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FOAR2000 - Projects for 2018-19

Europe and the Responsibility to Protect in Africa

Project Leader: Eglantine Staunton
This project will give you a unique and exciting opportunity to contribute to the research undertaken by the European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. In small research teams, you will investigate the European Union’s response to emerging and existing mass atrocity situations and conflicts such as the ones in the Central African Republic. The research will lead to country-specific reports that will be published on the Centre’s website. The project will help you develop your research and analytical skills, and will deepen your knowledge of the European Union, the responsibility to protect, and international relations more generally.

Prerequisite: Ideally, you will have completed PIED1511 - International Politics.

Europe and the Responsibility to Protect in the Middle-East and Asia

Project Leader: Eglantine Staunton

This project will give you a unique and exciting opportunity to contribute to the research undertaken by the newly established European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. In small research teams, you will investigate the European Union’s response to emerging and existing mass atrocity situations and conflicts in the Middle-East such as the ones in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. The research will lead to country-specific reports that will be published on the Centre’s website. The project will help you develop your research and analytical skills, and will deepen your knowledge of the European Union, the responsibility to protect, and international relations more generally.

Prerequisite: Ideally, you will have completed PIED1511 - International Politics.

First World War Pensions Database Development

Project Leader: Jessica Meyer

This project will develop your knowledge of the First World War and its legacy in Britain, medical and social history of the interwar period and the origins of the NHS and the welfare state.

You will be accessing images of primary sources and retrieving data for entry in the database being created by the Men, Women and Care project. In the process, you will identify particular files for further exploration and research alongside the project participants.  Using this research you will create outputs that might include a series of blog posts on the Men, Women and Care website, a finding aid for the database or an educational website about the pensions system. You will develop skills in working with primary sources, manipulating databases, developing independent research questions and communicating your research findings.

No pre-existing knowledge, experience or skills are required, although an interest in databases and web design will be beneficial. There is no particular time or travel requirements for this project.

Angry Young Men

Project Leaders: Sarah Prescott and Tracy Hargreaves

Special Collections holds the literary archives of Stan Barstow and John Braine, two significant writers of the 1950s/1960s Angry Young Men movement. These fascinating archives by the authors of, respectively, ‘A Kind of Loving’ and ‘Room at the Top’ are relatively underused. This project will help provide exciting opportunities for promoting your work and developing research in this area.

Students working on this project will have an exciting chance to re-examine the work of these key working class Yorkshire voices. You will work on listing previously uncatalogued material to help discover research applications for the archives. You will support a series of academic and public engagement events in 2018/9 focusing on Angry Young men and the material culture of the 1950s and 1960s.

You will be working with Tracy Hargreaves, Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Sarah Prescott, Literary Archivist in Special Collections, at the University of Leeds.

There are no time or travel requirements for this post.
You will need to demonstrate attention to detail, accuracy and a flair for envisaging research applications and promoting public engagement with our Literary Archives.
You will develop a range of transferable skills, including archives and heritage specific experience, and gain experience of developing literary research and sharing their findings with the wider community.

1918-2018: Celebrating Refugees in Leeds

Project Leader: Alison Fell

Leeds Asylum Seekers Support Network would like to celebrate the history Leeds has of welcoming refugees, from the 1st World War to the 100 year anniversary of the end of the war in 2018. In particular we would like to research the experience of refugees that arrived here in 1918 and have already identified an amazing resource held at Leeds Central library that give us amazing insight into this. The Library holds 11 volumes of local newspaper cuttings that document the war and that include how refugees were welcomed and integrated into the city in 1918.

Possible ideas for how this resource could be used:

  • Contrast the experience/demographic/similarities/differences of refugees arriving in Leeds in 1918 and 2018.
  • To celebrate Leeds’ 100 years history as a welcoming city
  • To investigate if any refugee descendants from 1918 are still living in the city and explore their links to Leeds.
  • To contrast the media portrayal/language used in newspapers talking about refugees over 100 years.

These are only our initial ideas we completely welcome your voice and thoughts in shaping this project with us.

This is a fantastic opportunity to work alongside local organisations, explore a previously un-researched area with a fascinating local archive and produce something completely unique  that will be publicly accessible.

Key partners will be Leeds Asylum Seekers Support Network, Leeds Central library and other refugee organisations/community groups across the city depending what direction the project takes.

YOU will need to be enthusiastic, conscientious and willing to work as part of a multi-agency team to design, develop and deliver this project. You will need organised research skills and be creative and committed to producing something of exceptional quality with us. Most of all you need to be as excited about this project as we are!

Refugees’ voices: past and present

Project Leader: Laura King

This project will chart the experiences of refugees arriving Leeds in the past and present. Students will research Leeds Central Library’s collection of autobiographical materials  and work with refugees from a variety of countries to help tell their stories. The library holds accounts of refugees’ experiences of coming to Leeds, from the twentieth century and earlier. Students will identify these in the collections (and potentially in other archives) and read through these accounts to build up an understanding of what it was like to come to Leeds as a refugee, such as a Jewish family fleeing Europe in the 1930s, or as a Displaced Person after the Second World War. Working with RETAS (Refugee Education and Training Service), the students will also research contemporary experiences of being a refugee in Leeds. Through interviews and collaborating with different communities, such as Syrian families, students will help to amplify the voices of refugees and find ways of sharing their stories with a wider audience. Throughout this process, students will work closely with and be fully supported by staff at both the Central Library and RETAS. The aim of this project is to show the rich history of refugees in Leeds, and the many ways in which refugees have had a positive impact on the city. The final output for this project will be decided in consultation with students, but might include an exhibition, a website, written resources for RETAS to use in their work (such as in the training they offer to raise awareness of refugees' experiences, or in welcome packs for refugees), and events at the Central Library or RETAS, or in other community spaces.