Vernon Lee and the Future of Intelligence

Sally Blackburn-Daniels  is the Impact Acceleration Fellow at Teesside University, UK. They have co-organised several conferences on Lee, including  Dedication: Unfurling Vernon Lee’s Kinship Networks  (2024),  Vernon Lee, Empathy and Aesthetics  (2022) and  Vernon Lee 2019: An Anniversary Conference  (2019) and  Order and Chaos: Vernon Lee's Politics of Disruption  (2026). They are long-term collaborators with Associazione Culturale il Palmerino (Florence) and worked with them on the first theatrical performance of Lee's  The Ballet of the Nations. 

Shafquat Towheed  is Director of Research in the School of Arts and Humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at The Open University, UK, where he also directs the OpenARC Research Centre and the History of Books and Reading research group. He is a Vice-President and founding member of the International Vernon Lee Society (IVLS) and is currently Vice President of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP). His most recent publication (with Corinna Norrick-Rühl) is  Bookshelves in the Age of the COVID-19 Pandemic  (2022).