Category: Award holders 2024-25

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 Dr. Chittaranjan Hens, who is an Assistant Professor at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH), India, working in the Center for Computational Natural Sciences and Bioinformatics (CCNSB). Dr. Hens visited the University of Bristol in Autumn 2024 to collaborate with Professor Luca Giuggioli in the School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology on the project ‘Disease propagation in complex networks: a biased random walk approach’.

 The research topic

The collaboration aims to investigate the dynamics of information diffusion across networks, while acknowledging that these dynamics are strongly influenced by the network’s structure and the specific dynamical mechanisms at work.   

Luca makes significant contributions to random walk problems in two-dimensional space, where the space may contain various types of obstacles. A systematic analysis captures the occupation probability at any time and location within the specified domain. This occupation probability can also be used to calculate the mean first passage time, which is an important component of understanding random walk problems because it relates real-world search problems in biology from animals to cells and in engineering from mechanical oscillators to computer networks.  This compelling analysis allows us to investigate random walks in both regular and non-regular lattices. The obstacle that Luca mentioned appeared in the network as link rewiring or shortcut. We have established a strong connection between the structural complexity emerging from non-regular networks and cutting-edge analytical tools capable of capturing the movement of random walks in heterogeneous media (in our case, heterogeneous graphs).   

Outcomes of the visit to Bristol

The collaboration has been both intellectually stimulating and deeply rewarding. We anticipate finalizing an engaging and insightful research draft soon. Additionally, my former PhD student, Subrata, has been actively contributing to the development of our paper. 

Beyond the research, my experience at Bristol was equally enriching. I delivered three talks at the department, two of which were designed for a broad audience. The discussions that followed were lively, with insightful questions that pushed the conversation further. Luca’s PhD student, Dan, who had limited prior exposure to network science, quickly grasped the essence of my work. He and Luca offered valuable perspectives on how their analytical methods could enhance my research—this made the whole exchange not only productive but also thoroughly enjoyable. And the best part? It remains enjoyable even now as we continue our discussions! 

Stepping outside the realm of equations and networks, I found the cultural and social discussions with Luca and Dan equally fascinating. Despite our varied backgrounds, we uncovered numerous shared viewpoints on global issues, reaffirming that intellectual and social bridges can transcend cultural boundaries. 

Exploring Bristol

Bristol itself holds a special place in my journey. Years ago, I stood before Banksy’s “The Flower Thrower” in Bethlehem—one of his most iconic works. So, arriving in Bristol, his hometown, felt like a full-circle moment. I took the time to track down some of his works, including “Well Hung Lover,” and found the experience thrilling. 

Before my visit to Bristol, I spent time in Oxford, where I reflected on the legacy of Ada Lovelace, a visionary who played a pivotal role in shaping Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a precursor to modern computing. To my delight, I later discovered that my office building in Bristol was named after her. Another powerful moment came when I encountered the life-size bronze statue of Henrietta Lacks near the Physics Department. Lacks, an African American woman, unknowingly contributed to one of the most significant medical breakthroughs when her cells were taken without consent—her story stands as a reminder of the need for inclusivity, respect, and ethical responsibility in science.

A final delightful surprise awaited me near College Green, where I stumbled upon a statue of Raja Ram Mohan Roy—the “father of the Indian Renaissance.” Born in my own district in India, he was a fearless reformer who campaigned against oppressive practices such as “Sati” (a custom that existed in a subset of upper caste society in Bengal, in which the widow was burned alive alongside her deceased husband). Seeing his presence in Bristol was both unexpected and deeply moving. 

This collaboration has been more than just an academic exercise; it has been a journey of discovery—scientific, cultural, and personal. It has reinforced the importance of interdisciplinary thinking, historical awareness, and the role we play in shaping a more inclusive and enlightened world. In a time of global turmoil, such exchanges—whether in science or in culture—serve as powerful reminders of our collective responsibility to push boundaries, foster diversity, and create meaningful progress.

This blogpost was authored by Dr. Jelmar Hugen, who is based at the Leiden University Centre for Arts in Society (LUCAS) in the Netherlands, and specializes in medieval romance literature and multilingualism. Dr. Hugen visited the University of Bristol in Autumn 2024 to collaborate with Professor Ad Putter in the Department of English.

Between October 1st and November 15th, I had the great fortune to attend the University of Bristol as a Visiting Researcher, working alongside some of the leading experts on medieval romance to examine the reception of unfinished medieval French literature outside of medieval France and explore new opportunities to study this movement and transformation of romance literature across Europe in the future. The aims of this stay – establishing new contacts, producing co-authored research articles, and planning for future scholarly collaboration – were all met and have made my stay extremely rewarding. 

Perceval Passing Borders 

As a main point of interest, my research in Bristol centered around a particular group of medieval romances whose content has been described as reactions or responses to the French Conte du Graal, an unfinished Arthurian romance by Chrétien de Troyes (late 12th century) featuring the Grail hero Perceval that enjoyed great popularity across Europe from its inception all the way into the premodern period. Scholars such as Prof. Ad Putter and Prof. Leah Tether at the University of Bristol have examined in the past how different French authors continued this unfinished work, some by adding new material, others by trying to tie up the loose narrative plotlines to close off the story. As it turns out, however, this mode of continuation (or, more broadly, rewriting) is different to that of writers outside of the francophone literary tradition. By examining the works of these writers, in particular the Middle Dutch Roman van Moriaen and the Middle English Sir Perceval of Galles, me and Prof. Putter were able to conclude these texts worked differently towards the closure of Chrétien’s work and, in doing so, made changes to the existing romance and placed new thematic emphases that shifted away from the Holy Grail quest towards more family-oriented adventures rooted in social realism. 

The findings of this research were presented in the Centre for Medieval Studies Seminar Series, where I was fortunate to get valuable comments and suggestions from experts of (Arthurian) romance and courtly culture in general (Fig. 1). In the near future, these findings will be reworked by myself and Prof. Putter into a co-authored publication. 

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 

Aside from the Conte du Graal and its European responses, I was also very happy to work on a different Arthurian romance during my stay, namely the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th century). This masterpiece is well-known among Arthurian scholars and a must-read even for those such as myself who don’t normally work on medieval English romance. Fittingly, the undergraduate course on medieval English literature in Bristol spend two full weeks on the text, exploring its literary-historical context, its use of nature and space and its view of medieval gender. As the fourth and final seminar in this series, I was given the opportunity to talk to the Bristol students about the literary development of the titular hero Gawain in the Arthurian tradition and even present the students with some of the interesting bridges that exist between Dutch and English Arthuriana. Doing so not only allowed me to spend time studying this fascinating text, but also gain a new experience by teaching in English to students outside of the Netherlands, which I greatly enjoyed. 

Pan-European Continuation 

These bridges between different romance traditions across Europe also formed the basis for various of my discussions with the CMS members. It quickly became clear that the Pan-European scope of medieval romance was not just interesting to many researchers of individual linguistic traditions, but also that some of the practices and literary traditions that we were examining showed interesting commonalities that suggested close ties and interactions. Texts that have commonly been studied in isolation, as part of their individual literary traditions, or through intertextual connections with specific works can be understood as crafted products of a Pan-European network in which texts move, transform and adjust to different cultures and audiences. Charting out this network and examining how it functioned across Europe will require a large scale project involving scholars with expertises in different literary traditions and forms of rewriting, and it is such a project that we will work towards in the following years. 

The article drafted by myself and Prof. Putter forms part of the foundation for this research, as will an article that myself and Prof. Leah Tether are working on that focuses on the literary practice of medieval continuation in French, German and Dutch romance. In the next few months, I hope to further explore the possibilities for a large scale project involving not just the University of Bristol and my home university of Leiden, but also other institutions and scholars across Europe. Hopefully, whatever form this project will take, it will also lead me back to Bristol in some way! 

Conclusion 

I am extremely grateful to have been able to spend time in Bristol, collaborating with some of the brightest and friendliest colleagues I have had the pleasure to work with. The Visiting Researcher program has been truly rewarding and the new connections I have made make me happy to look forward to the next steps our collaborations may take (Fig. 2). 

In June 2025 the visits of several of our international visitors lined up, so the International Research Development (IRD) team invited them and their University of Bristol hosts to a ‘mingle’ over afternoon tea and cakes. This was combined with an information drop-in session so that other researchers at the University of Bristol could attend and ask questions about our funding schemes for international research development. This event took place in the Verdon-Smith International Seminar Room, in the Grade 1 listed Royal Fort House.

This was an opportunity to share research projects, create connections and to find out about the further support provided by the wider Research Development International team. Attending visitors and their collaborative projects included:

• Professor Jackie Leach Scully – ‘Values in the regulation of human organ transplantation‘
• Dr Colin Gleason – ‘Delivering on the promise of Surface Water and Ocean Topography’s (SWOT) hydrologic revolution‘
• Dr Liza Rose Cirolia – ‘Digital futures and African urban transitions: thinking with urban speculation‘
• Dr Haidee Cadd – ‘Past human-environment dynamics in South America: Grant and Publication preparation‘

It was a real pleasure to meet our visiting researchers and their hosts and to find out more about their collaborative research development – we’re really looking forward to hearing how these collaborations develop, and providing further support where we can.

This blogpost was authored by Dr Felicity Jensz, who is a colonial historian at the University of Münster, Germany. Dr Jensz visited the University of Bristol as a Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor in February 2025 to collaborate with Professor Hilary Carey in the Department of History. 

The week that I arrived in Bristol to take up my Bristol Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professorship, the weather was bleak and more conducive to indoor activities than exploring new cities. Bristol had other ideas of me and the Light Festival drew me into the city to explore the streets and sights of the city that would be my home for a month. As a colonial historian with a focus on religious movements, Bristol offered me many opportunities to see where and how history was made publicly evident, such as in the cathedral and in the museums of Bristol. The physical exploration of the city and the broadening of my geographical horizons complimented my intellectual journey that involved both listening and lecturing within the School of Humanities.  

One of the motivating reasons to apply for the fellowship was to allow for prolonged and frequent conversations with my host, Professor Hilary Carey, in our development of a large funding application. In my first week at Bristol, I accompanied Hilary to a Faculty grant writing work shed, where in-depth conversations with both grant facilitators as well as successful grant applicants allowed for the development of the grant framework and constructive feedback for our initial ideas. It was inspiring to hear of innovative and critically important research projects that were in the final stages of grant appraisal as well as to observe the process of project consolidation. Our own funding application process benefited greatly from this workshop at the beginning of my time in Bristol, with ideas further fleshed out and discussed on walks in the English countryside and a weekend trip to Stonehenge; the Neolithic landscape a pertinent reminded of the enduringness of different forms of history. Conversations with Kenneth Austin, Head of the History Department, and also with Sumita Mukherjee (History) and Florian Stadtler (English) provided further opportunities to discuss future grant ideas. 

One of the most enjoyable aspects of being a fellow was to hear about people’s research in both structured lectures, of which I attended a variety, as well as more informally in conversations over coffee or dinner in wonderful places, such as: a café attached to one of the UK’s oldest outdoor swimming pools (Bristol Lido); or, in the café of the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, where a mummified kitten left a lasting impression. I really enjoyed giving a lecture to the School of Humanities on reports from German women deported from the German colony of Cameroon during the First World War. These fascinating first-hand reports open up a new perspective as how women navigated war and how their stories were used for German war propaganda. Discussing my paper with Africanists, WWI specialists, religious historians, and feminist scholars was inspiring and will improve the subsequent article, which back in Münster, I am still trying to find time to finalize.  

Being in Bristol opened up different views on the world and provided me time to finish writing other research papers with the help of the humanities library at Bristol.  One research article has since been accepted by The Journal of Commonwealth and Imperial History, an outcome that was facilitated through my time in Bristol. More generally, my time in Bristol provided many opportunities for collegial and insightful conversations, walks in the countryside, and for the generation of new ideas. The depths of winter may be now past, but the lights and inspiration from Bristol remain with me, and provide continuing impetus for the grant application being prepared.

This blogpost was authored by Professor Signe E. Kastberg, who is a mathematics teacher educator at Purdue University, USA. She visited the University of Bristol as a Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor in Autumn 2024 to collaborate with Dr Tracy Helliwell in the School of Education.

Living in the Principal’s house at Bristol brought new challenges including finding a grocery store, navigating a double oven with temperatures in Celsius, and laundering my clothes with a washer that was also a dryer. Each of these challenges served as a reminder of my learning. My stay at Bristol focused my attention on collaborations in teacher educator work with prospective teachers. 

In my graduate program I had heard “All doing is knowing and all knowing is doing” (Maturana & Varela 1992, p. 27) but I wondered at its meaning in terms of teacher learning. The Bristol symposia and working groups created space for me to revisit this phrase. In a symposium focused on teacher noticing, presenters shared a geometric image and asked attendees to be aware of what we noticed over some minutes. Attendees then shared what they had seen providing occasions for new ways of seeing.  

New ways of seeing teacher educator and teacher collaborations were stimulated by a local school. I saw children doing and talking about mathematics. I saw and heard a prospective teacher share her experience of teaching and identify areas in her practice for future action. I listened to my host Dr. Tracy Helliwell debrief with the mentor teacher and the prospective teacher. I noticed how much of the time the prospective teacher spoke and wondered about the thoughts of the mentor teacher and Dr. Helliwell. I became aware of “staying with the details” (Brown & Coles, 2013) as a way of doing mathematics teacher educator work. 

Seminars at Bristol involve discussions of noticings and emerging thoughts of attendees in response to presenters. In my presentations over the last 20 years I have asked attendees for their stories. Through the years I was aware that I could notice a theme for a few of the stories but not all. During the Bristol seminars I asked for stories about mathematics learners’ needs, writing research, and relationships in teaching. I left time for questions. Attendees used this time to share noticings and awarenesses. This was unexpected. In America, presentations in my academic contexts were more like showcases. The Bristol seminars were opportunities for the seminar leader and participants to share and to learn.  

Due to my background, I treated my first seminar at the British Society for Research in Mathematics Learning as a presentation. I described my experiences of Certainty and Uncertainty in designing instructional activities for prospective mathematics teachers. I heard from several attendees during and following the session. Attendees offered possibilities for my thinking such as whether the experience I relayed was one of certainty or something else (H. Povey, personal communication, November 2, 2024). By my last seminar at Bristol, Exploring and Defining Relational Practice for the School of Education, I was developing a new way of hearing seminar attendees. I tried to ask questions about attendee’s stories and to stay with the detail they shared about relationships. Hearing stories of a prospective Bristol student who shared his nervousness and a child who hid under a table to remain safe in school were stories that contained vital information seminar attendees associated with my descriptions of relationships. At Bristol I was learning how to hear these stories. 

By the end of my month, I found the grocery store, made cookies twice using the oven at the Principal’s house, and did my laundry each week. My cookies were not perfect, and I ruined a sweater or two. Yet through Bristol collaborations I became aware of ways of knowing through doing tasks including those in my teacher educator work. 

This blogpost was authored by Professor Dewey Hall. Professor Hall is a materialist ecocritic based at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA, USA. He visited the University of Bristol as a Next Generation Visiting Researcher in Autumn 2024 to collaborate with Professor Ralph Pite in the Department of English.

As a Bristol Next Generation Visiting Researcher, Professor Hall connected and engaged with faculty and postgrads in the Schools of Humanities, Geographical Sciences, and Earth Sciences. He delivered four (4) scripted lectures with powerpoints successfully as slated during his one-month residence, which were very well received:

1. “The Political Ecology of Matter” on 18 September 2024 (School of Geographical Sciences and School of Humanities);
2. “The Ecology of Hopkins’s ‘Remarkable Sunsets’ and Ruskin’s ‘Storm-Cloud’ Lecture (1883-1884): Krakatoa, Weather, and Climate Change” on 25 September 2024 (Centre for Environmental Humanities and School of Humanities);
3. “Marble as Material Form: Geology, Quarrying, and Provenance” on 1 October 2024 (School of Humanities, School of Earth Sciences, and IGRCT);
4. “A Materialist Approach to the Parthenon Sculptures: Subject, Object, and Thing” on 8 October 2024 (English, History of Art, Classics, and Archaeology).

The question/answer sessions following the lectures were collegial and mutually stimulating, inspiring further research and inquiry through one-on-one discussions and small group gatherings. Professor Hall’s lectures are chapters from his book manuscript under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing forthcoming in 2025 titled Materialist Romanticism: The Matter of the Marbles. He is grateful to wonderful, multi-disciplinary colleagues at the University of Bristol for their interest and engagement with his work: Professor Ralph Pite (English), Dr Lucy Donkin (History of Art), Dr Noreen Masud (English), Professor Nicoletta Momigliano (Classics), Professor Ellen O’Gorman (Classics), Dr Merle Patchett (Human Geography), Professor Rich Pancost (Earth Sciences), and Sir-Professor Stephen Sparks (Earth Sciences) among many other individuals. Professor Hall has further collaborations planned with Professor Pite through conferences convened by the University of Lausanne and U.C. Riverside, featuring their respective paper presentations. When Professor Hall thinks of the UoB, he states that he will recall it as a place of grace.