Welcome
... to the very first issue of Transformations, the newsletter of Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study. Transformations seeks to serve our global College of Fellows, some 250 of whom in the last 12 years have made their mark in Durham and, building on their experiences at Cosin’s Hall, returned to their home institutions. Transformations also reaches out to all interested persons, scholars, researchers, artists, in early or later career phases, who are keen to explore the opportunities afforded by our uniquely creative environment. In Transformations, readers will find not only the latest news of Fellows’ achievements in their research and careers, they will also find a full list of current and future events in Durham (and elsewhere); longer features on current projects; interviews with recent (and not so recent) Fellows; and news of developments within the Institute itself (not least our adaptation to the post-Covid world). One of these is our new website. The original one is still there, but will be streamlined and serve more as a portal to the new one. Readers who find items in Transformations of particular interest can click for further information on the read more links. If they are keen to follow one of our projects more closely, they can also link to one of the new dedicated project websites (such as: Material Imagination; or Threshold Worlds). If you would like to comment or contribute please contact enquiries.ias@durham.ac.uk. We hope you enjoy Transformations.
|
|
|
A word from the director...
I would like to begin with a very warm welcome to Transformations, the Institute of Advanced Study’s brand new newsletter. Its name reflects the IAS’s primary goal of ‘Transforming the Way We Think’ through creative interdisciplinary approaches to the major research questions of our time.
‘Our time’ is certainly challenging at present, as Covid-19 further destabilises societies already confronting critical social and environmental problems. The IAS’s priority has therefore been try to ensure that the benefits of interdisciplinary thinking can be applied to this most pressing issue. This required us, first of all, to maintain an intellectual base to support such endeavours, which raised some very immediate questions about how to keep a small research institute afloat amid a financial storm that threatens the very existence of Universities; and how to continue to bring leading international researchers to Durham, when it is barely safe for people to emerge from their houses, let alone embark upon international travel.
Keep reading
|
|
|
|
Where are they now?
N. Katherine Hayles
Professor Katherine Hayles, many will recall, was a member of the IAS Fellows cohort 2014-2015, which pursued the theme of Emergence, connoting the complex phenomenon of emergent causality. Participants in IAS activities in that memorable year will remember a series of exciting intellectual thought events, during which we discovered to what extent non-linear causality (‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’) accounts for our experiences in science, society, art and literature (and stock markets). Why is a novel different every time you read it? Not because of any deficiencies in your reading skills. Rather, because every time your deep attention accesses the complex system of the text a new feedback loop of hermeneutic construction activates a new and different – emergent – dimension of its elements, with unpredictable consequences every time.
Kate Hayles, recently the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita of Literature in the ‘other’ Durham, our partner Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, was one of our leading lights on this journey – one of the best possible guides thanks to her wide-ranging qualifications in both the sciences and the arts, from Chemistry to Computer Science, Cognitive Humanities and English Literature. She has returned to visit us more than once since that Fellowship year, notably to deliver a public lecture Universities at the Crossroads: Directing Cultural Transformations, in our IAS series on the Future of the University in 2018. But where is she now? We contacted Professor Hayles to bring us up to date.
Keep reading
|
|
Meet the team:
New Co-Director László Pólos
Once upon a time the University of Durham, like many universities based outside large cities, constituted only three Faculties: Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences & Health, and Science. But as the University has grown and changed in the last years, so too the number of its constituent Faculties. Since the summer of 2019 the University has been pleased to add the School of Business Studies (https://www.dur.ac.uk/business/) to the Faculty list, with its Departments of Economics, Business, Marketing, and Accounting and Finance. Now as is well-known, the Durham Institute of Advanced Study is one of very few around the globe which, thanks to its deep interdisciplinary focus, stretches its cognitive interest strategically across all University Faculties, so that our signature themes have always included Science. For the very same reason the IAS is delighted now to welcome Business Studies to the Faculty club, and all the more delighted to greet a very distinguished new Co-Director (Business Studies) to the fold: Professor László Pólos.
Professor Pólos fits our international and interdisciplinary profile. He graduated in Mathematics and Physics from the Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest in 1980, and in Philosophy in 1982. He was awarded his PhD in 1995 from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Since then he has worked in Stanford, the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, (including the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study), Amsterdam, and Budapest. Here he talks a little about what brought him to Durham and drew him to the IAS.
Keep reading
|
|
|
The Lambton Worm and First Australians: Tom Murray at the IAS
In this piece for the IAS blog, 2017 Structure Fellow Tom Murray considers how his Fellowship study of the Lambton Worm ties in with his interest in narratives of ‘otherness’ and his recent film ‘The Skin of Others’.
In late 2017, the Michaelmas Term, I was an IAS Fellow at Durham University. I was working on a project about the famous Lambton Worm that once haunted the townships of the River Wear in County Durham. It was a frightening beast that reared its head during some of the most dangerous and unsettling periods for the collective North-East: Saxon raids, Viking assaults, the crusades, industrialisation. Essentially then, my project was about narratives of conflict and turmoil where the human fear of 'others' begins to haunt our collective and individual psyche: a story as old as our earliest days. In 2017, then, as the UK approached peak BREXIT-paralysis, a narrative concerning a great reptilian figure of tremendous fear-inducing destructive capacity seemed particularly apt.
Keep reading
|
|
|
Current project profile:
Material Imagination
Project lead, Margarita Staykova, reflects on the exciting potential of living materials, and how the very processes of life – emergence, adaptation, resilience and death – can be used to develop new materials.
Imagine your feet growing their own shoes. Under sustained human guidance, some of the microorganisms living on your skin have learnt how to use the mechanical energy of walking, the sunlight and the sweat from your feet to synthesize an extra foot cover for mechanical protection. The heat generated by their metabolic activity is sufficient to warm your feet. These living shoes are able to adjust their shape and thickness in relation to your mobility levels, walking style, and seasonal changes.
This is an example of the sort living material scenarios we envisage in our project Material Imagination (https://www.materialimagination.org). They draw from the inexhaustible potential of living organisms to emerge into new forms and relations, better adapted to the surrounding conditions. And as much as living materials open exciting scientific opportunities at the interface of ecology, evolution and material design, they also question our scientific practices and aspirations. Material Imagination investigates the opportunity to replace our damaging material culture with one rooted in interdependence and interconnectedness of species, where people do not forcefully impose their needs on the earth ecosystem but skilfully craft their presence.
Keep reading
|
|
|
Video: Interview with Wilson Poon
Listen as Rob Barton, IAS Director of Social Sciences, interviews IAS Fellow Wilson Poon about his work with the Material Imagination project.
Watch the interview here.
|
|
IAS Artist in Residence
While the majority of our 2020/21IAS Fellowship is virtual, we are delighted to confirm that artist Sarah Danays joins us in Durham for her Fellowship from October to March. Learn more about Sarah (and enjoy her artwork!) here.
|
|
|
2020/21 IAS Fellowship
This year our 2020/21 IAS Fellowship takes the form of a ‘virtual’ Fellowship and across both terms, and our Fellows will engage with projects and their collaborators across Durham virtually. We hope that several Fellows will also join us in Durham during late Spring or early Summer 2021 to continue working together. Details of our current Fellows can be found here.
Jointly funded by the Institute of Advanced Study and the Institute of Medical Humanities, visit this term's major project, Threshold Worlds , and its website.
News from our Former Fellows
Dr Joanne Arciuli (2018/19 Fellow)
... was appointed Dean of Research at Flinders University, Adelaide.
Professor Willard Bohn (2007/08 Fellow)
... has published a book in 2018. The Early Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Literature and Art (Routledge).
Professor Mary Carruthers (2010/11 Fellow)
... was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 2020.
Dr Nathan Citino (2014/15 Fellow)
... was warded a Truman Library Institute Scholar's Award (US $30,000) to support research for a new book project, The Forever Empire: the foundations and longevity of American power in the Middle East.
Professor John Dupré (2006/07 Fellow)
... was elected an Honorary International Member of the American Academy of Arts and Science in Spring 2020. In January 2021, he will take up the Presidency of the Philosophy of Science Association.
Professor Mikhail Epstein (2010/11 Fellow)
... published two 2019 books in 2019: The Phoenix of Philosophy: Russian thought of the late soviet period (1953-1991) (Bloomsbury Academic); and A Philosophy of the Possible: modalities in thought and culture (Brill).
Professor John Heil (2014/15 Fellow)
... was awarded Australian-American Fulbright Fellow, Monash University February–June 2020; and appointed Professor of Philosophy at Durham University, and Adjunct Research Professor at Monash University. Publication of Philosophy of Mind: a contemporary introduction (4th edition. Routledge, 2019).
Professor Stefan Helmreich (2009/10 Fellow)
... edited a volume in 2019 with MIT Press: Being Material, (with M.P Boucher, L Kinney, S Tibbits, R Uchill, and E Ziporyn).
Professor Zoltán Kövecses (2007/08 Fellow)
... published a book in 2020: Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Cambridge University Press).
Professor David Martin-Jones (2012/13 Fellow)
... published a book in 2019: Cinema Against Doublethink: ethical encounters with the lost pasts of world history.
Professor Tim May (2015/16 Fellow)
... was appointed a Professorial Research Fellow in September 2019 in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield. His latest book publication, a fifth edition of Social Research: issues, methods and process (McGraw-Hill) is expected 2021.
Professor Tom Mole (2013/14 Fellow)
Tom Mole’s book What the Victorians Made of Romanticism won the Saltire Award for Best Research Book 2018.
Jonathon Porritt (2010/11 Fellow)
... had a new book published July 2020: Hope in Hell: a decade to confront the climate emergency (Simon & Schuster UK)
Professor Julia Prest (2016/17 Fellow)
... was awarded Chair of French and Caribbean Studies at St Andrews University in 2019.
Professor Michael Pryke (2007/08 Fellow)
... became the founding Head of School first for Politics, Philosophy, Economics, Development, and Geography (PPEDG), and then the School of Social Sciences and Global Studies (SSGS) at the Open University.
Professor Sverre Raffnsøe (2017/18 Fellow)
... was granted a Fellowship at the Collegium de Lyon from September 2020 until August 2021
Professor Barbara Sattler (2016/17 Fellow)
... was warded and took up a position of Chair in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the Ruhr University Bochum.
Professor David Scott (2018/19 Fellow)
Forthcoming 2021: David‘s volume of fiction, Between Friends (London: Austin Macauley).
Professor Thomas Servais (2016/17 Fellow)
... is To assume the role as chairman of the International Subcommission of Ordovician Stratigraphy (ISOS).
Professor Marilyn Strathern (2008/09 Fellow)
... is the 2018 recipient of the International Balzan Prize for Social Anthropology.
Professor David Sutton (2018/19 Fellow)
... his latest book, refined at the IAS, tentatively titled Bigger Fish to Fry: a theory of cooking as risk, is under contract with Berghahn Press.
Professor Bill Thompson (2017/18 Fellow)
... was awarded AUD $546,802.00 from the Australian Research Council for a collaborative research project ‘Social cohesion and resilience through intercultural music engagement’. Durham University partners are Professor Tuomas Eerola and Professor Martin Clayton (Music).
Professor Tim Thornton (2014/15 Fellow)
... was awarded a DLitt in winter 2019 with a thesis entitled ‘Judgement and Normativity in the Philosophy of Mental Healthcare: an anti-reductionist approach to philosophy and psychiatry.’
Professor Jack Williams (2016/17 Fellow)
... was elected a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America in summer 2019.
Visit our blog for exciting updates from the IAS alumni community.
|
|
The virtual IAS: Public lectures
At the IAS, we’re adapting our Public Lecture programme to the pandemic. We plan to hold the lectures on Zoom. After an introduction by one of our Directors, the Fellow’s pre-recorded lecture will be streamed, the Fellow will then take part in a live question & answer session. We will put the recorded lecture on our website for people to stream whenever they like, and hope to include a comments section to allow discussion of the subject to continue. Hopefully, not only will this allow us to continue though these unusual circumstances, but will mean that an even wider audience can attend our Public Lectures.
|
|
Introducing Dr Ronan O'Donnell
We're thrilled that Ronan has joined the IAS team. Follow the link below to learn all about our new administrator.
Keep reading
|
|
|
Sarah Danays Fellows’ Seminar: Uterine Dreams
In her upcoming seminar, current Fellow Sarah Danays will consider types of emotional stress and the physical locations perceived to house them.
26 October 2020 | 12PM-1PM | Virtual
|
|
|
Extreme states of matter: From Big Bang to the lab
Does nature set bounds on how perfect a fluid can be? What is the most perfect fluid? In this talk, Dr Dimitrios Giataganas will discuss the current status of the on-going research on such exotic physics.
28 October 2020 | 5.30PM-6.30PM | Virtual
|
|
|
World Literature: Some old and new ideas
In this talk, Dr Sowon Park asks whether world literature is actually more culturally diverse than national literature
4 November 2020 | 5.15PM-6.15PM | Virtual
|
|
|
Spotlight:
From the Lighthouse: interdisciplinary reflections on light edited by Veronica Strang, Tim Edensor and Joanna Puckering
|
|
|
Recent articles
IAS supported projects continue to generate exciting new insights and important publications. Recent highlights include:
- Bryant, L. and Williams, C (2020) 'Place and Space in Social Work', Qualitative Social Work, 13(3), pp. 321-336.
- Blank, M.L., Hoek, J (2020) ‘Roll-your-own Smokers’ Reactions to Cessation-efficacy Messaging Integrated into Tobacco Packaging Design: a sequential mixed-methods study’, Tobacco Control, doi:10.1136/ tobaccocontrol-2019-055284.
- Nie, J.B., Xie, G., Chen, H., & Cong, Y (2020) ‘Conflict of Interest in Scientific Research in China: a socio-ethical analysis of He Jiankui's human genome-editing experiment’, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 17(2), pp. 191-201.
|
|
|
|
