Programme

2019 AHRC DTP Conference on “Trust and Truth”

Please note: The information contained in this programme is still subject to change and will be updated on an ongoing basis.

Day 1 – Wednesday, 18th September 2019

8:00–8:45 Breakfast
13:00–13:30 Arrivals and Registration
13:45–14:00 Welcome Address: Professor Richard Rex and Conference Committee
14:00–15:00 Keynote Lecture: Professor Anna Temkina (E.U.S.P.):
Gender studies, “gender theory”, and post-truth . 
15:00–15:30 Tea and Coffee
15:30–17:00 Panel Session 1:

1a. Truths in Historical Sources
Chair: Dr Alison Bonner

  • Patrick McAlary (University of Cambridge): rex Caisil or rí Herend Truthfulness and Chronicles: The Case of Cathal mac Finguine.
  • Claudia Isabel Navas Aparicio (a.r.t.e.s Cologne): The case of ‘trust and truth’ in General Francisco de Miranda’s case.
  • Charles Beirouti (University of Oxford): Edward Terry, John Covel and the Depiction of Religious Practice and Belief in the Mughal and Ottoman Empires, 1616-1722.

1b. Historical Conceptions of Trust and Truth
Chair: Prof. Nicholas Hammond

  • Lukas Jansen (a.r.t.e.s Cologne): The Principate – a culture of distrust?
  • Lisa Nicholson (University of Cambridge): Une nouvelle Babilône: negotiating trust and truth at the Mazarin salon.
  • Alisa Hajdarpasic (a.r.t.e.s Cologne): A shift in the concept of truth in late medieval historia.

1c. Past Intellectual and Philosophical Debates on Truth
Chair: Dr Adrian Mihai

  • Robert Scott (University of Cambridge): Irony and Truth in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.
  • Jonathan Lyonhart (University of Cambridge): Heidegger and Aquinas on the location of Truth.
  • Aleksei Lokhmatov (a.r.t.e.s Cologne): ‘Historical Truth’ in Constructing New Social Realities: The Perspective of Intellectual History.

17:30 – 19:15 Art Workshop: ‘Broken Telephone’
This art and poetry workshop will explore the notion of what constitutes a ‘truthful’ representation of an object or thing, while also giving delegates the opportunity to socialise in an informal, creative setting. The activity will involve a more sophisticated version of the game known as ‘Broken Telephone’ or ‘Consequences’. In small groups, participants will be encouraged to write poetic descriptions (ekphrases) of various objects provided by the conference committee, without including the names of those objects. These poetic descriptions will then be swapped between participants and the original objects will be hidden. Using only the description given to them, participants will then draw an image based on the written word. These images will then provide the inspiration for another set of poetic descriptions, and the object translations will continue.
At the end of the session, each object will have been translated multiple times through words and images, creating a beautiful, jointly-made artwork that will reveal the complex process of information transmission. Which translation reveals the nature of the object most truthfully? The original material thing, the elaboration of its visual appearance in text, or maybe the entire set of translations taken as a whole? Does the proliferation of information about an object help us to understand with greater precision the nature of the object, or does it tend towards abstracted chaos? This will be an open-ended and relaxed workshop that will allow participants to meet one another on the first day of the conference.


19:30 – 20:30 Drinks & Buffet Dinner

Day 2 – Thursday, 19th September 2019

8:00–8:45 Breakfast
9:00–10:30 Panel Session 2:

2a. Trust and Truth in Linguistics and Language Use
Chair: Dr Ivan Kozachenko

  • Kim Jarle Wroldsen (Stockholm University): Hand in hand in the Peach Flower Land.
  • June Manjun Zhang (University of Cambridge): On How to Live a Good Life: A Dialogue Between “Qing” and “Emotion”.
  • Fabia Morger (Stockholm University): Claiming Trust and Truth: The Role of Internet Memes in Political Discourse.

2b. The Truth in the Arts
Chair: Dr Deborah Bowman

  • Susie Hill (University of Cambridge): Pointing to the Moon: Zen and Truth in John Cage’s Silence.
  • Jack Hart (University of Oxford): Wallace Stevens and Poetic Truth.
  • Daniil Zimin (E.U.S.P.): The truth about apes: scientific and artistic persuasion strategies in Charles de Pougens’s novel Jocko.

2c. Truth in the Visual Image
Chair: Dr Nigel Meager

  • Daria Panaiotti (E.U.S.P.): ‘The Truth of Life’ as a disciplinary constraint in the late-Soviet documentary photography.
  • Pavel Stepanov (E.U.S.P.): On making friends and foes: representations of the West in the Soviet cinema of the 1920s-1930s.
  • Miho Watanabe (Australian National University): ‘Awareness of Between-ness’ – an aesthetic and philosophy.
  • Patrick Wright (The Open University): Not Trusting our Eyes: The Ekphrasis of Abstract and Monochromatic Paintings.

10:30–11:00 Tea & Coffee
11:00–12:30 Panel Session 3:

3a. Truth as Represented in Contemporary Media
Chair: Dr Ella McPherson

  • Irene Elmerot (Stockholm University): How can you trust the news? – a methodological suggestion on how to scrutinise the structure of news items.
  • Kristiina Savola (Stockholm University): Political narratives as constructors and legitimisers of interpretations of truth in Finnish politicians’ blog and Facebook posts.
  • Jade McGlynn (University of Oxford): History as proof: The role of historical framing in Russian media coverage of contentious political events.

3b. The Information Sciences Take on Trust and Truth
Chair: Dr Martin Crowley

  • Tomasz Hollanek (University of Cambridge): ‘Trustworthy interfaces? User experience design and trust in technology.
  • Chelsea Spencer (MIT): Exdis No Disem: Knowledge and Information in the Era of Watergate.
  • Marc Aidinoff (MIT): Distrusting the Poor, Trusting the State: Networked Computing and Government Reform.

3c. Do We Trust the Government?
Chair: Dr Olga Petri

  • Svetlana Moskaleva (E.U.S.P.): Civic Expertise on Urban Issues in St. Petersburg.
  • Elena Sobrino (MIT): Corroding Pipes, Corroding Trust: The Politics of Evidence in the Flint Water Crisis.
  • Isabel Airas (University of Cambridge): (Dis)Trust in Sweden: Catalyst moments and the affective registers of support for national populist movements.

12:30–14:00 Lunch
14:00–15:00 Keynote Lecture: Professor Elisabeth Wåghäll Nivre (Stockholm University)
Questioning the Text: Trust and Truth in Early Modern Narratives on Queen Christina of Sweden, 1626–1689.
15:00–15:30 Tea and Coffee
15:30–17:00 Panel Session 4:

4a. Philosophy and the Truth
Chair: Dr Ankur Barua

  • Céline Henne (University of Cambridge): What we can aim for: A pragmatist and realistic account of truth.
  • Alexandra S. Ilieva (University of Cambridge): How to (re)conceptualise truth: A Buddhist-Pragmatist Dialogue.
  • Elin Danielsen Huckerby (University of Cambridge): Placing Trust in Each Other: Rortian Pragmatism and the Priority of Trust over Truth.

4b. Philosophical Conceptions of Trust
Chair: Prof. Richard Holton

  • Jakob Ohlhorst (a.r.t.e.s Cologne): Trust Responsibly.
  • Joern Wiengarn (a.r.t.e.s Cologne): Three Concepts of Interpersonal Trust.
  • P. Quinn White (MIT): Honesty and Discretion.

4c. Truth and Religion
Chair: Prof. Richard Rex

  • Sophie Yvert-Hamon (Stockholm University): The Place of Truth in Religious Controversies: the case of the Traité de l’eucharistie by the Protestant Philippe Duplessis-Mornay.
  • Glenn Bezalel (University of Cambridge): Conspiracy Theories and Religion: Reframing Conspiracy Theories as Bliks amid ‘Conspiratorial Ambiguity’.
  • Erik Sundblad (Stockholm University): Questioning scriptural orthodoxy: Criticism of the authenticity of the prophetic tradition in contemporary Egypt.

19:00-19:30 Pre-Dinner Drinks Reception
19:30 Conference Dinner

Day 3 – Friday, 20th September 2019

8:00–8:45 Breakfast
9:00–10:30 Panel Session 5:

5a. Trust and Truth in the Law and Justice Systems
Chair: Prof Alison Young

  • Ian Edelstein (Australian National University): Truth and trust: The international Court of Justice (ICJ) and the South West Africa Case.
  • Lewis Graham (University of Cambridge): Only Human: Should We Trust Our Judges?
  • Franziska Englert (a.r.t.e.s Cologne): Truth and Telenovelas in Transitional Justice contexts – exploring the possibilities.

5b. Anthropological & Sociological Analyses of Trust Relationships
Chair: Prof. Patrick Baert

  • Paul Schrader (a.r.t.e.s Cologne): Global networks and the role of trustful relationships between experts: the case of international health projects in India, ca. 1940-1970.
  • Nushelle de Silva (MIT): Contaminating Cultures vs. Cultural Collaboration: Trust and Truth in Exhibition Conservation.
  • Alexander Blandford (University of Oxford): Data-driven democracy: understanding the use of candidate data in UK elections.

5c. Truth in Space / Place
Chair: Prof. Wendy Pullan

  • Chen Qu (University of Cambridge): An exploration of Chinese Migrant Integration Using a Multi-Method Approach.
  • Savia Palate (University of Cambridge): Truth games and the Ideal Home: The case of the Parker Morris Standards.
  • Shamim Homayun (Australian National University): Spaces of Mistrust: Truth-telling, Duplicity, and Highway Travel in Afghanistan.

10:30–11:00 Tea and Coffee
11:00–12:30 Panel Session 6:

6a. Truth in Past Scholarly Discourses
Chair: Dr Dániel Margócsy

  • Phoebe Springstubb (MIT): The eyes of the collective body: Diagrams of the 1761 and 1769 Transits of Venus.
  • Roxanne Goldberg (MIT): Between Tradition and Science: Perceived Authenticity in an Art Dealer’s Manuscript.
  • Wanne Mendonck (University of Cambridge): Victorian Post-Truth? John Ruskin, Charles Darwin, and the Scholarly Fight for Cultural Authority.

6b. The Truth in the Present Academic Context
Chair: Dr Ros McLellan

  • Eman Faisal (University of Cambridge): Investigating the reliability of qualitative data using triangulation technique: A case study of a Saudi first-year.
  • Chelsea Morgan (Australian National University): When Trust Creates ‘Truth’: Biological Anthropology and the Binary Bias in Sex.
  • Bright Masocha (a.r.t.e.s Cologne): ‘Political truth and actual truth’ – discerning the truth in a socio-politically polarised research environment.

6c. The Truth in Poetry and Prose
Chair: Prof. Nick White

  • Andrew Dickinson (University of Oxford): Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘George Washington-handicap’. 
  • Burak Sezer (a.r.t.e.s Cologne): The Cryptography of Randomness in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge.
  • Célia Depommier-Cotton (University of Cambridge): Is there someone upstairs? A reading of Stendhal in the age of technopopulism.

12:30–14:00 Lunch
14:00–16:30 Organised activities: Groups meet in Old Court near the Hall.
16:30–17:00 Tea and Coffee
17:00–18:00 Keynote Lecture: Prof Andreas Speer (a.r.t.e.s Cologne): Speaking Truly – Speaking the Truth.
18:00-18:30 Concluding Remarks: Professor Diana Henderson (MIT) and Conference Committee
19:00 Dinner

Saturday, 21st September2019

8:00–8:45 Breakfast
9:30 Check-out from Peterhouse