By connecting activists – who are in touch with the needs of communities – and researchers, the Activist-in-Residence scheme takes an innovative approach to addressing some of society’s most pressing issues for marginalised groups. The resources and learning stemming from these projects will have the power to change lives.
Professor Daniel Orrells
04 February 2026
New projects pair activism and academia to drive social change
Four new projects under the Activist-in-Residence scheme by the Global Cultures Institute seek to address social challenges by bringing activists and researchers together.
The Activist-in-Residence (AiR) programme tackles social issues by connecting activists in all their forms with academics. Since 2026, the programme has been funded by the Global Cultures Institute, with £20,000 provided to support four residencies over two years.
Literature and Solidarity – Sharing Risk in a Hostile Environment will see English PEN working with three academics on the meaning of solidarity:
- Dr Jarad Zimbler, Reader in English and Global Cultures in the Department of English and the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities
- Professor Daniel Orrells, Professor of Classics in the Department of Classics
- Professor Anna Bernard, Professor of Comparative and World Literature in the Department of English and the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
Three workshops will explore frameworks for shared terminology; defining red lines; determining the resources needed for mutual support; and understanding how to share risk and power dynamics.
English PEN is delighted to form a part of this year's Activist-in-Residence programme. We look forward to thinking alongside peers at King’s and beyond about critical questions relating to the act of solidarity and the expanded potential of literary solidarity in today's complex world.
Daniel Gorman, English PEN
English PEN has championed freedom of expression for over a century. Given their enduring commitment and depth of experience, our collaboration is a wonderful opportunity to think together about what it means to share risks and as well as resources, and to explore how and why projects of solidarity remain so vital to contemporary literary and political cultures.
Dr Jarad Zimbler, Reader in English and Global Cultures
LGBTQ+ Archival Justice: Community, Representation & Resistance brings together Queer@King’s and Sweatmother, founder of Otherness Archive, to offer a response to knowledge exclusion and representational discrimination of the LGBTQ+ community. Through a four-part workshops series and public film screening programme, the project will co-develop inclusive, intersectional understandings of LGBTQ+ cultural heritage and activist strategies for its preservation.
We are so proud to welcome Otherness Archive and to support the organisation’s archival justice work. LGBTQ+ people have long been misrepresented and underrepresented in research repositories, methodologies and institutions. This collaboration seeks to undo some of that harm by deploying a radically different approach to archival practice – one that centres LGBTQ+ voices and intersectional identities. This is a project about archival justice grounded in the right to epistemic self-determination.
Dr Zeena Feldman, Director of Queer@King’s
Otherness Archive’s work is based on DIY and self-taught archival practices and comes from deep respect for the lived experiences and knowledges of the LGBTQ+ communities we serve and are part of. In this residency with Queer@King’s, we want to think with higher education institutions about what it would mean to bring those lived experiences and knowledges into a university’s archival work. Our residency is an experiment in whether institutions can adapt more humane, people-centred methods and deliver new forms of archival justice.
Sweatmother, founder of Otherness Archive
Ecofeminism and Reparative Histories seeks to enhance areas of research and practice relating to the position of communities in danger of losing voice through the long-term impact of coloniality with three academics:
- Professor Catherine Boyle, Director of the Centre for Language Acts and Worldmaking and Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies in the Department of Languages, Literature and Cultures
- Dr Daniel Mandur Thomaz, Senior Lecturer in Brazilian and Latin American Studies in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities
- Dr Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela, Reader in Latin American Culture in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
The academics will work with Gaël Le Cornec, whose eco-feminist performative approach works with reparative narratives of women whose erasure of voice and agency relates to loss of land.
This project is the perfect opportunity for the Centre for Language Acts and Worldmaking to continue in its innovative and impactful work with activist co-researchers from beyond the academy. This project connects activists in the Amazon who belong to communities in danger of losing place, voice and language with Latin Americans in London who also have shared histories of silencing and loss, with the aim of developing reparative narratives. It is important to us that our students engage with this work, as it will help them understand the place of their studies in the world.
Professor Catherine Boyle, Director of the Centre for Languages Acts and Worldmaking
I look forward to continuing my performance research on ecofeminism and reparative histories at King's College. The AIR residency will open up spaces to examine how language has been used to erase indigenous and Black narratives in transnational historical archives; engage with academics, Latin American activists and communities in both the UK and the Brazilian Amazon and co-create empowering tools to voice silenced histories through performance.
Gaël Le Cornec
Repairing and Restitution of Knowledge Exchange will be led by Dr Hannah Ishmael, Lecturer in Digital Culture and Race in the Department of Digital Humanities, with Connie Bell from Decolonising the Archive. Through the Museum Restitution adult education course, this project will test and evaluate how Decolonising the Archive’s approach to cultural (re)construction, restitution and repair can be adapted within a UK higher education context.
The project links to Dr Ishmael’s participation in the King’s Race Research Network and her research on reparations, the marginalisation of Black British diasporic histories, and the role of Black community activists in engaging and disrupting the heritage industry.
About the Global Cultures Institute
The Global Cultures Institute fosters interdisciplinary conversations to probe and articulate the limits and boundaries that divide us on the rounds of language, culture, community and identity. By building a critical understanding of their origins and development, the Institute shares its work through research, education and public engagement, finding ways to talk beyond boundaries.
In this story
Professor of Comparative and World Literature
Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies
Reader in Digital Culture
Lecturer in Digital Culture and Race
Senior Lecturer in Brazilian and Latin American Studies
Professor of Classics
Reader in Latin American Culture
Reader in English and Global Cultures
Related departments
- Faculty of Arts & Humanities
- Global Cultures Institute
- King's Race Research Network (KRRN)
- Language Acts and Worldmaking
- Queer@King's
- Department of Classics
- Department of Digital Humanities
- Department of English
- Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities
- Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
- Literature and Solidarity – Sharing Risk in a Hostile Environment
- LGBTQ+ Archival Justice: Community, Representation & Resistance
- Ecofeminism and Reparative Histories
- Repairing and Restitution of Knowledge Exchange