Birmingham Research Institute for History and Cultures

The School of History and Cultures (SHaC) is made up of three departments: African Studies and Anthropology; Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology; History. Academic staff and students in SHaC regularly collaborate with partners in other sectors.

Working collaboratively ensures that academic research is of benefit to people, communities, and organisations outside of academia. We are always keen to further understand the needs of others and how we can produce research that will provide some answer to those needs. If you would like to work with us, please do get in touch with any member of staff whose research speaks to your area of interest. You can find lists of staff members here.

Colleagues have produced research which has been used by national and international organisations to shape their understanding of situations and issues. For example, we have worked with the United Nations to raise awareness of the issues facing children born of war and provide data for the annual report of the UNSRSG for Sexual Violence in Conflict. We have also worked with the joint World Heritage Committee and the International Council on Monuments and Sites to shape their technical and methodological approaches to future planning and investigation. Colleagues have also engaged with organisations such as the Birmingham Irish Heritage Group to explore new understandings of past events.

SHaC staff have worked over many years in close collaboration with museums and heritage organisations to provide new research about collections and their significance. For instance, our research has illuminated the importance of everyday, domestic objects within internationally important collections such as that of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Working in close collaboration has also produced new knowledge about objects and led to new interpretations at museums such as the Museum of the Order of St John. Sustained working over multiple years has also led to further connections between museums to take a regional or national approach to certain issues, such as the work of James Watt.

Colleagues have approached such collaborative work with creativity and often work with practitioners to provide new ways in to complex cultural and social issues from the past and present. We have worked with Cardboard Citizens to produce new theatrical and radio work on the histories of homelessness. Colleagues have also worked with film directors to explore histories of political activism and particularly the strategies adopted by ‘political women’ in Ghana in the late twentieth century.

BRIHC is the umbrella research institute of the School of History and Cultures. It promotes and facilitates research and research-led teaching across the School and beyond, both through the support of research initiatives and through the organisation of events that foster cross-disciplinary conversations.

BRIHC team

Director: Dr Lucie Ryzova

BRIHC Scholarship holders (PhD)

• Rose Debenham: ‘Self-Fashioning at Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, 1982-2000’ (Supervisors: Chris Moores, Zoe Thomas)
• Ginette Hartley: ‘Making it: The evolution of a Birmingham middle-class metal-working family, the Phipsons, c1750-1850.’ (Supervisors: Malcolm Dick, Karen Harvey)
• Felix Tombindo: ‘Conservation, Landscape and Belonging on the Shores of Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe’ (Supervisors: Maxim Bolt, Reginald Cline-Cole)

Current visiting scholars

Burak Aslanmirza

Burak Aslanmirza was born in 1991 in İstanbul. He graduated from the History Department of Middle East Technical University (METU) (Ankara, Turkey) in 2015. In 2018, he submitted his master's thesis entitled "the Evolution and Professionalization of Economic Thought from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic: The Case of İbrahim Fazıl Pelin" on the scholarship of Atatürk Supreme Council for Culture, Language and History. He continues his Ph.D. studies on the Committee of Union and Progress at the Department of History of Kocaeli University, where he has been working as a research assistant since 2017. His research is on the Power Relations and the Power in the Committee of Union and Progress in the Light of British Sources.

Özge Aslanmirza:

Özge Aslanmirza was born in 1991 in İstanbul. She graduated from the Department of Foreign Language Education of Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2014 and completed her minor degree in the Department of History at the same university. In 2017, she submitted his master’s thesis entitled “Surplus-Receivers (Zevaid-Horan) From Imperial Waqfs: Between Philanthropy and Political Economy” on the scholarship of Turkish Historical Foundation. She completed her first year in the doctorate programme in Binghamton University with Fulbright Scholarship. She proceeds her Ph.D. at the Department of History of Kocaeli University and works there as a research assistant since 2019. Her research is on The Knowledge Production of Britain on the Middle East in the light of Mark Sykes’ Documents.

Emma Belanger

Emma is a 2021-2022 US Fulbright grant recipient, conducting independent research on Birmingham’s Chinese immigrant community. Growing up in Denmark, Greece, and the US, as well as studying Spanish, Chinese, and Russian in school, Emma developed a keen interest in modern languages and history. In 2020, Emma graduated from Hamilton College with a BA in Chinese and Russian Studies. At the same time, Emma became interested in the Fulbright program, applying for and winning a grant to conduct research at the University of Birmingham as a visiting scholar. Under the supervision of Dr. Shirley Ye, Emma’s independent research project will explore the history and development of the Chinese immigrant community in Birmingham and the larger UK. In addition to learning more about the history of Chinese immigrants in the UK, Emma also hopes to explore how contemporary changes, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have had an impact on this community.

Basak Derinel

Basak is a legal scholar who specializes in Roman Law and Civil Law. Basak’s research mainly focuses on Roman Law and its effect on modern private law. Basak’s book on the juridical situation of unborn child in Roman Law and in Turkish Law has been published recently by Jovene Editore, Naples (2020). Her current research seeks to examine how Augustan legislation contributed to the definition and establishment of gender in the early Roman empire. Basak’s research has been supported by the Italian Ministry of International Affairs, Municipality of Rome, Max Plank Institute and University of Hamburg.

Ander Salinas

Ander is a PhD student at the University of the Basque Country. He is currently working on his thesis titled ‘Administrative Transformations and their Effects over the Relationship between Monarchy and Nobility in the Kingdom of Navarre during the 13th century’. However, despite focusing mainly on the Navarrese territory, he defends the need of a comparative vision amongst the different European kingdoms, since there are similarities in the way nobility was introduced in the new state-structures that were raising since the 13th century. For this reason, he is very interested in adjacent topics as the construction of the State and the relationships between monarchy and nobility in the European context over the Middle Ages.

Muhammet Enes Midilli

Muhammet is a PhD candidate in the Department of Islamic History at Marmara University and a research assistant in the same department at Istanbul University. Muhammet is a researcher of the intellectual history of the pre-modern Islamicate world with a focus on the Syro-Egyptian region roughly between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. He studied theology as an undergraduate (BA) at Marmara University. In his MA thesis titled “An Institution of Learning in the Early Mamluk Period: The Mosque of Ibn Tūlūn (1296-1382)”, he proposed that the mosque in Mamluk Cairo had become waqf-based learning institution like madrasas. Also, he tried to contextualize the formation of comprehensive learning institutions in Cairo, which were primarily established by the ruling elite and offer extensive courses and positions to scholars.

Muhammet’s doctoral project attempts to evaluate how and through which patterns Jerusalemite ulama acquired specialized knowledge and scholarly positions during the Mamluk period. The study primarily focuses on al-ʿUlaymī’sal-Uns al-Jalīl fī Tārikh al-Quds waʾl-Khalīl and al-Sakhāwī’s al-Dawʾ al-Lāmiʿ li-Ahliʾl-Qarniʾt-Tāsiʿ. While the former has a section specifically dedicated to the list and brief biographies of Jerusalemite scholars, the latter covers only some of them but describes their education and career in a more nuanced way. The “Cairo-centrism” has long dominated the scholarship on the intellectual history of the Mamluk period, so that he attempts to add a local point of view on the social and scholarly practices of ulama during the same period.

Former BRIHC Postdoctoral Fellows

• Dr Theofili Kampianaki
• Ilya Afanasyev
• Victoria Anker
• Nikolas Funke
• Laura Martin

Former BRIHC Visiting Scholars

• Mariña Bermúdez Beloso (University of Santiago de Compostela)
• Fuka Fujita (Kyoto University)
• Shu Huiling (Huaqiao University)
• Mingzhao Hu (Huaqiao University)
• Yuxiu Tan (Jilin Normal University)

Previous BRIHC scholarship holders (masters)

• Georgia-Mae Evans
• Eleanor Greening
• Dominic Judd Page
• Tabitha Lambert-Bramwell
• Olivia Marsh
• Samuel Wood