Professor Haskins to take up Visiting Fellowship at Birkbeck

Tuesday, 29 August 2017

Member of the Centre for 21st Century Humanities and Co-Director of Purai Global Indigenous and Diaspora Research Studies Centre, Professor Victoria Haskins has been successful in an application for a Visiting Research Fellowship position at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.

UON Professor Victoria Haskins will take up a  Visiting Research Fellowship at Birkbeck University of London in October.
UON Professor Victoria Haskins will take up a Visiting Research Fellowship at Birkbeck University of London in October.

Professor Haskins will take up the fellowship at Birkbeck University of London in October and will spend a month there. While there she will hold a symposium on domestic labour and transnational mobility and present a public talk on domestic service and Indigenous activism.

The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities (BIH) has a focus on interdisciplinary research and collaboration, an environment that Professor Haskins is looking forward to.

“The BIH Fellowship provides a great opportunity for me to engage with colleagues in the highly rated Birkbeck Humanities research departments,” Professor Haskins says. “I’ve been nominated by Professor Rosie Cox, a leading geographer of domestic labour, and Dr Julia Laite, a historian working on histories of international trafficking, and the chance to work with these scholars and others from different disciplines to develop new insights into domestic service histories and race is incredibly exciting. I’m also keen to build connections between UoN and Birkbeck researchers, through the Centre for 21st Century Humanities and Purai.

Professor Haskins will also connect with UoN’s Global Innovation Chair in the Centre for the History of Violence, Professor Joanna Bourke, who is based at Birkbeck as a Professor of History.

Professor Haskins will arrive in the UK in early September to present at a history conference being held at Oxford, entitled Beyond the Home: New Histories of Domestic Servants . It will explore the lives and experiences of servants beyond their domestic workplaces.

“Beyond the Home will be an opportunity to explore fresh perspectives on both the history of domestic service and its impact on society at a local and global level. I’m looking forward to hearing from scholars from around the world and their insights into the contributions made by servants outside the home – to social, cultural, economic and political life throughout history,” Professor Haskins said.

Professor Haskins will present on  Indigenous domestic workers and citizen rights in Australia in the early twentieth century.