Dr Mary Newman

Dr Mary Newman is an IAS Quirk Postdoctoral Fellow in Languages of Evidence in 2025-26. 

As a Quirk Postdoctoral Fellow at UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies, Dr Mary Katherine Newman explores how early modern writers sought to represent experiences that seemed to exceed language - particularly in colonial accounts of the Americas - like the taste of new foods or the sounds of new languages. Her project, Ineffable Evidence in Accounts of the New World traces how Spanish and Indigenous authors used sensory description, translation, and metaphor to make sense of encounters that defied proof. Working within the IAS’s “Languages of Evidence” cluster, Newman examines how literature became a testing ground for what counted as evidence, bridging early modern studies, Indigenous Studies, and colonial epistemologies.

Mary's postdoctoral fellowship is funded by generous support from The Lord Randolph Quirk Endowment Fund at UCL.