Yvonne O’Dell

Thesis title:

Ontologies of Affect: Exploring emotional encounters and transformations in the Caribbean

My current PhD research considers affect as a means of better understanding the experience of intercultural encounter, particularly in the colonial Caribbean. I am interested in how ontologies come together, how (human and more than human) bodies are conceived and created, and how our archaeological narratives are important to present day engagements with the world.

Research Area

Archaeology

Publications

O'Dell, Y. 2015. The Implications of Imposing Modern Concepts of the Body and the Person onto the Past. The Post Hole. 42:28-34.

Conferences

'When Worlds Collide: Mapping the Transformation of Emotion in the Colonial Caribbean', The Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies Postgraduate Community Forum, 22^nd June 2018.

'Denials of Death? Chinchorro Mummification and Affect Theory' in Curating the Dead: Manipulating the Body and its Memory, Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference, University of Chester, 18^th December 2018.

'Names-in-Motion: Thinking through Difference with Affect Theory' in Types and Typlessness: (Ir)Regularity in Creative Action and Things' Becoming, Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference, University of Chester, 19^th December 2019.

'Nobody knows what a [feminist] body can do: difference, immanence and becoming', co-authored with Oliver Harris, in the session New Feminisms? Radical Post-Humanist Archaeologies, Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference, Syracuse University, New York, 4th May 2019.

'Ships of stone, unposted letters, and the archaeology of escapism on Isla de Mona, Puerto Rico', co-authored with Alice Samson, Jago Cooper, Mike Lace, and Victor Serrano, 43^rd Annual Conference for the Society of Caribbean Studies, University of Preston, 3^rd July 2019.

'New Materialism in the Colonial Caribbean', 28^th Annual Congress of the International Association for Caribbean Archaeology, Barbados, 22^nd July 2019.

'Affect Worlds and Immanence: A Spinozan Archaeology' in Capacious Archaeology, Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference, University College London, 17^th December 2019.

Public Engagement & Impact

Co-organiser of the Wednesday Research Seminars at the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, 2018-2019.

Co-organiser of the Centre for Historical Archaeology Lunchtime Seminar Series, University of Leicester, 2018-2019.

Co-organiser of the 4^th Annual School of Archaeology and Ancient History PhD Conference, University of Leicester, 16^th November 2018.

Representative for the SAAH at the Society of American Archaeology Annual Meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 10^th – 14^th April 2019.

Co-ran to SAAH's Instagram page, 2019: https://www.instagram.com/uol_archaeology_ancient_hist/

Currently co-organising social media for the 42nd Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference to be held at the University of Leicester, December 2020.

Other Research Interests

Post colonial studies, feminist theory, gender studies, historical archaeology, critical race theory.