top of page

Speakers

Keynote speaker

Keynote speaker

​Dr Carolyn Pedwell (University of Kent)

​​Monday 18 June, 10:00am-11:30am

​

Dr Carolyn Pedwell is Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at the University of Kent. She is the author of two research monographs: Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy (Palgrave: 2014) and Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice: The Rhetorics of Comparison (Routledge: 2010). Her third monograph, Transforming Habit: Revolution, Routine and Social Change, is under contract with McGill-Queens University Press. Dr Pedwell's keynote address will be titled, 'Decolonising Empathy: Thinking Affect Transnationally.' For more details, visit Dr Pedwell's page on the University of Kent website.

Keynote panel

Tuesday 19 June, 10:00am-11:30am

​Patrick Page

Public law caseworker, Duncan Lewis Solicitors

​

Patrick is a senior caseworker in public law at Duncan Lewis Solicitors, specialising in litigation relating to human rights and asylum. He began his career by challenging the detention of pregnant women, but he has increasingly taken on a role as a writer. He is particularly motivated by the need to expose the inhumane and undignified treatment of women and men in immigration detention centres and he advocates open borders with the free movement of people. In this capacity, Patrick has recently launched a blog called No Walls, for which he is the editor, an open forum for the discussion of such topics. He has also written for a variety of media outlets, including The Guardian, The Independent and The Huffington Post in addition to being a staff writer at The Canary.

 

While Patrick writes primarily about topics related to the UK, he is also interested in, and writes about, refugee and human rights issues from an international perspective, having studied and lived in Jordan for two years before taking an internship at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Patrick has since worked with refugees in Malta, Kenya, Uganda and the Calais ‘Jungle’.

​Juliet Mabey

Co-founder, Oneworld Publications

​

Juliet Mabey is co-founder and Publisher of Oneworld Publications, set up in 1986 as an independent publishing house focusing on high quality, accessible narrative non-fiction across a range of subjects from popular science and history to big ideas. She launched a literary fiction list in 2009 with Marlon James’ The Book of Night Women, and her novels have won the Man Booker Prize twice, with Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings in 2015 and Paul Beatty’s The Sellout in 2016. In 2017 Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, as was Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad in 2018. Oneworld places a strong emphasis on fiction in translation and showcasing a rich diversity of voices and stories from around the world.

David Francis

University College London & the British Museum

​

David has worked at the British Museum for ten years as an interpretation officer creating narratives for over twenty-five exhibitions including India and the World: A history in nine storiesHajj: Journey to the heart of Islam, and Shah ‘Abbas and the Remaking of Iran. His research interests focus on the encounter between objects and people in museums, zoos and botanic gardens, and on tracing the networks and narratives used to structure such spaces. David is currently finishing his PhD thesis at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, which focusses on narrative, identity and the museum visitor experience.

Conference organisers

Annie Webster

SOAS, University of London

​

Annie Webster is a doctoral student at the Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies at SOAS. She holds a BA (Hons) in English and Related Literature from the University of York and an MSc in Arab World Studies from the University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral research explores the literary afterlives of war in contemporary Iraqi fiction and is funded by the Wolfson Foundation. She is particularly interested in how empathy might function in moments of conflict and how expressions of empathy translate into action.

Jack Clift

SOAS, University of London

​

Jack Clift is a doctoral researcher based at the Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies and is a member of the European Research Council-funded Multilingual Locals, Significant Geographies project, led by Professor Francesca Orsini. Jack’s research focuses on historical fiction in Hindi and Urdu in twentieth-century North India, and draws on a breadth of authors including Krishna Sobti, Qurratulain Hyder, Chatursen Shastri and Naseem Hijazi. Jack’s previous research has centred on articulations of nationalism in Spanish and Arabic literature, and on the use of Arabic by a North Indian Muslim reformist group in the twentieth century.

bottom of page