CEMS: News

December 2012: A special issue of Lives and Letters edited by CEMS Co-Director Andrew Gordon, and Prof. James Daybell (Plymouth) has just been published. Entitled New Directions in the Study of Early Modern Correspondence, this is the first publication from the Cultures of Correspondence project, a collaboration between CEMS and Plymouth with jointly orgnaised conferences.

September 2012 New Appointments.: Dr Helen Lynch, a prize-winning creative writer and specialist in Milton studies joins the English department. Also appointed, and joining us in September 2013, is Dr Elizabeth Elliot, author of Remembering Boethius: Writing Aristocratic Identity in Late Medieval French and English Literatures. Dr Elliot is leader of the Bannatyne manuscript project, a Leverhulme-funded study of this important Scottish verse miscellany.

September 2011: Welcome to Dr Bruno Tribout, a specialist in Seventeenth century French culture and life writing who joins Aberdeen.

27th January 2011 The 28th Annual Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies Graduate Student Conference: CEMS was well represented at the annual Newberry Library conference with Glen Doris (History), Raymond Whelan (History) and Helen Lynch (English) presenting papers and leading sessions. The full programme is available here

January, 2009 The 26th Annual Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies Graduate Student Conference: Education: Forming and Deforming the Pre-Modern Mind
Friday, January 23, 2009. Two members of the postgraduate community from CEMS – Rachel McGregor (English) and Jessica Billhartz (History) – are representing Aberdeen in Chicago. The programme is available at
http://www.newberry.org/renaissance/conf-inst/gradstudents09.html .
December, 2008 Citizenship and Identity – the last Sawyer Seminar Publication: The book which resulted from the last Sawyer Seminar Series, held in November 2005, has just been published by Brill (Leiden): Karin Friedrich and Barbara Pendzich (eds), Citizenship and Identity in a Multi-national Commonwealth: Poland-Lithuania in Context, c. 1550-1772. The link to the Brill catalogue and a table of contents is http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=210&pid=26230
September 2008 Dr Jackson Armstrong: We also welcome Dr Jackson Armstrong, who teaches medieval and early modern history, with a particular focus on the late medieval British Isles. His current research is primarily concerned with the fifteenth-century Anglo-Scottish borderlands, and the themes of frontiers, conflict, law and kinship. His work also takes in chivalry, heraldry and the law and office of arms. He completed his undergraduate study at Queen's University at Kingston, and a MPhil in Medieval History and a PhD at the University of Cambridge. During his postgraduate research he held a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In 2007–8 he tutored at the universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews in European and Scottish history.
2007/8 Prof. Gauvin Bailey: We welcome Prof. Gauvin Bailey, who came to us from Boston College, USA, who is an internatinally-respected scholar in his field, and has co-operated in numerous international conferences and events.His special interests are in Southern and Central European Renaissance and Baroque arts and their international diffusion in Latin America and Asia; also the patronage of Catholic religious orders during the late Renaissance and Baroque eras, notably the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). He just completed a new book The Andean Hybrid Baroque: Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru, a study of colonial architecture in Southern Peru and Bolivia that combines indigenous iconography and symbolism with that of Catholicism and the International Baroque, as well as Baroque & Rococo under contract with Phaidon Press Limited.
We are also fortunate to be joined by Professor Tom Bartlett, who has been Professor of Modern Irish History at University College Dublin since 1995. Professor Bartlett was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1995. He is currently completing a Concise History of Ireland for Cambridge University Press, and future research plans include a study of the military origins of the Irish state in the early modern period.Dr Christoph Witzenrath joined us for 3 years as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow. He completed his doctorate at King’s College London and has had teaching experience at the Humboldt University in Berlin, where previously he passed his M.A. In researches the redemption of slaves in early modern Russia. The project studies the significance of redemption for perceptions of security on the Russian empire's steppe frontier and looks at representations and actual levels of ransoming, while seeking to integrate these processes into a framework of imperial culture.
June, 2007 Citizenship Studies: June 2007 saw the publication of a special issue of the journal Citizenship Studies edited by CEMS members Andrew Gordon and Trevor Stack. Under the title Citizenship Beyond the State, the editors brought together a team of specialists from different periods and different disciplines to consider the value of early modern concepts of citizenship for the modern world. The editors' introduction, subtitled 'Thinking with Early Modern Citizenship in the Contemporary World', sets out the terms of the debate and leading scholars David Harris Sacks, Tamar Herzog, Rui Ramos, Janet Roitman and Engin Isin take up the challenge, contributing important articles from their disciplinary perspectives. The special issue had its genesis in a colloquium under the heading 'Urban versus National Citizenship?' hosted by CEMS at Aberdeen in May 2005, generously funded by the Sawyer Mellon Foundation.
April, 2007 New Publications: Tom Nichols edited book, based on a CEMS-backed conference, entitled Others and Outcasts in Early Modern Europe: Picturing the Social Margins will be published by Ashgate in April. In the same month, a long scholarly article entitled ‘Secular charity, sacred poverty: Picturing the Poor in Renaissance Venice’ will appear in Art History (Blackwells). He recently spoke at the ‘Congresso Tintoretto’ held in Madrid’s Prado Museum.
January, 2007 Staff changes: We welcome Dr Michael Brown as a new staff member. Michael Brown, who joined us from Trinity College Dublin, works on the cultural and intellectual history of Ireland and Scotland in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His research focuses on the experience of the Enlightenment within the two countries. He is particularly concerned with the interaction of politics, faith and morals within civil society. He is also concerned with questions of political identity and the development of nationalism. He is currently writing a study of the Irish Enlightenment, and a monograph on the impact of the French Revolution on Scottish intellectual life. He is also working on a political biography of the Irish freethinker John Toland. He directs a RIISS project on Irish and Scottish Diasporas from 1600 to the present day.
1 February, 2005 Conflict and Conquest; Oliver Cromwell in Ireland: Micheál Ó Siochrú (History) has received a two-year special research fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust for 2002-4 for researching Conflict and Conquest; Oliver Cromwell in Ireland, which will be published by Faber and Faber ...
1 September, 2004 Staff changes - September 2004-September 2005: Welcome to Derek Hughes, Sixth Century Professor, who joined us from the University of Warwick last August. His areas of research include classical literature, seventeenth century British theatre and ...
1 August, 2004 The Sawyer Seminar: Citizens within Subjects: In 2003 the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded $107,000 to the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Aberdeen in support of a Sawyer Seminar on Citizens ...
1 July, 2004 Space, Voice and Community in London: Dr Andrew Gordon (English) has received an AHRB research leave award to work on Space, Voice and Community in Early Modern London. The book explores the connections between ...