The international Network in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies promotes and encourages collaborative research and teaching activity in the field of colonial and postcolonial studies between members of the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN).

This network was established following the success of the ‘Colonial and Postcolonial Migrations’ conference, hosted by the Leeds Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies (ICPS) in June 2006.

The network is characterised by a multi- and inter-disciplinary ethos, encompassing all disciplines from across the arts and humanities, including: History / English / Modern Languages and Cultures / African Studies and Afro-American Studies / Art History / Music / Theology and Religious Studies / Philosophy / Classics / Politics and International Relations / Sociology.

Latest news

Home or Away? Globalization and Literary Studies (Thursday 15th October, 2009)

A virtual seminar entitled ‘Globalization and Literary Studies: Home or Away?’ took place at the University of Leeds and the University of Sydney on Thursday 15th October as part of the Worldwide Universities Network’s (WUN) ‘Colonial and Postcolonial Studies’ Virtual Seminar Series. The seminar proved a successful experiment in international collaborative research, with participants from a total of four universities in the U.K. and Australia. Professor Huggan, one of the co-chairs of the event, commented that “the WUN seminars which link academics across the globe to discuss these issues are an exercise in postcolonial transnationalism in themselves”.

Two Phd students presented papers at the seminar: Ben Miller, from the University of New South Wales, gave a paper entitled ‘The Edinburgh ‘Corobbora’: (Post)colonial Nationalism in David Burn's The Bushrangers (1829)’ examining how “the ambivalent nationalism at the heart of The Bushrangers mirrors recent debates about Australian national identity”. The second paper was given by University of Leeds PhD student, Lizzy Finn, who is currently conducting her research at The University of Sydney as a visiting scholar through the WUN’s Research Mobility Programme. Finn’s paper, ‘Representations of Domestic Violence in Melissa Lucashenko’s Steam Pigs (1997)’ discussed local and global solutions to violence in Indigenous Australian communities.

A more detailed overview of this seminar will be published in the University of Sydney’s postgraduate journal, Philament, and both Miller and Finn’s papers are being considered for publication in the next issue of the WUN postgraduate eJournal, Ex Plus Ultra, which will be hosted by the University of Leeds in 2010. Finn, who also helped organize the event, hopes to further develop the links she has helped to build upon between Leeds and Sydney into a conference next year, and invites any interested staff and postgraduates interested in getting involved in this project to contact her for more information (Lizzy Finn - eng3e3f@leeds.ac.uk)

The Postcolonial Human, a postgraduate conference held by the ICPS, University of Leeds

From 24-25th September 2009 the ICPS held 'The Postcolonial Human', an interdisciplinary gathering of scholars from the UK, China, France, Canada, Germany, Austria, Denmark and Mexico supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Faculty of Arts Graduate School and the Leeds Centre for Canadian Studies.

Following on from the success of last year's postgraduate conference, the event was well attended, with 60 registrants over the two days. Presenters talked on a variety of topics, from representations of the human in literature and film, to problems arising from its sometimes unacknowledged specificity in narrative histories, to the ramifications of its legal definitions.

A distinction between the 'natural' and the 'culturally recognised' developed as a prominent line of inquiry, among others, during discussions. Papers discussing migration questioned whether the 'human' was a category of exclusion and disempowerment, while others suggested that the human body itself must be privileged as a site that rejects its own circumscription as 'civilised'.

Two especially engaging sessions on training and professional development were delivered at the conference by Dr. John McLeod and Dr. Ananya Kabir, both affiliated with the Institute and both in the English department at Leeds. Dr. McLeod's talk, 'Getting Started in Academia', characterised the importance of a proactive yet thesis-centred approach to a scholar's early career, while Dr. Kabir provided a more specific focus in 'Getting Published'. This part of the conference was well received by attendees, who generally found the career talks very useful as well as providing a pleasant break in the proceedings.

Finally, our keynote speakers, Professors Alan Lester and Peter Hallward, each challenged the possibility of intersecting postcolonialism with humanism on a conceptual level from their own disciplinary standpoints (Professor Lester as an Historical Geographer; Professor Hallward as a Philosopher). A special issue of Ex Plus Ultra, an international journal edited by postgraduates at the Institute, is being assembled.