Speaker Biographies
Plenary Speakers
Dr Amira K. Bennison
Amira Bennison is Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Magdalene College. Amira’s research interests include the medieval Islamic West (Islamic Iberia and Morocco), Maghribi modes of legitimation and cultures of power, and 18th-19th century Muslim religio-political discourse and engagement with modernity. In addition, Amira is an experienced cultural tour lecturer who has led numerous trips to Morocco, southern Spain, Syria and Egypt. Amira’s publications include The Great Caliphs: the Golden Age of the ‘Abbasid Empire, Cities in the Premodern Islamic World: the urban impact of religion, state and society (edited with Alison L. Gascoigne), and Jihad and its Interpretations in Pre-Colonial Morocco.
Subject Speakers
Dr Bill Burgwinkle
Bill Burgwinkle is a Reader in Old French and Occitan at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Bill’s research interests include literary relations in the Mediterranean (French, Occitan, Catalan, Italian), representations of sexuality and the sacred, the spread of troubadour poetry and the use of critical theory in Medieval Studies. Bill has published several books, including The Cambridge History of French Literature (ed.). Bill is currently working on an AHRC project on Medieval Francophone Literary Cultures outside of France and is responsible largely for the Southern routes of transmission, reception and origins of manuscripts dealing with the Trojan war material and Alexander the Great.
Dr Rosemary Clark
Dr Rosemary Clark came late to university teaching, completing a PhD on Catholic Iconography in the novels of Juan Marsé in 2000 after working in secondary teaching and literary translation. There followed a two-year fellowship at Clare College and she is now a bye-fellow at Downing and Christ's, and a director of studies in Spanish at Christ's and St John's. Born in South Africa (father in France and mother in India), Dr Clark is currently researching relations between Spain and North Africa, and in her work with students she much enjoys exploring issues of identity in relation to regions and nationhood, shifting gender prescriptions, and history, memory and childhood.
Dr Martin Crowley
Martin Crowley is Reader in Modern French Thought and Culture in the Department of French at the University of Cambridge. Martin’s current research examines accounts of the visual and plastic arts in the work of modern French thinkers. Martin is the author of: L'Homme sans: Politiques de la finitude; Robert Antelme: L'humanité irréductibe; Robert Antelme: Humanity, Community, Testimony; Duras, Writing, and the Ethical, Making the Broken Whole, and the editor of Contact! The Art of Touch/L'Art du toucher and Dying Words: The Last Moments of Writers and Philosophers.
Dr Stuart Davis
Stuart Davis has been Lecturer in Spanish at Girton College, University of Cambridge since 2003. Stuart’s broad research and teaching interests lie in the contemporary periods of both Spanish and Latin American literature and culture, museum and memory studies, representations of gender and sexuality, theories of literary canonisation, and metacriticism. Stuart has published extensively on the contemporary Spanish author Juan Goytisolo, on literary canon and pedagogical practices and on Jorge Luis Borges, "Generación X". Stuart is co-editor of Reading Iberia and is currently completing a monograph entitled Writing and Heritage in Contemporary Spain.
Professor Nick Harrison
Nick Harrison studied French and German at the University of Cambridge, spending the third year of his degree as a lecteur at the University of Tunis. After graduating Nick spent a further year working as a lecteur, this time in rural Quebec, and then returned to Cambridge to write a PhD about censorship and notions of freedom of expression in modern France. During that time Nick spent a year teaching English at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. Subsequently Nick was a research fellow and lecturer in Cambridge, before moving to UCL, and then King’s College London in 2005, where Nick is currently head of department, and professor of French and postcolonial studies.
Dr Chris Pountain
Chris Pountain has been Professor of Spanish Linguistics at Queen Mary, University of London, since 2004, following a period of nearly 25 years lecturing in Romance Philology in the University of Cambridge. Chris has published articles on a wide range of topics concerned with historical Romance syntax, together with A History of the Spanish Language through Texts and Exploring the Spanish Language. Chris’s current research interest is linguistic variation in 16th-century Spanish prose drama and is an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.
Dr Martin Ruehl
Martin Ruehl is Lecturer in German at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, University of Cambridge, specializing in the intellectual history of modern Germany. Martin’s research to date has focussed on the ideas and ideologies that shaped German society and culture in the Wilhelmine and Weimar period, in particular the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and its reception since the 1890s. Martin has published books and articles on Nietzsche, Burckhardt, Thomas Mann, German "Geschichtsphilosophie" and philhellenism. Martin’s essay on the palingenetic nationalism of the George Circle will appear in the collective volume Weimar Thought: A Critical History (Princeton University Press).
Professor Martin Swales
Martin Swales studied German at the University of Cambridge, and then went on to take a PhD at the University of Birmingham under Roy Pascal. After a year's schoolteaching Martin joined the German Department at Birmingham University - and subsequently taught German at the University of Toronto, at King's College London, and at University College London where, since 2003, Martin has been Emeritus Professor of German. Martin has published widely on German literature from the late 18th century to the present as the author of monographs on Goethe, Stifter, Schnitzler, Thomas Mann, the German Novelle, the Bildungsroman and on German realism.
Dr Sheila Watts
Sheila Watts is a graduate of Dublin University who moved to Cambridge in 1998 to take up a post teaching German and Germanic linguistics. The main focus of Sheila’s research to date has been on the expression of time within the verb phrase through categories like tense, aspect and Aktionsart. Other interests include ideas about the German language in the seventeenth century, and Sheila has recently published on both the grammarian Justus Georg Schottelius and the lexicographer Caspar Stieler. Sheila is committed to all aspects of language teaching, and has published on ab initio learners as well as on the teaching of spoken German at third level.