Global engagement

Following the success of British Cultures, a module created for inbound year-abroad students, Jo Esra and Vicky Sparey have designed and accredited Shakespeare’s Women, which will run in 2024 for the first time. It responds to feedback from students who wanted more opportunity to study Shakespeare. 

An ongoing collaboration with the English department at the Universities of Geneva, led by Exeter academics, Pascale Aesbischer, Vicky Sparey and Jo Esra, has seen three successful reciprocal visits which began with shared research interests in Shakespeare. Their collaborative research spawned a widely attended online roundtable on the social justice aspects of the playhouse production, hosted by the British Shakespeare Association and including former members of the Geneva-Exeter collaboration alongside Prof Farah Karim-Cooper of Shakespeare’s Globe. This year, Exeter colleagues travelled to Geneva to lead a doctoral workshop on the theme 'Types of Titus.' A final co-writing session in July has resulted in a joint conference paper which will be presented at the meeting of the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies in 2024 and publication in SPELL journal. The collaboration has strengthened relationships, encouraged research collaboration, kick-started an editorial project on Titus Andronicus and paved the way for further exchanges and opportunities for students and staff alike. This partnership activity has provided the basis for a new student exchange agreement with Geneva.

As Visiting Scholar at Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, South Africa, Regenia Gagnier immersed herself in African literatures, languages, and cultures as part of her long-term book project on the geopolitics and political economies of literary migration. She also began intensive reading and discussion with fellows on the controversial topic of African aesthetics, following on work she has been doing for the past decade on comparative Chinese, Islamic, and western aesthetics. As former Chair of the Consortium of Institutes of Advanced Study UK and Ireland, she had the privilege of addressing the STIAS Academic Advisory Board on perspectives on interdisciplinary institutions.