The Global Past Research Initiative Call for Applications - International Workshop in Cairo
Description
The Global Past Research Initiative seeks Humanities PhD students at the University of Toronto and graduate students associated with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Institut français de Pondychéry, and the American University in Cairo to participate in a workshop taking place in Cairo, Egypt, in February 2024. Successful applicants from Toronto and India will have their expenses covered (e.g. travel, accommodation, and meals). Successful applicants from Cairo will have their local expenses covered (e.g. local transportation and meals).
The Global Past Research Initiative (GPRI) aims to address fundamental questions in the Humanities today: How can research on the premodern world proceed without recourse to approaches and perspectives associated with colonization and imperialism? How can we develop new methods for understanding the complexity of the global past, methods that do not reify western power through our inherited models of hegemonic knowledge?
The Cairo workshop foregrounds Art and the Built Environment while incorporating the other two clusters into its programming. It is organized around visits to Coptic, Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk sites and to museums, including the Grand Egyptian Museum and Museum of Islamic Art. Before the workshop takes place, participants will work in small groups on a particular site, collection, or object in a museum. In February, the groups will present their observations in situ to the full group. Specialized knowledge of premodern Cairo is not required of participants; the small group presentations will draw upon a common list of readings selected to inspire interdisciplinary dialogue and prompt methodological reflection. Roundtable discussions at the end of the workshop will provide additional opportunities for reflection and deliberation, as will special lectures, optional site visits, and social events.
To prove these issues from multiple perspectives, the GPRI has developed 3 interlocking research clusters:
- Mobility: Considers the shifting of goods, ideas, and peoples and could encompass things like narratives of pilgrimage or travel diaries
- Storytelling, Narrative & Textuality: Explores the science of texts in the global humanities and modes of cultural communication in oral and written narrative traditions
- Art & the Built Environment: Focuses on various aspects (techniques, media, artists) of architecture and art in premodern Eurasia
How to Apply
Please submit a c.v. and letter (maximum 750 words) describing your research interests and why you are a good candidate for the workshop to globalpastproject@gmail.com. View the 
Call for Applications for more information.
Deadline
September 1, 2023
Questions:
Email project managers, Aqsa Ijaz and Alisha Stranges at globalpastproject@gmail.com. Instagram: @gpri_utm. Twitter: @GPRI_UTM.
Funded by the Connaught Global Challenge Research Program, the Global Past Research Initiative is a multidisciplinary, multiyear project that seeks to build networks of collaboration and exchange among scholars and students at the University of Toronto, American University in Cairo, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Institut français de Pondychéry, and National University of Singapore.
