Phil Crang is conducting a three-year project investigating the presence of ‘South Asian' clothing textiles in ‘British' culture in both colonial (1850s to 1880s) and post-colonial (1980s to 2000s) times. In exploring the processes of material cultural exchange between Britain and South Asia, the research will cast new light on both the British imperial diaspora in the Indian subcontinent and contemporary South Asian diasporas in Britain. More generally, in centring transcultural objects, this research recognises that diaspora cultures exceed the identities of specific diasporic communities. Concepts and histories of diaspora alert us to deeper and wider re-imaginings of the relations between culture, place and identity. Instead of being mapped onto identifiable peoples and places, culture is conceived as the product of circuits of exchange and translation, of interrelated but distinct movements of people, objects and ideas. Practically, the research is funded from 2007–2009 through the AHRC's Strategic Research Programme on Diasporas, Migration and Identities. The project team brings together expertise from the Department of Geography at RHUL and the Victoria and Albert Museum in cultural and historical geography, fashion and textiles studies, visual arts practice and museology. Further information: Philip Crang

Helen Gilbert is convening a research network titled ‘Performance and Asylum: Embodiment, Ethics, Community’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council from 2006–07. This transnational network examines issues concerning refugees and asylum seekers in Britain and Australia in reference to globalisation and fears about national security. While highlighting performance as an exemplary medium through which to explore questions about identity, belonging, refuge, corporeality, surveillance and ethics, the network also involves scholars from other disciplines to expand and energise specific, performance-based research work.