Research Round-up: Good News from the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities
Posted on behalf of: Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities
Last updated: Thursday, 10 July 2025
A celebration of recent research activity and successes of Media, Arts and Humanities researchers.
Formerly the 'Good News' section of the Research Newsletter, the Research Round-up is a regular feature within the Media, Arts and Humanities Institute and a space to celebrate each other's successes.
If you'd like your good news included in the next Research Round-up, email us at MAH-research@sussex.ac.uk.
To catch up on previous news, read the June Research Round-up.
Awards, recognition and funding
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Rob Sharp and architect Elena Orap have been awarded the 2025 Urban Communication Grant by the International Communication Association’s James Carey Committee for their project Landscapes of emergency: Critical cartography and participatory map-making in the context of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. The award supports projects that feature creative approaches to studying the transformation of urban communities and urban public life, at times of local and global change, and will support a pilot study in Makariv, Kyiv Oblast in July. Read more about this Mapping Ukraineresearch in development.
External engagement
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The Festival of Ideas, part of Brighton Festival, took place throughout May, featuring events led by MAH academics. See the Festival of Ideas 2025 photo gallery.
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Alice Eldridge is guest performer at Heroines of Sound Festival, Berlin. DJ-ing with soundscapes recorded above and below water and earth she will play an extended set to a sleeping audience of public and trainee neuroscientists interested in the impact of music and sound on sleep.
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Ivor Gaber assessed Labour’s political handling of its proposed benefits reform in an article in The Argus, comparing Keir Starmer’s woes to a “Laurel and Hardy” routine and questioning the influence of adviser Morgan McSweeney, a strategy which risks alienating both left-wing supporters and Red Wall MPs.
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Andrew Hadfield’s co-authored research – using AI-driven textual analysis to attribute the 1592 insult "upstart crow" to playwright Thomas Nashe, not Robert Greene as previously thought – has been featured in the articles “‘Angry co-writer' compared Shakespeare to an upstart crow” in The Times and “Mystery of William Shakespeare's co-writer and critic solved after 433 years” in the Daily Express, as well as “Who called Shakespeare ‘upstart crow’? Our study points to his co-author, Thomas Nashe” in The Conversation.
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The Landecker Digital Memory Lab staged a world-first event focused on global approaches to sustaining Holocaust memory in the digital age, welcoming delegates from more than 30 countries. The three-day ‘Connective Holocaust Commemoration Expo’ brought together international heritage, digital and creative professionals, artists, educators, academics, students and funders. The event launched an innovative new publishing platform and world’s first database on digital Holocaust memory, and included games arcade, VR suites and exhibition alongside keynotes, showcases, ‘Let’s Play’ sessions, digital skills workshops and panel discussions dedicated to Holocaust memory.
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Justyna Robinson was interviewed by BBC Radio Sussex & BBC Radio Surrey, discussing learning multiple languages and the challenges and quirks of various languages (listen from 14.03 at BBC Sounds).
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Cornel Sandvoss told The Observer – in the article ‘Raducanu & Alcaraz: The ‘love match’ that reveals modern world of fandom’ – that the online frenzy around Emma Raducanu and Carlos Alcaraz shows sports fandom “isn’t so different from pop culture stanning,” noting that the same “practice, motivations and rewards” now drive engagement across both spheres.
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Alban Webb appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Feedback to discuss audience responses to a combative interview with Sebastian Gorka. He said: “It is necessary sometimes to reveal the difficulty of getting straight answers from people in authority… seeing that in real time is a positive contribution to democratic debate.” He added that the shift to digital platforms means interviewees now face “less jeopardy” and are more willing to challenge traditional media norms (listen from 10.27 at BBC Sounds).
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The Coast Is Queer, Brighton & Hove’s annual festival of LGBTQ+ writing that is hosted at Sussex and co-sponsored by the University's Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence, has featured in The Bookseller’s article ‘The Coast Is Queer rolls into 2025 with its biggest edition yet’.
New work and publications
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Tom Davies and Clive Webb’s feature about civil rights pioneer Sarah Mae Flemming was published in BBC History magazine.
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Ambra Moroncini’s edited book Ekphrasis in Italian Culture from 15th-Century Humanism to the Digital Age has been published by Franco Cesati Editore (Florence). The book includes Ambra’s chapter, titled "Artemisia Gentileschi’s ‘Feminist’ Ekphrastic Voice".
- Lynne Murphy presented two parts of her ‘definite dictionaries’ project at recent conferences: “Putting the definite in definition: The, style, and presupposition in English noun definitions” at the Dictionary Society of North America Biennial Meeting in Buffalo, NY (29 May) and Have definitions become less definite? at the International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology in Lisbon (25 June).
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Micheál O'Connell presented ideas about a new meta-manifesto which uses philosopher John Robert's recent paper, ‘Unfitting: Art and Labour From Conceptualisation to AI’ as basis, at Antidefuturing: Infrastructuring for Socio-Technical Sustainability at The Whiddy School as part of AGON-A. His Digger Collusive collaborative residency with fellow Uillinn Artists in Residence Tomasz Madajczak and Mairéad Vaughan runs from 24 July to 4 August, with an open studio on 26 July and artists’ discussion on 2 August. The story of Micheál’s recent artwork Irish Broken English China is available to watch on YouTube.
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Pressing Matters: Printing with Virginia Woolf, a new exhibition on campus that brings together contemporary art engaging with the work of Virginia Woolf, runs in the Library Exchange from June to September 2025. It has been curated by the Centre for Modernist Studies (co-directed by Helen Tyson and Hope Wolf) in collaboration with the Library. Pressing Matters coincides with the centenary of the publication of Mrs Dalloway, and is a featured exhibition of the 34th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf being held at Sussex, co-hosted with King’s College London, from 5 to 8 July. Read more about Pressing Matters.
- Charlotte Taylor and Anna Marchi (Bologna) gave a shared plenary at Corpus Linguistics 2025 on 'What counts?'
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Clive Webb was interviewed for the feature 'What if... The US has stayed out of the Great War?’ in History of War magazine, and wrote an article about US military hero ‘William H. Wilbur’ for the same publication. Clive has also been a guest on the Irish radio programme Talking History’s ‘Best of May Books’ episode to discuss his book Vietdamned.