Moving (across) Boundaries
An interdisciplinary research conference and workshop hosted by Q+ at the University of Cambridge
22nd April
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Where are possibilities of change situated across disciplines, between academia, creative practices and activism?
This one day event, hosted by Q+ at the University of Cambridge looks towards new possibilities for research, practice, and activism.
The opening panel will prompt discussions about the potentials for queer creative research and practice, involving a cross-disciplinary group of discussants. The panel will look towards an ‘otherwise’ or ‘across’ approach to curation and research, through a conversation between activists, artists and researchers. These approaches will then be further developed in interventions from researchers and practitioners in the following session.
The event will continue in person in the afternoon. Beginning with a discussion led 'Feel Tank' on the theme 'Out of Time,' facilitated by Chloe Turner, the afternoon sessions will provide a space for affective and emotional reflection upon the combined processes of research, activism and creative practice. This is followed by a workshop led by the event organisers: the workshop will be centred around collective processes that are generative but non-teleological, such as improvisation, listening, recording, or collaging.
Further tapping into ‘otherwise’ or ‘across’ forms of making and doing, we would dwell further on the potentials of thinking ‘queerly’ or thinking trans* (Christina Sharpe) about research. Inspired by crip perspectives, notably Mia Mingus’ notion of ‘access intimacy,’ we want to make the various spaces of the event genuinely accessible. We believe a combined online and in-person approach will create room for people with a variety of needs, and all in-person spaces will include time and resources for rest.
Speakers |
| Lola Olufemi (she/they) is a Black feminist writer and Stuart Hall foundation researcher from London based in the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster. Her work focuses on the uses of the feminist imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands and futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021) and a member of 'bare minimum', an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective. |
| Yara Rodrigues Fowler (she/they) is an author and climate justice organiser from South London. Her first novel, Stubborn Archivist, was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2019 and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2020 and the Desmond Elliot Prize 2019. Yara’s second novel, there are more things, will be published in the UK in April 2022. Yara received the John C Lawrence Award from the Society of Authors for research to write there are more things, and the book was shortlisted, as a work in progress, for the Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writer’s Award 2019. |
| Dr Neda Alizadeh Kashani (she/her) has a PhD in Modern and Comparative Languages and Literatures from the University of Macerata. She is the recipient of the Fath al-lah Mojtaba’i Prize for the best PhD thesis of the year 2014. Her research interests span across comparative languages and literatures, contemporary Italian literature, plurilingualism, transnationalism and nomadic writing. She is an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Italian Language and Literature, University of Tehran and at the Department of English Language Teaching, Allameh Tabataba’i University. |