Our Visiting Fellows

SIAH was delighted to welcome its first cohort of International Visiting Fellows to the university in 2024. The fellowships culminated in a series of shared residencies and workshops. These were held across our campuses in June 2024. The fellows represented a wide range of disciplines and career stages. They were united by a shared interest in heritage and communities.

We are pleased that the scheme has been renewed, and we recently welcomed our 2025 cohort.

Current Fellows

Pratik Purswani

Pratik Purswani is a Lecturer at O.P. Jindal Global University, India. He teaches courses like Public International Law, Human Rights Law and Theory, and Environmental Security. Pratik completed his LL.B. from Symbiosis Law School, Pune in 2019 and then read Public International Law during his LL.M. at Leiden University (2019-20). His research primarily focuses on international environmental law and climate change law, and its interface with human rights and humanitarian law. Pratik is a Research Fellow at the Environmental Law Clinic (ELC) at Jindal Global Law School. He is also an Assistant Editor at Jindal Global Law Review, and an Assistant Director at the Centre for Postgraduate Legal Studies (CPGLS). Pratik is also a qualified (non-practising) lawyer in India and is enrolled with the Bar Council of India.

Laurie Johnson

Laurie Johnson is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Southern Queensland and a Fellow of both the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Royal Historical Society. He is the author of five monographs, including Leicester’s Men and Their Plays: An Early Elizabethan Playing Company and its Legacy (Cambridge UP, 2023) and Shakespeare’s Lost Playhouse: Eleven Days at Newington Butts (Routledge, 2018), along with over 60 articles and book chapters on Shakespearean drama, early playhouse culture, and related topics. Prof. Johnson is academic adviser for the Museum of Shakespeare at the Curtain playhouse site in Shoreditch, research dramaturg for the Oxford Marlowe Project, and project researcher for the Weather Extremes in England’s Little Ice Age, 1500-1700 database. His collaborations with theatre historians, climate experts, archaeologists, and practitioners are helping to reshape our understanding of the rise of playhouse culture in the Tudor and Stuart periods.

Hande Eslen-Ziya

Hande Eslen-Ziya is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Stavanger and an Honorary Research Associate with Gender Justice, Health, and Human Development at Durban University of Technology (2023–2026). Professor Eslen-Ziya holds a PhD in Sociology from the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, an MA in Social Psychology from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, and a Gender Specialization from Central European University, Budapest.  Recent publications include the books The Social Construction and Developmental Trajectories of Masculinities (2017) and Politics and Gender Identity in Turkey (2020, Routledge). They also co-edited The Aesthetics of Global Protest (2020, Amsterdam University Press) and Populism and Science in Europe (2022, Palgrave Macmillan). In addition, Professor Eslen-Ziya has authored around 48 articles, with an h-index of 22 and an i10-index of 38, reflecting the impact and reach of their scholarly contributions.

Yolande Harris

Yolande Harris (PhD) is an artist and researcher focusing on the transformative potential of sound and listening in times of environmental change. She creates audio-visual installations, walks and performances, approached through a sonic sensibility. Originally from the UK, Yolande has lived and worked throughout Europe and the US, presenting her projects in both intimate concerts and international museums. Awards include Individual Artist Stipends from the Mondrian Funds (NL), and research fellowships at STEIM (Amsterdam), Netherlands Institute for Media Art (Amsterdam), the KHM/Academy of Media Arts (Cologne), and the Jan van Eyck Academy (Maastricht). Recent major sound art residencies include the Roden Crater project (Arizona State University), Polyphonic Landscapes (Amsterdam) and Atmosphere of Sound (UCLA). Yolande was Assistant Professor in video at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and is currently Assistant Professor of Teaching in Music and Creative Technologies at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). 

Past Fellows

2024

Elisabeth Becker-Topkara, University of Heidelberg

Gauri Bharat, CEPT University Ahmedabad

Jay Stock, University of Western Ontario

Stacey Copeland, University of Groningen