CNCSI: About

OUR HISTORY

The Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies International (CNCSI) is the organic evolution of the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies (CNCS), founded at Durham University in 2013 by Bennett Zon. CNCS is a thriving research centre including postgraduates, postdoctoral fellows and academic staff at all career levels.

CNCS represents five universities—Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Teesside and Sunderland universities—and comprises roughly 200 national and international individuals and institutions.

Since 2015 it has attracted many Northern Bridge PhD students and postdoctoral fellows (Addison Wheeler, British Academy, Fulbright, Leverhulme, Marie Curie, Newton), and has hosted numerous large and small project grants from the AHRC, ESRC and elsewhere, more recently the £1 million AHRC grant ‘Jewish’ Country Houses: Objects, Networks, People (Tom Stammers, CNCS Associate Director, 2019-23).

CNCSI was born in the image of CNCS, in 2018, at a CNCS meeting of leaders of 35 international research centres, institutes, professional societies and independent research organisations.

That meeting proved what many scholars had thought – that despite the existence of many nineteenth-century organisations all over the world, collectively they:

Tended to work in isolation, seldom collaborating with other national or international organisations.

Linguistic barriers obstructed broad international accessibility and dissemination.

Their range of scholarly interests tended, perhaps inevitably, to reflect national boundaries (for example, one of the largest ‘international’ societies, INCS (Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies), was founded in America; it serves a predominantly American membership; and its scholarly interests are largely Anglosphere – i.e., American/British/Victorian).

Their members came mainly from the country where the organisation was founded.

Despite emphasizing interdisciplinarity in theory, in practice their manifest interests lay principally in history and literature.

CNCSI was forged to redress these issues, and in 2019 a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by Durham, the Sorbonne, Aarhus and Monash to formalise its creation. Since then, CNCSI has grown exponentially, both in number and type of organisation.

Click here [link to add] to view our current MoU and list of participating organisations.

Member Organisations

Objectives

1.

To create and facilitate opportunities to develop international research projects.

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To create international opportunities for academic and student (postgraduate and postdoctoral) exchanges providing cross-institutional training, teaching, research and administrative experience in areas related to nineteenth-century studies.

3.

To host nineteenth-century-related events focusing on (a) training e.g. publishing, grant and postdoc applications, employability, leadership (b) teaching e.g. methodologies, practice (c) research e.g. topics, resources (d) administration e.g. financial, committee structures, systemic challenges

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To create the possibility for providing international co-supervision of advanced research degrees (doctoral programmes).

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To create opportunities to co-advertise international events through university research centres, professional associations and independent research organizations.

7.

To provide opportunities for exchange between research centres, professional associations and independent research organizations (e.g., guest or advisory membership of committees, postgraduate conversations across associations; joint supernumerary events/conferences).

Executive Committee/Structure

Steering Committee Members

Daisuke Adachi
Slavic-Eurasian Research Center University of Hokkaido, Japan, adaisuke@slav.hokudai.ac.jp

Geoff Belknap
National Museums Scotland, Scotland, g.belknap@nms.ac.uk

Nicolae Gheorghita
National University Of Music Bucharest and Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies International Romania, Croatia and Serbia, Romania, naegheorghita@hotmail.com

Rosemary Golding
The Open University, United Kingdom, rosemary.golding@open.ac.uk

Sarah Hardy
Garden Museum, United Kingdom, Sarah@gardenmuseum.org.uk

Alexis Harley
La Trobe University, Australia, a.harley@latrobe.edu.au

Amanda Hsieh
Durham University, United Kingdom, amanda.hsieh@durham.ac.uk

Li-hsin Hsu
National Chengchi University, Taiwan, johsu@mail2.nccu.tw

Chris Murray
Monash University, Australia, chris.murray@monash.edu

Shannon Thomas Perich
National Museum of American History – Smithsonian Institute, United States, perichs@si.edu

Olha Romanova
Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine, olhavikromanova@gmail.com

Karen Sayer
Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies, United Kingdom, k.sayer@leedstrinity.ac.uk

Hannah Scott
Newcastle University, UK hannah.scott@newcastle.ac.uk

Jennifer Tucker
Wesleyan University, United States, jtucker@wesleyan.edu

Deepali Yadav
Banaras Hindu University, India, deepaliy06@gmail.com

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Director: Bennett Zon

Associate Director: Efram Sera Shriar

Deputy Associate Director (Digital): Christa DiMarco

Deputy Associate Director (Digital): Kate Faber Oestreich

Deputy Associate Director (Early Career Researcher): Pramantha Tagore

Deputy Associate Director (Museums): Joanna Norman

Deputy Associate Director (Professional Societies): Claudia Capancioni

Deputy Associate Director (Research): Emma Merkling

Deputy Associate Director (Research): Emily Vincent

Deputy Associate Director (Universities): Veronica Uribe Hanabergh

Deputy Associate Director (Universities): Marie-Laure Massei-Chamayou