Shakespeare in the Royal Collections (ShaRC)
Shakespeare in the Royal Collections has received just under £1 million in AHRC funding and is led by Principal Investigator Professor Gordon McMullan (KCL) and Co-Investigator Professor Kate Retford (Birkbeck).
The project runs from 2018-2022 and currently supports two post-doctoral researchers, Dr Sally Barnden and Dr Kirsten Tambling.
The aim of the project is to establish a new understanding of the relationship between the afterlife of Shakespeare's works and the royal family, primarily from George I to the end of the reign of Victoria, by way of the first thorough investigation of the Shakespeare-related holdings in the Royal Collections. We seek to offer a compelling new perspective on the mutually sustaining nature of the development of both Shakespeare and the royal family as hegemonic cultural phenomena, asking the twin questions ‘what has Shakespeare done for the royals?’ and ‘what have the royals done for Shakespeare?’
In the process, we seek to assist the Royal Collections in enhancing democratic access by making materials and findings publicly available by way of a website with comprehensive images and metadata, an innovative set of 3D visualisations, a TV documentary and an exhibition.
Published outputs will include:
- Two monographs (one each by the postdocs)
- An object-based collection of essays emerging from a major conference
Beyond Enemy Lines, led by Principal Investigator Dr Lara Feigel, has received c. £1.1 million in Starting Grant funding from the European Research Council.
Running from September 2013 to March 2019, it has supported the work of Dr Feigel, as well as several post-doctorates and PhD students including Dr Elaine Morley, Dr Emily Oliver, Dr Alisa Miller, Julia Vossen and Hanja Daemon.
This project investigates the cross-fertilisation of Anglo/American and German literature and film during the Allied Occupation of Germany between the end of the war and the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949. Major research outputs have included:
Modern Moves: Kinetic Transnationalism and Afro-Diasporic Rhythm Cultures
Modern Moves was funded by a European Research Council Advanced Grant (2.2m €). Directed by PI Professor Ananya Kabir, along with a team of two postdoctoral researchers Dr Madison Moore (now at Richmond University, Virginia) and Dr Elina Djebbari (now at University of Paris-3 Diderot), a PhD student (Leyneuf Tines), an administrator (Ania Stawarska), and several Associated Researchers based in Lisbon, Paris, and London. It has run from 2013-18.
Modern Moves conducted research on a central question: what can the global popularity of social dances that arose from the violent and traumatic histories of slavery and colonialism tell us about modernity itself? Uprooted peoples from the African continent used their embodied heritage to resist, protest, and express their humanity. The new, creolized, music and dance forms that arose reflected encounters, both creative and coerced, with European, Indigenous, and Asian cultures, within inter-imperial frameworks; subsequently, they became part of the global leisure economy under capitalism, the Cold War, and beyond.
Modern Moves studied the transformative potential of these social dances through an innovative methodology that combined research visits to dance floors and libraries worldwide, and a highly successful series of Moving Conversations and annual Research Showcases at KCL.
These carefully-curated events, which brought together internationally-renowned dance practitioners, musicians, DJs, and academics and lively audiences of ‘thinking dancers’ and ‘dancing thinkers’, became legendary in London’s dance community. Each event was recorded and, together with the team’s field visits, constitute a valuable archive for further academic research. Research outputs include monographs by team members and a number of co-edited journal special issues.
Modern Moves was funded by a European Research Council Advanced Grant (2.2m €). Directed by PI Professor Ananya Kabir, along with a team of two postdoctoral researchers Dr Madison Moore (now at Richmond University, Virginia) and Dr Elina Djebbari (now at University of Paris-3 Diderot), a PhD student (Leyneuf Tines), an administrator (Ania Stawarska), and several Associated Researchers based in Lisbon, Paris, and London. It has run from 2013-18.
Shakespeare 400
The Shakespeare400 project, led by Professor Gordon McMullan of the Department of English, established a consortium of leading cultural, creative and educational institutions in and around London to create a season of events throughout 2016 to mark the Quatercentenary of the writer’s death by celebrating four hundred years of Shakespeare-inspired creativity.
The season included theatre, music, opera, dance, ballet and exhibitions as well as educational and widening-participation events. We reflected on four centuries of Shakespeare-inspired work across the different art forms and looked ahead to the next hundred years in the afterlife of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. The season was coordinated by the London Shakespeare Centre and the Cultural Institute at King's College London.
The legacy website provides a record of everything that took place across 2016 under the Shakespeare400 banner, offer, we hope, a model for other celebrations of this kind.
Rwanda in Photographs
In April 2014 King’s marked the twentieth commemoration of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda with a photography exhibition reflecting on life in Rwanda today. It was curated by King’s academic Dr Zoe Norridge (English & Comparative Literature) and Dr Mark Sealy MBE, Director of Autograph ABP. We asked visitors “How do you see Rwanda?” – inviting them to reflect on their mental images of the country and how those images had been formed.
Internationally circulating photographs of Rwanda still tend to be taken by international visiting photographers. Our exhibition complicated this narrative by showing photographs of life today by ten Rwandan photographers, including Jean Bizimana, John Mbanda, Mussa Uwitonze and Jacqueline Rutagarama.
The exhibition was accompanied by a series of events featuring: a genocide commemoration in King’s College Chapel; discussion panels about justice, politics and culture; and the UK première of Ery Nzaramba’s play Split/Mixed.
The Rwanda in Photographs exhibition and events were supported by the AHRC (£44k) and the Cultural Institute at King’s. 
The work grew out of Zoe Norridge’s ongoing research on cultural responses to genocide and drew on an earlier AHRC grant exploring international conceptions of Translating Freedom lead by Paul Gready at the University of York.
It has since grown into two new projects: Children of Political Violence, exploring artistic work from Argentina, Rwanda and Northern Ireland; and Zoe Norridge’s more recent AHRC Leadership Fellowship, Stories From Rwanda: Academic, Creative, Applied.
[Images selected from those featurered in the exhibition; used with permission.]