Muhammad Hameem Bin Sheik Alaudin

With a BA in English Language and Literature and an MA in Linguistics, I am currently undertaking a DPhil in medieval English, where I am studying Middle English verse form: specifically the interaction between alliteration and other formal features like metre and rhyme in the history of English poetry. However, I have a wider cross-linguistic interest in poetics and am fascinated by the phenomenon of language contact and its effect on the emergence of vernacular literary traditions and the development of new, often hybrid, poetic forms. In this regard, I aim to expand my academic ambit beyond Western Europe to the Persianate literatures of the medieval Islamic world in future, with ongoing work on languages such as Persian and Chaghatay. The ultimate question that motivates me intellectually is: what makes poetry poetry within a certain linguistic and literary tradition at a given point in time?