Started in April 2020, when the M4C-funded doctoral history researcher David Christie (University of Birmingham) invited historians, philosophers and literature students who he had met through the M4C, and felt were doing impressive and relevant work, to debate the ramifications of Covid-19 on ‘future history’. In addition to the core membership (below), the group has hosted Ellen Smith (History – University of Leicester), Dr Jakub Benes (History – University College London), Will Gildea (Philosophy – University of Warwick), Dr Helen Kingstone (History – University of Surrey), and Alastair Gardener (History – University of Birmingham). The group feels strongly that interdisciplinary discussion is imperative to tease out the complexities of the pandemic’s political, economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts. It also believes that it is vital that academics engage in the crucial debates that will shape the development of our society in the radically changed post-Covid future. The group is always open to new members, believing that thinkers from all disciplines bring new and important perspectives to the debate. Core members include:
David Christie is an AHRC M4C funded doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham researching street homelessness under the New Labour governments. He spent ten years running projects for Rough Sleepers in London and Bristol in the late 1980s and 1990s. David has also been a market-stall trader, fish-farmer, wanderer in Africa, advertising executive and history teacher. He has degrees in both Biology and History and a MA in Modern British Studies from UoB. His 2016 utopian novel ‘Sweden’ is still available on Amazon, and although hardly anyone has read it, the author is still convinced its time will come. He is happily married with two children and lives in Hereford.
Sadegh Attari is a Wolfson Scholarship-funded doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham. His thesis examines the impact of outbreaks of pestilence on understandings and representations of human materiality (inclusive of body and soul) in late fourteenth to early sixteenth century culture, with a particular focus on East Anglia. Prior to this, he completed degrees at Shiraz University, Iran and University of Tehran, Iran and worked in policy research in the Iranian IT sector. In addition to his research output, he has translated an edited selection of entries, all of which centred around the history of medicine, from The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Second Edition) into Farsi.
Hanan Fara is a doctoral student and Teaching Associate in the School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham, as well as an academic mentor and a visiting lecturer at Newman University. Her research specialises in sociology of religion; she explores young people’s religious identity construction within university settings. She has completed a BA in Theology and Education at Newman university and an MA in Theology at the University of Birmingham.
Niall Gallen is an AHRC funded doctoral candidate in English Literature at the University of Birmingham. In his PhD thesis, Niall traces a cultural genealogy of accelerationism, which is a controversial insistence that the best answer to capitalism is accelerating its “radical” tendencies. His interdisciplinary research involves exploring the connections between writing and art, as well as anti-institutional movements and group formations. He is also a co-director of the Contemporary Theoretical Network (Ctrl Network).
Christopher Griffin is an AHRC funded doctoral researcher of Contemporary Anglophone Literature at the University of Warwick (2020 – 2024). His research investigates the intersection of three threads – the novel, neoliberalism, and the aesthetics of ‘the secret’ – to examine the social and political significance of the novel in Britain since the turn of the twenty-first century. Having read there as a Cambridge Trust Scholar, Christopher holds an MPhil in Modern and Contemporary Literature from Pembroke College, Cambridge, alongside a BA in English (Single Honours) from the University of Nottingham. His writing has appeared in Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds.
Richard Kendall is a doctoral student and Teaching Associate in Classics at the University of Edinburgh, specialising in the ancient Greek colonies on the northern Black Sea coast, funded by the College Research Award. Prior to this, he undertook degrees in archaeology and ancient history at University College London (UCL), the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) and the University of Birmingham. His research specialisms are ancient art, urban space in antiquity and the archaeology of religion.
Liam J. L. Knight is a doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham whose thesis demonstrates the tradition of post-truth in the literary dystopias of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. His research specialisms also include documentary fiction, intertextuality, metafiction, and the history of the various forms of totalitarianism. Prior to commencing his PhD, he completed degrees in English with Creative Writing, Creative Writing, and Secondary English Education, all at the University of Nottingham, and taught English in schools in Nottingham and Devon. A firm believer in supporting young people with their studies, irrespective of their backgrounds, Liam produces GCSE English Literature revision content on his YouTube channel, DystopiaJunkie.
Gah-Kai Leung is an ESRC-funded PhD candidate at the University of Warwick. His research studies the ethics and politics of earthquake risk management. Specifically, I work on the risk of catastrophic tsunami-generating earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest USA and Canada. He is affiliated with the Centre for Ethics, Law and Public Affairs (CELPA) and the Interdisciplinary Ethics Research Group’s project on Ethics in Climate and Development. He is also a member of the UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR), the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) and the Consortium for Socially Relevant Philosophy of/in Science and Engineering (SRPoiSE). Before starting his PhD, he spent two years teaching English in schools in Paris and Newbury, as well as adult education classes in Reading. He is qualified in teaching both English and French to speakers of other languages.
Ronan Love is an AHRC M4C funded doctoral candidate at the University of Warwick. His research explores the politics of public debt during the French Revolution, with a specific focus on how the financial crisis of the Old Regime catalysed the revolutionary attempt to rethink and remake sovereign power. Alongside his research, Ronan teaches European social and political thought during the long-eighteenth century at Warwick, where he completed his BA and MA in Modern History.
Carmen Torres was born and raised in New York, Long Island. She is Puerto Rican, single, and has no children by choice. Her career started with the United States Department of Justice as a federal Correctional officer, and a few years later she landed a job with the New York Police Department as a probation Police Officer. She obtained her undergraduate degree from C.W. Post University and went on to pursue a Master’s in Criminal Justice and a Master’s in Psychology. She is currently starting her PhD in Criminal Justice – Homeland Security in May 2021. She received the Shirley Chisolm award for her tireless work in the community, and her hobbies are extreme fitness, female bodybuilding and networking. She currently lives in New York City and hopes to pursue a career with the F.B.I. She is open to working contractually in the United Kingdom in the early future