Our Visiting Fellows
SIAH was delighted to welcome its first cohort of International Visiting Fellows to the university in 2024. The fellowships culminated in a series of shared residencies and workshops. These were held across our campuses in June 2024. The fellows represented a wide range of disciplines and career stages. They were united by a shared interest in heritage and communities.
We are pleased that the scheme has been renewed, and we recently welcomed our 2025 cohort.
Current Fellows
Pratik Purswani
The project explores the legal validity of recent climate protests involving the defacement of famous artworks and public property under international human rights law. It examines whether such acts, even when causing no serious damage, qualify as non-violent and are thus protected under the right to peaceful assembly enshrined in Article 21 of the ICCPR. The study will analyse tensions between protesters’ rights and the public’s right to access and enjoy cultural heritage. By assessing these sporadic acts of ‘violence,’ the project aims to evaluate whether they remain lawful forms of protest or breach international legal norms governing peaceful assemblies.
Biography
Pratik Purswani is a Lecturer at O.P. Jindal Global University, India. He teaches courses like Public International Law, Human Rights Law and Theory, and Environmental Security. Pratik completed his LL.B. from Symbiosis Law School, Pune in 2019 and then read Public International Law during his LL.M. at Leiden University (2019-20). His research primarily focuses on international environmental law and climate change law, and its interface with human rights and humanitarian law.
Pratik is a Research Fellow at the Environmental Law Clinic (ELC) at Jindal Global Law School. He is also an Assistant Editor at Jindal Global Law Review, and an Assistant Director at the Centre for Postgraduate Legal Studies (CPGLS). Pratik is also a qualified (non-practising) lawyer in India and is enrolled with the Bar Council of India.
Enquiries regarding the project can be made to Andrea Maria Pelliconi, Lecturer, Southampton Law School or Stephanie Jones, Professor of Literature and Law, English.
Laurie Johnson
My specialism lies in the histories of playing companies and playhouses in early modern England and current research focuses on the role of Little Ice Age climate in England on the development of Tudor playhouse types and the Shakespearean playing industry.
During the SIAH Fellowship, I will be working with colleagues, students, and performers to research the contribution of Southampton to Elizabethan drama, with special focus on Bargate as a playhouse used by touring companies at a time when flooding repeatedly disrupted touring itineraries.
Biography
Laurie Johnson is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Southern Queensland and a Fellow of both the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Royal Historical Society. He is the author of five monographs, including Leicester’s Men and Their Plays: An Early Elizabethan Playing Company and its Legacy (Cambridge UP, 2023) and Shakespeare’s Lost Playhouse: Eleven Days at Newington Butts (Routledge, 2018), along with over 60 articles and book chapters on Shakespearean drama, early playhouse culture, and related topics.
Prof. Johnson is academic adviser for the Museum of Shakespeare at the Curtain playhouse site in Shoreditch, research dramaturg for the Oxford Marlowe Project, and project researcher for the Weather Extremes in England’s Little Ice Age, 1500-1700 database. His collaborations with theatre historians, climate experts, archaeologists, and practitioners are helping to reshape our understanding of the rise of playhouse culture in the Tudor and Stuart periods.
Enquiries regarding the project can be made to Callan Davies, Lecturer in 17th Century Lit and Culture.
Hande Eslen-Ziya
The project I will be pursuing during my fellowship examines monospheres—closed digital communities—and their role in driving anti-gender movements and science denial across Europe, focusing on developing methodologies to study these phenomena. The fellowship collaboration will allow us to refine the methodological framework and explore opportunities to integrate a UK-focused site into the research. By addressing key issues of digital isolation, cross-radicalization, and societal polarization, the project bridges populism, gender studies, and digital culture. This research aligns with the fellowship themes of Culture, Place and Inequality and Culture, Trust, and Technology, contributing to interdisciplinary understanding of digital radicalization and its societal impact.
Biography
I am a Professor of Sociology at the University of Stavanger and an Honorary Research Associate with Gender Justice, Health, and Human Development at Durban University of Technology (2023–2026). I hold a PhD in Sociology from the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, an MA in Social Psychology from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, and a Gender Specialization from Central European University, Budapest.
Recent publications include the books The Social Construction and Developmental Trajectories of Masculinities (2017) and Politics and Gender Identity in Turkey (2020, Routledge). I also co-edited The Aesthetics of Global Protest (2020, Amsterdam University Press) and Populism and Science in Europe (2022, Palgrave Macmillan). In addition, I have authored around 48 articles, with an h-index of 22 and an i10-index of 38, reflecting the impact and reach of my scholarly contributions.
Enquiries regarding the project can be made to Olu Jenzen Professor of Media and Digital Culture, Winchester School of Art (staff) Professor of Media and Digital Culture, Winchester School of Art.
Yolande Harris
Project title: Whale Bubbles, Sonic Orientations, Sound Portals: Interdisciplinary Artistic Research into Whales and Underwater Sound in Times of Environmental Change.
Whales, living in an ocean of sound, share ancient and entwined relationships with humans. Yet the ways we listen to whales are becoming increasingly technological and now include hydrophone arrays, AI analysis and biometric tags. Artistic and sonic methodologies can foreground different ways of knowing, ways that disempower a sonic colonialism. This interdisciplinary research explores concepts of sonic materiality - how sound is part of the material world, and sonic orientations - how we orient ourselves through sound. A sound portal - the opportunity to experience such states of sonic reorientation - explores simultaneity of displaced sound, multi-species intelligences, and multi-sensorial artistic imaginations.
Biography
Yolande Harris (PhD) is an artist and researcher focusing on the transformative potential of sound and listening in times of environmental change. She creates audio-visual installations, walks and performances, approached through a sonic sensibility. Originally from the UK, Yolande has lived and worked throughout Europe and the US, presenting her projects in both intimate concerts and international museums.
Awards include Individual Artist Stipends from the Mondrian Funds (NL), and research fellowships at STEIM (Amsterdam), Netherlands Institute for Media Art (Amsterdam), the KHM/Academy of Media Arts (Cologne), and the Jan van Eyck Academy (Maastricht). Recent major sound art residencies include the Roden Crater project (Arizona State University), Polyphonic Landscapes (Amsterdam) and Atmosphere of Sound (UCLA). Yolande was Assistant Professor in video at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and is currently Assistant Professor of Teaching in Music and Creative Technologies at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC).
Enquiries regarding the project can be made to Prof Louise Siddons, Head of Department of Art and Media Technology
Past Fellows
2024
Elisabeth Becker-Topkara, University of Heidelberg
Gauri Bharat, CEPT University Ahmedabad
Jay Stock, University of Western Ontario
Stacey Copeland, University of Groningen