SCI Delivers ‘Brilliantly Curated’ Events with University of Virginia Professor

On the left: Professor Geeta Patel. On the right: Professor Amina Yaqin (SCI Assistant Director of Research)

The Societies and Cultures Institute (SCI) invited the globally renowned Professor Geeta Patel (Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Virginia) to the University of Exeter to deliver two interdisciplinary events, engage in critical and productive conversations and explore the University’s Special Collections archives.

Geeta Patel’s work is at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary studies. Her current research explores bacteria and genocide, pensions and poetics, physics and literary prose, nationalism and promissory notes. In her first book, Lyrical Movements, Historical Hauntings, she explores the queer semiotics of Urdu modernism through the lyric, biography and historical conditions of production of the poet Miraji. Her next, Risky Bodies & Techno-intimacy brings haphazard science to media, aesthetics, sexuality, finance. She translates zealously from a roster of languages, writes poetry and has co-edited three journals.

A number of postgraduate, postdoctoral and early career researchers benefitted greatly from Geeta’s experience in her first event on Monday 6^th November 2023. With a focus on research methods and approaches, Geeta related how the contexts of the sciences and humanities are deeply interconnected, basing her reflections on her own experiences. Later, the attendees (from a range of disciplines) had the opportunity to engage with her about their individual research projects, gaining invaluable feedback and ideas.

It was so brilliantly curated, each meal and meeting were delightful; it was brimming with care, opportunities for research, and amazing conversations and exchanges that helped me think through portions of my own work in useful ways.

Professor Geeta Patel

The next day, Tuesday 7^th November, Geeta talked about her work to wider University staff from diverse disciplines in a two-hour seminar event. Her discussion, titled “Decolonising on Notice: Returning Pensions to Colonial Paupers”, explored one genesis of the pension funds as we know them today, one set in South Asia, the British colonial setting of pensions and social security. Underpinning this talk was the interrelatedness not only of the various disciplines in the humanities, but also of the humanities with wider STEMM disciplines. This event was hosted by SCI with the Centre for Social Mobility.

Geeta’s work on pensions has been shaped by her archival study of the East India company public private pension funds. This interest sparked an engagement with the Bombay diaries held in Exeter’s Special Collections archive. These diaries are late 20th century photocopies and transcripts of East India company papers relating to the British factories in Bombay (present day Mumbai) and Basra. She also visited the Arab World Documentation Unit (AWDU), to explore certain materials in their Reading Room. Geeta’s research interests also took her to Exeter Cathedral as she wished to learn more about its historic colonial connections which can be tracked through its extensive archives. SCI organised the visit and arranged an exclusive tour of the archives.