Small projects

Every year CModS provides a number of Small Project Grants to aid interdisciplinary work across the humanities and social sciences (and relevant partnerships with other disciplinary configurations) in the modern period. These may be used to organise lectures, workshops, study days, conferences, graduate symposia, and reading groups, or to facilitate less public events where scholars can interact with one another as a means to developing new interdisciplinary research and grant applications.

For more information on projects that have been funded by CModS small project grants, please see below.

2024-25
2021-22
2020-21
2019-20
2018-19
2017-2018
Archive

2024-25

Grants awarded in 2024-25

Lead applicant	Department	Project
Jin Fan	Archaeology	Two starting points: an architecture education history of York, 1950-2025 In 2025, York University will receive its first students at the School of Architecture. However, it is not the first architecture school York ever had. The Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies (IAAS) was established by the university in the 1950s and grew rapidly with its teaching, research, and design practice before it was shut down in the 1990s. What were the merits of its teaching in terms of the diversity of architecture education approaches, the proliferation of practices, and their relationship to the unique city of York? The project will investigate these questions by bringing staff from relevant departments in the University of York and the architecture industry for discussion, along with an archive study through the surviving bulletins, correspondence, and press clips, revealing the significant stories, to serve as inspiration for the upcoming school.
Amélie Castellanet	History of Art	Readymade, Objects and Assemblages This project aims to offer a series of lectures during the academic year 2024/2025 on the Readymades and Assemblages created in the Avant-Garde. By focusing on the object's nature and materiality, a diversity of study approaches can be unfolded. This is visible, for example, in the recent publication 'Contagion, Hygiene, and the European Avant-Garde' (2023), edited by David Hopkins and Disa Persson, which offered a multidisciplinary and original perspective on well-known artworks through the lenses of hygiene and health issues. The author and co-editor of this volume, Professor David Hopkins (University of Glasgow), will be offered the opportunity to give the first talk related to his last research in this book.
Vera Mey	History of Art	Art and Anticapitalism To further explore the links between recent art and exhibition making centred on ideas of anticapitalism. This builds on from research on 20th century independence era movements in Southeast Asia, including the Bandung 1955 Asia Africa Conference as one of the world's first instances towards political decoloniality. Building on from this historical period brings to question what is the new international solidarity movement in the contemporary era centred around? While recent contemporary art aims towards destabilising categorisations of ethnicity and nation, looking at capitalist structures of production and circulation as sites of intervention and critique seem to be the preoccupation with many contemporary artists - particularly from the Global South - today.
Pritika Pradhan	English	Victorian Expansions Conference A one-day conference (21 February 2025, The Treehouse) with national and international speakers whose research diversifies and decolonises Victorian studies, by pushing against its geographical (beyond the British Isles), chronological, and disciplinary boundaries. The Victorian era witnessed the emergence of eclectic literary, artistic, and musical forms and genres that belie the myth of “splendid isolation,” by highlighting colonial, European, and transatlantic engagements, and cutting across Romantic, Victorian, and Modern/ist periodisations. By gathering interdisciplinary research by postgraduate students and senior scholars, “Victorian Expansions” will uncover the inherent diversity and expand the scope of what we think of as Victorian, and indeed British, culture and identity.

2021-22

Grants awarded in 2021-22

Lead applicant	Department	Project
Emma Bryning and Gwendoline Pepper	Archaeology	Removal, Re-interpretation or Re-contextualisation? A Conversation on Contested Statues, Resistance and the Reimagination of Public Spaces
Louise Yu-Jui Yang and Francesca Curtis	History of Art	Earthlings: Anthropocene Art Talks

2020-21

Grants awarded in 2020-21

Lead applicant	Department	Project
Alice Hill-Woods	English and Related Literature/History	Thinking Sympathies: Radical Approaches to Environment, Health and Embodiment

2019-20

Grants awarded in 2019-20

Lead applicant	Department	Project
Catherine Fahy	Music	Composers and Poets Forum
Alex Gushurst-Moore	History of Art	Conference: Threshold, Boundary, and Crossover in Fantasy
Ruth Kelly	Centre for Applied Human Rights	Collaboration and Co-Authorship as Feminist Practice workshop series
Jun Qiang	English and Related Literature	CModS Art Competition - Creative Responses to Covid-19
Tali Kot-Ofek	History	Pandemic, Crisis, and Modern Studies Twitter Conference: The intersection between your research and the pandemic

2018-19

Grants awarded in 2018-2019

Lead applicant	Department	Project
Lola Boorman	English and Related Literature	CModS Works in Progress Group
Isabelle Gapp	History of Art	The Circumpolar World, 1850-1940: From Scandinavia to North America
Emilie Morin	English and Related Literature	Histories of Listening
Aurèlia Úbeda Puigdomènech	Women's Studies	Mary Doesn't Just Wear Blue: Exhibition of artworks on new meanings of femininity in contemporary secular images of the Virgin Mary

2017-2018

Grants awarded in 2017-2018

Lead applicant	Department	Project
Laura Blomvall	English and Related Literature	Eborakon
Louisa Lee	History of Art	Looking at Art-Language: Artist's Magazines and Conceptual Art, 1969-1985
Madeline Potter	English and Related Literature	The Poetics of Faith: Exploring Belief in Modern and Contemporary Poetry
Jessica Schouela	History of Art	Atmospheres
James Williams	English and Related Literature	Symposium: New Work on Edward Lear
Kailing Xie and Joy Ogbemudia	Centre for Women's Studies	The Real Rubbish Diary Project

Grants awarded in 2016-2017

Lead applicant	Department	Project
Lawrence Black	History	What can we learn from the history of social movements?
Madeline Boden	History of Art	The Leighton Network
Martha Cattell	History of Art	Turner and the Whale symposium
Ilaria Grando, Grace Linden	History of Art	ACT UP: Thirty Years Fighting AIDS
Jiyi Ryu	History of Art	Reconnecting Dots: Art History and the British Empire
Lotta Schneidemesser	English and Related Literature	Bringing Conflict Home
Miles Taylor	History	The utopian universities: the new campuses of the 1960s

Grants awarded in 2015-16

Lead applicant	Department	Project
Anna Svendsen	English and Related Literature	David Jones: Dialogues with the Past, conference July 2016
Emily Moore	History of Art	Sargentology: New Perspectives on the work of John Singer Sargent, conference April 2016
Margarita-Maria Makri	Language and Linguistic Science	ConSOLE XXIV, January 2016
David Huyssen	History	Situating the Americas after Global History, study day.
John Roe	English and Related Literature	Anthony Powell Society conference, April 2016

Grants awarded in 2014-15

Lead applicant	Department	Project
Karl O'Hanlon	English and Related Literature	Eborakon poetry journal
Anna Bonewitz	History of Art	Disseminating Dress - interdisciplinary three-day conference
David Ellis	History	Society for the Promotion of Urban Discussions (SPUD) - 3rd biannual meeting
Margarita-Maria Makri	Language and Linguistic Science	2nd PARLAY (Postgraduate and Academic Researchers in Lingustics at York) conference
Hannah Andrews	Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media	Real Lives on Page, Stage and Screen research colloquium

Grants awarded in 2013-2014

Lead applicant	Department	Project
Sara Perry	Archaeology	Gender and Digital Culture workshop
Benjamin Madden	English and Related Literature	Ordinary/Everyday/Quotidian - international two-day conference
Sebastian Owen	English and Related Literature	Holocaust Memorial Day 2014: teaching and learning programme
Tim Lawrence	English and Related Literature	Conference on Realist film and television after Alan Clarke
Izzy Isgate	English and Related Literature	The Coming Out Monologues
Norman Yeo	Language and Linguistic Science	'Known Unknowns' in the Study of Language - seminar and workshop series
Jo Applin	History of Art	The London Art World: Mobile, Kinetic and Ephemeral Networks 1960-1980 - conference in November 2013
Mark Hutchinson	Music	Memory in Post-1980s Music - study day in February 2014

Grants awarded in 2012-13

Lead applicant	Department	Project
Sophie Norton	Archaeology	The Reunion: Sustainably Managing the Skills of the Yorkshire Stonemason's Network - stonemasons' workshop at Fountain's Abbey
Anthony Levin	English and Related Literature	The Holocaust on Film - symposium in November 2012
Catherine Spencer	History of Art	Silent Spring: Chemical, Biological and Technological Vision(s) of the post-1945 Environment - interdisciplinary postgraduate workshop
Adam Perchard	English/Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies	The Eighteenth Century in the Twentieth Century - two-day conference and public engagement event in June 2013
Rafe McGregor	Philosophy	Contemporary Aesthetic Education in the United Kingdom - workshop in December 2012
Sarah Shaw	English and Related Literature	What Defines Edwardian Culture? - one day interdisciplinary symposium
Sophie Coulombeau	English/Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies	Strange Bedfellows: Creativity and analysis in an age of austerity
Nathan Atkinson	Language and Linguistic Science	PARLAY (Postgraduate Academic Researchers in Linguistics at York) conference in September 2013
Kirstin Donaldson	History of Art	Representing the Industrial Scene: Lowry in Context c. 1900-1980 - symposium June 2013
Charlotte Drew	History of Art	Collaborators: The role of collectors, critics and curators in artistic practice c. 1780-1914 - workshop in June 2013
Jonathan Eato	Music	South African Jazz Cultures: indaba/study day April 2013
Benjamin Poore	Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media	Neo-Victorian villainy: The Summerland project - symposium May 2013
Nektarios Rodosthenous	Music	Narcissus for Juice ensemble - a new music theatre piece on the theme of first love.

Grants awarded in 2011-12

Lead applicant	Department	Project
Sebastian Owen	English and Related Literature	Postgraduate mini-conference on Cultural Memory Studies
Isabelle Hesse	English and Related Literature	Contested Histories and Dissonant Heritage: (Post)Colonial Narratives of Conflict - symposium in Summer 2012
Eoin Martin	History of Art	The Material Culture of Mourning in late-Victorian Britain - one-day interdisciplinary symposium
Sarah Pett	English and Related Literature	Living Beyond Theory: publication workshop - workshop to produce a published collection of papers based on the conference held in February 2011 Read a report of the publication workshop on the blog PhD2Published
Michelle Kelly	English and Related Literature	Reading South Africa: Approaches to South African Literary Culture - public lecture and roundtable discussion with Professor Dorothy Driver
Lawrence Rainey	English and Related Literature	Samuel Beckett: Out of the Archive - international conference and festival
Mary Luckhurst	Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media	Unspeakable Theatre - theatre and human rights conference
Catherine Spencer	History of Art	CModS postgraduate forum - seminars and annual conference