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UCL Arts & Humanities Quirk Symposium 2025

2 June 2025

The Lord Randolph Quirk Endowment to UCL supports a growing community of scholars and researchers. The endowment has, since 2021, funded a series of symposia. This year’s Quirk Symposium on Thursday 29 May brought together the current recipients of Quirk funds and others.

Quirk symposium - group of people sat on chairs in a lecture style room, with a women at the front speaking

This year’s second informal Quirk Symposium begun with a welcome and introduction from Professor Stella Bruzzi, Executive Dean of UCL Arts & Humanities and Chair of the Quirk Advisory Board, and Dr Charlotte Roberts, Academic Lead of the Quirk Endowment. Dr Roberts, who took on this role in January 2025, noted how wonderful it is to get all those associated with the Quirk endowment in one place. 

Professor John Mullan, Head of UCL English, spoke about Lord Quirk’s life and accomplishments, highlighting his focus on Old English and the influence this still has on the syllabus undergraduate English students study today. Lord Quirks influence continues to this day with his endowment for humanistic scholarship.  

Quirk symposium - a man up at a lecturn presenting with two women sat in front of a screen

Quirk symposium - a woman up at a lecturn presenting with two people sat in front of a screen

The symposium was an opportunity to hear about current recipients', projects and networks. The participants were split into groups with three Quirk recipients in each group; the discussions begun with an informal presentation from the Quirk recipient and then time for questions and discussions.  

The projects discussed included:   

Cecilia Berti: A critical discourse analysis of populist women in leadership of radical right parties in a European context between 2011 and 2021. 

Joshua Clark: A cross-cultural examination of the linguistic signification of depression in French, German, and English film and literature.  

Kearsy Cormier: Understanding the history of British Sign Language variation and change through deaf school records in the UK. 

Xiaofan Amy Li: Translation and the Mediation of Francophone and Sinophone Literatures. 

Chloe Franklin: The Impact of Information Inaccessibility: A Community-Based Study Based on the Experience of d/Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Communities in England.  

Riitta Valijarvi: The linguistic means of expressing nonbinary gender(s) in Finnish, including names, terminology, and English pronouns. 

Guyanne Wilson: Early Warnings for all?: The language of early warnings systems. 

Beth Malory: Translating linguistic research on pregnancy loss language into social impact: consolidating knowledge exchange networks and upscaling dissemination. 

Sharon Morris and Catrin Webster: Spineless Wonders is an international network of artists, writers, academics and librarians, creating and researching small press publications including artists books. 

Josh Weeks: The Languages of the Future research cluster explores the intersections of languages and future-making within and beyond the academy. 

Emily Ranken: How do bilingual children experience primary school? 

Amy Faulkner: From Old English to World Englishes: A Roving Exhibition. 

Quirk symposium - a group of people sat in a circle in a discussion

Quirk symposium - a group of people sat in a circle in a discussion

UCL Arts & Humanities are immensely grateful for the Lord Randolph Quirk Endowment. The projects and research funded by the endowment are testament to Lord Quirk’s dedication to humanistic scholarship across disciplines, involving a wide range of scholars with far-reaching impact. We look forward to the symposium next year, which will take place in UCL’s bicentenary year, UCL200.  

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