If you walk down the streets of Kathmandu, you can’t fail to notice its vibrant street art scene. When I first visited the city in 2018, I was taken aback by the juxtaposition of heritage buildings and slick urban iconography that defined the capital and its environs. Outside the Zoo in Patan, for example, a long grey wall is adorned with girls’ hand-prints. The prints flow from the pen of a schoolgirl, painted in her uniform, drawing on the wall with her back to the viewer. Above her, the English words ‘Wall of Hope’ float in a deliberate scrawl. In the corner of the work just visible is the signature ‘Pink Riches’—a Minneapolis-based street artist.
Continue reading Framing Women’s Rights in Nepali Street ArtMonth: July 2021
Intervention on Behalf of Foreign Subjects during the Anglo-Spanish War, 1585–1604
It is fitting that my dissertation on the idea of intervention and protection of foreign subjects during the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) has been published in the GHIL’s series, as it touches on one of the most researched periods of English history: the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and the Anglo-Spanish War. My study investigates the conflict-ridden relationship between Protestant England and Catholic Spain in the incipient Age of Confession as reflected in publications and drafts of declarations of war and war manifestos, which scholarship has shown to be sources of vital importance for the history of political thought in the early modern period.
Continue reading Intervention on Behalf of Foreign Subjects during the Anglo-Spanish War, 1585–1604Prophecies and (Hi)Stories: Telling the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453
From a Euro-Mediterranean perspective, the conquest of Constantinople led by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in 1453 not only marked the end of the Byzantine empire that had lasted more than a millennium, but also the end of the European Middle Ages. Rightly considered a ‘moment of great historical significance’1 by both contemporaries and modern researchers, the conquest of Constantinople ‘had repercussions that went far beyond its walls’2 not only politically and economically, but also culturally and socially.
Continue reading Prophecies and (Hi)Stories: Telling the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453