The School was delighted to hear that Dr Jacob Blanc, Lecturer in Latin American History, has been awarded two grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). HTML Image Both grants relate to Dr Blanc's new project on rethinking Brazilian history from the inside, a framework he is developing as ‘interior history.’ The first grant is an Early Career Leadership fellowship that will provide Dr Blanc with 18 months of full funding to conduct research and oversee engagement activities in the UK and Brazil. Focusing on the Prestes Column rebellion in 1920s Brazil, the project explores how questions of modernity and national identity were shaped by perceptions of Brazil’s vast interior regions. The project aims to deconstruct the long-standing tropes between the supposedly ‘backwards’ interior and the ‘modern’ coast. Along with a book monograph, the grant will also produce an online bilingual atlas that will serve as a digital humanities resource for users to visualize the Prestes Column’s long march through the interior. The second grant is a Research Networking Scheme, where Dr Blanc will expand the approach of interior history as a collaboration with a dozen scholars in the UK, Brazil, and the United States. Each project member will contribute a chapter for an edited volume that will revisit a seminal moment in Brazilian history from an interior perspective, from the colonial period through today. This grant will run for 22 months and will fund a conference in Edinburgh, a follow-up workshop in Brasília and translations for a Portuguese version of the anthology. Like the Leadership award, this network will also build a digital map where each case study becomes an interactive visual narrative. Dr Blanc said, “I am really grateful for this support from AHRC. It will be very exciting to work on interior history both through my own work on the Prestes Column and also at a larger scale through the network. I look forward to collaborating with such a stellar group of international colleagues, and to help train a group of postgraduate research assistants in Brazil. Now more than ever it is crucial to build these networks and to collaborate toward new historical frameworks. And especially in the uncertainty of the current moment, this is a great opportunity to create digital resources that can let us continue learning and growing regardless of what else may be happening in the world.” The School sends its warmest congratulations to Dr Blanc on his awards. Dr Jacob Blanc's staff profile Dr Jacob Blanc receives NEH Fellowship Dissertation prize for Jacob Blanc This article was published on 2024-08-01
