Nicholas Collins: Nicholas is researching early modernity and literature in England and how its questions of sovereignty, legitimacy and nationhood are played out, specifically in Shakespeare (and Hamlet), but literature from 1580-1630 more widely. He looks at these questions through the lens of five spaces in twentieth-century Irish literature to investigate how and if Irish modernity and Modernism relied, was based on and was born from Shakespeare's England. For more information, see Nicholas' e-portfolio.

Alice Eden: Alice completed her BA degree in History at Royal Holloway, University of London and an MA in British and American History at the University of Nottingham. Alice later completed an MA in Victorian Media and Culture during which she began research into Robert Anning Bell (1863-1933), one of many British artists of the period ‘forgotten’ in the art history annals, as their work cannot be aligned into the orthodoxies of the canon and art historiography. Alice obtained a Warwick Postgraduate Research Scholarship for her PhD research: ‘British Art 1880-1920: Representations of Women and Forms of Knowledge’ which, alongside Bell, also examines the work of Thomas Cooper Gotch and Frederick Cayley Robinson. Alice's work concerns ideas or forms of knowledge or knowing as articulated through iconographies of women. These artists shared an interest in expressing the inexpressible and will be re-read within the context of the international Symbolist movement and related strains of mysticism abounding across Europe.

Grace Huxford: Grace researches the significance of the Korean War (1950-1953) within British social history. In particular, her thesis uses ‘life writing’ from this pivotal, but often overlooked, conflict to explore the construction of ‘subjectivity’ in Cold War Britain. She analyses the extent to which British servicemen internalised state models of subjectivity, cross-sectioned by generational, occupational and class differences, as well as by the vagaries of collective and individual memory. For more information, see Grace's e-portfolio.

Rebecca Taylor: Rebecca is a MPhil/PhD student in the department of Classics and Ancient History researching ancient philosophy and medicine from Thales to Aristotle. She focuses in particular on what affect the natural environment, or "ancient meteorology," was thought to have on man and man's health during this period.She is also a student mentor with IGGY (International Gateway to Gifted Youth). Rebecca creates content for the IGGY website, work with the IGGY members (aged 13-18) and occasionally do workshops in schools. She works for the disabilities office as a notetaker for two undergraduate modules in Classics, modules ranging from Advanced Greek to the Roman Empire. Rebecca is involved in the HRC (Humanities Research Council) project and also works for the Residential Life Team as a Resident Tutor in Arthur Vick.

Alexi Marchel: Alexi Marchel is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick in the School of Theatre and Performance department, where she is a recipient of a Chancellor’s International Scholarship. At Royal Holloway, University of London she completed her MA in Research which examined the ways in which the history of the 1994 Rwandan genocide has been memorialised and performed by British cultural institutions and civic society organisations. Alexi received her B.A from the University of Toronto (Trinity College). Her current research examines the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission; politics of memory; and performances of national mythologies.

This image was brought in by Alexi during our sixth meeting as a group. She took the photograph during the 2012 Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill, Ottawa. As part of her research, Alexi examines government sponsored and non-official activities of the War of 1812 Bicentennial taking place in Canada. As sites of performance of national myths, she analyses the ways in which such displays reinforce and concretise nation-state narratives and/or are confronted and resisted in public spaces.

(Not to be reproduced without the author's permission)