The successful fellows will embark on ambitious research projects within their areas of expertise at Queen Mary.
The successful recipients of the Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowships were selected based on their submitted research project proposals. The projects cover four distinct topics of study: the tolerance to refugees in post-war Britain, the effects of ‘declinism’ on identity and intercultural relations, analysing poetic performance as writing, and exploring Black women’s sense of home while negotiating wider socio-economic processes.
The Fellows will be joining four schools within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; the School of History, the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, the School of English and Drama, and the School of Geography.
The fellowships provide an opportunity for the next generation of leading researchers to undertake a significant piece of publishable work in their own right, with the hopes of launching their future careers in academic research.
Anna Maguire of the School of History
Ms Maguire’s research will use humanitarianism as a lens to examine ideas of ‘sanctuary’ and ‘tolerance’ in Britain after the Second World War. The dual strands of this research – the construction of Britain as a sanctuary for refugees by charities and refugee experience of charity – will provide a deeper understanding of who was welcomed into Britain and what that ‘welcome’ meant. The research project will offer fresh perspectives on ‘arrival’ in Britain and moral qualifiers of ‘good’ citizenship.
David Anderson of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film
Dr Anderson’s research will address contemporary anxieties by diagnosing the significance of ‘declinism’ as a cultural myth in post-war Britain and Germany, and its bearing — both oppressive and potentially enlivening — on identity and intercultural relations.
Hannah Silva of the School of English and Drama
Ms Silva’s will undertake a practice-based and theoretical research project into how all intentional aspects of a poet’s performance can be analysed as part of their ‘writing’. In researching the performance of poetry as a psychophysical act of writing she will draw on methodology from literary criticism, performance studies, sociolinguistics, black cultural studies and musicology. She will also conduct practice-based research into the poet’s use of technology and gesture in collaboration with the sound poet Tomomi Adachi.
Azeezat Johnson of the School of Geography
Dr Johnson’s research will explore how homes and homelands are imagined through racialisation. How do Black women create a sense of home even as they negotiate wider socio-economic processes, inside and outside of the material home place? She will draw from Black feminist ethnography with interview dialogues and diaries. The project will include collaborative workshops with The Geffrye Museum of the Home to trace the racial histories that inform contemporary experiences of home-making by Black women and will carve out a new field connecting home studies and Black geographies.
More information
For more on the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships and for key application dates for the 2020 fellowship see here
Learn more about Queen Mary Research
For media information, contact: