Ditchfield, Dr Simon
Senior Lecturer in History, York (H9; H2)
Papacy and People: The Making of Roman Catholicism as a World Religion, 1500-1700
The projected outcome of this fellowship will be the volume Papacy and People: the making of Roman Catholicism as a world religion, 1500-1700 for the Oxford History of the Christian Church series (published by OUP). Central to the argument is the importance of understanding the reciprocal, dynamic nature of the relationship between Rome and its local churches; from Milan to Manila; Palermo to Paraguay. This entails a significant modification of such interpretative paradigms as 'confessionalisation' and categories such as 'social discipline', which need to be nuanced by reference to the capacity of peoples in both the New and Old worlds to appropriate Roman Catholicism as their own. Just as the papacy was not the only active agent, neither were the people merely subaltern, passive consumers. Drawing, in particular, on the history of liturgy and of the cult of saints, the study aims to furnish us with the means whereby we can better understand the protean forms taken by Roman Catholicism in the process of making itself this planet's first world religion.
Dorling, Professor Danny
Professor of Human Geography, Sheffield (S3; S4)
The Transformation of Social Inequality in the United Kingdom: 1945-2005
This project begins with the premise that half a century ago society in the UK was tainted by Beveridge's five great evils of want, ignorance, idleness, squalor and disease. The research will consider the argument that our society is now better summarised as being characterised, on the down-side, by high levels of poverty in the midst of affluence, of educational segregation - especially in higher education, of widening inequality in the workplace, of the amassing of unproductive riches in housing, and of the growing importance of despair creating illness rather than disease. If this is the case then how and why did an era of social policy that began with the tackling of Beveridge's five evils end in such an uneven playing field of opportunity and outcome?
All five new faces of the social evils suggested above are clearly related and I believe a better understanding of the transformation of social inequality in the United Kingdom can be achieved by studying all five simultaneously. One route to achieving this is through exploring their related human geographies.
Edwards, Dr Nancy
Reader in Archaeology, Wales, Bangor (H7; H8)
Early Medieval Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in North Wales
The archaeology for Wales in the period c AD 400-1100 is still poorly understood and documentary evidence is sparse. Therefore the early medieval inscribed stones and stone sculpture, as the most prolific form of material evidence, are especially important. Despite some difficulties concerning close dating and chronology, we can use their context, form, ornament and inscriptions to open windows on larger research questions about this formative period of Welsh history. This material throws unique light on questions concerning conversion to Christianity, the identification of early church sites, their hierarchy and evolution, as well as changes in liturgy and belief. The inscriptions also provide the main source for study of the Welsh and Irish languages in post-Roman Wales and shed light on literacy and learning. It is also possible to identify local and regional sculptural groups and to contribute to debates concerning wealth and the role of patronage, changing cultural identities, the impact of Irish and Viking settlement in Wales, and the significance of Welsh cultural and artistic contacts with other parts of Britain and Ireland, especially around and across the Irish Sea, as well as with the Continent. Research on the Welsh material will also complement studies of sculpture elsewhere in Britain and Europe allowing comparisons and contrasts and contributing to broader debates.
This research will complete the 3 volume Corpus of Early Medieval Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in Wales project. Volume III on north Wales will provide an introduction which will integrate analysis of the monuments in light of the above research questions, and a well illustrated analytical catalogue (with specialist contributions on geology, language and epigraphy). This publication will also be a significant tool for the future protection, conservation and display of the sculpture.
Jackson, Professor John
Professor of Public Law, Queen's Belfast (S1)
The Internationalisation of Evidence Law: Realigning the Common Law and Civil Law Traditions
The debate in comparative law as to whether legal systems within the common law and civil law traditions are converging has led to a renewal of interest in comparative procedure and evidence. The thrust towards convergence has been at its strongest within Europe where the European Court of Human Rights has sought to fashion common standards of process and procedure across the two European legal traditions. But another recent global development has been the efforts made by the ad hoc criminal tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the International Criminal Court to fashion evidentiary standards that conform with international human rights standards. Traditionally, the law of evidence is associated with the 'adversarial' common law tradition but these international developments are leading to an opportunity for a shared set of evidentiary norms to be developed across common law and civil law jurisdictions. The project aims to examine whether a genuinely cosmopolitan and coherent law of evidence is being developed across the common law and civil law divide. International developments such as the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and the Human Rights Committee of United Nations and the rules and standards developed by the international criminal institutions will be examined to determine whether there has been an internationalisation of evidence law. A central question will be to determine whether this jurisprudence represents a compromise on the part of judges who hail from different traditions or the extent to which it represents a genuinely transformative attempt to evolve new concepts and methods of proof. As well as considering the international jurisprudence, a mix of domestic jurisdictions from both legal traditions will be chosen to consider what impact this jurisprudence has had on domestic jurisprudence.
Majeed, Dr Javed
Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature, Queen Mary, London ( H6; H3; H10)
Translation and Colonialism in British India
Most (perhaps all) studies of postcolonialism and translation in English literary studies concentrate exclusively on English language texts and how they reflect the polyglot societies of the colonised and post-colonial world. This study will break from that exclusive focus. Its aim is to examine the interaction between English, Urdu and Persian in British India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It focuses on a range of texts in these three languages, from travelogues and ethnographies to literary treatises and novels. The study considers how, why, and when translation between these languages reinforced as well as challenged relationships of power in colonial South Asia. The study also considers the Linguistic Survey of India (c.1900-1927) in the context of these processes of translation. I will examine how British and Indian translators interacted with their source texts, and how they constructed their cultural identities in relation to them. By focussing on translation between these languages, I hope to define fresh perspectives on the cultural relationships of British India, and in particular, the cultural and political relations between South Asian Islam and Britain.
Mattli, Professor Walter
Professor of International Political Economy, Oxford (S5)
Disaggregating the Globalized Regulatory State: The Cases of Global Regulation in Food and Transport
Regulation, once largely a domestic public matter, has tremendously grown in complexity and scope with the onset of globalization. This transformation of rule-making processes and governance structures, which is affecting practically all areas of human activity, has emerged as one of the most central and fascinating topics in world politics. The overarching goal of my project is to better understand the nature of the emerging global economic governance through careful analyses of the regulatory trends and institutional changes in key areas of global governance. In other words, the project seeks to better understand the nature of what has been called the globalized regulatory state by disaggregating this state into key constitutive parts and reflecting on differences across these parts in structure, process, and outcome. While the main substantive focus of my analysis will be on global food and transport (sea, air, and road) regulation, I will also consider a range of other regulatory issue-areas. The ultimate objective of this research is not simply to generate more case-studies on global regulation (however well-informed) but to go the extra analytical mile and seek to improve our theoretical understanding of striking differences and/or similarities in regulatory structure, process, and outcome across issue-areas.
Smith, Professor Steve
Professor of History, Essex (H10)
Struggling with "Superstition": Communism Versus Popular Culture in Russia (1917-41) and China (1949-76)
Using material that has only recently become available in archives in the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, the project compares the efforts of Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China to reform popular culture along lines of science and rationality. It takes the official category of 'superstition' as the optic through which to examine the conflict between the ostensibly 'scientific' worldview of the party-state and the essentially magical worldview of millions of the population. It asks how far increased penetration of society by the state led to the erosion of 'traditional' beliefs and practices and how far it created conditions in which these were reactivated to meet new challenges. In particular, it examines how traumatic social and economic change galvanised a politics of the supernatural, rooted in religion, folklore and magic. The analysis of the attempts to reform popular culture focuses on efforts to extirpate 'superstition' in life-cycle rituals around birth, marriage and death; in the seasonal and liturgical calendar; in folk medicine; and in farming practices; and efforts to suppress the activities of magical specialists, such as witches, wise women, spirit mediums and daoist masters. The project uses this struggle to analyse similarities and differences between the Soviet and Chinese Communist regimes, exploring how similar ideologies and institutions operated in vastly different cultural contexts. Finally, it seeks to shed light on the ways in which the political cultures of Stalinism and Maoism came to absorb values, norms and orientations from the popular cultures they purported to despise.