PhD candidate Lauren Pearl Holmes was delighted to present the progress of her Targeted Research Panel’s (TRP’s) project at the British Association for American Studies (BAAS) 71st Annual Conference 2026, together with a second member of the panel, Dr Heena Hussain of the University of Manchester. The conference, held from Thursday 9th to Saturday 11th April 2026 at the College of Arts & Humanities and Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies at the University of Glasgow, offered new scholarly appraisal in the event of the 250-year anniversary of the 1776 Declaration of Independence.
The TRP’s roundtable presentation was entitled “COVID-19 and the Slow Death of Interdisciplinarity in the Practice and Teaching of American Studies.” It presented the development of the project, which was awarded £5,000 from the BAAS TRP Award in 2024.
The conference announcement and further details on its proceedings can be found here.
The abstract for the TRP’s roundtable presentation is as follows:
Following the successful delivery of a roundtable discussion at the BAAS Annual Conference 2025, the Targeted Research Panel (TRP) for the funding period 2025-27 are returning to the BAAS Annual Conference 2026. Continuing their discussion that the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted students and scholars of American Studies in a multitude of ways, the TRP will be delivering an update in the form of a roundtable on their developed research project to date. This roundtable, which is designed to increase inclusivity and participation in its audience, will consider the long-term impact of COVID-19 on American Studies in the context of the interdisciplinary field as one in crisis. At the same time, it will contribute to larger conversations about the pandemic’s impact on learning and success across levels of primary, secondary, Further, and Higher Education learning. Post-pandemic discussions within university leadership structures of profitability and subsequent discontinuations of courses and funding has contributed to a fracturing and disunification of disciplines encompassed within the field. Subsequently, exposure to American Studies as an option for Higher Education study has been reduced.
This TRP has adapted the format of its roundtable discussion presented at the BAAS Annual Conference 2025 to a research project. The data collection for the research will be formed by taking an emergent exploratory approach to exploring the poorly understood impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on interdisciplinarity in the practice and teaching of American Studies. The TRP – which is formed of three scholars who earned their Master’s degrees in the academic year of 2019 to 2020 – will contribute their lived experience of navigating the development of hybrid education and work-from-home approaches to the project. The project aims to broaden understanding and enjoyment of American Studies by delivering workshops aimed at primary, secondary, further, and higher education level students; the workshops are formed of group reading, writing, and the teaching of shared interdisciplinary approaches to the discipline. The project and its workshops are designed with the aims of prioritising student experience, demystifying American Studies, and widening participation in the discipline. Through its emergent exploratory approach, this study seeks to learn how engagement with American Studies across educational levels has a more direct impact upon enjoyment and anticipated pursuit of interdisciplinary scholarship in the field. As causational crises of the pandemic across educational levels have and continue to normalise and complicate a shifting landscape of hybrid and remote working, experiential understandings of the production of new knowledge have been affected. In keeping with these crises, this research considers how the disruption of such dually social and educational spaces as the classroom can serve as both a bridge and a barrier to participation in American Studies. It also addresses the requirement for the early development of such core skills as critical thinking, which are essential for successful scholarship in American Studies. The intended result of this project is to address barriers to participation in American Studies in students across educational levels, leaving them likely better equipped to participate in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies.
