Faculty of Arts Interdisciplinary Themes - illustrative glosses (January 2024)

As the themes are, by design, not described in terms that link them to particular disciplines, cultural genres or historical periods, we thought it might be helpful to provide this gloss indicating the kinds of work that might find a place within these themes.

Each theme is designed to be cross-sectoral and to house all approaches characterising Arts & Humanities Studies (literary, performance-based, visual-arts-based, linguistic, historical, aesthetic...), with an extensive geographical, historical and sociological range.

Note: these glosses are purely illustrative, and the actual research strands and substrands that develop may well be different.

Energy, Environment, Climate, Resilience

Corresponds to extensive work across the Faculty on representations, discourses and cultural debates around climate crisis, anthropocene, ecology, fossil fuels, energy, etc. Distinctive current strands of this are work on (non-)sustainability of the cultural and creative industries (energy use etc) and work on (post-)fossil fuel imaginaries. Other areas are likely to emerge in the wake of wider Faculty discussion, as for other themes.

Radical Traditions

Designed to provide an extensive historical and geographical frame for the exploration of ‘radical’ (root-unsettling) approaches to art, aesthetics, politics and thought. It is hoped that topics will extend across different kinds of political and intellectual spectrum, and may include: traditions of feminist dissent and gender politics; traditions of decolonization; understandings of social justice; histories of movements such as anarchism, syndicalism, etc; cultural traditions of far-right movements; traditions of radical aesthetic experimentation and theorisation; avant-garde traditions of all kinds; anti-hegemonic traditions.

Medical Humanities

Designed to bring together researchers working at the interface of medicine and the humanities. This will include extensive work on the history of medicine, but also work across various departments on the place of medicine within wider cultural histories, the relevance of artistic and historical resources for therapeutic purposes and/or the cultural dimensions of those purposes.

Geographies and Materialities of Cultural Exchange

This can house a number of related research strands. Firstly, it provides a base for the extensive work done across the Faculty on the ‘History of the Book’ as well as other approaches to the dynamics and technical/material underpinnings of intellectual and cultural exchange. Secondly, it can house work on the significance of ‘place-based culture’, whether this is understood in terms of the University’s own regional engagements, or explorations further afield on the interaction between local cultures and international flows (e.g. cultural impact of China’s Belt and Road Initiative). Thirdly, it can bring together researchers focusing specifically on transnational language flows.

Creative and Cultural Industries

Designed to bring together work on processes, creative works and audiences across industries such as film, TV, publishing, music, performance, heritage, etc. (concentrated notably in SCAPVC, but present also in other departments). Specific working groups/subthemes likely to be estalished in wake of further deliberations.

Intelligence and Experience

This is a more speculative theme. Firstly, in the light of the current salience of the notions of ‘intelligence’ and ‘consciousness’ given the rise of AI, it is designed to surface engagement with the notions from established or innovative Humanities perspectives (without necessarily passing directly or initially through engagement with AI problematics). Secondly, it will bring together the currently quite small number of researchers in the Faculty who are working quite directly on AI and large language models (for example translation research in SMLC, work on algorithmic cultural policy in SCAPVC). The foregrounding of ‘experience’ is designed also to capture some of the experiential/phenomenological/gendered/queer (etc...) inflections of our Humanities research – notably in work on aesthetics, writing of the self, etc.