Kamila Shamsie, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Hellenic Prize, has been announced as the inaugural New Imaginaries Fellow for the University’s Migration and Movement Signature Research Theme (SRT).
Kamila is the author of seven novels, which have been translated into over 30 languages, and her novel Home Fire was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She is a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester.
Launched in 2021, the Migration and Movement SRT is a multidisciplinary team of academics, with expertise in issues ranging from the politics of human movement, the migration of pathogens and technologies, to the movement of cultures, ideas and labour.
Against a backdrop of intersecting crises of movement, including the continued acceleration and escalation of climate change and conflicts, research carried out by the SRT will play a key role in intellectual debates around migration, its contexts, histories and benefits. As the New Imaginaries Fellowship, Kamila will ensure that the SRT not only speaks to existing agendas but shapes new ones – helping to re-imagine and re-articulate the dynamics of migration and movement.
In her role, Kamila will deliver the 2022 T S Eliot Lecture, titled ‘Waking alone/ At the hour when we are/Trembling with tenderness/Lips that would kiss/Form prayers to broken stone’: Literature’s power and powerlessness’ on 7 June. This public event will be jointly hosted by the University’s School of English and its Institute for Cultural and Creative Industries (iCCi).
Kamila will also lead a cross-disciplinary workshop for colleagues and students interested in the work of the SRT on the implications for human movement of her award-winning novel Home Fire on 8 June.
For more details about the T S Eliot Lecture, including how to book place, please visit our events site.