Research Round-up: Good News from the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities
Posted on behalf of: Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities
Last updated: Friday, 6 December 2024
A celebration of recent research activity and successes of Media, Arts and Humanities researchers.
Formerly the 'Good News' section of the Research Newsletter, the Research Round-up is a regular feature within the Media, Arts and Humanities Institute and a space to celebrate each other's successes.
If you'd like your good news included in the next Research Round-up and Faculty News newsletter, please fill in the Faculty News Submission form.
Awards, recognition and funding
- Joanna Callaghan's Goodbye Breasts! project has been named as an exemplar in the National Centre for Creative Health's announcement by the NCCH's Director, Alex Coulter.
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Distant Voices, New Worlds is the Guardian’s contemporary album of the month. It features music inspired by the South Downs by five contemporary British composers, including MAH’s Evelyn Ficarra and Ed Hughes, plus Shirley J Thompson, Matthew Sheeran and Rowland Sutherland.
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Martin Spinelli’s The Rez made it into the Top 10 charts in the US in its category, and has also been number 1 in Ireland, South Korea, Bahrain, Greece, Kuwait and Lithuania in the last year.
External engagement
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The documentary film She Dances by the Seas, produced by Vincent Du, premiered at the International Competition section of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). The film was awarded the IDFA Bertha Fund in 2023.
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The Copper Family, Sussex’s folk singing dynasty, are celebrated in a new exhibition at the Library in partnership with Sussex Retold, a project led by Margaretta Jolly with the support of Sam Carroll, which explores the histories, heritage and landscapes of the Sussex regions. The free Scholars of Simplicity exhibition runs until 28 April 2025 and showcases recordings of speech and song, photos and sketches.
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The Landecker Digital Memory Lab was officially launched at a special event at the Imperial War Museum, London, on Monday, 18 November 2024.
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The Centre for Modernist Studies’ Artist in the Archives for 2023-4 was the writer Justin Hopper. Following their event ‘Making Your Own Press: Printing a Pagan Bohemia in Sussex’, Hopper created a zine with designer Stefan Musgrove: A Sanctuary: New Writing & Art Work Inspired by Victor Neuburg and the Vine Press (2024). The zine can be read online. Find out more about the Artist in the Archives.
- Hope Wolf has curated the Sussex Modernism exhibition at the Towner Eastbourne, which draws on her book Sussex Modernism (Yale University Press, 2025). Spanning from the late nineteenth century to the present, the exhibition interweaves painting, sculpture, film, textiles, literature and music, bringing together artists not usually included within the story of modernism. It opens on 21 May 2025 and runs to 28 September 2025.
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Tom Wright joined presenter Danny Pike in the BBC Radio Sussex studio reacting to early indications that Donald Trump would become the next US President (starts at 01:10:20).
New work and publications
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Feras Alkabani recently celebrated the launch of his new book, Richard Burton, T.E. Lawrence and the Culture of Homoerotic Desire, at an event in London. SARN UK recently held their second AHRC-funded workshop at Cambridge, showcasing their collaborative research projects. Feras, SARN UK’s AHRC PI, said, ‘It’s great to see Syrian academics and artists coming together to collaborate on projects, which will ultimately translate their research and work into impact for the benefit of the wider Syrian community.’
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Alba Arias Álvarez, with co-author Sheryl Bernardo-Hinesley from Western Washington University, presented their paper "Institutional Goals and Virtual Schoolscape: Two Universities on the US-Mexico Border" at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Alba also presented "Graffiti in Asturies: Ideologies and Transgression in the Linguistic Landscape" at the SAnTINA conference (Society for the Analysis of Cultural Topics and Linguistic Identities N'Asturies).
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Thomas Austin’s article, Bodies, care and power in La Permanence, has been published open-access in journal French Screen Studies.
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Danny Bright and Lee Westwood’s band Noise Peddler has released an album on Rose Hill Records, with performances in Whitstable and Witney, and an album launch at The Rose Hill in Brighton, in November. The album was released digitally on 29 November, and a limited splatter Vinyl is available. Find out more about Noise Peddler's ground-breaking debut album.
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Elena Dennison has been interviewed about her role as Sussex Digital Humanities Lab Programme Manager.
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The English and Drama departments held an event attended by colleagues and students to mark the publication of six new monographs that have appeared in the last year by Sara Crangle, Sam Ladkin, William McEvoy, Catherine Packham, Keston Sutherland and Helen Tyson. They plan to hold one next term to discuss the books they were not able to include this time.
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The FSF-Toolkit is a major deliverable from the Full Stack Feminism in Digital Humanities Project, jointly funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) and the Irish Research Council (2021-2024). It contains resources, best practice guides, reflections, and documentation which relate to feminist approaches to research and feminist methodologies related to our three stacks: (1) data and archives; (2) infrastructure, tools and code; and (3) access, experience and integration.
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Irene Fubara-Manuel's exhibition ibi minji faari is at ONCA in Brighton from 30 Nov to 13 Dec. It is an exploration of the riverine landscapes of the oil-producing region of Nigeria in celebration of Remembrance Day for Lost Species (RDLS). The exhibition is supported by the AHRC IAA Account.
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Ben Highmore’s new book Playgrounds, the experimental years has been published by Reaktion Books. Ben’s research on playgrounds has been highlighted as a case study in Upen’s open-access publication, How does Arts and Humanities research influence public policymaking?
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Iain McDaniel’s article,"American Caesars" has been published in History Today. The full article is available to Sussex staff via the Library's History Today access.
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Ambra Moroncini's article "Cinema, literature and looking at the world from Naples" has been published in the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies. Ambra has also signed a contract with Cesati Editore (Florence) to co-write and co-edit a book on Ekphrasis in Italian Culture from Antiquity to the Digital Age. Her Panels on Boccaccio's Afterlives I and Boccaccio's Afterlives II have been sponsored by the American Boccaccio Association to be presented at the forthcoming Renaissance American Association Conference, to be held in Boston, 20-22 March 2025.