiction of fictional queens in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century. Identity has long been acknowledged as the interaction between experience, allegiance, and community, constructed at the intersection of multiple ideological demands and social categorisations. Drawing on this understanding of the intrinsic multiplicity of identity, my research establishes a new intersectional framework through which the queen鈥檚 character and the crisis that her identity was undergoing as a result of tensions within Spanish imperial ideology can be understood. In so doing, it challenges existing critical typologies of female characters, and demonstrates how female roles cannot be neatly contained by static and one-dimensional categories of identity. By applying an intersectional lens to the study of the comedia generally, and to the figure of the queen specifically, my thesis identifies how playwrights variably utilise, manipulate, and invert interlocking systems of power in order to shape the creation of their characters.

Michael Protheroe - Seeing Queerly: Embodied Spectatorship in Chilean and Venezuelan Queer Cinema.

Supervisor(s): Professor Deborah Martin (principal) and Dr Emily Baker (subsidiary)

This research project examines contemporary queer Chilean and Venezuelan cinema which appeals to a more embodied form of spectatorship than traditional cinema. In doing so, this project will interrogate how such cinema explores and represents queer space, queer time and what I will propose is a queer visuality specific to these films. The films in my corpus invite a synaesthetic approach that attends to the materiality of film as they deconstruct the traditional cinematic dependence on the visual economy at the expense of the other senses. This research will also focus on the (queer) lived-body and how such a body might occupy (queer) space and time and how the films in this corpus perceive, express and navigate a queer spatiotemporal framework. This emphasis on bodies, space and time will be aided by a methodological and theoretical framework of phenomenology, specifically the film phenomenology first espoused by Vivian Sobchack in her Address of the Eye (1991), which I will develop through a productive combination with Sara Ahmed鈥檚 Queer Phenomenology (2006). I aim to put into practice a kind of 鈥渜ueer film phenomenology鈥� as a mode of approaching cinema that attends to its materiality and also its queerness, separately and in concert.

Oliver Schwarz -听Nietzsche in Rio:听A cultural transfer听1950鈥�1975.

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听Dr Martin Liebscher听(principal) and听Dr Ana Cl谩udia Suriani da Silva听(subsidiary)

The specific aim of my doctoral research project is the reconstruction of the Brazilian reception of German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's ideas 鈥� especially among avant-garde groups, such as the Brazilian second and third generation modernists in Rio de Janeiro, and the burgeoning counter culture in the 1960s and 1970s Ipanema. A particular focus is thereby on the dynamics of the cultural transfer, hence on international networks, intellectual mediators and gobetweens of the globalised 'World Republic of Letters', that helped these ideas to spread around the globe. My work can therefore be placed right at the edge of fields such as Intellectual History, German- and Brazilian Studies鈥�.

Translation Studies

Asa Erh-Ya Tsui -听Combining Critical Discourse Analysis, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and Natural Language Processing Approach to the Impact of Ideology on News Translation (A study of western English mainstream media on the evolving crisis of the US-China economic relationship).

Supervisor(s): Dr听Federico Federici (principal), Dr听Christophe Declercq (subsidiary) and Dr Claire听Yi-Yi Shih (subsidiary)

Translation and media play an essential role in our society, particularly in an era of sweeping globalisation trends and unprecedented advances in technology development. By their common nature, both are instruments of communication, their neutrality has always been in question since they are susceptible to the impact of human-related factors, especially ideology. Drawing on Fairclough's three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis (CDA), along with Halliday's systemic functional grammar (SFG) and Martin and White's appraisal theory within the paradigm of CDA, my study attempts to examine the ideology concealed underneath news translation via a mixed research method approach- combining CDA, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and Natural Language Processing approach.

Shaoqiang Zhang -听Developing A User-Oriented Accessibility Evaluation Model for Translated Health Resources.

Supervisor(s): Prof Federico Federici (principal) and Dr Vicent Montalt (subsidiary)

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) recognises access to health information and digital resources and technologies as a basic human right. Enjoying accessible and digital bilingual, as well as translated health resources is a fundamental human right, especially for vulnerable people such as elderly citizens, people with hearing or visual impairments, and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. However, health information is always written in a way that is difficult for the layperson to understand, thus creating barriers for them to use and act.

My research aims to identify the linguistic, textual, and visual features which have an important impact on the accessibility and understandability of bilingual health-themed resources and explore the best practice model in health translation by integrating textual and visual information. In order to alleviate the cascading impact caused by inaccessible health information and improve the experience and satisfaction of users with the widest range of abilities, this research project will develop a user-oriented accessibility evaluation framework to enable more effective health education and the promotion of resources in multilingual, multicultural societies.

Lucelle Pardoe -听Decolonizing the Curriculum through Translation: Indonesian Literature in Dutch Education.

Supervisor(s):听Prof.听Kathryn Batchelor听(principal) and Prof. Reinier Salverda听(蝉耻产蝉颈诲颈补谤测)

This research responds to calls to decolonize institutions and curricula across Europe by making a case for research at the intersection of Translation Studies and Education Studies. Using the Netherlands and Indonesia as a case study, this research unfolds the potential for counter-narratives from Indonesian literature to de-center Europe in Dutch education through translation.

Fang Shaohang -听Interpreters' online preparation behaviour.

Supervisor(s): Dr听Claire Shih (principal) and Dr听Caiwen Wang (subsidiary)

Interpreting for a specialised assignment requires linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge. Different from translators who can learn this knowledge while translating, interpreters have little time to do so and thus have to acquire it mainly by preparation. Among professional interpreters, there are some common preparation strategies like reading the documents sent by clients, searching online for background information, and building a glossary. But regarding the more specific questions about, for example, where to find the most relevant knowledge and how to make them available for interpreting, few detailed and thorough approaches have been provided. As a result, some trainee interpreters may find the preparation process confusing and do not know where to start. Collecting evidence about the behaviour of interpreters鈥� preparation could reveal some commonalities and idiosyncrasies of their practice. By comparing the behaviour of different interpreters with an eye on their interpreting quality, good practice may be found. However, while translation studies have seen researches on translator鈥檚 behaviour of web searching, there is little research done investigating the interpreters鈥� behaviour during preparation. Therefore, researching the process of interpreting preparation could help fill the gap and offer empirical evidence for interpreting preparation.

Huihuang Jia -听The Impact of Subtitling Speed on Viewers Watching Experience: Evidence from Eye Tracking and EEG Technologies.

厂耻辫别谤惫颈蝉辞谤(蝉):听Prof. Jorge D铆az-Cintas (principal) and听Prof. Agnieszka Szarkowska (subsidiary)

Huihuang's doctoral study sets out to work in the emerging and blooming field of audiovisual translation, with special emphasis on cognitive approaches to subtitling. The main aim is to explore empirically the impact that different subtitling display rates, under various linguistic conditions, can have on viewers' watching experience.听

Chloe Franklin - The Impact of Information Inaccessibility: A Community-Based Study Based on the Experiences of d/Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Communities in England.

Supervisor(s): Prof. Federico Federici (Principal) and Prof. David Alexander听(Subsidiary)

The COVID-19 Pandemic highlighted the importance of information accessibility in appropriate formats. England's communication strategy throughout this pandemic demonstrated that the study group was an afterthought in their comminques, with inadequate communication methods utilised. This research aims to investigate these failings and areas in which communication must be improved, using guidance from the study group.

Yunke Deng - Accessible video gaming for visually impaired players in mainland China.

Supervisor(s): Dr Xiaochun Zhang听(Principal) and Prof. Jorge Diaz-Cintas听(Subsidiary)听

Video games have become a leading form of entertainment worldwide across different platforms and devices. However, people with diverse abilities often find themselves excluded from playing video games due to accessibility challenges. The blind and visually impaired persons (BVIPs) are likely to face significant obstacles due to the visual-centric nature of videogaming. My research focuses on game accessibility for visually impaired persons in mainland China and also explores accessibility features in video game design, especially for visually impaired people.

Dody Chen - Game Localisation in Live Game Streaming.

Supervisor(s): Dr Xiaochun Zhang (principal) and Dr Rocio Banos Pinero (subsidiary)

In the Chinese context, many game streamers are conducting English-Chinese game localisation practices based on non-localised English video games in live streaming. These activities not only include the streamers鈥� gameplay such as the demonstration of game content but also cover streamers鈥� speech to localise orally English texts on the screen with special techniques (e.g. dubbing). The objective of Dody鈥檚 PhD project is to incorporate streaming-based game localisation behaviours into the research field, which significantly influences game localisation, audiovisual translation, multimodality, and game studies.