October 2023 Newsletter

Can you tell us what your PhD was about?

"Hi! My name is Fatima Kola and I was a Bonnart-Braunthal scholar at University College, London in the faculty of laws. I finished my PhD in 2011, and my PhD was on the international law of torture. I looked at how nation-states respond to terrorist threats, and how they operate interrogation of suspected terrorists around those threats. I looked at Israel and the occupied territories, Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States after 9/11. And my PhD asked, first of all, whether torture could be justified. and then secondly, if it couldn't, which I found that it couldn't, how the international law on torture might be adjusted or changed so that nation-states could not use interrogation that arguably rises to the level of torture as a tactic in encountering terrorism."

Tell us what you're doing now.

"After I finished my PhD, I did a pupillage at Garden Court Chambers in London, where I primarily did criminal defense work, but I also did some amount of employee rights, immigration, and some international human rights law, including submitting a brief to the Colombian Supreme Court, an amicus brief on torture with other members of Garden Court. After a few years of practicing as a barrister, I decided to undertake a career change, and I applied to MFA programs in the US for creative writing. I ended up doing an MFA* in fiction at the University of Texas at Austin, and after that time wrote short stories, worked at the O'Henry Prize, which is an American short story prize, and then did a Stegner Fellowship in fiction at Stanford University. At the moment, I'm a writer in residence at the Department of Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where I will be for the year. And surprisingly, I feel as though my doctoral work and my fiction writing have come full circle because for this year, I am teaching a class on medicine and literature, and as part of that class, we've been looking at fiction about detainees. We've been reading critical theory about pain and torture. And it feels at this point in time that my creative work and my doctoral work have managed to combine, which I'm really happy about."

*MFA: Master of Fine Art

October 2023 Newsletter

I will be studying MA in Contemporary History and Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, 2024-2026.

I have a keen interest in the historical roots of modern conflicts and the efforts that governments and communities make to overcome war-time sectarianism and post-conflict woes. I am drawn to studying how cross-community adhesion to peaceful coexistence influences peacebuilding opportunities towards post-war reconciliation and recovery.

I would like to explore the impact of intercultural communication on countering historical narratives that fuel the politics of prejudice, a powerful barrier to coexistence. My research also aims to investigate theory and practices of policies that intend to assist the strengthening of cohesive communities committed to long-term conflict resolution.

I am eager to discover more about the global climate crisis and the strategic challenges it poses to social peace and sustainable security when left unaddressed, especially in areas where desertification and droughts continue to hit farming communities at an alarming rate.

I completed my BA in Journalism at the University of Leeds in 2012. My undergraduate dissertation assessed the impact of embedded journalism on conflict reporting. Since graduation, I have worked as a journalist and media analyst.

In my spare time I enjoy spending time with my family and socialising with friends. I like improvisational cooking, creating new dishes and listening to music of all types. I cycle on and off road and enjoy exploring rural greenery. I watch feature films at the cinema when time allows and continue to be fascinated by observational documentaries.

October 2023 Newsletter

James (he/him) is a PhD student in History at Birkbeck College, University of London.

His research employs queer oral histories to examine the life and work of England’s queer teachers from the post-partial decriminalisation era of the 1970s to the repeal of Section 28 in 2003.

In this way, the project historicises this particular intersection of the professional and the (putatively) personal and provides the first detailed and sustained account of the ways in which queer teachers' lives were shaped by factors within and outside of the school environment over this 30-year period.

The research is motivated by his own experiences as a gay secondary school teacher in East London. Prior to his PhD, James was a school teacher, and has been a policy advisor within the Civil Service since 2018 where he worked on forestry and the UK Net Zero Strategy. In 2020, he attained an MA in European History at Birkbeck having been awarded an Eric Hobsbawm Postgraduate Scholarship. His MA research explored mid-century print media representations of queer people in public service occupations.

He passionately believes in the importance of queer space and is an advocate for queer-led social organising to improve LGBT+ health and educational provision and outcomes. He is a mentor with MOSAIC LGBT+ Young Persons' Trust and a member of KNOCKOUT LGBTQ+ boxing club.

July 2023 Newsletter

What did it feel like it to submit your viva?

"Finishing my PhD and passing my viva was an incredible feeling. I spent almost five years developing my study, carrying out my research, doing interviews and writing the thesis, and the majority of this took place during COVID, with all the additional challenges that brought. So there was a real sense of relief to have finished, as well as just a sense of accomplishment to have passed."

Tell us what you're doing now.

"Right now, I'm working as a social researcher for a health and social care organisation in Greenwich. Our work is concerned with how people experience publicly funded health and social care services in the borough, with a focus on communities most likely to experience health inequalities. The work is really varied and I've completed projects on a wide range of issues, including young people's access to different contraception methods, as well as how migrant women experience maternity care. My experience doing the PhD was essential to getting this position and it's been really interesting to use my research skills in a non-academic setting."

July 2023 Newsletter

My current research project looks at the work of the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women (JAPGW) in the campaign against ‘white slavery’. A broad term used to describe sex trafficking, prostitution and sometimes other illicit sexual practices, white slavery became heavily associated with Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century. In the late 1880s, the JAPGW founded a series of residential homes intended to ‘rescue’ Jewish girls from the traffic.

While historians have often presented the leaders of the JAPGW as either feminist liberators or classist assimilationists, my research complicates these narratives by focusing on the day-to-day realities of institutionalization. Reading the JAPGW’s own minute books and records ‘against the grain’, I attempt to unearth the voices of ‘inmates’, probing at instances of disobedience and displays of affection in order to build a fuller picture of their lives.

I hope to consider rescued girls as agents in making meaning out of the work done by the JAPGW, focusing on the dynamics of class and power in interactions between reformer reformed. I am also interested in the role that anti-white slavery campaigning played in constructing and producing new identities for British Jewish women, and its significance in early movements for Progressive Judaism.