Cambridge
Creative
Encounters 2024

Dr. Nicola Smyllie is a neuroscientist working at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Hastings. She started her career studying biochemistry at the University of Bristol, before gaining her PhD at the University of Cambridge. The focus of her PhD was to research the inner workings of 24-hour circadian clock of the brain at the molecular level. For the last 10 years she has continued to pursue her research in this area, where she uses light microscopy to study the fundamental behaviours of circadian clock proteins within the brain.

The goal of my research is to understand how our 24-hour body clock, also known as circadian clock, is controlled by the brain. Almost all the cells in our bodies have a molecular clock built into them. This molecular clock involves a small group of “clock proteins” that work together to form a cycle that has evolved to be approximately 24-hours, matching the day-night cycle length that is imposed by the revolution of the Earth with respect to the sun. By themselves, these cellular clocks are not able to keep time very well, but a “conductor,” such as you would find in an orchestra, synchronises and coordinates these cellular clocks so that they keep time with each other and with the outside world. This coordinator is located in a specific, very small part of the brain, made up of 20,000 cells, which communicate with one another. This is such a good clock that amazingly, it carries on “ticking” when removed from the brain entirely and grown in a dish.

The focus of our project is to bring to life, the science behind our 24-hour (circadian) body clock. We wanted to create a short animation that included a character that, through its movements and facial expressions, embodied some of the scientific ideas within the real biology of the circadian clock. Our aim was not to provide an educational video, but instead to spark curiosity and create something thought provoking, yet still accessible to a wide audience, including children.

Joshua Fitzgerald is the 2020-24 Jeffrey Rubinoff Junior Research Fellow with Churchill College, an Affiliated Lecturer with the Faculty of History, Affiliated Researcher with the McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research with the University of Cambridge. Josh’s primary research has focused on the theme of “art as a source of knowledge” in the context of Colonial Mexico. Regarding Mexican Heritage Studies, he has explored José Guadalupe Posada’s innovations in analogue games of the nineteenth century, as well as Mesoamerican heritage in popular video games. Josh’s interests extend to Indigenous amaranth seed-dough rituals and edible archives, gendered military histories, Place-Identity Theory and the persistence of Mesoamerican art forms to the present. His first book is entitled An Unholy Pedagogy: Mesoamerican Art, Architecture, and Learningscapes under Spain (under review). In 2019, Josh received a PhD (History) and Museum Studies certification from the University of Oregon and has continued to work closely with museums in museum education and collections research. A specialist in Nahuatl Studies, he strives to acknowledge and excite interest in the heritage and ethnohistory of Nahua communities of Mexico.

For Cambridge Creative Encounters, Josh turns to poetic and immersive studies in an unparalleled collection of old board games from Mexico (the Starr Collection) at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge. He reveals relationships that have formed between Mexican artists, game artwork, playable things kept in museums and digital-age interventions in museum practice.

Re-Imagining Coyote brought together expert artistry, Augmented Reality and museum studies to produce an exciting digital, interactive prototype about an old Mexican board game. The team is Julian Escott and Adrian Gamboa, creative experts, and ethnohistorian Joshua Fitzgerald. At Cambridge’s MAA, Josh has been investigating El Nuevo Coyote, a board game published in Mexico (c. 1889-1901) by Antonio Vanegas Arroyo and illustrated by José Guadalupe Posada. Adrian produced dozens of intricate and imaginative artwork. Julian digitally rendered these alongside detailed models from the collection and Josh’s findings. The purpose is to encourage deeper investment in museum experiences through artistic inspiration and added degrees of immersivity with play.

Dr. Jitka Štollová is a Title A Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, having previously held a research fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford. She focuses on the understanding of tyranny in the early modern period and on the Tudor and Stuart interpretations of medieval history. She examines the afterlives of King Richard III (1452-1485) and the mythology associated with him which, quite separate from the historical man himself, transformed him into a symbol of political anxieties about royal power and government. Besides early modern literature, her other research interests include the history of the book and the works of the Czech dramatist and President Václav Havel.

Richard III ranks among one of the most controversial monarchs in English history. His life and reign were immortalised by Shakespeare, whose eponymous play represented an early breakthrough in his playwriting career. The seventeenth century witnessed plays and poems by other authors which often diverged significantly from Shakespeare’s model. Sir John Beaumont (1627) offers a moving, well-balanced depiction of Richard as a king aware of his dark deeds but also fiercely protective of his army and his land. Christopher Brooke’s “The Ghost of Richard III” (1614) analyses his rise to power and fall from grace to the depths of hell. These and other sources hold a mirror up to Shakespeare’s play and explore original ways of capturing Richard in the moment of deep anguish on the eve of and during the Battle at Bosworth Field. My research traces the reception of Shakespeare’s play through such texts, while locating them within the specific anxieties of the 17th century: the crisis between Charles I and Parliament in the 1630s, the Civil War, and the Interregnum.

This project captures the layering of narratives through which we construct the past. It juxtaposes early modern texts which render the emotions of King Richard III in the final hours before the battle of Bosworth. This project enables a unique, embodied experience that brings largely unknown 17th century texts to the 21st century audiences: it crosses the boundaries between the printed and performed word, and between emotions and physicality (both able-bodied and Richard’s notoriously dis-abled one).

My research has principally been focused on the history of feminisms in global perspective. I’m deeply committed to the transformation of feminist history to embrace critical analysis, contextual understanding and a focus on issues of inclusion and exclusion. I’ve published on feminist debates about individualism, men’s involvement, contentious campaigns on rape and child sexual abuse, orientalist and racialised feminisms, anti-feminism and feminist businesses. Most recently, I've been exploring disability history, and am writing a new book about disabled people’s experiences of labour, within and beyond institutions. I work closely with autobiographies and oral history sources, and have helped create the Unbecoming Men and The Business of Women’s Words collections at the British Library.

In her research, Prof Delap explores the history of workers who were deemed disabled by their mental status. Records of Trades Boards (1909-1945), the disability employment quota system (1944-1995), and the voluntary sector can tell us more about the aspirations and experiences of intellectually disabled people in Britain. While their voices are often hard to hear, there are multiple sources that speak to their work in industry, agriculture, in hospitals and in the armed forces. Many performed cleaning and care work at home or in institutions. Despite popular assumptions about oppression and segregation in the period prior to the 1960s, many, perhaps most, intellectually disabled people of working age were in employment, though they did not always gain direct rewards from their labour. This research is part of a larger research project into twentieth century disabled workers in Britain, spanning a variety of impairments and policy contexts.

The collaboration involves people with disabilities sharing and writing their own life stories. The first phase saw the artists of Rowan Humberstone (a charity which supports adults with learning disabilities) meeting with academics and library staff from the University Library to review their range of disabled people’s life writing. The second stage created photographic portraits of the Rowan artists, including tools or creations important to them. Finally, the photos were used to trigger self-reflection at subsequent writing sessions.