Politics in Residence 2016

Emma Rees is Professor of Literature and Gender Studies at the University of Chester, UK. Throughout her career, Emma has written extensively on representations of gender in literature and culture, considering the work of Shakespeare, Margaret Cavendish and Led Zeppelin. Her occasional columns for the Times Higher Education take an at times light-hearted look at academic life.

Emma was awarded the inaugural residency for political writing for her latest book, The Vagina: a Literary and Cultural History, which was published in paperback by Bloomsbury earlier this year. Emma has toured ‘Vulvanomics’ – a distilled spoken-word discussion of The Vagina – worldwide, including at Gladstone’s Library’s first Gladfest. Emma is currently writing a book on the turbulent debates in contemporary feminism, a subject that she explored in her Fractured Feminism course at the Library earlier this year.

"Being Political Writer in Residence gave me not only the characteristically supportive environment of Gladstone’s Library in which to work on my next project, but also, in some important but indefinable sense, to pay my dues to William Gladstone’s liberal vision. The Residency is something I can still call on, in those desolate moments all writers face from time to time, when self-belief seems to disappear, to remind me that I can do this, because the Panel that selected me believed I can, too."

Read the blog Emma wrote during her residency.

Click here to read a Q&A with Emma about her residency.

Politics in Residence 2017

Caroline Shenton is an archivist, historian and author. She was Director of the Parliamentary Archives at Westminster from 2008 to 2014.

James Kirchick is a journalist and foreign correspondent based in Washington. He has reported from Southern and North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, across the European continent, and the Caucasus. He is a fellow with the Foreign Policy Initiative in Washington D.C., a correspondent for The Daily Beast and writes the ‘Continental Drift’ column on Europe for Tablet. A leading voice on American gay politics and international gay rights, James is a recipient of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Journalist of the Year Award.

Politics in Residence 2020

Jonathan Heawood

Jonathan Heawood is the author of The Press Freedom Myth. The founder of IMPRESS, an independent press standards organisation, Jonathan spoke of how, as a lifelong campaigner for press freedom, he came to re-evaluate his position in light of the phone hacking scandal of 2011 and subsequent unethical behaviour from sections of the news industry. In his talk, also titled The Press Freedom Myth, he argued for a more universal, ethical approach to journalism. 

Andrew Graystone

Andrew Graystone, author of Faith, Hope and Mischief and Bleeding for Jesus, attended in 2022 after his residency was delayed by Coronavirus. His long-awaited talk centred on the issue of abuse within the Church, and suggested that a new approach was needed to heal both the Church and victims of abuse. Andrew is a staunch Christian who has worked as a youth worker and in broadcasting, and who has found himself 'walking alongside victims of abuse' in recent years.