Sibyl Adam will lead the day, with Peter Cherry, Sarah Arens and Justine Seran giving talks as part of the ‘new directions’ section.
 | Sibyl Adam
Second year PhD candidate in English Literature
Sibyl Adam is a second year PhD student at the University of Edinburgh in the English Literature department. Her research maps literary representations of Muslim women migrating to the UK from the Edwardian era to the present day, in particular the way narratives of everyday experience have developed in these texts as a response to the changing political contexts. She draws upon travel writing as well as fiction in order to consider how issues of gender, religion, and class converge in everyday migrant life.
|
 | Peter Cherry
Third year PhD candidate in Comparative Literature
Peter's doctoral research examines constructions of masculinity in fiction and film by British writers and filmmakers of Muslim heritage. Using novels and films by British writers and filmmakers with a Muslim cultural background, his research addresses the reshaping of masculinity through migration and interaction with other cultures within the UK. More specifically, his thesis questions how male and female protagonists travel with their conceptions of masculinity and how these are ‘translated’ into a British context. His broader research interests are in gender and masculinity studies, travel and migration writing and film, transcultural and diaspora literature and culture, comparative literature, and postcolonial studies. Peter is interested in the intersection of these disciplines generally with a focus on modern and contemporary British and Turkish literature and film, and narratives that address cultural encounters between Britain and Turkey.
|
 | Sarah Arens
Third year PhD candidate in French
Sarah Arens is a final-year PhD candidate at the Centre for Francophone Belgian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral research focuses on representations of the urban space of Brussels in contemporary Francophone diaspora and postcolonial literature; in particular on how the effects of migration and exile shape the perception the city. Her broader research interests include Belgian and French colonialism, theories of space and place, ecocriticism and hydropolitics.
|
 | Justine Seran
Fourth year PhD candidate in English Literature.
Justine is about to submit her doctoral thesis entitled "Intersubjective Acts and Relational Selves in Contemporary Australian Aboriginal and Aotearoa/New Zealand Maori Women's Writing." She has published previously on Keri Hulme, Alexis Wright, Paula Morris, Kelly Ana Morey, and Sally Morgan. Wider interests include exploring the ways in which Indigenous authors, scholars, and social commentators challenge the established paradigms of feminist and gender theory, trauma and disability studies, and postcolonial criticism. |