{"id":1456,"date":"2025-07-02T20:37:45","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T20:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/?p=1456"},"modified":"2025-07-02T20:40:27","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T20:40:27","slug":"two-british-academy-mid-career-fellowships-awarded-to-mems-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/2025\/07\/02\/two-british-academy-mid-career-fellowships-awarded-to-mems-staff\/","title":{"rendered":"Two British Academy Mid-Career Fellowships awarded to MEMS staff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many congratulations to Dr Edward Roberts<\/a>, Senior Lecturer in Early Medieval History, and Dr Sarah Dustagheer<\/a>, Reader in Early Modern Literature. who have been awarded prestigious British Academy Mid-Career Fellowships for the 2025-26 academic year. Read more about their projects here:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dr Edward Roberts: \u2018Bishops, Law and Society at the End of the First Millennium\u2019.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

The institutional power of the medieval church has traditionally been thought a product of the eleventh-century \u2018Gregorian reform\u2019, whereby newly invigorated popes liberated the church from secular interference and restored clerical integrity. But this was only possible because a bottom-up transformation was well underway across Latin Europe. This project traces changes in ecclesiastical governance across the tenth and early eleventh centuries by reassessing the activities and ethos of the church\u2019s most important local leaders: the bishops. Through a study of contemporary episcopal manuscripts, this research shows how innovative approaches to religious law produced new conceptions of episcopal jurisdiction and group cohesion, which enabled bishops to operate as a transregional elite and paved the way for a wider transformation of European society.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dr Roberts added:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a project about how \u2018the church\u2019 became the dominant social institution in medieval Europe. It is still often said that this only came about after zealous reformers took over the papal curia around 1050 and began to establish a more bureaucratic, hierarchical church with universal reach. But institutions are not simply top-down organisations. They are interactive, requiring demand from below as well as supply from above. I therefore wanted to find out what was happening at local levels across Western Europe in the preceding period that might have encouraged this rapid growth of papal authority.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dr Roberts teaches early medieval European history in the School of Humanities and MEMS. He is always happy to hear from prospective research students who are interested in working on any aspect of European history in the period c.500 \u2013 c.1100.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dr Sarah Dustagheer: Shakespeare and the Legacy of the British Empire<\/h4>\n

This project examines Shakespeare performance \u2013 in professional, amateur and educational settings \u2013 from key locations in the life of the British Empire. The project will cover six indicative case studies and interrogate the playwright\u2019s evolution from cultural tool of the Empire to global icon. It argues that the largely unanalysed performance history of colonial Shakespeare complicates this alleged evolution, and reveals undocumented examples of complicity, resistance and hybridity between colonised and colonisers. It offers a unique contribution to critical debate on Shakespeare\u2019s entanglement with the colonial project and how that legacy has an impact on contemporary culture. In sharing research with teachers, sixth-formers and the public via an educational film, exhibition and workshops, the project contributes to current debates around antiracist Shakespeare pedagogy, the decolonisation of curriculums and the Empire\u2019s legacies in today\u2019s ‘culture wars’.<\/p>\n

\n

Image: Contemporary portrait of Bishop Sigebert of Minden (1022\u201336), originally contained in his prayer book, now preserved as a single folio (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, MS theol. lat. qu. 3).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many congratulations to Dr Edward Roberts, Senior Lecturer in Early Medieval History, and Dr Sarah Dustagheer, Reader in Early Modern Literature. who have been awarded … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65703,"featured_media":1458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1456"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1460,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions\/1460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}