On 3 July 2025, CAPPE kindly hosted an end-of-year celebration of doctoral research. The day provided an opportunity for post-graduate researchers and CAPPE members to catch up on one another’s projects, reflecting the breadth of research that CAPPE supports. It included a supportive space for post-graduate researchers to share and discuss work-in-progress presentations, while identifying opportunities to collaborate with one another through CAPPE-supported initiatives.
The day kicked off with “speed date your research”, in which we rotated around the room, spending 5 minutes catching up with different researchers on their projects. This provided a semi-structured space to learn about some of the amazing research currently being undertaken at Brighton, and to dig deeper into projects with which we are already familiar.
The morning panel then included presentations by Brighton researchers Alice O’Malley Woods and Jon Norman Mason, and a chance to learn about visiting researcher Arianna Preite’s project.
The morning panel comprised three presentations:
- Alice O’Malley-Woods: “Human, Interrupted: A Mad Ecopoetic of Multispecies Relationships”.
- Arianna Preite (University of Bologna): “The Left-Handed Archives: Imagining Histories and Disrupting Memories in Shelley Jackson’s Riddance”.
- Jon Norman-Mason: “Rockstars and Sci-Fi: Modernity, Fantasies, and Re-Enchanting Built Space”.
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- Alice O’Malley-Woods shows visual works and “Free Marks” made part of “A Mad Ecopoetics of Multispecies Relationships”
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- Jon Norman-Mason presenting on storytelling as a form of re-enchantment
While each of these projects engages in creative practices or analyses creative works, the panel brought out a number of shared focuses in the research. This included the porosity of borders and what it means to be “in-between”; the multiplicitous nature of relationality, including relationalities with non-human animals, landscapes and urban environments; and the pluralistic nature of the “real” and “realisms”.
The morning panel and “speed date your research” session sparked ongoing discussions about research and possible collaborations over lunch:
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- Lively discussions about one another’s research spilt over into lunch at CAPPE’s end-of-year Celebration of Doctoral Research 2025
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- Natasha Jane Kennedy presents on “Markers of intimacy in heterolingual texts” at CAPPE’s end-of-year Celebration of Doctoral Research 2025.
The afternoon panel further reflected the breadth of research conducted by CAPPE members, including three presentations:
- Isaac Thornton: “Reconciling resilience and resistance?”
- Luqma Temitayo Onikosi: “The Decolonisation of International Development in Africa: The Vital Use of the Yorùbá People’s Ifá Epistemic System in a Decolonised Development Agenda in Nigeria.”
- Natasha Jane Kennedy: “Markers of intimacy in heterolingual texts: a study of family member nouns appearing in writers’ first language”.
The day ended with an open discussion of ways in which CAPPE can support post-doctoral researchers during the 2025-6 academic year. Among other collaboration opportunities, the mind mapping exercise discussed Interfere (the CAPPE-run Journal for Critical Thought and Radical Politics), ideas for student-led conferences, and ways in which CAPPE can engage with and disseminate research among local communities.
After pizzas arrived to end the day, we carried on the conversation over a picnic on Brighton’s Old Steine, before parting ways full of inspiration, new research pathways, and enthusiasm in our project.
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Tom Pryce is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Brighton, investigating how contemporary trans phenomenology helps us challenge and think the unthought in various phenomenological traditions.
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