Empty Spaces - camelThe 2014-15 cohort of Junior Research Fellows at the IHR will be holding a number of excellent colloquia and workshops in the coming months. These colloquia are a key element of the IHR Fellowships programme, and the institute provides Fellows with administrative and financial support in running them. The idea is that early career researchers get valuable experience in planning and hosting academic events, while the institute benefits from participating in engaging, diverse academic activity. Events held at the institute itself will be open to public registration.

This blog will feature details on upcoming colloquia over subsequent posts.

Empty Spaces

A one-day conference at the Institute of Historical Research
Friday 10 April 2015

Plenary Speaker: Dr Matt Houlebrook (Birmingham)

If nature abhors a vacuum, cultural attitudes to emptiness are more complex. Vacant places have been constructed and sustained by a variety of actors, from colonial powers to cartographers, city planners to scientists. This one day colloquium asks how and why empty spaces have been important to travelers, empires, anthropologists, artists, archivists, photographers, and the historians who study them. How is emptiness made? What tools, materials, and agents does it involve, and what cultural, physical, and natural work goes into maintaining nothingness? Have empty spaces been particularly important at specific points in history? What cross-cultural continuities are there in how they have been made and understood? How have historians perceived and created ‘gaps in the literature’? What ideological functions does emptiness serve?
The conference will explore ‘empty space’ in history.

Website: https://www.academia.edu/9809969/CFP_Empty_Spaces_A_One-Day_Conference_at_the_Institute_of_Historical_Research_London_10th_April_2015

Twitter: https://twitter.com/emptyspacesihr

Organized by: Courtney J. Campbell, Allegra Giovine, Jennifer Keating, and Will Pooley (IHR Junior Research Fellows)

UPCOMING JUNIOR RESEARCH FELLOWS’ COLLOQUIA

Read more about these in subsequent blog posts.

IWM_ART_001179Gender in War Captivity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

A one-day symposium at the Institute of Historical Research
Friday 8 May 2015

Organised by Elodie Duché (IHR Junior Research Fellow) and Grace Huxford (Warwick) of the Prisoner of War Network in conjunction with Warwick Institute of Advanced Study and the Institute of Historical Research.

Image:  Randolph Schwabe, The Women’s Land Army and German Prisoners, 1918, available at the Imperial War Museum.

History of the BodyThe History of the Body: Approaches and Directions

A one-day colloquium at the Institute of Historical Research
Saturday 16 May 2015
Organized by: Kate Imy and Will Pooley (IHR Junior Research Fellows)

Religious IdentitiesReligious Identities and Material Landscapes in Early Modern Europe

A one-day workshop at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Friday, 5 June 2015

Organized by: Roisin Watson (IHR Junior Research Fellow)

Image: Prayer Book, c. 1623, V&A Images Image reference 2006BJ4433

Add. 49598, f.25Water in Anglo-Saxon England

A one-day colloquium at the Institute of Historical Research
October 2015 [date TBC]

Organized by: Carolyn Twomey (IHR Junior Research Fellow)

Image: Benedictional Aethewoldi c. 963-984 (c13101-49) ©British Library Board, Add MS 49598 f.25r

Crime, Identity and Economics: New Research and Approaches

A one-day colloquium at the Institute of Historical Research
Saturday 12 September 2015

Organized by: Caroline Nielsen and Ben Taylor (IHR Junior Research Fellows)

Ententes Cordiales? Methodology in French History from France, Britain, and Beyond

A one-day colloquium at the Institute of Historical Research
Date to be determined

Organized by: Will Pooley (IHR Junior Research Fellow)