Fariha Shaikh

Mobility, Space, Place, Globalisation, Migration, 

Hello! I am currently writing up my thesis, provisionally entitled ‘Material Cultures of Migration: Mobility, Space and Place in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Art’. In it, I interrogate the literary encounters with nineteenth-century settler emigration. The literary culture of settler emigration is a burgeoning field, and my thesis both uncovers genres that have not been studied before – such as newspapers emigrants wrote themselves enroute to Australia – or pulls genres that have received critical attention – such as printed emigrants’ letters – into a literary framework. I also examine the ways in which the anxieties over mobility, settlement and colonization circulated by texts directly produced out of the moment of settler emigration seep into and are registered by genres that did not directly engage with it – such as the mid-century novel and narrative paintings.

Throughout my time at King’s, I have been involved in a number of different research projects which are outlined below.

Commodities and Culture in The Colonial World, 1850-1914

I am a Network Participant of the Commodities and Culture Network. The research activities of the Network included three international workshops, a series of reading groups and a postgraduate training day at the V&A archives over a period of two years, all of which I participated in. My paper presented at the ‘Commodities and Migration’ workshop in New York (2011) will appear in a revised format in the Network’s forthcoming volume, Commodities and Culture in the Colonial World, 1851-1914: A Reader, currently under consideration by Routledge. My own research and thinking has been profoundly influenced by this network of scholars and I am hugely grateful to all who have question, queried and probed my research findings during the course of the two years. My workshop reports can be found on the Network’s website.

Victorian Network

I am currently the Peer Review Editor for Victorian Network, an MLA-indexed online journal dedicated to showcasing the best postgraduate and early-career work in Victorian Studies. The editorial team at Victorian Network is marked by its dedication to showcase the rich intellectual curiosity of postgraduate and early-career researchers throughout the world and to provide a forum through which they can connect and network. We have frequently collaborated with other conferences to produce special issues, and in December 2012, we also hosted our very first conference in conjuction with the Institute of English Studies exploring the theme of ‘Other Worlds’.

Gaskell Society Journal

In 2011, I was the Editorial Assistant of the Gaskell Society Journal and an active member of both the London Gaskell Reading Group and the Gaskell Society. I am pleased to have had the opportunity to work so closely with so many Gaskell scholars. My own essay on Gaskell’s literary engagements with migration is forthcoming in Elizabeth Gaskell: Place, Person and Progress (Ashgate, 2015).

I came to King's College London in 2008, as a Masters student on the 1850s to the Present programme. I then took a year out before coming back to start a PhD here.