4A. Room 1 — Creative Writing 1: Home, Family, Self
Chair: Kanu Priya Dhingra, Centre for Cultural, Literary, and Postcolonial Studies, SOAS
Rosa Lucy Rogers
‘Composing the Subject “In Process”: Semiotic Slippage and Language Innovation within the Child’s Narrative Voice in My Working Novel Composition’
Sarah Butler
‘Writing Home‘
Sabina Dosani
‘Flesh and Blood’
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Home is both site and process, both physical place and imagined space; it is made, un-made, made again; left, returned to, left again. It is intimately connected to who we are and who we aspire to be. It is a story we tell and retell, embellish and edit. Home is a narrative project; something that happens over time as well as space; a process that looks to hold past, present and future together, and through doing so generate meaning and connection.Taken from the final chapter of my PhD critical commentary, this paper examines the relationship between writing and home. It explores the idea of the novel as a house — a metaphor used by Henry James and Alice Munro among others — and asks whether we might extend this analogy to the novel as a home, with all the complexities that term encompasses. It argues for reclaiming domestic fiction as a political space, and finally turns to the process of writing itself as a means of home-making.Sarah Butler has three novels published by Picador in the UK and with fourteen international publishers: Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love (2013), Before The Fire (2015) and Jack and Bet (2020). In November 2018, she published a novella, Not Home, written in conversation with people living in unsupported temporary accommodation in Manchester. Sarah’s work explores ideas of home, belonging, identity, family, and urban landscapes. She is currently a CHASE Scholar in Creative Writing at the Open University and lectures part-time in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.
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For several years, my professional life as a psychiatrist was concerned with interrogating mother-child relationships. While working as a medical expert witness for the family court, I routinely made recommendations to judges who were deciding whether children should be removed from their mother’s care. On rarer occasions, I was asked to conduct a pre-birth assessment, which involved evaluating a pregnant woman’s ability to parent a child who was not yet born. During that time in my professional life, I experienced recurrent miscarriages and was treated with an unproven drug regime in an NHS recurrent-miscarriage clinic. Almost all my professional conversations were about motherhood, about what makes a good enough parent and what causes harm. Away from work, I was preoccupied with the smallest physical signs of life and those signs that might herald impending foetal death. These collisions, of private experiences as a woman miscarrying, and my professional experiences as an expert witness made me curious about how stories are told by parents, by professionals and by the courts. Being a patient myself, albeit an obstetric one, made me construct assessments differently. My obstetrician used military metaphors to describe his treatment plans. My immune system, he postulated, was mounting an attack on embryos, identifying them as enemy invaders. The consultant suggested I had high numbers of cells called natural killer cells and his proposed treatment was presented as a counterattack. Throughout that pregnancy, I lived with my husband, an army officer, on a large military headquarters. The politics and poetics of war were part of my life during that pregnancy. For the creative component of my PhD, I am writing a memoir to explore these personal and professional collisions. I will be reading an extract of my creative non-fiction, which investigates the language used in the recent British medical literature and in the writing of women in memoir and fiction to describe foetal death, with a particular focus on deaths in early pregnancy.Sabina Dosani: I am a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist and a writer, in my second year of a CHASE-funded PhD on the creative and critical writing programme at UEA. While working as a junior doctor, I had a parallel career in medical journalism, working both freelance and as an editor at the British Medical Journal (BMJ). In 2013, I was appointed by the Lord Chancellor as a Medical Member of the First Tier Tribunal (Mental Health). I have MSc degrees in Mental Health Studies and in Medical Humanities (with distinction) from King’s College, London.
4B. Room 2 — Poverty and Plague in Seventeenth-Century London
Chair: Dr Brodie Waddell, Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck
Aaron Columbus
‘To Prevent the Great Influx of Poor People into this Parish’: The Impact of the Poor and Plague on the Perceptions of the Parish Community in the Suburban Environs of Early Stuart London’
Anna Cusack
‘Some of These Dead Are Not Like the Others: The Self-Marginalised Plague Dead’
Nikki Clarke
‘Proclamations, the Press and the Word on the Street: How Londoners Used and Made Judgements about Their News Sources on the Plague’
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The parishes (secular and ecclesiastical units of local government) beyond the walled city of early modern London were ever-growing and fluid communities. By the 1630s, most in the suburban environs contained populations greater than many of England’s provincial cities and those populations tended to be balanced toward the ordinary poor. This group were largely self-sufficient but easily swayed toward the need for parish relief by a change in life circumstance or crisis event. The cumulative impact of accelerated population growth, a changing built environment and poverty had coalesced in the 1630s and 1640s and, alongside the long-term problem of plague, placed acute stress on parishes in the suburban environs. Whilst select parish vestries (a socially exclusive and co-opting group of men who governed the parish) were handed enhanced powers to manage their local problems by the Plague Orders in 1578 and 1583 and the Poor Laws in 1598 and 1601, this also carried great responsibility and was an ever-increasing burden. The interpretation of community by vestries in the suburban environs after 1600 was necessarily narrow and situated within the formal and traditional construct of the parish boundaries, that failed to or could not practically take into account the fast-changing demographic and social situation. This manifested in ever hardening perceptions of belonging and discretion in who the parish was responsible for, which was driven by practical considerations of matching limited resources to ever-growing need. Plague, as a long term problem, amplified this outlook. For the greater population in the suburban environs though, the perception of parish community was imagined on a different plain to that of parish government and the practical concerns that guided their response to the poor and plague. This short paper will consider the impact of plague and the poor in shaping perceptions of community in the suburban environs between 1600 and 1650, and will explore the conflicting perceptions of community that existed between parish government and other individuals and groups in the parish. Aaron Columbus is a final year PhD candidate at Birkbeck. His research is focused on plague and the poor in the suburban environs of early modern London c.1600–1650. Aaron completed a BA in Classical Studies and Diploma of Teaching at the University of Canterbury (NZ), then later, an MA in London Studies at Birkbeck.
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London’s heterogeneity lends itself to a study of marginalisation, especially across the seventeenth century and especially when epidemics hit. The dead mattered but not all the dead were treated the same.During the 1650s, at a time when political uncertainty and religious expectation was rife, several dissenting groups sprung up; one of these groups was the Quakers. Quakers established their own practices around the disposal of the dead, and these practices were influential in promoting the movement’s unique identity. Not long after the emergence of the Quaker movement, in 1656, Jews were informally readmitted to England and small groups of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews settled within the metropolis. These Jewish communities brought with them pan-European traditions around the disposal of their dead, and these traditions were placed fully formed upon the landscape of seventeenth-century London.This short paper will explore how these religious ‘outsiders’ dealt with the 1665/6 plague and their own plague dead. Did the outbreak of plague allow them the freedom to set up independent burial grounds with little to no opposition from parish authorities? Were these same authorities happy to turn a blind eye to the disposal methods used by these communities, as it lessened the pressure upon them and the pressures on the parish’s fiscal resources? What were the challenges faced by these marginal groups when dealing with their dead during such an epidemic? Not all dead were treated the same and not all plague dead were treated the same, as this paper will illuminate.Anna Cusack is a final year PhD candidate at Birkbeck. Her research is on the marginalised dead of London c.1600–1800. Anna completed a BA (Hon) in History at Birkbeck in 2016 then undertook an MPhil in Early Modern History at the University of Cambridge before returning to Birkbeck for her PhD which is funded by The Mercers’ Company.
+ Abstract
How did those who did not have the resources to leave London for the relative safety of the country during the 1665 epidemic use the range of news and information sources that were available to them to navigate the dangers of life in the capital?By the 1660s even London’s most deprived citizens were living in a multimedia world where news came via complex networks of oral, print and manuscript transmission. Consumers of the period were accustomed to managing a range of sources, which could inform their decision making and perhaps give them some agency in a situation where they had a very limited number of options.How did people compare their own direct newsgathering, counting the number of red crosses on doors in the neighbourhood and the number of times the passing bell rang, to what the weekly Bills of Mortality said? Were people more inclined to believe their family, trade or religious networks, than City proclamations? What impact did public health restrictions on normal methods of oral news transmission — from hawkers to coffee shops, markets to religious meetings — have on the way people consumed news?Finally, how did people judge the accuracy and reliability of their plague news, and did they trust sources that had been reliable on other news in the past? Were they inclined to trust print adverts for new medicines and preventatives more or less than the local apothecary who stayed in the neighbourhood through the plague, or was the situation so dire that they would try anything they could afford? This paper will suggest that the variety of sources available did allow London’s citizens to make their own assessments of the crisis. Nikki Clarke is a second year PhD student at Birkbeck, researching accuracy and its value in seventeenth-century English news sources. Nikki completed an MA in Early Modern History at Birkbeck, where her research focused on the working lives of professional musicians in Commonwealth and Protectorate London.
4C. Room 3 — Applying Digital Methods to Arts and Humanities Research
Sarah Middle, Stuart Falconer, Andrew Smith, Jack Taylor
The application of digital methods is becoming increasingly common in Arts and Humanities research and CHASE PhD students are no exception. In this panel, we will provide a series of snapshots to demonstrate our use of digital methods in our own research projects, before facilitating a discussion with the audience. Topics will include the possibilities and opportunities provided by digital methods, as well as the potential limitations and pitfalls.
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Sarah Middle (Classical Studies, Open University) studies the use of digital tools and resources by Ancient World researchers and will open the panel with a presentation to share some of her survey and interview research findings. In particular, Sarah’s talk will focus on identifying which methods Ancient World researchers most associated with digital technologies and communicating insights into their experiences.Stuart Falconer (Classical Archaeology, Open University) is researching the economy of the ancient Roman world in South-Western Britain. Through using Historical Environment Record and Portable Antiquities Scheme data he is compiling a dataset for identifying evidence of change and continuity in the material culture evidence. Stuart’s talk will look at the challenges of consolidating diverse datasets as well as how digital approaches can offer further opportunities for understanding of material culture evidence.Andrea Smith (Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia) is studying the plays of Shakespeare on BBC Radio. She is not only listening to digital recordings of the plays, but also searching through the vast number of newspaper and magazine reviews and reports about them available online. Her talk will look at how she has tracked down relevant material, as well as the benefits and complications of searching online.Jack Taylor (History, Open University) researches male on male sexual violence in late eighteenth and nineteenth century London using a mixture of physical and digital material, such as court records and digitised newspapers. In his talk, he will highlight the resources available to study the history of crime, noting their advantages and limitations. For instance, while digitisation has increased accessibility for amateur and professional historians, commercialisation of resources and lack of focus on the context of historical data may result in misunderstandings regarding crime in the past.
4D. Room 4 — Milagros and Metaphor, Foil Sculpting
Linda Miller
This session includes a brief introduction to milagros and talismen and the value of metaphor for reflective practice. Participants are invited to sculpt or emboss, in tinfoil, an object that relates to hope for the future or a recent positive experience. No artistic ability required. Sharing is entirely optional, but participants are invited to show their piece and describe it and enjoy an appreciative inquiry response. Feedback about the experience of using an object and creativity for reflection is invited. The session is deliberately founded on coaching/group supervision, positive psychology principles and appreciative inquiry to create a positive experience.
+ Session info
This is one of a series of workshops which I have been running for GPs during the pandemic in conjunction with the Faculties of the Royal College of General Practitioners. The series gives doctors a first-hand experience of the use of arts in health and ‘social prescribing’ which can benefit their patients. Reflective practice is mandated in health care. In General Practice governance, processes of appraisal and revalidation demand formulaic reflection on individual cases, particularly negative events, complaints, significant events and things which could have gone better. Burnout, attrition and suicide are significant problems in the profession. As a GP appraiser I am interested in the negative impact of such enforced reflection and the potential for the arts to enable broader thematic reflection and meta-cognition about what it means to be a practitioner. This approach is more aligned to the principles of wellbeing; with its distinct hedonic and eudemonic aspects, logotherapy and salutogenesis rather than the pathologizing approach of burnout prevention.Linda Miller is in her second year of part-time practice-led doctoral studies in the Medical Humanities at Birkbeck. She is a practising GP currently working for the Covid 111 senior clinician assessment service (SCAS) and has also worked as a doctors’ coach for the Professional Support Unit at Health Education England since 2008 (and the NHS London Leadership Academy and Faculty of Medical Coaches).
4E. Room 5 — Flow n Flux: Creative Approaches to Feminist Community Building
Natasha Richards and Eleanor Kilroy
Flow n Flux is a discussion group which privileges creative approaches to feminist community building. Held once a month, each workshop explores a different theme through a combination of textual and video resources, discussion, theatre exercises, creative writing and crafts.
+ Session info & bios
Flow n Flux is a discussion group which privileges creative approaches to feminist community building. Held once a month, each workshop explores a different theme through a combination of textual and video resources, discussion, theatre exercises, creative writing and crafts. The first portion of our presentation will provide an overview of our individual PhD research centred on feminist approaches to theatre with young people. We will draw attention to how overlaps in our research interests and engagement with the CHASE Feminist Network led to the advent of Flow n Flux. The second portion facilitates creative participatory exercises to demonstrate the evolving landscape of Flow n Flux. Dialogue through creative processes is at the heart of our workshop design and research interests, which was foregrounded on the power of in person, live and embodied exploration. We will discuss the opportunities and challenges that came from being forced to shift our workshop methods during social distancing measures. We have continued to nurture and grow during these challenging and increasingly digitised times, which has informed Flow n Flux as well as our PhD research.Natasha Richards: PhD Theatre, Year 3, University of Essex, Department of Literature, Film and Theatre StudiesEleanor Kilroy: PhD Theatre and Performance, Year 3, Goldsmiths, University of London, Departments: Theatre and Performance/Media, Communications and Cultural Studies
4F. The British Library – Supporting PhD Research
Flavia Dietrich-England, Nora McGregor, Jason Webber
9:30 The British Library – Who we are and how we support doctoral research (Flavia Dietrich-England)
9:45 Digital research: Collections, data, tools and methods (Nora McGregor)
10:05 What is the UK Web Archive and how can I use it for my PhD? (Jason Webber)
10:20 Q&A
+ Bios
Flavia Dietrich-England works as part of the British Library’s Research Development Team, with a focus on postgraduate programmes. This includes collaborative doctoral studentships, the PhD Placement Scheme and international fellowships. Flavia has previously worked in collections management, national partnerships and research at the National Gallery and the V&A.Nora McGregor is a Digital Curator in the Digital Scholarship department of the British Library. Her work centres on providing digital scholarship training opportunities to colleagues across the Library to support, and undertake in their own right, computationally driven humanities research and projects.Jason Webber is the UK Web Archive Engagement Manager, based at the British Library. Jason aims to promote the web archive, build partnerships and projects and support research. Jason has previously worked at the Museum of London and Natural History Museum managing websites and online projects.