Dr Vicky Randall Researching British Literary Representations of the Arab-Islamic World

  5th January 2024

Dr Vicky Randall has been awarded a period of research leave this semester. While on leave she will be researching and writing a journal article on Sir John Malcolm (pictured below) and his book The History of Persia (2 vols, 1815). This was the first work on Persia (modern-day Iran) written in the English language and it reveals the complexity of British attitudes towards the religion and culture of the middle east at a time when the area was gaining in diplomatic importance. This research is part of Vicky’s larger project, which (she hopes) will become a book – provisionally titled British Literary Representations of the Arab-Islamic World, 1790-1900. 

Vicky will still be supervising dissertations and managing personal tutees while on leave, but we are happy to announce that Dr Alice Kinghorn from the University of Bristol will be joining us this semester to cover Vicky’s teaching (HM4403, HM5416 and HM6411).

Alice is a British historian, whose research examines Anglican missionary societies’ involvement in transatlantic slavery in the early nineteenth century. It focuses specifically on Christian support networks behind these societies that included both abolitionists and members of the West India Interest. She is interested more broadly in the Church of England’s connections to transatlantic slavery from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, and in wider transatlantic histories of religion and colonialism. Alice is very much looking forward to joining the team this semester.