Project Organisers
Sibyl Adam is a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, working on a thesis which aims to theorise migration as an everyday experience using affect theory. In her thesis, she analyses a range of literary narratives of Muslim women migrating to the UK since the Edwardian era in order to argue for the importance of emotional knowledge and experience. She has been interested in the capacities of public engagement in the humanities since her masters, where she worked on a project called 'Moving Beyond Boundaries' that taught women's history to A-Level students in York.
Laura Beattie is currently working on a PhD exploring ideas of citizenship and community in Shakespeare's comedies, based in the English Literature department at the University of Edinburgh, having previously studied at Freie Universitaet Berlin, University of California Berkeley and the University of St Andrews.
Moira Hansen is currently in the 2nd year of her PhD, based in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. Funded by a Lord Kelvin Adam Smith scholarship, her project is examining the physical and mental health of Scotland's national poet Robert Burns, investigating the theory that he was affected by a mood disorder, and exploring the impact of his varying moods on his creative output. With a background in both the life sciences and the arts, and research interests lying firmly in the medical humanities and in the long eighteenth century, she probably couldn't find a better-suited project! Outside academic life, (is there such a thing?!) and when she's not chasing around after the family, her focus is on working towards her black belt in taekwondo.
Agnese Sile recently completed a PhD in Modern Thought at the University of Aberdeen. Through intermedial analysis of several visual and narrative photographic essays, her thesis reveals the forms of knowledge that are shared between the photographer, the subject and the viewer; examines how these photographs and text communicate private expressions of pain and illness; and evaluates the broader cultural and political importance of these works in the Western society. Her background is in classical music, and graphic and media design. She earned her first and second degrees from London College of Communication (University of the Arts London) and the University of Edinburgh. She is currently working as a postdoctoral tutor at Edinburgh College of Art on various undergraduate and postgraduate courses, including Introduction to Community Arts Practice, Media and Culture, and Design Research and Context. Her research interests include public perception of illness, disability and death, visual representations of illness, and visual communication.
Sarah Stewart is a PhD student in the English Department of the University of Edinburgh. In her current research, she looks at how contemporary theatre makers in Australia and the UK represent relationships between asylum seekers, citizens and the state in terms of spaces that are empowering and/or oppressive. Sarah completed her BA, Honours and MA degrees in Spanish and English Literatures and Comparative Literature at the University of Auckland. She has undertaken her own research and formed part of research projects that have examined exile and prison writing, queer and feminist perspectives on the Cuban Revolution and the Troubles in Northern Ireland, as well as indigenous and settler relations in Aotearoa New Zealand and Abya Yala Latin America. Sarah is also currently involved in local reading and creative writing groups in Edinburgh and Glasgow that actively include asylum seeking and refugee members of the community.