Exoticism, Colonialism and decadence around the fin de siècle
Professor Jennifer Yee, Lecturer in French, Official Student
Professor Yee arranged a conference on Exoticism, Colonialism and decadence around the fin de siècle, and publish a related volume, with the support of the Christ Church Research Centre. The conference and related volume aimed to explore the intersections between ideas of decadence and the experience and discourses of colonialism, in French literature and culture, or between France and other literatures. ‘Decadence’ is a concept used more provocatively than prescriptively, primarily in the last decades of the nineteenth century, and it is usually understood in medical, historical or stylistic terms. The conference aimed to situate French metropolitan ‘decadence’, too often seen in an apolitical light, within the broader geographical, cultural and political context of colonialism.
Leopardi Studies at Oxford
Professor Ela Tandello, Emeritus Student
‘Leopardi Studies at Oxford’ – acronym LEO – is dedicated to the study of the work Giacomo Leopardi (1798 – 1837), Italy’s major Nineteenth-century poet and thinker, and one of the major figures of European Romanticism.
The Research Centre has generously supported LEO events over the years, including the International Conference “Contaminazioni leopardiane”, which took place in September 2020, and two consecutive Leopardi Research Days, in June 2023 and 2024.
Past and present: narratives of progress and decline in nineteenth-century Britain
Dr Joshua Bennett, Junior Research Fellow in History
The Research Centre supported Dr Bennett’s work towards a conference on ‘Past and present: narratives of progress and decline in nineteenth-century Britain’. He held a one-day interdisciplinary symposium which brought historians and literary scholars together to discuss the constitutive roles of ideas of ‘progress’ and ‘decline’ in nineteenth-century British culture. The conference explored how progressive and retrogressive understandings of historical movement percolated well beyond texts produced within the emergent discipline of History, to saturate a much broader sphere of social and cultural experience. The day’s discussions opened up new perspectives on how Victorians debated and represented historical time, in fields ranging from politics to the visual arts.
Dr Leah Morabito, Millard and Lee Alexander Postdoctoral Research Fellow
The Research Centre supported Dr Morabito’s project on Understanding How Super-Massive Black Holes Impact Galaxy Evolution. The project focused on using radio data from the Low Frequency Array to study galaxy evolution. The data provided unique information on energetic phenomena associated with super-massive black holes which reside at the centres of massive galaxies. She has developed bespoke data reduction techniques to produce the highest resolution images at low radio frequencies, which is critical to answering the question: what physical process produces these energetic phenomena, and how do they impact galaxy evolution? Dr. Morabito used these techniques on several data sets for a comprehensive, state-of-the-art study of galaxy evolution.
Dr Chihab el Khachab, Junior Research Fellow
This project investigated the efforts of civil servants in Egypt to create, promote, and shape new technological and cultural policies. This research described how people at the intersection of civil bureaucracy and private industry managed to keep the state's operations running over the past few years, and how the state implemented its strategy in practice. The outcome of the project will be the first systematic study of the state administration in Egypt since 1952, and engaged in wider debates about the ways in which state bureaucracy maintains its authority and implements its program under conditions of uncertainty
End of project reports
Dr Chihab El Khachab – Junior Research Fellow in Anthropology
In Hilary 2018, I convened a seminar series entitled “Current Trends in the Anthropology of Bureaucracy” under the auspices of the Christ Church Research Centre. The purpose of the seminar was to gather an international community of scholars conducting long-term ethnographic research on bureaucratic settings across the world, while highlighting their distinctive contributions to an area traditionally dominated by sociology and political science.
Speakers at the seminar series included: Dr Eda Pepi (Yale), who discussed family registers and citizenship in Jordan; Dr Michael M. Prentice (Harvard), who discussed the corporate/bureaucratic interface in South Korea; Dr José-María Muñoz (Edinburgh), who talked about transport bureaucracies in Cameroon; Seamus Montgomery (Oxford), who talked about EU bureaucrats under the Juncker commission; Dr Bernardo Zacka (Cambridge), who discussed welfare service provision in the United States; Dr Julie Billaud (Sussex), who gave an account of the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review (UPR); and Marie Alauzen (Mines ParisTech), who introduced us to the recent digitization and modernization efforts of French state administration.
Since most of the papers presented were works-in-progress, they are still in the process of being published. For now, a detailed report on the seminar’s core questions and themes is available here: http://allegralaboratory.net/current-trends-in-the-anthropology-of-bureaucracy-a-report/
Dr Leah Morabito – Millard & Lee Alexander Fellow
My research focusses on using radio data from the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) to study galaxy evolution. These data provide unique information on energetic phenomena associated with super-massive black holes which reside at the centres of massive galaxies. I have developed bespoke data reduction techniques to produce the highest resolution images at low radio frequencies, which is critical to answering the question: what physical process produces these energetic phenomena, and how do they impact galaxy evolution? I am using these techniques on several data sets from the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) for a comprehensive, state-of-the-art study of galaxy evolution. However, the data reduction techniques require very fine time and frequency resolution in the data, which results in extremely large data volumes. The typical size of dataset I work with is about 20 TB, and the data reduction more than doubles this before producing the final science-ready images (which are much smaller). This intensive data processing requires working on large computing clusters, where disk space is limited. Over the past year, thanks to an award from the Christ Church Research Centre, I have been able to test new techniques to process data, working on three separate datasets (initially over 60TB of data!). This would not have been possible without the award of a 100 TB disk which was connected to the LOFAR-UK computing cluster.
Three publications based on this work were published in 2019.
Oxford Workshop of the Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint at Christ Church Research Centre, 2-6 July 2018, at the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies
Summary
From 2 to 6 July, 18 scholars from 8 countries got together in the framework of the Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint project. Five papers were read, and small working groups revised or completed articles of the Lexicon.
Scientific programme
Each day of the workshop there was a paper (see the attached programme) presenting new ideas and methodological hints. On Wednesday and Thursday, Dr J. Aitken of Cambridge University, who is on the advisory board of the HTLS, attended the morning lecture. The level of the lectures was excellent. Because only 5 papers were read we decided not to publish proceedings of the workshop. Otherwise, the programme consisted of group work on articles in various stages of preparation. The participants had access to internet courtesy of the Hebrew Centre and some of them got library cards so as to be able to access the resources of the Bodleian. Almost all the participants had earlier experience in preparing articles for the Lexicon which made the work very productive.
