The Committee

Communications Officer

Nora Baker

I am a PhD student in French at the University of Oxford. My research focuses on refugee memoirs written by Huguenots who escaped France in the 17th and 18th centuries, so I am really interested in narratives of displacement, and in experiences of negotiating distance from one's home and family. I am looking forward to engaging with the fresh ideas and perspectives in this area that this conference is sure to spark!

Logistics and Programme Officer

Aoife Cantrill

I’m a PhD student in Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford. I research the way literary translation reflects and affects narratives about Japanese rule in Taiwan, so I’m often thinking about distance in various form - between languages, between texts, between generations. I’m looking forward to discussing these themes - and more - at the conference.

Communications Officer

Greta Colombani

I'm a PhD student in English at Cambridge. My research focuses on communication with the Other World in Romantic poetry, so I'm deeply interested in ways of coming into contact across distance, however seemingly unbridgeable, and in the gaps in communication that complicate and enable encounters with the Other. I'm excited to see how the notion of distance may inspire discussions on otherness, contact and the (im)possibilities of communication.

Logistics and Programme Officer

Eli Cumings

I'm a PhD student in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge. I look forward to reflecting on the interlinked notions of distance and proximity over the course of the conference, particularly with regard to temporality. How do we imagine, perceive and relate to the past? What forms have these processes taken in other times and places? What does a sense of the past do for us (or to us)?

Finance Officer

Nina Ellis

I am a PhD student in American Literature at Cambridge. The theme speaks to me in part because I am a lifelong expatriate, suspended between places and identities. I have lived at 23 different addresses across the US, the UK, France and Pakistan, and always seem to be on the move. But Lucia Berlin, my PhD subject, puts me to shame: she lived in over 200 houses, moving on average every nine months!

Communications Officer

Elisabetta Garletti

I am a PhD student in History of Art at the university of Cambridge. My research focuses on the representation of femininity in contemporary British moving image art and its reconfiguration in response to queer and transgender theory. I am interested in exploring how distance and proximity affect spectatorial experience, as well as the possibility of establishing intergenerational and cross-cultural collaborations across theories of gender.

Chair

Robert Jones

I’m a PhD student in philosophy at the Open University. I’m really interested to see how issues surrounding language, meaning and communication might be addressed in relation to ‘distance’. I’ll also be fascinated to see how current context informs research. In a period of lockdowns and self-isolation where the experience of distance is more salient to us than ever, I wonder how these experiences might feed into the research presented.

Logistics and Programme Officer

Horia-Gabriel Teodorescu

I am a PhD student in History at the University of Cambridge. I am excited to help put together a conference whose theme goes to the heart of my academic research. Historians work within and across distances in time and space and this event is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on how we negotiate these processes. In corona times, I am also looking forward to bridging the physical distance between the conference participants.

Finance Officer

Sheryl Wombell

I’m doing a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge. Distance is a central theme in my research – my work examines the production and transmission of medical and alchemical knowledge across geographical and social distance in a seventeenth-century social network. I’m particularly interested in how early moderns understood physical distance in the context of medical encounters, which naturally entailed an engagement with the body.