PROJECTS
Jade Munslow Ong holds an AHRC Early Career Research grant for a three-year project, ‘South African Modernism 1880-2020’. This project explores how South African personal and textual networks helped shape literary modernism from the nineteenth century to the present day, and investigates how modernism continues to provide a politically-charged mode of representation for South African writers responding to major historical events and changing political, economic, social and cultural contexts. https://www.southafricanmodernism.com/
Caroline Magennis’ research on the cultural legacy of the Troubles in the North of Ireland has been featured in The Irish Times, The Independent and Prospect Magazine. The Chair of the British Association for Irish Studies, she has organised multi-media engagement projects to mark the anniversaries of the 1996 Manchester Bombing and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Caroline makes extensive use of social media and partnerships with cultural organisations, including the Irish World Heritage Centre and the John Hewitt Society, to engage the public in nuanced discussions of history, memory and identity. Some of her resources are collected here.
Ursula Hurley’s collaborative research into inclusive 3D printing practices adapts creative writing methodologies to generate new routes to skills development, knowledge exchange and self-expression. Ursula was Principal Investigator for an AHRC Connected Communities Scheme project called ‘In The Making’: a co-constructed mapping and feasibility study of digital fabrication labs and their potential to catalyse cultural change. Findings from the project were published in the United States in 2020 as In the Making. Subsequently, Ursula has gained Research England funding to develop policy research on access to the digital industries, and is currently leading a follow-on collaborative project with the Morson Maker Space, Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce and Barclays Digital Eagles.
Lucia Nigri is currently working on a digital open-access archive designed to make Shakespeare’s narrative sources available to scholars, students and general readers (SENS). SENS wants to achieve a better understanding of the Italian narrative sources of Shakespeare’s works and make them easily and freely accessible to researchers worldwide; to provide two user-friendly open-access research instruments for school and university students as well as for Shakespeare and theatre and drama scholars globally; to offer textual and visual material to favour a broad interpretation of intertextual transmission; and to develop and test a new theoretical approach to textual comparison including textual segmentation and intermodal analysis. The Romeo and Juliet resource is now available here.
David Savill is trained as a workshop facilitator for international charity Narrative 4. Funded by the Beszos and Obama foundations among others, Narrative 4 exists to cultivate skills of empathy in diverse community settings. In collaboration with Narrative 4, Salford and Birmingham University, David led workshops between schools from the West Midlands and Northern Ireland; an event covered as a feature article in The Guardian Magazine. In Manchester, David has an ongoing relationship with St Peter’s Catholic High School in Longsight, to deliver empathy workshops to students.
Maggie Scott is investigating the manuscript dictionary of ‘Arms, Armour and Costume’ compiled by Charles Relly Beard (1891-1958), and held by the Society of Antiquaries of London. Beard was an expert in these subjects, and advisor for Hollywood films including Treasure Island (1950). Maggie is in the process of constructing a website version of the archive: https://beardstrove.org/
Scott Thurston co-leads Arts for the Blues: an interdisciplinary project which explores the impact of the arts in health and well-being settings. This is a collaborative research project with colleagues in Counselling & Psychotherapy and in Psychology at Salford and with colleagues at Edge Hill University and the NHS. The group have developed an evidence-based multi-modal creative psychological therapy for depression. https://artsfortheblues.com/
Jack Wilson’s latest project, to analyse the language of Dementia Diaries will provide a unique perspective on the language used by the diarists and, through this, the representations of people living with dementia by people living with dementia. Jack is creative lead for the Salford Institute for Dementia.