The Hispanists National Conference 2013

(Originally posted 1 April 2013)

This time last week I was eating pheasant in a dining hall that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in Harry Potter – that’s what you get when Oxford University play host to the AHGBI conference!

The AHGBI (Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland) annual conference brings together those working on any Spanish or Portuguese speaking country from all levels, with graduate students right up to top professors. It’s therefore the best chance both to learn about new developments in the field and to do some serious networking.

This was my first AHGBI conference and I’m glad to say I made the most of it, spending 37 hours over two and a half days attending presentations, making mountains of notes, asking questions, meeting new people, catching up with friends from previous conferences, and eating lots of very posh food. The great thing about the conference is how it brings together scholars from so many different aspects of our very large field: I attended papers on everything from dubbing in Spanish films to feminist translation practices. While I obviously love the topic of my own research, a PhD can feel very limited at times, so it’s great to connect to so many other fascinating topics. I also enjoyed the many unexpected topics that popped up in presentations, from Edward the sparkly vampire in Twilight to time travel, Broadway musicals to Fifty Shades of Grey!

On the final day of the conference, it was time for my own panel on ‘Canonicity and Marginalised Literature in Latin America’ (looking at literature from countries often ignored by academia), which had been almost a year in the making. Although one of the participants didn’t turn up, and it was too early for a particularly numerous audience, the panel went really well. My fellow presenters gave us all lots of food for thought and there was a very lively discussion after. I’m really looking forward to seeing where this area of research will go next.

Looking for a PhD topic? Try the British Library

(Originally posted 21 March 2013)

This week in our SPLAS seminar, we were lucky enough to be joined by Dr Geoff West and Dr Elizabeth Cooper, subject curators for Spanish and Latin American Studies respectively at the British Library. They explained the many facets of curating: acquisition, maintaining the collection, organising material for exhibitions and other public engagement exercises, and one thing not many people are aware of: supervising PhD students. 

As one of the two biggest libraries in the world (the other being the Library of Congress in Washington DC), the British Library has over 150 million resources to explore; not just printed books and manuscripts, but sound recordings, microfilm, even a lock of Simón Bolivar’s hair! With so many treasures lurking unexplored in the archives, there is plenty of material on offer for an exciting PhD based on first hand analysis and investigation of these invaluable literary and historical documents.

Beyond allowing access to its resources, the BL supports doctoral research by offering joint supervision with universities including King’s. One notable example of this partnership is Tom Overton, whose joint PhD between the BL & King’s on John Berger lead to the recent Art and Property Now exhibition at the Inigo Rooms. Tom told us how he was the first person in decades to look at Berger’s private documents, which offered him a unique glimpse into this key figure in British art history.

So if you’re on the hunt for a PhD topic and you would enjoy exploring original documents, why not investigate the BL. You can find out more about PhDs jointly supervised by the British Library here.