St John's College Oxford

In this two-year project, history, anthropology and law are brought together in order to bring a truly interdisciplinary perspective to the study of law and legal systems. Drs Malcolm Vale and Paul Dresch were joined by anthropologists Drs Fernanda Pirie and Judith Scheele to build a set of research themes and a research network, both within and beyond Oxford, with a view to generating a major grant proposal. They also hosted a seminar series at the Research Centre; for further details on the series or the project please contact Dr Scheele.

The Life and Work of Soviet Chemist Armin Stromberg 2008-2009

A re-assessment of the contributions of Armin Stromberg to the field of electrochemistry, led by Professor Richard Compton and Dr Gregory Wildgoose. Armin G Stromberg was arguably one of the founding fathers of the technique of stripping voltammetry frequently used in chemical analysis, yet he is virtually unheard of in Western scientific circles. He was a brilliant scientist, but due to his German ancestry he was interred in one of the NKVD GULAG camps at the outbreak of the Second World War. He later founded the thriving Tomsk school to the wider historical context of electroanalysis in the USSR, drawing conclusions about the rate of scientific development as compared to the West and showing how 'wet analysis' remained of vital importance to Soviet industry long after alternative equivalent measurements were made elsewhere. Dr Alex Kabakaev, previously at the University of Tomsk in Russia, joined the Centre in 2008 to contribute to this one-year research project. A book was published by Imperial College Press in 2011.

Forests and Chases of England and Wales

This project has been supported by both the Research Centre and the Marc Fitch Fund. Its aim is to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary investigation of the medieval and post-medieval spatial, temporal, functional, and cultural survival and significance of the Forests and Chases of England and Wales. Directed by Dr Jack Langton with the assistance of Dr Graham Jones.

The Future of Fecundity 2008-2009

An international network of collaborators, under the direction of Professor David Coleman and Professor Wolfgang Lutz of the Vienna Institute of Demography, was established as part of this study. Dr Stuart Basten was the Research Associate for the project between May 2008-09.

Plasma Astrophysics 2006-2009

This three year project began in March 2006 under the direction of Professor Katherine Blundell, Professor Keith Burnett (who is now Vice Chancellor of the University of Sheffield), and Professor James Binney of Merton College, as well as with a team at University College Dublin, led by Dr Peter Duffy. There were to two Research Centre Fellows attached to the project: Dr Katrien Steenbrugge, who joined the programme from Harvard University and whose contract ended in August 2009, and Dr Fatallah Alouani Bibi, who was previously at the University of California Irvine. Dr Bibi moved back to the USA at the end of 2008. The programme was also supported by the Royal Society, The Royal Irish Academy and Science Foundation Ireland.

Arabic Poetry and Comparative Poetics 2002-2005

This three year project began in October 2002 was under the direction of Dr Robin Ostle and Professor Geert Jan van Gelder, and employed two Research Centre Fellows, Walid Khazendar and Marle Hammond.

The objectives of this project were:

• to promote the poems of ancient, modern and contemporary Arabic poetry beyond their specialist and academic confines, and to enable these poems to reach non-Arabist scholars, critics and writers, and general readers in the West
• to produce studies on comparative and contrastive poetics of Arabic through the investigation of ancient, medieval and modern Arabic poetry
• to create a forum for the constructive engagement of scholars, poets and critics, primarily of English poetry and literature, with works of Arabic poetry and also with Arab poets and critics.

Activities included two poetry readings: Voices Crying in the Wilderness, presentations and readings in Arabic and English of ancient Arabic poetry, with the participation of the Oxford poets David Constantine and Bernard O'Donoghue; and Love and Other Difficulties: Goethe and Arabic Poetry, readings in German and English of poems by Goethe, and readings of Arabic poems (in English and Arabic) as counterparts and responses to the German texts, with the participation of Ray Ockenden and Jim Reed.

Publications from this project include:

• Modernism and the Intrigues of the Antique: A Reflection on Arabic Poetry by Muhammad Lutfi al-Yusufi. Translated and edited by Robin Ostle and Walid Khazendar.
• Ancient Arabic Poetry: selections and translations by Walid Khazendar.
• Arabic Poetry & Orientalism by Jaroslav Stetkevych, edited by Walid Khazendar.

 

Public Employment Services and European Law 2002-2005

This project was carried out under the direction of Mark Freedland FBA, Professor of Employment Law, Univerisity of Oxford, Paul Craig QC FBA, Professor of English Law, University of Oxford, Catherine Jacqueson, Lecturer in Law, University of Copenhagen, and Nicola Kountouris, Lecturer in Law, University College London. It addressed the following questions:

How can the EU's community of welfare states adapt their public policies to economic globalization? What happens when the economic and social aims of the EU come into conflict? Public Employment Services and European Law examines the law and regulation of public services though public employment services (job-placement and vocational training), revealing interaction and conflict between economic and social aims of the EU and between regulation at national and supranational levels.