Queen Mary’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences has invested in several new strategic lectureships. Over the next few weeks we will be featuring each of our new recruits and showcasing their research.
Queen Mary University of London is a member of the Russell Group of leading UK universities, in acknowledgement of its distinctive excellence in research and teaching.
The Humanities and Social Sciences have been key to establishing Queen Mary’s global reputation and the Faculty Schools regularly appear in subject rankings in the top 50 universities in the world.
Our Centres and Institutes drive Queen Mary’s local, national and global reputation, such as the Centre for the Studies of the Home, the Mile End Institute and the Centre for Commercial Law Studies.
In the third part of our feature series, we introduce three more of our academics who will be joining us in September 2019.
Dr Sharri Plonski teaches undergraduate courses in politics in the Middle East, colonialism, international development and international relations theory. Her research interests include settler colonial relations, particularly in relation to Israel/Palestine as well as the practices and spaces of anti-colonial struggles. In 2017 she published her monograph, Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Power, Resistance and the Struggle for Space.
“I have been craving an opportunity to both think long-term about the kind of research I want to do and the kind of career I want to have, as a scholar, a teacher and an activist. The strategic lectureship offers an incredible chance to do this,” said Dr Plonski.
In her spare time Sharri enjoys reading comics. “I am addicted to Marvel comics and the idea of superheroes,” she added.
Dr Anna Bourne was a Lecturer in Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Southampton’s Palaeoenvironmental Laboratory research group prior to joining Queen Mary. Her principal research interests include the development of robust and precise regional chronologies of environmental change and the application of tephrochronology to palaeoenvironmental sequences in order to link records and test the synchronicity of events. Other interests include the application of tephrochronology and volcanic hazard assessment, specifically in the South Pacific, North Atlantic and Central Mediterranean regions.
Dr Anna Bourne said: “I am looking forward to having the space and time to develop my independent research career in one of the leading Geography departments in the country.”
Dr Simon Franklin holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford, where he is a Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of African Economies. Prior to joining Queen Mary, he was a Lecturer at the London School of Economics. He has past and ongoing work on the economics of public housing, urban redevelopment policies, labour market effects of social protection in Africa, and job search among unemployed youth. He is originally from Cape Town in South Africa.
Dr Simon Franklin said: “I have lived just down the road from Queen Mary for some years now, and have passed by the campus many times. I'm really looking forward to working in the area and engaging with the students and staff there.”
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