Sean Wyer (Balliol 2010 and Stipendiary Lecturer in Italian since 2022) has been awarded a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship by the Institute for Citizens and Scholars.
The Newcombe Fellowship is the largest and most prestigious award for PhD candidates in the humanities and social sciences ‘addressing questions of ethical and religious values in interesting, original, or significant ways’. Fellows receive a 12-month award to support the final year of dissertation writing.
Sean, who read Modern Languages at Balliol, is completing his PhD in Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, but he is working in the UK on his dissertation, entitled ‘Constructing Convivenza: Multicultural Heritage and Cosmopolitan Rhetoric in Contemporary Palermo’, while also teaching at Balliol.
His current research uses discourse analysis; close observations of the urban environment; and anthropological fieldwork carried out in Palermo. His academic research interests also include the anthropology of the Mediterranean; regional and hyper-local food traditions in Italy; cultural memory; and Sicilian identity. He is a co-founder of UC Berkeley’s Italian Studies Migration Working Group. Read his full academic profile here.
Sean Wyer is one of 21 people in the 2023 class of Newcombe Fellows, announced here.