2021 Annual Theme - Hope

‘The whole of history is about hopes being sustained, lost, renewed,’ wrote John Berger in reflecting on the life and work of the poet Nazim Hikmet. ‘And with new hopes come new theories.’ In 2021 the Humanities Research Centre is inviting scholars from across the world to explore the historical and contemporary significance of hopes sustained, lost, and renewed across theories, cultures, and scholarly disciplines. While hope has been understood as virtuous, like faith and love, hope has also been seen as deceptive, the ambiguous contents of Pandora’s Box. Whether political, theological, or technological, one person’s hope may well be another person’s fear, especially in our increasingly diverse and febrile contemporary societies. >>read more

2020 Annual Theme - Liberalism(s)

The concept of ‘liberalism’ or ‘liberal culture’ is central to modern social and political thinking, as it is to the content and conduct of the humanities generally. At different times, both the provenance and authenticity of liberalism as a coherent philosophy or ideology have been contested, as has the desirability of liberalism’s principles and institutions. Today, liberalism is once again under threat, and many of its structuring principles and institutions – individualism, pluralism, internationalism, secularism, freedom of speech, free trade, representative democracy, and the rule of law – face escalating challenges in one country after another. As the middle class, the core constituency of liberalism, experience stagnation and frustration in the Global North, can the emerging middle class in the Global South still be considered agents of liberalisation? >>read more

2019 Annual Theme - Crisis

Mobilised as a defining characteristic of the contemporary condition, ‘crisis’ often functions as a way to mark out a critical ‘moment of truth’ or rupture. Alternatively, it is offered as a tool with which to understand the category of history, or to differentiate the past from a conflicted present. For some, crisis has become a state of ordinary ambivalence, a constant and unresolvable feature of the status quo. Forming a background to these debates is the escalating chorus of ‘crisis’ texts in popular and academic contexts alike. >>read more

2018 Annual Theme - Imagining Science and Technology 200 Years after Frankenstein

'It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know'. Percy Bysshe Shelley In 2018, the Humanities Research Centre will be looking at the humanities’ engagement (and failure to engage) with the accelerating fields of science and technology. The questions we will ask concern our understanding and imagining of the...

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2017 Annual Theme - The Question of the Stranger

‘The cluster of words describing those who are (or who are made to seem) different from us (whoever ‘us’ is)—the foreigner, the alien, the stranger—has been critical in the articulation of how we live after 9/11’. So wrote David Simpson in the study from which we take our theme for 2017.  The theme asks us to look at the way individuals and...

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2015 Annual Theme - Global Languages

The history of the world is characterized by great diversity in languages and societies as small groups split off and develop their own ways of talking and interacting. This diversity has been periodically checked by the rise of larger societies and economies, created by empires, evangelism and the demands of trade and diplomacy. Greek, Latin,...

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2012 Annual Theme - Ecological Enlightenment

In the 1960s, James Lovelock formulated his Gaia hypothesis about the symbiosis of the earth’s intersecting ecosystems.  He posited a complex feedback loop that somehow maintains, as he put it, ‘an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet’. Little did he know then that the catastrophic role of human agency in upsetting...

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