Silence Hub

This network was funded from 2019 to 2022.

SH was the Silence Hub, where scholars interested in silence came together to share ideas.  The Hub was inter-disciplinary and public-facing. Its convenors came from the Faculty of English (Professor Kate McLoughlin), the Faculty of History (Dr. Suzan Meryem Rosita Kalayci) and the Department of Psychiatry (Professor Willem Kuyken) at the University of Oxford, but silence is of interest to a range of disciplines - neurology, physiology, physics, engineering, literature, linguistics, philosophy, music, religious studies, theology, anthropology, ethnography, sociology, education - and we invited everyone working in such disciplines, and others besides, to join us for discussion.

Kate McLoughlin was writing a literary history of silence, Suzan Meryem Rosita Kalayci was interested in silence in history and Willem Kuyken worked on the prevention of depression, primarily with mindfulness-based approaches. We brought different research questions to the Silence Hub, but all three of us are interested in investigating what silence actually is, its origins and effects, and why it is so powerful.

In 2018-2019, the Silence Hub was putting on a number of events (see the ‘Events’ tab for details).  In Michaelmas Term, we ere concentrating on silence and mindfulness.  In Hilary, we were exploring Silence and Syria.  In Trinity, we were investigating Silence and God.  Each term, we met as a group to discuss readings that we circulated in advance. We were also be putting on performances of silence - a concert, films and rituals - followed by debriefing workshops to discuss them.