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Past & Present Author Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh Wins 2026 RHS Early Career Article Prize

By Josh Allen - July 6, 2026 (0 comments)

by the Past & Present editorial team

We were delighted to learn that Dr. Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh (University of Amsterdam) has won the Royal Historical Society’s Early Career Article Prize 2026 for his article “Colonial world-making and global knowledges at the early modern Cape of Good Hope” (Open Access) which was published in Past & Present no. 268 (August 2025).

Awarded annually, the RHS Early Career Article Prize (known between 1898 and 2025 as the Alexander Prize) is for an essay or article based on original historical research, by a doctoral candidate or an early career historian within three years of being awarded a doctorate, published in a journal or an edited collection of essays.

Two prizes of £250 each are awarded annually.

In their citation the judging panel chaired by Dr Jesús Sanjurjo stated that:

“The panel is delighted to award the 2026 Early Career Article Prize to Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh for his brilliant article, ‘Colonial World-Making and Global Knowledges at the Early Modern Cape of Good Hope’.

Gianamar presents a sweeping, transoceanic history that fundamentally challenges our understanding of early modern geography and knowledge production. By seamlessly weaving together the ambitions of the Dutch East India Company, the astronomical diplomacy of French Jesuits, and the anticolonial resistance of the Indigenous Khoekhoe, the author vividly demonstrates how the Cape was actively reimagined as an extension of the East Indies. The article stands out for its staggering intellectual ambition, its rich source base, and its masterful execution of global history.”

Our congratulations to Dr. Giovannetti-Singh on his scholarship being recognised in this fashion.

The other winner of the 2026 prize was Dr. Stephanie Wanga for her article ‘Rereading Ujamaa, rethinking freedom’, in Development and Change. A full list of those shortlisted for the 2026 prize can be found here. Congratulations to Dr. Wanga and those on the shortlist, also.

"Medicine, Race, and Slavery in the Transatlantic World, 1600–1850" Past & Present Supplement No. 18

By Josh Allen - June 26, 2026 (0 comments)

by the Past & Present editorial team

Edited by Dr. Hannah Murphy (King’s College London) the 18th Suppmentary issue of Past & Present “Medicine, Race, and Slavery in the Transatlantic World, 1600–1850” comprising 12 articles has now been published.

The suppment’s abstract explains the volume illustrates that:

“The histories of medicine, transatlantic slavery, and race cannot, and should not, be viewed separately. Between 1440 and 1888 more than twelve million African people were forcibly trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean, enslaved in plantations, cities, and homes across the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe. As emerging discourses on anatomy, physiology, and disease claimed new authority over explanations for human difference, the same period gave rise to medicalized concepts of ‘race’.

Bringing these developments into a single analytical frame, this Supplement offers a wide-ranging set of case studies spanning Italy, Spain, the Canary Islands, the British and French Caribbeans, Britain, North America, Ethiopia, and the kingdoms and territories of the west coast of Africa. Ranging from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, the contributions draw on diverse archival materials, including inquisitorial trials, port inspections, medical case histories and treatises on disease, missionary correspondence, travel narratives, legal records, newspaper accounts, and first-person testimonies. Foregrounding a broad cast of historical actors – physicians and surgeons, colonial practitioners, metropolitan intellectuals, enslaved women and indigenous healers – the volume traces professional practices, experiences of disease, and the lives of patients, from Canarian nobles to enslaved galley workers. In addressing medical practices within structures of slavery, genealogies of race-medicine, and how the politics of health and healing were themselves racialized, the articles here collectively demonstrate that a critical approach to the role of medicine offers a fresh narrative perspective to the histories of slavery, and a new understanding of the problems of race.”

All of the supplement is currently free to read and a couple of articles are open access.

Cover of the 18th Past & Present history journal supplement "Medicine, Race and Slavery in the Transatlantic World, 1600-1850" edited by Hannah Murphy. It is in the journal's standard colours of red and grey with text providing key bibliographic information in white. Most of the lower half of the cover is taken up by a historical pen drawing likely from a medical handbook of various surgical and other medical instruments

Cover of “Medicine, Race, and Slavery in the Transatlantic World, 1600–1850”, Past & Present Supplement No. 18 (2026)

Reflections Upon "Speech/less in the Early Modern World"

By Josh Allen - June 23, 2026 (0 comments)

by Dr. Olivia Formby (Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge)

Rational speech was hailed by early modern Europeans as the clearest outward sign of reason: the capacity that set humans above all other animals. Yet speechlessness was a common part of early modern life. All human infants were born without speech and, throughout the life cycle, speech could be impeded or even silenced, temporarily or permanently. ‘Speech/less in the Early Modern World’ research workshop (23-24 April 2026) aimed to interrogate the ways that the articulation of rational speech continues to be privileged by modern scholars as the best evidence for humanness, reason, and even emotion.

We gathered at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, to share new research that explores the multiple meanings and diverse lived experiences of speechlessness in the early modern world (c.1450-1830). Contributors and chairs were drawn from all career stages and represented institutions across the UK, Europe, Canada, and Australia. Spurred on by gorgeous spring weather, the workshop was a convivial environment for interdisciplinary discussion about voice, the body, and personhood in early modernity.

Across six panels, we explored how people of the past experienced varying degrees of speechlessness due to illness or disability, enslavement, migration, spiritual events, or dramatic performance. These early modern experiences were often difficult and even distressing. Lack of articulate speech generated ambiguity, both in the meanings which an individual could convey to others, and in the status of speechless people in their communities. Speech was often most critical at moments in early modern life when religious and legal personhood was at stake, such as when deaf children approached the sacrament of confirmation or a dying man lost his speech before the making of his will. Yet contributors were also attentive to the nuances of these ambiguous experiences and highlighted the ways that speechlessness was effectively navigated by individuals, families, and communities. People without speech – from young slaves to the prelingually deaf to the bewitched – often employed alternative written, sounded, and gesture-based means of communication, with purpose and agency.

A common thread throughout the papers was the dynamic relationship between speech and the body. Early modern people looked to the speechless body for signs of reason and understanding, and for clues about whether speech might be restored. Our discussion of the changeability and ageing of the body revealed that speechlessness was not at all clear cut. Speech could sometimes return, by miraculous or ordinary means. A person could be deemed speechless in a medical context, even when they could produce certain word sounds. In a legal context, a non-speaking deaf person could be declared fit for marriage, as long as their gestures indicated their capacity for understanding. The interpretation of non-verbal gestures and sounds was highly dependent on the relationships and settings in which speechlessness was expressed.

Professor Rosamund Oates (Manchester Metropolitan University) delivered a magnificent keynote on ‘Silent Histories: Deafness, Speech and Consent in Early Modern England’. Professor Oates expertly drew out these issues of speechlessness and personhood, gesture and the body, using vivid examples of the lived experiences of deafness drawn from her groundbreaking work on deafness in early modern England. This was an especially fruitful keynote given the number of young scholars in the room also working on deafness and other disabilities.

‘Speech/less in the Early Modern World’ sets early modern histories of the lifecycle, religion, and emotion in new directions, by revealing how speechlessness tested the limits of early modern thinking about what it meant to be a person in one’s community and by finding such limits to be very malleable indeed. The organiser is pursuing avenues for publication of an edited collection of essays.

I thank the Past and Present Society for their generous funding of this research workshop (along with co-funders, the Social History Society and the Faculty of History, Cambridge), which made it possible to fund travel bursaries for postgraduate and early career researchers and to allow free registration.

Past and Present was pleased to support this event and supports other events like it. Applications for event funding are welcomed from scholars working in the field of historical studies at all stages in their careers.

Reflections upon the "Kizilbash/Alevism-Bektashism Symposium: New Corpora, Databases, and Digital Tools in Ottoman and Contemporary Contexts"

By Josh Allen - June 11, 2026 (0 comments)

by Dr. Yeliz Teber (Wolfson College, University of Oxford)

The Kizilbash/Alevism-Bektashism Symposium: New Corpora, Databases, and Digital Tools in Ottoman and Contemporary Contexts, generously supported by the Past & Present Society, was held successfully at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, on 22 May 2026. Convened by Dr. Yeliz Teber, Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, the symposium brought together established and emerging scholars working on the history, culture, religion, and heritage of Kizilbash/Alevi-Bektashi communities, who constitute the largest religious minority in today’s Sunni-majority Turkey. As the first event of its kind dedicated specifically to digitally engaged approaches to Kizilbash/Alevi-Bektashi studies, the symposium provided a unique platform for scholarly exchange on new methodologies, sources, and research questions within this rapidly expanding field.

The symposium featured nine research papers presented by scholars from the UK and abroad, exploring a wide range of themes and long-standing questions in the field. In the morning panel, Mark Soileau advanced a novel methodological approach to the study of the hagiography of Hacı Bektaşi, a major text narrating the life and legends of the patron-saint of the Bektashi Sufi order, by drawing on a corpus of 103 manuscripts. Soileau demonstrated how the tracing of textual and paratextual features across manuscript networks can reveal complex patterns of transmission, continuity, and transformation beyond conventional models. Yeliz Teber introduced the first systematic study of the Hacı Bektaş shrine collection, highlighting the significance of documenting and analysing this largely unexplored corpus of manuscripts, paintings, and objects through a database to understand Alevi-Bektashi material culture and heritage after a century of dispersal and loss. Gökçen B. Dinç presented a new digital humanities project that uses computational analysis of vernacular religious texts to map the vocabulary of ‘Islam in Turkish’, offering new evidence for the centrality of Alevi traditions in shaping broader Turkish Muslim religiosity and recovering overlooked Alevi-Bektashi voices from modern scholarship.

The first afternoon panel started with the presentations of Kumru Berfin Emre and Bedriye Poyraz, who offered important perspectives on the 1937-38 Dersim Massacre, combining survivor testimonies, mapped massacre sites, and visual archives to demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary approaches for recovering suppressed histories and cultural memory. Sinibaldo de Rosa showed how movement notation and digital humanities methodologies can transform Alevi ritual dance into a searchable and analysable embodied archive, contributing to approaches to documenting, preserving, and studying intangible cultural heritage.

The final panel highlighted the work of the Alevi-Bektashi Digital Archive (ABDA) project, a major collaborative initiative under the principal investigation of Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, who first presented the archive’s efforts to preserve endangered manuscripts, oral histories, and audiovisual heritage through a publicly accessible digital repository. Yasemin Karakuş demonstrated how newly digitised manuscript collections in this corpus are transforming our understanding of Alevi-Bektashi literary culture through the recovery of previously unknown texts, poets, and paratextual materials. Finally, Özkan Karabulut showcased how digital corpus analysis and mapping of Alevi poetry collections are revealing new insights into the circulation of texts, canon formation, collective memory, and religious history. Together, the panel illustrated the transformative potential of digital humanities approaches for preserving and reinterpreting Alevi-Bektashi cultural heritage.

The event generated significant interest within and beyond the University of Oxford. Owing to exceptionally strong interest in the event, the number of registered audience members was increased from the originally planned 15 participants to 25 attendees (excluding speakers). This expanded audience included academics, graduate students, and independent researchers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, creating a vibrant environment for discussion and networking. The symposium fostered new connections between scholars working on related topics and encouraged interdisciplinary conversations that will support future collaborations and research initiatives.

The generous support of the Past and Present Society was instrumental in enabling the successful delivery of this symposium. The funding helped create an inclusive and intellectually stimulating forum that enhanced the visibility of Kizilbash/Alevi-Bektashi studies within Oxford’s wider research community and beyond. The strong attendance, high-quality papers, and productive discussions demonstrated both the growing scholarly interest in the field and the value of supporting specialist forums that bring together researchers working on underrepresented histories, cultures, and communities. I am deeply grateful to the Past & Present Society for its generous support and for helping make this event possible.

Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh Shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society’s Early Career Article Prize 2026 for Past & Present Article

By Josh Allen - May 21, 2026 (0 comments)

by the Past and Present editorial team

Past and Present was delighted to learn that Dr. Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh (University of Amsterdam) has been shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society’s Early Career Article Prize 2026 for his article “Colonial world-making and global knowledges at the early modern Cape of Good Hope” (Open Access) published in Past & Present #268.

Dr. Giovannetti-Singh’s work is one of eight articles shortlisted for the prize. Two winners will be announced in July 2026 each of whom will be awarded a prize of £250. The Royal Historical Society states that “the 2026 shortlist recognises the scholarly contribution of the eight articles published in 2025”. Our congradulations and best wishes to Dr. Giovannetti-Singh and all whose work has been recognised by being shortlisted this year.