Castles, Drummers, and Beyond: A term of connecting with researchers and communities

In one of our most ambitious terms to date, we launched two new Seasons of events on Japan and Dante, welcomed over 2000 people to the Oxford Castle in a vibrant Knowledge Exchange event, held the Syria Writes Literary Festival, and were able to host international visitors once more, starting with the 2021 Global South Visiting Professor, Dr Obari Gomba.

Our facilitation of interdisciplinary Humanities research and its communication to new audiences continues to be impacted by the pandemic, however we’ve been grateful to be able to return to some in person events this term, and to use what we’ve learnt about digital opportunities to share this work with diverse audiences.

Humanities Cultural Programme

Image credit: Ian Wallman

With our new Seasons, we were able to bring together researchers and artists from around the world to explore two contemporary topics through public programmes of events. In the year of the Tokyo Olympics, the Japan Season celebrated Japanese culture from Butoh dance to the Upopo songs of the Ainu people. Meanwhile, the Dante Season marked 700 years since the great poet’s death by exploring the impact of Dante’s work throughout time, right up to his present day inspiration of artificial intelligence poet, Ai-Da.

• Drummers Unite! brought an outpouring of sound to the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, with Joji Hirota and the London Taiko Drummers performing traditional Taiko drumming with impressive precision and flair, whilst Spark! brought their playful spirit to a beautifully lit and lively routine, weaving amongst the audience and bringing our Japan Season to a close.
• We were able to return to our Ashmolean After Hours events and invited the public to explore the museum at night with talks, performances, and interactive activities themed around Dante. You can read more about the highlights here, including Ai-Da’s first ever live poetry performance.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/7bnr81z9Wj4

Networks and Programmes

Several of our Programmes gained new steering committees this term, bringing together academics from across disciplines to guide our work around Environmental, Medical, and Intersectional Humanities in the coming years. We also launched two new networks, the Reimagining Performance Network and the Queer Intersections Network.

• The Silence Hub and Armenian Genocide Network collaborated with Humanities Cultural Programme project Syria and Silence to hold the Syria Writes Literary Festival. Bringing renowned Syrian writers such as Khaled Khalifa and Itab Azzam to Oxford for a series of talks, the Festival created a hub for Syrian Literature in the centre of Oxford, with Maktabah, a public library of Syrian literature in the Weston library, at its heart.
• The Reimagining Performance Network began their time with TORCH with a series of fascinating events that explored new ways of performing and new subjects of performance, such as how to stage sexual assault and how to imagine non-human perspectives in theatre.

Knowledge Exchange

This term saw two major Knowledge Exchange funding calls open, as we seek new Knowledge Exchange Fellows to work with external partners over an extended period, and support new Knowledge Exchange Innovation Fund projects in the areas of Creative Industries, Heritage, Theatre and Performance, and Policy.

• We welcomed four new Knowledge Exchange Fellows: Dr Cesar Palacios-Gonzalez (Philosophy), Professor Patricia Kingori (Population Health), Professor Patrick McGuinness (MML) and Dr Priya Atwal (History). They will work with museums, artists, health departments and more on projects ranging from a Museum of Revelatory Fakes to community workshops on place-writing and memoir.
• Oxford Castle at 950 Years: Son et lumière brought together a vibrant group of researchers and community partners to create a projection documenting the castle’s long and complex history displayed on the side of its former prison. Over 2000 people joined us to enjoy the spectacular light show, which included drawings by local school children.

International

Our partnerships in Berlin and Paris have thrived this term, and we’ve continued to bring in insights from across the globe through online events. We’ve also been able to host Global South Visiting Professor Dr Obari Gomba.

• Dr Obari Gomba has joined us this term from University of Harcourt, Nigeria, connecting with Oxford academics and making use of the University’s libraries to conduct his research into literature about the Niger Delta. He also held ‘Eyes on Africa, Readings from Oxford’, where he was joined by Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu and Professor Elleke Boehmer to discuss contemporary African culture, with musical accompaniment from Jali Fily Cissokho.
• The Oxford/UdK Berlin Seed Fund for Creative Collaborations supported eight new projects, encompassing ‘Communicating Vaccination’, the ‘Sound of Contagion’ ‘Design for Anti-racist Art Schools, and more. The partnership is an effort to strengthen the ties both between the two institutions and between artistic and academic disciplines.

We are enormously grateful to the many people and organisations who have contributed to our work this term: the interdisciplinarity at the heart of our work is not possible without the generosity of collaborators.