‘Hybridity’ - 2022 Cambridge AHRC International Conference

19-21 September 2022, St Catharine's College, Cambridge

The Seventh Annual Cambridge AHRC International Conference, supported by the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP, will bring together students from the OOC DTP, the doctoral community of the OU, Oxford and Cambridge, and from international partner institutions to facilitate interdisciplinary discussions and collaborations around the theme of 'Hybridity'. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK (AHRC), this conference aims to be a space to present, discuss, and debate the theme of ‘hybridity’ in any and all forms. It will allow attendees to introduce their work to the broader research community, to establish new connections, and to spotlight new areas for collaboration.

This opportunity is open to arts and humanities doctoral researchers of all subjects, from the University of Cambridge, the Open University, the University of Oxford, a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School of Cologne University, the Australian National University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stockholm University. Participants are encouraged to attend all three days of the conference, which will include social events, as well as guest lectures and paper sessions. Students who are not registered at Cambridge will be offered accommodation and support for travel expenses if selected to speak at the conference.

Deadline for submissions

The deadline for paper abstracts and panel proposals is Monday 30 May.

 

 

Hybridity has long been a concern amongst scholars in the humanities, evidenced by innumerable attempts to think across social, geographical, political, conceptual, and disciplinary boundaries. Since the global outbreak of COVID-19, however, this theme has taken on new meaning and urgency, as people have sought to respond to large-scale societal changes wrought by the pandemic. As the OED states, ‘hybrid’ refers to ‘anything derived from heterogeneous sources, or composed of different or incongruous elements’. Stemming from the concept of biological interbreeding, ‘hybridity has been used by authors in the social sciences, literary, artistic, and cultural studies to designate processes in which discrete social practices or structures, that existed in separate ways, combine to generate new structures, objects, and practices in which the preceding elements mix.’ (García-Canclini, 2001). The term has currency in the social sciences as well: ‘Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari offer hybrid views of conjoined bodies formed of human, nonhuman, and technology making new entities with new capacities for action. For example, a rider, a horse, and riding technology (saddle, stirrup, and reins) together become a new entity which has new power and space/life-making potentials’ (Jones, 2009). As this brief outline shows, hybridity is a polysemous term encompassing multiple subjects, capable of investigation from any number of disciplinary standpoints.

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers, 5-minute lightning talks, and themed panels. Potential topics and approaches could include, but are not limited to:

  • Hybridity and identity
  • Hybrid methods and interdisciplinary approaches
  • Digital humanities, hybrid in-person/remote interfaces, and post-covid ways of living
  • Hybrid genres
  • Hybridity and the environment
  • Race and theory
  • Humans, space, and technology
  • Traditions and modernity
  • Hybrid linguistic registers
  • Global economic flows and connections
  • Dialogues between cultural production, artisanry, human, and technology
  • Interactions between the rural and the urban, and between local and supralocal cultures
  • Human and more-than-human perspectives
  • The agency of individuals and networks
  • Ethics, and discourses of purity and impurity, and otherness
  • Discourses of ‘monstrosity’ in literature studies and other disciplines

Doctoral students at the OU, Oxford and Cambridge are invited to submit proposals for 20-minute papers, 5-minute lightning talks, and for themed panels. All proposals must include:

  • Title
  • Abstract (of no more than 300 words for full papers and panel proposals, 200 for lightning talks)
  • Speaker biography (of no more than 150 words)

How to submit

Paper abstracts Please submit via this online form. 
Panel session proposals Please submit via email to hybridity2022@gmail.com.
Attendees If you wish to attend, but not present, please sign up by 15th August using this separate online form. 

Outcomes

We will aim to let applicants know the outcome of their submission by 6 July.

Belinda Álvarez-Alonso

Belinda Alvarez-Alonso

I am a PhD student in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. My research focuses on civil mutual-support initiatives during the covid-19 pandemic as alternative models for social care outside of the state.
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Mark Borthwick

I am a PhD student at the Open University. My doctoral project focuses on values and practices surrounding salmon farming. One billion salmon are farmed every year, with ~1.2 trillion aquatic animals being processed into fish feed to support the industry. Salmon farms continue to be flare points for land use issues, animal welfare concerns, and indigineous rights. I intend to explore the interplay between cosmologies, eco-ontologies, and the (trophic, aquacultural, spiritual) relationships between humans and salmon.
Nicola Carotenuto

Nicola Carotenuto

I am a DPhil student in the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford. My research interests focus mainly on the reconstruction of the commercial networks of 14th century Venice, using unpublished sources. The conceptual framework will be constituted by Mediterranean history, cross-cultural trade, diaspora studies and network theory.
Aldri Cela

Aldri Cela

I am a PhD student in the Faculty of History at Cambridge. My PhD investigates the encounter between Europeans and the Native Americans in the fifteenth and sixteenth century - the greatest encounter in the history of mankind - and considers the questions it prompts concerning topics such as human rights and cultural and religious confrontation.
Sarah Fengler

Sarah Fengler

I am a DPhil student in Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. My doctoral project focuses on European Old Testament tragedies in the Age of Enlightenment and was previously supported by scholarships from the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies and from Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst.
Dylan C. Price

Dylan Price (Chair)

I am a PhD researcher in the Faculty of Music at the University of Oxford. Operating in the interstitial space between political geography, international relations, music analysis and game theory, my current research focuses on constructing a more viscerally engaged theory of cultural and political nationalisms.
Marie Puyssegur

Marie Puysségur

I am a PhD student in American history at the University of Cambridge. My research focusses on the mass internal movement of Black and white southerners to northern industrial cities, during the period commonly referred to as Second Great Migration (1940-1970).

Our international partners for the 2022 conference include:

  • a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School of Cologne University
  • Australian National University
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Stockholm University
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The first five Cambridge AHRC International Conferences were organised and supported by the Cambridge AHRC DTP. Conference themes included: Trust and Truth (2019), Space and Surface (2018), Tradition and Transformation (2017), Time and Temporality (2016). You can find out more about these past conferences here: https://cambridgeahrcdtpconferences.co.uk/.

The 2021 conference, Across Distance, was organised by a committee of students from the OU, Oxford and Cambridge, with support from the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP.

Contacts

Please address any questions to hybridity2022@gmail.com