London’s Records of Slavery

What is a record of slavery and what responsibility does its possessor bear? How should institutions with early modern histories confront their role in the Transatlantic slave trade? What kind of dialogue should work on records of slavery foster? Who should its beneficiaries be? These are some of the questions at the heart of this project, which connects CEMS researchers with private and cultural sector institutions across England undertaking work on their past participation in the slave trade. Growing directly out of the programme of research generated by MMoR (Medicine and the Making of Race), as well as collaborative work within the King’s History Department, this project facilitates a cross-sector exchange between archivists, curators, and historians on the question of investigating records of slavery.

Multilingual London

Multilingualism was a fact of early modern life. In thinking critically about this, Multilingual London aims to uncover the history of multilingualism and open points of identification for modern multilingual inhabitants of the city. The imperative of this research programme, which has grown out of conversations between researchers in English, History, and Modern Languages, is not just to assert the presence of other languages, but to explore how they were experienced, heard, thought about, dealt with, and how they mediated interactions, both between speakers and in the mind of the individual speaker. We aim to do this through multidisciplinary (languages, literatures, history) academic research and public engagement activities showcasing – or rather, making audible – the multilingual nature of the early modern streets, courts, churches, and marketplaces. Project partners include Memory Mapper, who will help us to plot the sounds of early modern London.

Keywords

Keywords is a postgraduate blog series that aims to locate points of interconnection across discipline and faculty: from the coexistence and specialisation of meaning(s), to obsolescence, imposition, and change. Each post is by a student at postgraduate level, taking the research interests of the individual as a framework through which to interrogate a problematic and/or familiar term. In the process, indeed, through this process, we hope to construct something of an alternative ‘early modern vocabulary’, one that asks new questions about the ways in which we use – and have used – language in different places, and at different times. Entries range from distraction to material, refugee to soil.

Keywords series by CEMS KCL

Ways of Knowing

How best can scientists and humanities scholars collaborate? How does the practice of collaboration actually work? Ways of Knowing is a cross-faculty, collaborative project that showcases new partnerships across science and humanities, with particular emphasis on the early modern. This experimental pairing of workshop and laboratory provides insights into how interdisciplinary research gets off the ground, how it works and what it can find.

Key Things

Key Things is the CEMS postgraduate blog series for 2022. In a material turn, each piece takes a single object or ‘key thing’ as both its title and point of departure. The series seeks to explore the complex relationships that exist between beings and things in the world, and some of the ways in which these (and the objects themselves) shift and change through time in different historical contexts. As with Keywords, participants are all postgraduate students, drawn from across departments and disciplines. Subjects of posts range from a pinch to dust to a boxwood comb, a piece of mummia to a sugar ‘subtlety’ (or sculpture). You can explore the series on the CEMS KCL blog.

Key Things series by CEMS KCL

London Migrations

A collaborative art project between members of CEMS and artist Clare Qualmann on the theme of early modern migrations into and out of London. The project aims to explore the multilingual migrant city and produce art works that will make the research accessible to the public. CEMS members from the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and History working on the multilingual diasporas of early modern London will be involved, and provide the starting point for the collaboration working with the multilingual diasporas of early modern London. The project asks: What were the affective and cognitive experiences of early modern migrants? Do they speak to the present? What was the daily life of early modern migrants like in London, and can art works help us to reimagine it? Can art collaborations help us to understand our source material in different and valuable ways?