Month: October 2025

This blogpost was authored by Dr Guido Bacciagaluppi from Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Dr Bacciagaluppi visited the University of Bristol in early 2025 to collaborate with Dr Karim Thebault on a Benjamin Meaker award.

I spent two extremely profitable months at Bristol working on philosophy of physics with Karim Thébault and others in the Department of Philosophy. When I came, I knew very well that Bristol was a powerhouse in both philosophy and foundations of physics (as well as in the philosophy of science), and had witnessed that in person two years ago when Bristol hosted Foundations2023 – that year’s edition of one of our most important conferences. When I saw the current and past Bristol contingent having their own group photo (something like 18 people!), I knew I had to be back for a longer period. And I will lavish praise on the Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professorship programme, which provided me with just what I needed: excellent support, freedom to fashion my research stay as suited best, and very convenient accommodation – stunningly located in the heart of the university.

I walked everywhere, making a point at week-ends of exploring what I could of the city (a welcome change from the very flat surroundings I have become used to in the Netherlands). As a classical music lover, it was great to be 11 minutes’ walk from the Bristol Beacon (I timed it!), and even closer to the lunchtime recitals at the Victoria Rooms, and the welcoming University Church Choir who rehearse at St Paul’s, Clifton. I have further never been so close to my office in my life: had I been a squirrel, I could have covered the 15m between my bedroom and office windows in no time.

I mainly work in the philosophy of quantum mechanics and the history of the debates on its foundations, and scientifically my visit was very productive. My principal aim was to explore some new ideas with my host Karim Thébault about formulating quantum theory without the notion of state. (One inspiration comes from Heisenberg, who was antagonistic towards – Schrödinger’s – quantum states and preferred to see quantum theory as a theory about state-independent transition probabilities between values of physical quantities, and the state only as a mathematical artefact useful for calculating them.) We got on to a very good start (watch this space!) and in fact realised something that should have been obvious, that the project has rather deep connections with one of Karim’s own projects of conceptualising quantum theory in terms of open systems. We also managed to clarify our points of difference on the role played in quantum theory by decoherence, the spontaneous suppression of interference effects through interaction with the environment. These are points that are not clearly articulated in the literature and we plan to spell them out in a joint paper, which should be very useful for everyone interested in the topic. I also learned a lot in interaction with both Karim and James Ladyman on conceptual problems relating to quantum chemistry.

On the history side of things, I was very lucky to find not one but two BA International Fellows in the department, Jer Steeger and Noah Stemeroff, respectively working on Heisenberg and Pauli (among other things). I have a big ERC project in progress on Niels Bohr, trying to clarify his thought and its potential relevance to current debates in philosophy of physics, philosophy of biology and philosophy of science. I had numerous conversations that were very relevant for this project, especially with Jer about the disagreements between Bohr and Heisenberg on the gamma-ray microscope thought experiment.

I cannot list all the other things I managed to do, but for instance I had the opportunity to interact with the graduate students and do some teaching, and was extremely impressed by their quality and preparation. I also had the opportunity to give a seminar on work of mine in the philosophy of probability that I was keen to advertise and for which I found a very appreciative audience.

My visit was very well timed also because it overlapped with another Benjamin Meaker visiting professor in our field, Dean Rickles from the University of Sydney (an erstwhile colleague from my own time there). Karim, Dean and I co-organised a one-day workshop shortly before I left again for my home university of Utrecht, entitled Quantum Investigations, with talks from Dean, Bristolians and co-workers, three other members of my ERC project, and myself. The line-up of topics worked extremely well, and the workshop rounded off very appropriately two very good months. I hope to be back soon, because professionally and personally the environment at Bristol has been perfect!

This blogpost was authored by Dr Josiane Zerubia from the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, France. Dr Zerubia visited the University of Bristol in Summer 2025 to collaborate with Professor Alin Achim on a Benjamin Meaker award.

When I arrived in Bristol at the beginning of July, 2025 I was astonished to discover a very sunny and joyful city where lots of students attended their graduation ceremony. After a few days I was used to it and started to really be involved in my research work on Learning Stochastic Geometry Models for Ship Identification in Synthetic Aperture Radar Images with Prof. Alin Achim, who hosted me in his lab at the School of Computer Science.  

Over the last few decades there has been a growing interest in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging on account of its importance in applications such as mapping, search and rescue, and target recognition and tracking. Modern SAR systems can produce high quality pictures of the Earth’s surface while avoiding some of the shortcomings of other forms of remote imagining systems, like limitations during nighttime and seeing through cloud cover. Its value also extends to areas like marine spatial planning and habitat restoration. In maritime applications, accurate analytics of SAR provides key information for tracking (illegal commercial activities) vessels for instance. 

I also interacted regularly with Prof. Achim as well as the postdocs and PhD students from his lab through more general discussions and demos. The topics of the discussions were about signal and image processing techniques and AI with applications to SAR remote sensing and medical or biomedical imaging. 

Finally, during the month of July, I stayed at Principal’s House which is a very nice and convenient place to live, close to Merchant Venturers Building where Prof. Achim is located and close to Park street where there are many shops and restaurants.  

In the future, it would be great to stay there again and to continue to work in collaboration with Prof. Achim and his team. 

This blogpost was authored by Professor Tita Chico, who is Professor of English at the University of Maryland. Professor Chico visited the University of Bristol in Spring 2025 to collaborate with Professor Elaine McGirr on a Benjamin Meaker award.

I had the great fortune to work with Professor Elaine McGirr, Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies in the Theatre Department. Our collaborative project, “Performances of Wonder: Science and Spectacle,” turned to the unexplained, the mysterious, and the odd as paradigmatic occasions of wonder in eighteenth-century theatre and science. While the phrase “child-like wonder” implies an uninformed and uncorrupted response to something in the world, our project demonstrated that wonder in the long 18th century was a powerful way of understanding and engaging the world, and teaches an important lesson: feeling played a constitutive role in the formulation of Enlightenment rationalization, a conclusion that directly challenges the uncritical celebration of objectivity that obscures this important history.  

And to add, this work is inspired by the scholar Katherine McKittrick, who teaches us that “Wonder is study.” 

In various activities, including lectures, seminars, and (the centrepiece of our collaboration) a day-long symposium, we studied the imaginative underpinnings of how we come to understand the world, whether in nature or on the stage, with a particular emphasis on the forms of technology that facilitate these encounters.  

For example, my lecture and seminar for students, “On Wonder and Equiano,” argued that the concept of “wonder” illuminates the relationship between literature and science, which in turn challenges us to reimagine what studying the eighteenth century can and ought to do. Drawing on René Descartes and Adam Smith, I demonstrated that the knowing of wonder—that is, the affective experience of wonder is always also a cognitive experience—conjoins observation and imagination, and models a mode of apprehension and cognition that thinks through science to conjure a world where space and time can be reimagined, where their fullness and amplitude open up other possibilities.   

Turning to a text the students were studying, Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African (1789), I argued that Equiano’s wonder inaugurates profoundly important moments of reckoning—and reimagining. The Interesting Narrative is Equiano’s autobiography, the story of his life as an enslaved African trafficked to the West Indies and Virginia, and as a free Black man who had purchased his manumission in 1766. The narrative is replete with wonder, including specific encounters with scientific technology such as a clock, an “iron muzzle,” and a Davis quadrant. When Equiano uses the phrase, “all made up of wonders,” he captures the intimacy of technology and terror that shape his life, registering his consciousness, and his refusal, of being subjected to tyrannical and abusive power. Nor does Equiano’s assessment emerge in isolation, but in recognition of the whole-scale system of what historian Stephanie E. Smallwood calls saltwater slavery—its brutality, violence, fixedness. Equiano’s wonder challenges us to recognize and imagine the future that he sees—the future of abolition and the future of social, legal, and ethical equity, an incomplete yet ongoing collective project.  

The centerpiece of our collaboration was a day-long symposium or, to more accurately, a “makerspace.” This format of a “makerspace” is key to the intellectual goals and underpinnings of “Performances of Wonder.” Makerspaces, as colleagues at the University of Virginia (USA) explain, are “learning spaces that foster creativity, tangible knowledge production, communal knowledge sharing, openness, and experimentation.” They are, by intentional design, spaces that encourage curiosity and questioning, engagement and play, confusion and discovery.  

“Wonder! A Makerspace Day” fostered experiential learning and research methodologies that were focused on wonder as an object, a sensation, and a way of being curious about the world. Participants of Wonder! moved between makerspaces in the Theatre Department, Theatre Collection (one of the world’s largest archives of British theatre history and Live Art), and the Bristol Common Press (a working historical print shop located at the University of Bristol). Drawing upon its eighteenth-century connections with science and spectacle, Wonder! featured hands-on workshops that brought eighteenth-century practices and archives into the modern day, and invited participants to experience, study, and learn through the haptics of wonder. Individually and collectively, participants learned new ways of producing, apprehending, and teaching knowledge, both embodied and abstract.  

In the workshop “Printing Wonder!” participants designed bespoke pages and made prints on the Bristol Common Press’s replica 18th-century oak common press. In this makerspace, participants learned historical practice and utilized contemporary improvisation to study the haptics of wonder available through the heritage and tradition of letterpress printing.  

The workshop “Seeing Wonder!” featured various optical instruments of wonder, ranging from an eighteenth-century peep show, a nineteenth-century magic lantern, and 21st-century VR technologies held in the Theatre Collection’s and U of B Special Collection’s archives. By experimenting with this range of technologies, participants practically investigated how the experience of wonder has been, is now, and might be manufactured, learning in the process that instruments (whether for science or the stage) rely upon improvisation and performance.    

The collaborative project, “Performances of Wonder: Science and Spectacle,” has already yielded identifiable research results. Based on the work of Wonder! A Makerspace Day, we are co-editing a collection of essays for an internationally respected, peer-reviewed journal. I also have a piece forthcoming in the highly regarded, public facing humanities journal, Public Books, based on the cinematographic possibilities afforded by science, spectacle, and eighteenth-century archives.  

Moreover, our collaboration not only advances the fields of theatre history, literary studies, and the history of science, but also uniquely pilots experiential learning and research methodologies and charts new connections between the arts and STEM disciplines. “Performances of Wonder: Science and Spectacle” offers important contributions to modern-day debates about the veracity of scientific inquiry and the role of the imagination in education and research.  

My many thanks to the University of Bristol for this absolutely fantastic and generative research opportunity.  

This blogpost was authored by Professor Jo Crow, from the Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at the University of Bristol. In June 2024, Professor Crow hosted Dr. Gimena del Rio Riande from CONICET (Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council). They collaborated on the RDI funded project ‘Digital Humanities and Latin American Studies: Challenges and Opportunities for Open Research’.

In the first week of June 2024, the School of Modern Languages and Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB) welcomed Dr Gimena del Rio Riande to Bristol to deliver an enlightening and provocative lecture, asking ‘Is there such a thing as global Digital Humanities?’, and to lead a really helpful step-by-step workshop focusing on ‘Tools and tips for an open Digital Humanities project’. Bristol does not currently have an UG or PGT program in digital humanities but many of us are working on digital humanities projects, the University has set up several important research centres and institutes focused on digital innovation (e.g. the Centre of Creative Technologies and Bristol Digital Futures Institute), and we have recently launched Isambard-AI, the UK’s most powerful super computer. When it is one of our celebrated areas of excellence, it is especially important to think about the ethical issues bound up in digital technologies (and our use of and investment in them). I was delighted that Gimena del Rio Riande accepted our invitation to come and talk and work with us. She is president of the Argentine Association of Digital Humanities, co-director of the journal Revista de Humanidades Digitales, and director of the Digital Humanities Lab at CONICET (Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council). This lab in Buenos Aires has a long history of working with minimal, open source and sustainable technologies related to DH projects. 

Digital Humanities conferences, programs, and publications aim to establish a global community, using technology as a key element capable of bringing together researchers from different latitudes. Gimena’s talk questioned the meaning of ‘global’ in this context and probed its connection with globalization – that is, the successful globalization of one particular localism. She urged more critical reflection on power relations within the scholarly communications ecosystem: the fact, for example, that the DH tools and standards we use were built in the Global North and primarily use English as the default language. How do we build a local field, she asked and, at the same time, collaborate? Her answer focused on Latin America-based practices and experiences of open and multilingual scholarly production and knowledge exchange which, she argued, offer a way of radically transforming Digital Humanities on a global scale.   

The workshop took place the following day. After participants had introduced themselves and the DH projects they were working on, we looked back together over the last couple of decades of scholarship in DH, honing in on some of Gimena’s own publications as well as the writings of Dominico Fiormonte, Alex Gil, Simon Mahony and Jennifer Isasi Velasco. In the next part of the workshop, Gimena took us through – and answered questions on – a huge range of open source tools and minimal computing technologies. I could not believe how little I knew! Finally, we discussed our hoped-for future projects and the possibility of further collaborations.  

In response to this discussion enabled by RDI funds, Patience Schell (Aberdeen), Gimena and I came up with a proposal for research support funding from the Society of Latin American Studies. We were successful in our bid (April 2025) and are currently co-leading the project ‘Sustainable and Ethical Technologies for Digitally Engaged Research in the Humanities: A North-South Collaborative Lab’ (2025-2026). We are also co-writing a chapter on ‘Ethics and Sustainability’ for the Palgrave Handbook of Digital Latin American Studies (due for submission in October 2025) and testing out ideas for an AHRC Catalyst Award. The conversation that started in June 2024 has thus kept going, taking us in new directions and connecting us with more scholars in the field of DH, and especially in minimal computing.