Comparatively Speaking

A BCLA EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS PROJECT

Comparatively Speaking Interviews

The “Comparatively Speaking” questionnaire delves into the exciting new research being undertaken by early career comparatists. The project aims to light on emerging trends and direction in the field of Comparative Literature and promotes the ground-breaking work by scholars who cross disciplinary boundaries. It also aims to build an inclusive and supportive community of researchers who share their thoughts, insights and experiences with each other.

If BCLA Members would like to be considered for an interview, you can submit a request here.

Filters

Position

University

Valeria Taddei

Position:

Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow

University:

University College Dublin

Bio:

Valeria Taddei is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin. She obtained her DPhil from the University of Oxford with a project on literary epiphanies in Italian and English modernist short stories. Her current research focuses on writers' diaries written in Italian, English, and French at the beginning of the 20th century.

Michael Tsang

Position:

Lecturer in Japanese Studies

University:

Birkbeck, University of London

Bio:

Michael Tsang is Lecturer in Japanese Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Prior to Birkbeck he was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Newcastle University. His research interests lie in world and postcolonial literatures with an East Asian focus, specialising in Japanese, Hong Kong, and Chinese literatures. He also conducts research in Asian popular cultures at large. He is the co-editor of Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage (Routledge, 2021), and has been published in various journals and volumes such as Japan Forum, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Wasafiri, Sanga, and others.

Shuangyi Li

Position:

Lecturer and MA Programme Director of Comparative Literatures and Cultures

University:

University of Bristol

Bio:

Shuangyi Li is Lecturer and MA Programme Director of Comparative Literatures and Cultures at the University of Bristol. He received his first degree in French and English, MSc in General/Comparative Literature, and PhD in French at the University Edinburgh. He was selected as pensionnaire étranger (2012-13) at the École Normale Supérieure (Paris). He worked as a Research Fellow in French and Comparative Literature at Lund University, Sweden between 2017-2021, during which he received a 3-year research grant from the Swedish Research Council/Vetenskapsrådet. His first monograph, Proust, China and Intertextual Engagement: Translation and Transcultural Dialogue (2017) won the International Comparative Literature Association Anna Balakian Book Prize (2019), for the best book in the field of Comparative Literature published in the last three years by a scholar under the age of forty. He’s recently published his second monograph titled Travel, Translation and Transmedia Aesthetics: Franco-Chinese Literature and Visual Arts in a Global Age (2021).

Nazry Bahrawi

Position:

Senior Lecturer

University:

Singapore University of Technology and Design

Bio:

Nazry Bahrawi is a senior lecturer of comparative and world literature at Singapore University of Technology and Design. His research explores Malay-Indonesian textual and non-material cultures in maritime Southeast Asia in light of race and ethnicity, poetics and literary theory as well as translation and adaptation studies. He has published in these areas in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. Nazry serves on the editorial board for the literary magazines, Wasafiri (UK) and PR&TA (Singapore).

Doriane Zerka

Position:

Early Career Fellowship

University:

University of Cambridge

Bio:

Doriane Zerka holds an Early Career Fellowship with the Leverhulme Trust and Isaac Newton Trust, hosted by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. Her work focuses on comparative medieval literature, perceptions of alterity and gender, and the mobility of cultural production in the medieval world, with a particular emphasis on the German and Iberian contexts. She holds a PhD in German and Hispanic Studies from King’s College London, an MPhil in European Literature and Culture from the University of Cambridge and a BA in German and Hispanic Studies (European Studies) from Queen Mary, University of London. After completing her doctoral studies in 2019, she worked as Lecturer in German for Queen Mary, University of London before returning to Cambridge in 2020. Her doctoral thesis analysed representations of Iberia and the construction of identities in medieval German literature and is currently being revised for publication in 2022 with Legenda under the title Imagining Iberia in Medieval German Literature, while her current research questions the role of women as transcultural agents in the formation of a network of ‘European’ literature in the premodern world.

Alessia Zinnari

Position:

Lecturer in Italian

University:

University of Glasgow

Bio:

Alessia Zinnari is Lecturer in Italian at the University of Glasgow, where she has also taught Spanish and Comparative Literature. She obtained her PhD at the University of Glasgow in August 2020. Her thesis, entitled ‘Mental Illness, Women’s Writing and Liminality: A Comparative Study of Leonora Carrington and Alda Merini’, is grounded in feminist theory and focuses on the works that the two authors produced as a result of their experiences of hospitalisation in psychiatric institutions. In 2020, Alessia contributed to the edited collection Leonora Carrington: Living Legacies (Vernon Press) with a chapter on Carrington’s liminal journey in Down Below. Her most recent publication is an article titled ‘Alda Merini’s Memoir: Psychiatric Hospitalisation, Institutional Violence and the Politicization of Illness in 20th Century Italy’ (Journal of Trauma & Dissociation). Alessia's research interests include women's writing and art, life writing studies, trauma studies and the medical humanities.

Comparatively Speaking

A BCLA EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS PROJECT