Affective Experience Lab lead Corinne Saunders delivered keynote lecture address at the new ADAM Network in September 2024: ‘Addressing Difficulty: Medical Humanities, Affective Experience and Medieval Studies’. ADAM is led by postgraduate and early career researchers at the Universities of Oxford and Düsseldorf. The network brings together researchers working on difficult, sensitive or ‘taboo’ topics in the Middle Ages, such as gender, sexual violence, mental health, disability, and race. ADAM’s aims are to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and provoke academic discussion, provide scholarly resources, and establish a supportive community and safe space for uncomfortable research conversations.
Its inaugural workshop, held at St John’s College, Oxford in September 2024, brought together c.20 speakers from Britain, North America and Europe, working across medieval literary and historical studies, to explore the methodologies of working with difficult topics, including the problems of establishing new terminologies and reworking those that may be problematic; how best to deal with extant scholarship with outdated views; and how to approach sensitive topics within an academic framework. The workshop also considered pastoral issues such as the potential mental toll of research on difficult themes.
More information about the ADAM Network is available here.
Building on this exploration of complex feelings, the Affective Experience Lab will host a one-day interdisciplinary workshop on ‘Ambivalence’ in May 2025. To register your interest, please email affectiveexperience.lab@durham.ac.uk.
