#BirkbeckVoices: Recent Episodes
Birkbeck, University of London
Birkbeck is a world-class research and teaching institution, a vibrant centre of academic excellence and London's only specialist provider of evening higher education.
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
In a new series, the #FuturesPodcast will be delving into the world of enterprise and chatting with inspiring entrepreneurs and industry leaders across the UK start-up scene.
In our next episode, we meet with Maria Torres Giron, Managing Director of Ole Spanish. Maria is passionate about the value of modern foreign languages in today’s job market, and a huge advocate for franchising as a valuable career choice for those looking at independent and self-employment options. Ole Spanish allows tutors to run their own Spanish-teaching franchise, in this episode listen to Maria talk about her journey to Ole Spanish, her newly published book ‘The Only Way is Ole’, and how you can get started in franchising.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head to bbk.ac.uk/futures for more details.
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
In a new series, the #FuturesPodcast will be delving into the world of enterprise and chatting with inspiring entrepreneurs and industry leaders across the UK start-up scene.
In our next episode, we meet with Ahmad Saqib, Founder and CEO of Vital Educators. Ahmad spent years teaching before setting up his business, and is committed to supporting young people’s educational journey in a practical and empathetic way. Vital Educators offer courses, match tutors to students, and Ahmad has his own podcast. Listen to Ahmad talk about his journey setting up Vital Educators, and the importance of staying positive through challenges and moving forwards as an entrepreneur.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head to bbk.ac.uk/futures for more details.
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
In our new series, the #FuturesPodcast will be talking to students and alumni about their experiences of studying at Birkbeck and the support they have accessed through Birkbeck Futures.
In this episode, we talk to Birkbeck alumnus Seyed Mohammad Ahlesaadat about his experiences of studying law and securing a training contract with global law firm BCLP.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head to bbk.ac.uk/futures for more details.
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
In our new series, the #FuturesPodcast will be talking to students and alumni about their experiences of studying at Birkbeck and the support they have accessed through Birkbeck Futures.
In this episode, we talk to Tosin Odelusi, BBK Alumna, about the marketing internships she secured via Birkbeck Talent.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head to bbk.ac.uk/futures for more details.
My guest is Haidee Elise Mulgrew recent graduate from the innovative Birkbeck & Central St Martins MBA and Founder of the Professional Dyslexic Talent Network. Haidee shares how her creativity and passion for design has influenced her career trajectory to date and champions how important it is that employers fully realise the potential of dyslexic talent.
Birkbeck Future’s Ability Programme is a dedicated course for students and recent graduates with a disability, neurodiverse or long term health condition, who are looking to get advice on finding a job they will love, supercharge job applications and get the opportunity to connect with disability confident employers. Find out more on our website tinyurl.com/y8f287bd or contact us at employability@bbk.ac.uk
You can find a transcript of the Podcast here https://1drv.ms/w/s!AvEfPODjtzngjRurdvvUoQ0U478_?e=HdBw1Z
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. In the Ability Programme Series we will be sharing our conversations with industry professionals, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni around disability and careers.
For this episode, we welcome Adam Tobias Co-Founder of Inventum Group and Neurodiversity Advocate. Adam shares his passion for disability inclusion and his thoughts on what is needed to make positive changes embracing diversity, along with a galvanising call to action for employers.
Birkbeck Future’s Ability Programme is a dedicated course for students and recent graduates with a disability, neurodiverse or long term health condition, who are looking to get advice on finding a job they will love, supercharge job applications and get the opportunity to connect with disability confident employers. Find out more on our website or contact us at employability@bbk.ac.uk
You can find the transcript of the podcast here: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AvEfPODjtzngi1cRxsBYSBNB5nKq?e=SgzxYh
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. In the Ability Programme Series will be sharing our conversations with industry professionals, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni around disability and careers.
For this episode, we welcome Michelle Pilkington who is an Organisational Psychologist, Birkbeck student and Ability Programme Alumna. Michelle shared her amazing career journey, her thoughts on inclusion and why she took part in the Ability Programme. https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-pilkington/
Birkbeck Future’s Ability Programme is a dedicated course for students and recent graduates with a disability, neurodiverse or long term health condition, who are looking to get advice on finding a job they will love, supercharge job applications and get the opportunity to connect with disability confident employers. Find out more on our website https://tinyurl.com/y8f287bd or contact us at employability@bbk.ac.uk
You can find a copy of the transcript here: https://tinyurl.com/ycwylzn5
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. In the Ability Programme Series will be sharing our conversations with industry professionals, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni around disability and careers.
For this episode, we welcome Paul Hubble who is an Associate Director with Barclays. Paul shared his career experience with the bank, some tips on wellbeing and his thoughts on being open about a disability when applying for jobs.
Birkbeck Future’s Ability Programme is a dedicated course for students and recent graduates with a disability, neurodiverse or long term health condition, who are looking to get advice on finding a job they will love, supercharge job applications and get the opportunity to connect with disability confident employers. Find out more on our website https://tinyurl.com/y8f287bd or contact us at employability@bbk.ac.uk
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. In the Ability Programme Series will be sharing our conversations with industry professionals, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni around disability and careers.
For this episode, we welcome Vaibhav Adlakha who is an Associate Solicitor with global law firm Reed Smith. Vaibhav shared his career journey and how he navigated the recruitment process as someone with a disability.
Birkbeck Future’s Ability Programme is a dedicated course for students and recent graduates with a disability, neurodiverse or long term health condition, who are looking to get advice on finding a job they will love, supercharge job applications and get the opportunity to connect with disability confident employers. Find out more on our website https://tinyurl.com/y8f287bd or contact us at employability@bbk.ac.uk
You can find the transcript of the podcast here: https://tinyurl.com/ycpv2ljz
What did books mean to women in the medieval to Enlightenment period – and how did they use them? Matt Clancy tells us about the fourteenth-century aristocrat Katherine Neville and her Book of Hours; Eva Lauenstein uses Mildred Cooke’s reading to examine the Reformation uses of books to influence not just religion but politics, and Lou Horton brings to light the extraordinary story of how Mary’s White’s reading shaped her famous brother Gilbert’s Natural History of Selbourne.
Matt Clancy (PhD Birkbeck, 2020),‘Katherine Neville and the Hastings Hours’
Matt Clancy shows how Katherine Neville, Baroness Hastings (1442-1504) was at the heart of the conflict we now know as the Wars of the Roses. Katherine and her husband, William, Baron Hastings, were close allies of King Edward IV of York, an association which led to Hastings’ death in 1483, when Richard III claimed the throne. Remarkably, however, Katherine survived and thrived. Her Book of Hours, known as the Hastings Hours, is now part of the British Library collection and gives a clear sense of Katherine’s place in events at the heart of the Yorkist faction. Please cite using Matt Clancy, ‘Katherine Neville and the Hastings Hours’ in Matt Clancy, Lou Horton and Eva Lauenstein, ‘Sociable Objects’ podcast, Birkbeck Arts Weeks 2020 online / 15 June 2020.
Eva Lauenstein (PhD ,Birkbeck, 2020), ‘Mildred Cecil, the Tomb and the Writing of Protestant Piety’
In Elizabethan England, your devotional reading was never entirely an inward-facing pastime, but always a highly politicised pious performance. When the scholar and translator Mildred Cooke Cecil (1526–1589) was buried in Westminster Abbey, her epitaph reminded readers that she ‘spent all her life in the study of sacred literature and the letters of holy men, especially the Greeks such as Basil the Great, Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus and similar others’. On her monument, Mildred’s library is opened to the viewing and reading public for scrutiny in a way that openly challenges ideas about reading as a private pastime. It suggest that the performance of female reading played an important role in the emergence of English Protestantism and its books. Please cite using Eva Lauenstein, ‘Mildred Cecil, the Tomb and the Writing of Protestant Piety’ in Matt Clancy, Lou Horton and Eva Lauenstein, ‘Sociable Objects’ podcast, Birkbeck Arts Weeks 2020 online / 15 June 2020.
Lou Horton (doctoral student at Birkbeck), ‘Sister Antiquary: How Molly White Read Medieval Poetry in Georgian London’
Born in 1759, Molly White was active in the London book trade in the last decades of the eighteenth century. This podcast delves into her private correspondence to listen to her discussing Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, as well as the classics, with family members. Through her own words, we recreate her bookcase shelving medieval poetry alongside eighteenth century collections of ballads and manuscripts to understand why her uncle – the natural historian – Gilbert White, declared her to be ‘sister antiquary’. This is part of work in progress. Please cite using Lou Horton, ‘Sister Antiquary: How Molly White Read Medieval Poetry in Georgian London’ in Matt Clancy, Lou Horton and Eva Lauenstein, ‘Sociable Objects’ podcast, Birkbeck Arts Weeks 2020 online / 15 June 2020.
Listen, and to see the image fully here: http://www.blakearchive.org/images/but442.1.1.wc.300.jpg.
Some of William Blake’s best- known images are of Satan, and he uses the Bible to think with throughout his art. Here, one of Britain’s foremost Blake scholars introduces you to his little-known image of ‘Pestilence’ and his thinking on the book of Exodus.
To cite this podcast: Luisa Calè, Pestilence, Birkbeck Arts Weeks online 2020 /June 8. William Blake, ‘Pestilence: The Death of the First-Born’, c. 1805, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’
Flann O'Brien (also known as Myles na gCopaleen), brought his uproarious adaptations of Goethe's Faust and the Čapek brothers' Insect Play, along with his own inimitable sketch Thirst, to the Dublin stage in 1942-43. Join Birkbeck’s Joseph Brooker and Tobias Harris and reader extraordinaire Hugh Wilde to explore these rarely heard plays.
‘The Smoke’, as I’ve called this presentation, comes out of my work on nineteenth-century Manchester, a book-length version of which I hope to have finished by the end of this year. Often known as the ‘first industrial city’ or ‘shock city’, Manchester’s architectural, urban and visual forms have been surprisingly little discussed. I’m interested in whether we can use them to make a similar kind of claim to the one Walter Benjamin made of Paris as the ‘capital of the nineteenth century’. The engraving discussed here will open my book and be used as an introduction to its coverage and main issues.
Mark Crinson, Professor of Architectural History, Birkbeck
Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and Desire in the Age of Consent is Katherine Angel's third book, and is coming out in February 2021, published by Verso. Her first book, Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell was published by Penguin, and her second, Daddy Issues: An Essay on Fathers and Feminism, by Peninsula Press. Katherine is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck and runs the MA in Creative and Critical Writing.
Read an extract of the chapter: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4573-sex-and-self-knowledge-beyond-consent
Use promotional code 'BBK' to buy the e-book of Daddy Issues half price: The ebook can be found here: https://peninsulapress.co.uk/product/daddy-issues?attribute_book-type=e-book
Listen to John Henderson on what an extraordinary image evoking what it was like to live through plague in Renaissance Florence, the subject of his new book Under Siege: Surviving Plague in an Early Modern City (Yale, 2019), and Yale have made a chapter available here https://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2020/04/24/surviving-plague-an-extract-from-florence-under-siege/
IMAGE CREDIT Luigi Baccio del Bianco, The Plague in Florence in 1630 (pre-1657), Venerabile Arciconfraternita della Misericordia di Firenze. akg-images / Rabatti & Domingie.
Mark Blacklock reads from his latest novel, Hinton (Granta, April 2020) which explores the strange worlds of pioneer of the fourth dimension, Howard Hinton.
Mark Blacklock is a novelist and cultural historian and teaches on Birkbeck's MA Creative and Critical Writing. He is the author of I'm Jack (London: Granta, 2015) and The Emergence of the Fourth Dimension (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Hinton is his second novel. Mark is currently working on a new edition of the non-fiction of the British author J.G. Ballard and writing his third novel.
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
In a new series, the #FuturesPodcast will be delving into the world of enterprise and chatting with inspiring entrepreneurs and industry leaders across the UK start-up scene.
In our next episode, we meet with Elisa Damaliti, Founder and CEO of AOG Consultancy. Elisa’s experience in setting up this holistic business consultancy agency is a masterclass in hard work, creativity and integrity. Upon uprooting her life to move to Dubai, somewhere she’d never been before, Elisa cultivated a loyal and engaged network through her clever use of social media and now works with some of the biggest brands around. Listen to Elisa talk about social media, the importance of authenticity in marketing, and her advice for shoestring budgets.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head to bbk.ac.uk/futures for more details.
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
In a new series, the #FuturesPodcast will be delving into the world of enterprise and chatting with inspiring entrepreneurs and industry leaders across the UK start-up scene.
In our next episode in this new series, we meet with Dan Hudson, Founder and CEO of Gigl. With over a decade of experience in HR and recruitment, tied with a naturally entrepreneurial nature, Dan is the ideal person to run his own innovative recruitment start-up. Gigl is a totally video-based recruitment app, by which job descriptions and applications all operate in a video format. Listen to Dan discuss his background in recruitment, his experience running a tech business without a tech background, and crucially – his advice for keeping productive and making the most of your time during lockdown.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head to bbk.ac.uk/futures for more details.
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
In a new series, the #FuturesPodcast will be delving into the world of enterprise and chatting with inspiring entrepreneurs and industry leaders across the UK start-up scene.
In our first episode in this new series, we meet with Kofi Oppong, Founder and CEO of Urban MBA. Kofi has a wealth of professional expertise and life experience to back up his programmes at Urban MBA, “the university for street entrepreneurs”, which provide enterprise education, employment training and life skills to people from all walks of life. Listen to Kofi discuss his background and work experience, how he set up Urban MBA, and his advice for staying ahead of the curve as an entrepreneur in the face of rapid technological advancements.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head to bbk.ac.uk/futures for more details.
Welcome to Big Ideas, a podcast series to accompany Birkbeck’s free public lecture series, where academics bring their research out to local communities around London, sharing the exciting and innovative work that happens at Birkbeck, and opening up the world of research and universities.
The series is organised by Birkbeck’s Access and Engagement team, who support underrepresented groups of people to apply and succeed in study here at Birkbeck, University of London.
In this podcast, Sophie Swain and Hester Gartrell from Birkbeck's Access and Engagement Department discuss the 'Big Ideas' lecture series and how academics can get involved in 2020.
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
On this episode, we welcome Selina Yankson, Digital Marketing Manager, career coach and Birkbeck Alumna. We talk through all things marketing and we look at the idea of going freelance. Selina discusses the importance of continuously upskilling yourself to remain competitive and grow your career.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head over to your bit.ly/MyBirkbeck profile now to register with Birkbeck Talent (you’ll find us under the ‘Study Support & other Services’ Tab), to see all our live roles and follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date! linkedin.com/showcase/birkbeck-talent
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
For this episode, we are joined by Alina Ghost, SEO expert & podcast host. Alina’s worked across the likes of Tesco, Debenhams & Carpet Right and now at Amara Living. We talk through what SEO actually means & what a career in SEO looks like. Her advice is to be patient and wait for the right opportunity for you.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head over to your bit.ly/MyBirkbeck profile now to register with Birkbeck Talent (you’ll find us under the ‘Study Support & other Services’ Tab), to see all our live roles and follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date! linkedin.com/showcase/birkbeck-talent
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
In this episode we are joined by Kate Temple-Brown, Early Careers expert. Kate studied Drama & English at University and then fell into the city working at a stockbroker, moving onto working in HR across the Banking industry. Kate shares her top tips for starting a career in banking, what you can expect and how to get your foot in the door.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head over to your bit.ly/MyBirkbeck profile now to register with Birkbeck Talent (you’ll find us under the ‘Study Support & other Services’ Tab), to see all our live roles and follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date! linkedin.com/showcase/birkbeck-talent
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
For this episode, we welcome Birkbeck Alumnus, Imran Arain, Cyber Security Consultant at KPMG. Imran spent 9 years working in the army in Pakistan before moving to the UK where he worked in several different roles before enrolling at Birkbeck and starting a career at KPMG. Imran shared so much invaluable advice; his leaving thought is to be bold.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head over to your bit.ly/MyBirkbeck profile now to register with Birkbeck Talent (you’ll find us under the ‘Study Support & other Services’ Tab), to see all our live roles and follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date! linkedin.com/showcase/birkbeck-talent
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
On this episode, Emma Lacy, Business Operations Leader at Oracle & Early Tech Careers founder, joins us to share her experience of working in tech. Emma has become an ambassador for woman in tech and has been nominated as one of the most influential woman in her industry. A key point in this podcast is do what you enjoy and be true to yourself. We also discuss the power of LinkedIn and networking, and the impact this has had on Emma’s career.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head over to your bit.ly/MyBirkbeck profile now to register with Birkbeck Talent (you’ll find us under the ‘Study Support & other Services’ Tab), to see all our live roles and follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date! linkedin.com/showcase/birkbeck-talent
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
In this episode, we meet with life coach, Edwina Lawson from the digital team at EE. Edwina started her career in the NHS before moving onto a digital graduate scheme. We explore the world of digital and discuss mentors, applications, job search motivations and much more! Her biggest piece of advice is to relax, and to remember; if you do not know now, you will know later.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head over to your bit.ly/MyBirkbeck profile now to register with Birkbeck Talent (you’ll find us under the ‘Study Support & other Services’ Tab), to see all our live roles and follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date! linkedin.com/showcase/birkbeck-talent
Episode 5: Managing academic and social culture shock by Birkbeck, University of London
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
In this episode, Hishem Azzouz joins us, to discuss all things personal brand and its impact on growing your career. Hishem discusses what a personal brand is, how you can develop yours and shares his views on how much of an asset a personal brand is throughout your career.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head over to your bit.ly/MyBirkbeck profile now to register with Birkbeck Talent (you’ll find us under the ‘Study Support & other Services’ Tab), to see all our live roles and follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date! linkedin.com/showcase/birkbeck-talent
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
For this episode, we welcome Daniel McCoy, Birkbeck Alumnus & Head of Business Development at Photocert, a growing start-up, which has recently been selected to join an accelerator programme backed by Barclays. Daniel started his degree at Birkbeck, full-time alongside working 50-60 hours in a management role before graduating and joining a start-up. Daniel discusses how he developed his transferable skills from his earlier career and pitched his experience in applications & interviews. His advice is to be more explorative with your career earlier, take advantage of internships, volunteering and new opportunities and utilise the support & guidance you have available to you whilst at University.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head over to your bit.ly/MyBirkbeck profile now to register with Birkbeck Talent (you’ll find us under the ‘Study Support & other Services’ Tab), to see all our live roles and follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date! linkedin.com/showcase/birkbeck-talent
Welcome to the #FuturesPodcast, a podcast series created by the Birkbeck Futures team, here at Birkbeck, University of London. We will be sharing our conversations with industry leaders, hiring managers and Birkbeck Alumni to offer you an invaluable platform for industry knowledge and career support, from relevant and relatable sources.
In our first episode, we meet with Mo Jamei, Birkbeck Alumnus and Manager at PWC working in the Fiscal Policy team. Mo started his career in the Civil Service as an economist, then to a trade association where he then decided to apply for a Masters at Birkbeck, University of London. Mo shares his experience, his advice on how to build your skillset and how you can start a career in Fiscal Policy.
Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support our students and graduates in their future lives. Go further in your career with our dedicated services to enhance your skills, develop a business idea and connect with employers for your next career step. Head over to your bit.ly/MyBirkbeck profile now to register with Birkbeck Talent (you’ll find us under the ‘Study Support & other Services’ Tab), to see all our live roles and follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date! linkedin.com/showcase/birkbeck-talent
Welcome to Big Ideas, a podcast series to accompany Birkbeck’s free public lecture series, where academics bring their research out to local communities around London, sharing the exciting and innovative work that happens at Birkbeck, and opening up the world of research and universities.
The series is organised by Birkbeck’s Access and Engagement team, who support underrepresented groups of people to apply and succeed in study here at Birkbeck, University of London.
In this podcast we meet Professor Adam Gearey from Birkbeck's School of Law. He argues that the offshore industry has been used to conceal staggering amounts of money and assets in such a way as to make them invisible to national governments, and that there is very little distinction between dirty and clean money. Adam's talk will take place on 18 June 2019 at City and Islington College‘s Centre for Lifelong Learning in Finsbury Park.
Book your free place to attend the talk here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbecks-big-ideas-dirty-money-the-offshore-industry-wealth-and-the-abuse-of-privilege-tickets-62475641325
As part of Arts Week 2019, Dr Sasha Dovzhyk held a screening and discussion of Askold Kurov’s documentary 'The Trial,' which investigates the truth about the arrest and imprisonment of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov by Russian FSB.
Welcome to Arts Week 2019 and the Monday Medley. Professor Sue Wiseman interviews guests, academics and artists about the events taking place over the course of the week.
Birkbeck Arts Week runs from 20-24 May 2019. Find out more and book onto events: www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/about-us/events/arts-week
Birkbeck MFA theatre students discuss their upcoming #BBKArtsWeek event 'Testimony: a theatrical exploration' at the Birkbeck School of Arts on 23 May 2019.
What can and can't we say in public in the modern world? Join us for a new interactive performance exploring truth, secrets and confidences, inspired by the facsinating testimony of three 17th century Calvinist women: Hannah Allen, Anna Trapnel and Sarah Wight. Students on the MFA Theatre Directing present a devised exploration.
For more information and to book your place: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/testimony-a-theatrical-exploration-tickets-59158030261
As part of the CIMR Financing Innovation Workshop, held on 16th April 2014, Jinmin Wang from the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at University of Nottingham presents his talk: How Government Venture Capital Guiding Funds Work in Financing High-Tech Start-Ups in China: A ‘Strategic Exchange’ Perspective
More information: www.bbk.ac.uk/cimr/2014/02/14/financing-innovation-workshop
The Birkbeck Centre for Innovation Management (CIMR) is a college-wide research Centre of Birkbeck, University of London. Launched in 2008, it undertakes international research focusing on multi-disciplinary academic, industrial and commercial themes relating to the management of innovation. It is a hub for enabling collaborations, teaching and sharing of research, ideas and practice to create impact and facilitate more effective management, commercialisation of innovation and the development of effective policy. Our researchers regularly publish in top quality journals, present at international conferences and undertake consultancy for national and international policy-making bodies and research for influential think tanks.
More information: www.bbk.ac.uk/cimr
As part of the CIMR Financing Innovation Workshop, held on 16th April 2014, Stephanie Macht from Newcastle Business School at Northumbria University presents her talk: The Benefits of Online Crowdfunding for Fund-Seeking Business Ventures.
More information: www.bbk.ac.uk/cimr/2014/02/14/financing-innovation-workshop
The Birkbeck Centre for Innovation Management (CIMR) is a college-wide research Centre of Birkbeck, University of London. Launched in 2008, it undertakes international research focusing on multi-disciplinary academic, industrial and commercial themes relating to the management of innovation. It is a hub for enabling collaborations, teaching and sharing of research, ideas and practice to create impact and facilitate more effective management, commercialisation of innovation and the development of effective policy. Our researchers regularly publish in top quality journals, present at international conferences and undertake consultancy for national and international policy-making bodies and research for influential think tanks.
More information: www.bbk.ac.uk/cimr
‘Self-Education and Mentoring in the Domestic Medical Texts of Margaret Mason, Lady Mount Cashell’ - Dr Alexis Wolf (Birkbeck, University of London)
Friday 5 April: ‘A Species of Knowledge’: Women and Medicine 1750-1850
This an interdisciplinary symposium, examined the ways that women gained, exchanged, and recorded medical knowledge during the period 1750-1850, including through correspondence, manuscript circulation, publication, apprenticeship, and training while considering how women engaged in medical practice in a variety of contexts.
‘Women Advisers to the Foundling Hospital Governors’ Friday 5 April: ‘A Species of Knowledge’: Women and Medicine 1750-1850 - Janette Bright (Institute of Historical Research, University of London)
This an interdisciplinary symposium, examined the ways that women gained, exchanged, and recorded medical knowledge during the period 1750-1850, including through correspondence, manuscript circulation, publication, apprenticeship, and training while considering how women engaged in medical practice in a variety of contexts.
‘Seniority, Experience, and On-the-job Training at British Naval Hospitals 1775-1815’ - Dr Erin Spinney (Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford)
Friday 5 April: ‘A Species of Knowledge’: Women and Medicine 1750-1850
This an interdisciplinary symposium, examined the ways that women gained, exchanged, and recorded medical knowledge during the period 1750-1850, including through correspondence, manuscript circulation, publication, apprenticeship, and training while considering how women engaged in medical practice in a variety of contexts.
Knowledge, negotiation and nervous disorder in the diary and letters of Sara Coleridge, 1832-43 - Professor Hilary Marland (University of Warwick), keynote speaker
Friday 5 April: ‘A Species of Knowledge’: Women and Medicine 1750-1850
This an interdisciplinary symposium, examined the ways that women gained, exchanged, and recorded medical knowledge during the period 1750-1850, including through correspondence, manuscript circulation, publication, apprenticeship, and training while considering how women engaged in medical practice in a variety of contexts.
Welcome to Big Ideas, a podcast series to accompany Birkbeck’s free public lecture series, where academics bring their research out to local communities around London, sharing the exciting and innovative work that happens at Birkbeck, and opening up the world of research and universities.
The series is organised by Birkbeck’s Access and Engagement team, who support underrepresented groups of people to apply and succeed in study here at Birkbeck, University of London.
In this podcast we meet Natalie Lancer, PhD researcher at Birkbeck's Department of Psychological Sciences. She is looking to understand how students having one-to-one coaching grow at university and initially found that students developed their social skills and their confidence. Natalie’s talk will take place on Tuesday 21 May 2019 at City and Islington College‘s Centre for Lifelong Learning in Finsbury Park.
Book your free place to attend her talk here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbecks-big-ideas-do-lifes-tensions-help-us-grow-how-we-experience-growth-and-how-coaching-can-tickets-53916467606
Episode 4 - Resilience and the job market: managing competition and perfectionism by Birkbeck, University of London
Episode 3 - Self-esteem and taking up your place at university by Birkbeck, University of London
Professor Julia Lovell from Birkbeck’s Department of History, Classics and Archaeology discusses the evolution and legacy of Maoism, both in China and internationally.
Professor Lovell’s book, Maoism: A Global History, is published in March 2019, by The Bodley Head.
Professor Lovell teaches on the following programmes - MA Global History http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/2019/postgraduate/programmes/TMAGHESC_C/ - BA History programmes http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/course_search?q=History&lvl=ug
Welcome to Big Ideas, a podcast series to accompany Birkbeck’s free public lecture series, where academics bring their research out to local communities around London, sharing the exciting and innovative work that happens at Birkbeck, and opening up the world of research and universities.
The series is organised by Birkbeck’s Access and Engagement team, who support underrepresented groups of people to apply and succeed in study here at Birkbeck, University of London.
In this podcast we meet Dr Szymon Manka,who discusses the fast-growing scientific field of epigenetics, and why we should care about it. Szymon's talk will take place on Tuesday 19 March at City and Islington College‘s Centre for Lifelong Learning in Finsbury Park. Book your free place to attend his talk here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbecks-big-ideas-beyond-genetics-how-is-everyone-unique-tickets-53913295117
On Wednesday 30 January, the Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies welcomed Dr. Linda Freedman (UCL) to mark the 200th anniversary of Walt Whitman's birth with two papers that examined his reception in Victorian Britain.
In his 1868 Essay on William Blake, Algernon Charles Swinburne closed with a comparison to Whitman in which he claimed: ‘The points of contact and sides of likeness between William Blake and Walt Whitman are so many and so grave, as to afford some ground of reason to those who preach the transition of souls or transfusion of spirits.’ For Swinburne, they were prophets of democracy and he, like many of the international avant-garde in London, put his faith in poetry, not politics, to herald a new dawn of republicanism in Britain. But when Swinburne championed Blake as a home-grown Whitman, America’s self-declared prophet of democracy was beginning to wonder whether he had been right to put his faith in poetry. The comparisons between Blake and Whitman were unequivocal and optimistic. Moncure Conway called Whitman: ‘the re-appearance of William Blake in America’. Whitman’s friend William O’Connor thought, much to Whitman’s chagrin, that his poetry was ‘indistinguishable’ from Blake’s. The irony, however, is that Blake and Whitman shared a great deal more in frustration than optimism, doubting, rather like the Biblical prophets on whom they partly modelled their verse, in their own power to effect social change. The prophecies of Blake and Whitman frequently tip into lamentation for worlds which might have been. But, in his desire to capitalise on American associations with freshness and new beginnings, Swinburne either didn’t notice, or deliberately reversed, the haunting and unwelcome sense of lateness in the writing of both Blake and Whitman. The affinities between Blake and Whitman have been thoroughly recognised in Blake’s twentieth-century American reception, but the ironies of Swinburne’s initial comparison, and their historical context, have been somewhat overlooked. They are worth exposing.
On Wednesday 30 January, the Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies welcomed Prof. Michael Robertson (The College of New Jersey)to mark the 200th anniversary of Walt Whitman's birth with two papers that examined his reception in Victorian Britain.
During the 1890s, Whitmanite activity in Britain was centered, improbably, in the northern industrial town of Bolton, where a group of lower-middle-class men corresponded regularly with Whitman, made pilgrimages to his home in Camden, New Jersey, and were in frequent contact with every prominent Whitman apologist in Britain and North America. The men of the Eagle Street College, as they called themselves, integrated multiple approaches to Whitman’s poetry: religious, political, and most of all affectional. Contemporaries of early homosexual theorists Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, they were stirred by Whitman’s paeans to male love, but they had no interest in the emerging Continental discipline of sexology. Instead, they created a male world of love and ritual centered on Leaves of Grass and through their connections to Britain’s nascent socialist movements promoted a utopian vision of a future society grounded in Whitmanian comradeship.
Welcome to Big Ideas, a podcast series to accompany Birkbeck’s free public lecture series, where academics bring their research out to local communities around London, sharing the exciting and innovative work that happens at Birkbeck, and opening up the world of research and universities.
The series is organised by Birkbeck’s Access and Engagement team, who support underrepresented groups of people to apply and succeed in study here at Birkbeck, University of London.
In this podcast we meet PhD candidate Keith Jarrett, who discusses how his research into an overlooked segment of Caribbean Pentecostalism has led him to write an experimental novel. Keith’s Big Ideas talk will be on Tuesday 12 February at City and Islington College‘s Centre for Lifelong Learning in Finsbury Park. Book your free place to attend his talk here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbecks-big-ideas-writing-as-research-exploring-the-migration-of-caribbean-religion-and-identity-tickets-53994201109
Welcome to Big Ideas, a podcast series to accompany Birkbeck’s free public lecture series, where academics bring their research out to local communities around London, sharing the exciting and innovative work that happens at Birkbeck, and opening up the world of research and universities.
The series is organised by Birkbeck’s Access and Engagement team, who support underrepresented groups of people to apply and succeed in study here at Birkbeck, University of London.
In this podcast we meet Dr Mark Panton, whose research explores how stadium-led regeneration affects local communities. Mark’s Big Ideas talk will be on Tuesday 15 January at City and Islington College‘s Centre for Lifelong Learning in Finsbury Park. Book your free place to attend his talk here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbecks-big-ideas-does-stadium-led-regeneration-work-tickets-53538871205
A one-day symposium discussing the most important aspects of scholarly editing for those new to the field.
To learn more about the event and the CHASE consortium visit: https://www.chase.ac.uk/scholarly-editing/
A one-day symposium discussing the most important aspects of scholarly editing for those new to the field.
To learn more about the event and the CHASE consortium visit: https://www.chase.ac.uk/scholarly-editing/
A one-day symposium discussing the most important aspects of scholarly editing for those new to the field.
To learn more about the event and the CHASE consortium visit: https://www.chase.ac.uk/scholarly-editing/
A one-day symposium discussing the most important aspects of scholarly editing for those new to the field.
To learn more about the event and the CHASE consortium visit: https://www.chase.ac.uk/scholarly-editing/
Dr Alex Colás and Dr Jason Edwards travel between three London destinations to discuss the themes in their new book 'Food, Politics and Society: Social Theory and the Modern Food System'. They first visit the Princess Louise Pub in Holborn, where they discuss the politicisation of alcohol, such as how attitudes to drinking are shaped by class and gender; then to Pisqu, a Peruvian restaurant in Fitzrovia, where they explore the contemporary, capitalist food system and its origins in the Columbian exchange; and finally, Dr Colas meets Professor Sami Zubaida at Tottenham Court Road Food Market, to hear his insights into the relationships between food, globalisation and nationalism.
Find out more at a launch event for the book: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/food-politics-and-society-book-launch-tickets-52211191078 or buy a copy online: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520291959/food-politics-and-society
Find out more about the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies: http://www.cncs.bbk.ac.uk/
By Simon Jarrett.
Find out more about the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies: http://www.cncs.bbk.ac.uk/
Cara Dobbing explores patient engagement and the equality of care in the nineteenth-century lunatic asylum.
Find out more about the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies: http://www.cncs.bbk.ac.uk/
By Peder Clark.
Find out more about the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies: http://www.cncs.bbk.ac.uk/
Emily Turner discusses Craiglockhart staff and Hydra writers as medical activists.
Find out more about the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies: http://www.cncs.bbk.ac.uk/
Sophie Almond discusses the socio-medical activism of the Association of Registered Medical Women (ARMW), who acted ‘In the interests of medical women, of medical men, and of the nation as a whole’.
Find out more about the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies: http://www.cncs.bbk.ac.uk/
Jo Waugh explores the impact of the typhus epidemic of 1847.
Find out more about the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies: http://www.cncs.bbk.ac.uk/
Ian Miller discusses force feeding, female prisoners, and medical activism in Britain, c. 1909–75.
Find out more about the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies: http://www.cncs.bbk.ac.uk/
Whistleblowing is a hot topic from Hollywood to Canary Wharf. It is rarely out of the media. But have you ever stopped to think about how we ‘talk’ about whistleblowing? Which words do we choose and why? Do those words matter? Liz Hornby, PhD candidate in the Department of Management discusses all these things and more, ahead of her Big Ideas talk on 15 November.
Big Ideas is Birkbeck's public lecture series, bringing ground-breaking Birkbeck research to our local communities. They are free to attend and open to everyone. Book your place here to Liz's talk here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbecks-big-ideas-did-i-just-blow-the-whistle-how-do-we-talk-about-whistleblowing-tickets-51706248782
Waiting is one of healthcare’s core experiences. It is there in the time it takes to access services; through the days, weeks, months or years needed for diagnoses; in the time that treatment takes; and in the elongated time-frames of recovery, relapse, remission and dying. Professor Lisa Baraitser from Birkbeck’s Department of Psychosocial Studies explores how waiting can itself be a form of care, and challenges assumptions about the value of waiting, counteracting the current political use of ‘waiting times’ as a tool for dismantling the NHS. This is part of interdisciplinary research project, Waiting Times (http://waitingtimes.exeter.ac.uk/), funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Professor Baraitser will be discussing these ideas further in a free public lecture on 31 October, as part of the Big Ideas series. Book your place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbecks-big-ideas-waiting-and-care-in-rushed-times-tickets-50949666825
A panel discussion with Prof Veena Das, Prof Lyndsey Stonebridge and Dr Anna Rowlands, 4 June 2018.
Dr Sarah Thomas from Birkbeck's Department of History of Art examines the powerful impact of slave-ownership on some of Britain’s key cultural institutions, and how the brutal system of colonial slavery infused the world of aesthetics and taste during the first half of the nineteenth century.
In particular, she looks at the impact of the £20 million paid by the British government to former slave-owners to compensate for their loss of income on the abolition of slavery on artworks, collections and cultural institutions.
She will be discussing these ideas further at a Big Ideas lecture on 5 July 2018 at Birkbeck's Stratford campus. Free places can be booked here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbecks-big-ideas-the-art-of-compensation-slavery-and-british-culture-stratford-tickets-43164879316
The Centre for the Study of Internationalism launched with a lecture by Professor Holly Case examining ‘The Age of Questions’. The talk focused on a period in modern history – roughly 1810 to 1950 – when ‘questions’ reigned. The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy wrote his views on the ‘Eastern question’ through the character in Anna Karenina, the future president of Czechoslovakia penned over 700 pages on the ‘social question’, and a German novelist expressed his immoderate views on the ‘oyster question’. When and why did people start thinking in terms of ‘questions’ and what did it mean?
The Centre for the Study of Internationalism provides an intellectual home for researchers from a range of academic disciplines with interests in internationalism, broadly conceived.
For more information: https://centreforthestudyofinternationalism.wordpress.com/2017/06/21/the-age-of-questions
.
The Centre for the Study of Internationalism recently welcomed Alanna O’Malley, Assistant Professor of History and International Relations at Leiden University, to talk on her book, The Diplomacy of Decolonisation: America, Britain and the United Nations during the Congo Crisis 1960-64.
The book examines the role of the UN during the Congo Crisis from 1960 to 1964 and in her talk Dr O’Malley argued this was a pivotal moment in the Cold War. Through examining the divergent positions adopted by the US and Britain in response to the crisis, and the effect of this on relations, she demonstrated how the UN helped to position the crisis as a lightning rod for debates regarding decolonisation.
The Centre for the Study of Internationalism provides an intellectual home for researchers from a range of academic disciplines with interests in internationalism, broadly conceived.
For more information: https://centreforthestudyofinternationalism.wordpress.com/2018/04/23/the-diplomacy-of-decolonisation
.
The collision of the sublime and the ethical is as unavoidable as the political crises that make us attend to antique ruins with sudden and renewed urgency. This presentation addresses the difficulty of reaching a perspective on damaged objects—a challenge that is both methodological and conceptual. The Comte de Volney’s memorable evocation of Palmyra in his widely influential Reflections on the Revolutions of Empires (1791) and John Ruskin’s searching reflections on the power of ruins and the creative drives of modernity in Modern Painters (1843-1861) offer an opportunity to explore the implications of a question that has never been more pressing: is the surveying of damage always only synonymous with overlooking it? Responding to the acute pressures of a not too-distant past, Volney and Ruskin enjoin us to consider how looking over ruins might become a new mode of seeing. The much publicized situation of antiquities at risk in zones of conflict, and the challenges posed by the movements of displaced peoples in (and out of) those same regions make it all the more vital for us to understand the ethics of over-looking.
Speaker: Jonah Siegel is Professor of English and Co-Director of the British Studies Center at Rutgers University. Aside from numerous articles on literature and the fine arts, he is the author of two books, Desire & Excess: The Nineteenth-Century Culture of Art (2000), and Haunted Museum: Longing, Travel, and the Art-Romance Tradition (2005) and the editor of The Emergence of the Modern Museum: An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Sources (2007). He is currently completing two books, Material Inspirations: The Interest of the Art Object and Beauty and Damage: Essays on Display and Loss.
Shooting Galleries: Soldiering, Domesticity and Art
Trooper George’s shooting gallery turned refuge in Dickens’s Bleak House encourages us to think about the interleaving of military and domestic cultures in mid-Victorian Britain. I take George and his shooting gallery community as representative of the Victorian investment in domesticating the military man. At the same time soldiers themselves made strenuous efforts to forge connections between their military and home identities, often using art and craft to keep in touch with family and friends and to emphasise shared skills and experiences. After a Dickens prologue, this paper focuses on my research for the current exhibition ‘Created in Conflict: British Soldier Art from the Crimean War to Today’, exploring continuities in the emotional work of soldier art and considering the ways in which soldiers’ creativity can be deployed to make us feel both better and worse about war.
Why did Britain vote to leave the European Union in 2016? Dr Dionyssis Dimitrakopoulos argues that many of the reasons people voted to leave the EU are directly related to key decisions made by British governments: politicians who were voted into power by the British people.
He will be discussing these ideas further at the next Big Ideas event, at Birkbeck's Stratford campus on 28 June 2018. Tickets are free but booking is required. Find out more and book your place: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbecks-big-ideas-why-brexit-is-unbritish-stratford-tickets-43127122384
Militant suffragettes’ public demonstrations often deployed the visual arts. Exploring their campaigns, Gillian Murphy (Women’s Library, LSE) introduces the Artists’ Suffrage League and banners from their archive, while Monica Walker (Old Operating Theatre Museum) investigates links between art and militancy through the defacing of the Rokeby Venus.
Militant suffragettes’ public demonstrations often deployed the visual arts. Exploring their campaigns, Gillian Murphy (Women’s Library, LSE) introduces the Artists’ Suffrage League and banners from their archive, while Monica Walker (Old Operating Theatre Museum) investigates links between art and militancy through the defacing of the Rokeby Venus.
As part of the CIMR Financing Innovation Workshop, held on 16th April 2014, Pierre Nadeau presents his talk "A Global Overview of Venture Capital and Alternative Sources of Entrepreneurial Finance".
More information: www.bbk.ac.uk/cimr/2014/02/14/fi…nnovation-workshop
The Birkbeck Centre for Innovation Management (CIMR) is a college-wide research Centre of Birkbeck, University of London. Launched in 2008, it undertakes international research focusing on multi-disciplinary academic, industrial and commercial themes relating to the management of innovation. It is a hub for enabling collaborations, teaching and sharing of research, ideas and practice to create impact and facilitate more effective management, commercialisation of innovation and the development of effective policy. Our researchers regularly publish in top quality journals, present at international conferences and undertake consultancy for national and international policy-making bodies and research for influential think tanks.
More information: www.bbk.ac.uk/cimr
As part of the CIMR Financing Innovation Workshop, held on 16th April 2014, Benjamin Hamilton, of ZEQUS, presents his talk "ZEQUS: Crowdfunding Platform as Featured in BBC, CNN and Bloomberg".
More information: www.bbk.ac.uk/cimr/2014/02/14/financing-innovation-workshop
The Birkbeck Centre for Innovation Management (CIMR) is a college-wide research Centre of Birkbeck, University of London. Launched in 2008, it undertakes international research focusing on multi-disciplinary academic, industrial and commercial themes relating to the management of innovation. It is a hub for enabling collaborations, teaching and sharing of research, ideas and practice to create impact and facilitate more effective management, commercialisation of innovation and the development of effective policy. Our researchers regularly publish in top quality journals, present at international conferences and undertake consultancy for national and international policy-making bodies and research for influential think tanks.
More information: www.bbk.ac.uk/cimr
Professor Ken Gemes from Birkbeck's Department of Philosophy discusses Nietzsche's conception of nihilism, and how it relates to the rise of populist politics, including the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote.
He will be discussing these ideas further at Birkbeck's next Big Ideas event, at City and Islington College on 29 May 2018. Tickets are free but booking is required. Find out more and book your place: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbecks-big-ideas-nihilism-whats-behind-the-brexit-vote-and-the-rise-of-donald-trump-finsbury-park-tickets-39284543126
Welcome to Art Week 2018. In this podcast, Sue Wiseman and Louise Owen from the School of Arts speak to some of the performers and artists whose events took place on Monday; Greek chorus cabaret Myth Independent; Birkbeck Artist-in-Residence Lily Hunter Green with her immersive sound and art project, Bee Composed Live; director Brian Logan from the Camden People's Theatre; plus special guest Bernie, who looks after the School of Arts all year round.
Birkbeck Arts Week runs from 14-18 May 2018. Find out more and book onto events: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/about-us/events/arts-week
Marking 120 years since Beardsley’s death, The Eve of St Aubrey: Re†Collecting Beardsley (1872-1898) symposium brought together established and emerging scholars of the artist to examine his works, his public image, and his new – global – place in the art canon. The interdisciplinary symposium unlocked the geographical and chronological boundaries of the ‘Beardsley Period’ by reassessing the artist’s international reception and the impact of his aesthetics on modern movements in art, literature, ballet, cinema, and fashion.
Professor Denis Mareschal, Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development talks about the successes of Birkbeck's pioneering Babylab in identifying early markers of autism in infants.
We are currently crowdfunding to be able to extend these learnings to toddlers with the world's first ToddlerLab, and to transform the lives of children with developmental disorders. If you would like to contribute, please go to our crowdfunding page: birkbeck.hubbub.net/p/toddlerlab/
Marking 120 years since Beardsley’s death, The Eve of St Aubrey: Re†Collecting Beardsley (1872-1898) symposium brought together established and emerging scholars of the artist to examine his works, his public image, and his new – global – place in the art canon. The interdisciplinary symposium unlocked the geographical and chronological boundaries of the ‘Beardsley Period’ by reassessing the artist’s international reception and the impact of his aesthetics on modern movements in art, literature, ballet, cinema, and fashion.
Marking 120 years since Beardsley’s death, The Eve of St Aubrey: Re†Collecting Beardsley (1872-1898) symposium brought together established and emerging scholars of the artist to examine his works, his public image, and his new – global – place in the art canon. The interdisciplinary symposium unlocked the geographical and chronological boundaries of the ‘Beardsley Period’ by reassessing the artist’s international reception and the impact of his aesthetics on modern movements in art, literature, ballet, cinema, and fashion.
Marking 120 years since Beardsley’s death, The Eve of St Aubrey: Re†Collecting Beardsley (1872-1898) symposium brought together established and emerging scholars of the artist to examine his works, his public image, and his new – global – place in the art canon. The interdisciplinary symposium unlocked the geographical and chronological boundaries of the ‘Beardsley Period’ by reassessing the artist’s international reception and the impact of his aesthetics on modern movements in art, literature, ballet, cinema, and fashion.
Marking 120 years since Beardsley’s death, The Eve of St Aubrey: Re†Collecting Beardsley (1872-1898) symposium brought together established and emerging scholars of the artist to examine his works, his public image, and his new – global – place in the art canon. The interdisciplinary symposium unlocked the geographical and chronological boundaries of the ‘Beardsley Period’ by reassessing the artist’s international reception and the impact of his aesthetics on modern movements in art, literature, ballet, cinema, and fashion.
Marking 120 years since Beardsley’s death, The Eve of St Aubrey: Re†Collecting Beardsley (1872-1898) symposium brought together established and emerging scholars of the artist to examine his works, his public image, and his new – global – place in the art canon. The interdisciplinary symposium unlocked the geographical and chronological boundaries of the ‘Beardsley Period’ by reassessing the artist’s international reception and the impact of his aesthetics on modern movements in art, literature, ballet, cinema, and fashion.
Marking 120 years since Beardsley’s death, The Eve of St Aubrey: Re†Collecting Beardsley (1872-1898) symposium brought together established and emerging scholars of the artist to examine his works, his public image, and his new – global – place in the art canon. The interdisciplinary symposium unlocked the geographical and chronological boundaries of the ‘Beardsley Period’ by reassessing the artist’s international reception and the impact of his aesthetics on modern movements in art, literature, ballet, cinema, and fashion.
Marking 120 years since Beardsley’s death, The Eve of St Aubrey: Re†Collecting Beardsley (1872-1898) symposium brought together established and emerging scholars of the artist to examine his works, his public image, and his new – global – place in the art canon. The interdisciplinary symposium unlocked the geographical and chronological boundaries of the ‘Beardsley Period’ by reassessing the artist’s international reception and the impact of his aesthetics on modern movements in art, literature, ballet, cinema, and fashion.
Marking 120 years since Beardsley’s death, The Eve of St Aubrey: Re†Collecting Beardsley (1872-1898) symposium brought together established and emerging scholars of the artist to examine his works, his public image, and his new – global – place in the art canon. The interdisciplinary symposium unlocked the geographical and chronological boundaries of the ‘Beardsley Period’ by reassessing the artist’s international reception and the impact of his aesthetics on modern movements in art, literature, ballet, cinema, and fashion.
Dr Tim Reynolds, a senior lecturer from the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck discusses the relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans, following a recent discovery in a Neanderthal burial cave.
Tim will deliver a talk that explores those discoveries and what they can tell us about our nearest relatives, on 17 April at City & Islington College, as part of Birkbeck’s Big Ideas series of free public lectures.
Book your free spot here: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events-calendar/neanderthal
In this episode of Birkbeck Voices, we chat with Professor Ian Crawford from the Department of Planetary Sciences and Astrobiology.
Professor Crawford discusses the recent launch of the world's most powerful operational rocket, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and what it means for space exploration in the future, as well as the benefits of mining resources on the moon and why it is still so important to 'keep looking for aliens' (read more here: https://theconversation.com/why-looking-for-aliens-is-good-for-society-even-if-there-arent-any-80700).
Professor Daniel Monk from Birkbeck's School of Law discusses the debate around school uniforms and dress codes, and what it might be able to tell us about childhood, education and politics in contemporary Britain.
Daniel will be speaking further on the topic at City and Islington College on 20 March as part of Birkbeck's Big Ideas series. Book your free place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbecks-big-ideas-school-dress-codes-who-cares-and-why-finsbury-park-tickets-43123651001
The Birkbeck Law Review recently held its annual conference, ‘Law and the City: Exploring the Urban Revolution in Critical Legal Studies’. In this podcast, we hear the keynote address from Mariana Valverde Professor of Criminology at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, introduced by Stewart Motha, Acting Dean of Birkbeck’s School of Law.
Professor Valverde’s keynote talk is called ‘Beyond privatization and neoliberalism: analysing hybrid networks of urban development.’
Find out more about the Birkbeck Law Review: http://www.bbklr.org/
Ron Balzan, who is in the third year of his PhD in psychology at Birkbeck’s Department of Psychological Sciences, will be speaking at Birkbeck's next Big Ideas event entitled, 'The biggest problem in the world: our problem with problems (and why truth matters)'.
If you’ve ever struggled with solving a problem – and most of us have! – his thesis sets out to prove that you may not have represented, or modelled the problem correctly.
Ron talk will be held on 20 February at City & Islington College, as part of Birkbeck’s Big Ideas series. Book your free place now: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbecks-big-ideas-the-biggest-problem-in-the-world-our-problem-with-problems-and-why-truth-tickets-38659920864
Birkbeck's Big Ideas is a series of thought-provoking free public lectures, designed to inspire and bring world class Birkbeck academics to the local community.
The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies and History and Theory of Photography Research Centre hosted a panel discussion with a talk by Kate Flint and a response by Lindsay Smith to mark the publication of Kate Flint’s Flash! Photography, Writing, and Surprising Illumination (Oxford University Press, 2017).
The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies and History and Theory of Photography Research Centre hosted a panel discussion with a talk by Kate Flint and a response by Lindsay Smith to mark the publication of Kate Flint’s Flash! Photography, Writing, and Surprising Illumination (Oxford University Press, 2017) in November 2017. This is a recording of Lindsay Smith's response.
In this episode of Birkbeck Voices, we're joined by Dr Clare Makepeace, who completed her PhD at Birkbeck and is now an Honorary Research Fellow at the College.
Clare’s work looks at prisoners of war, specifically those in Europe during the Second World War and the measures they took to cope and come to terms with wartime imprisonment. Perhaps the most inventive of these measures was putting on pantomimes, with prisoners dressed as female impersonators.
Clare has recently published a book, Captives of War, available here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Captives-War-British-Prisoners-Cultural/dp/1107145872
You can find out more about her work on her website: warfarehistorian.org
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and the wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
Researching (with) Difficult Feelings: A CHASE-funded training event with follow-up resources and activities
This workshop took place on 14-15/12/2017 and was hosted by Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, School of Arts, Birkbeck College. This recording is of Jennifer Doyle giving the keynote.
Researching (with) Difficult Feelings: A CHASE-funded training event with follow-up resources and activities
This workshop took place on 14-15/12/2017 and was hosted by Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, School of Arts, Birkbeck College. This is a recording of the Artists Panel,
Researching (with) Difficult Feelings: A CHASE-funded training event with follow-up resources and activities
This workshop took place on 14-15/12/2017 and was hosted by Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, School of Arts, Birkbeck College. In this recording we have Shane Boyle on 'Customer Relations' and Molly Flynn-My Nikolaevka on 'Notes from the field with Ukraine's Theatre of Displaced People'.
Researching (with) Difficult Feelings: A CHASE-funded training event with follow-up resources and activities
This workshop took place on 14-15/12/2017 and was hosted by Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, School of Arts, Birkbeck College. In this recording we have Broderick Chow on 'Willful Things: Bodies, Equipment, and Potentialities' and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck-on 'How to deal with the (dead) Elephant in the room and other problems of the non-human'.
Researching (with) Difficult Feelings: A CHASE-funded training event with follow-up resources and activities
This workshop took place on 14-15/12/2017 and was hosted by Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, School of Arts, Birkbeck College. In this recording we have David Harradine on 'How Do You Feel When Men and Girls Dance?' and Emma Cox on 'Ethics, embodiment and the long vantage'.
Researching (with) Difficult Feelings: A CHASE-funded training event with follow-up resources and activities
This workshop took place on 14-15/12/2017 and was hosted by Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, School of Arts, Birkbeck College. In this recording we have Anna Harpin on 'Difficult Company: Research and Emotional Distress' and Clare Finburgh on 'The Greatest Possible Tact’: Writing about Torture'.
In this episode of Birkbeck Voices, we're joined by Dr David Brydan, Lecturer in Modern European History, to discuss his latest article examining leprosy and rebellion in Spanish colonial Africa during the 1940s and 50s. The article is available on open access: https://academic.oup.com/shm/advance-article/doi/10.1093/shm/hkx094/4590150
Dr Brydan is a member of the Reluctant Internationalists research group, based in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck. Find out more about the project: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/reluctantinternationalists
Dr Brydan is also a member of the Centre for the Study of Internationalism - https://centreforthestudyofinternationalism.wordpress.com
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
.
Catherine Heard, Director of the Institute for Criminal Policy Research (ICPR) at Birkbeck, introduces the speakers at a recent panel event, looking at the causes and consequences of the rising female prison population.
The featured speakers were: Lady Edwina Grosvenor, prison philanthropist; Roy Walmsley from the World Prison Brief; Olivia Rope from Penal Reform International; Marie Nougier from the International Drug Policy Consortium; Teresa Njoroge from Clean Start Kenya; Madhurima Dhanuka from the Commonwealth Human Rights Institute in India; and Jo Peden from Public Health England.
Read more on the #BBKblog - http://blogs.bbk.ac.uk/events/2017/12/14/female-imprisonment-worldwide
Find out more about the ICPR: http://www.icpr.org.uk
.
Cohn examines temporal dislocations in realist depictions of environmental crisis, emphasizing that novelists expand what narratologists call “narrating time” by shifting among these modalities in parallel and embedded clauses, suggesting that dilation and expansion are the “mental procedures” that substantialize seemingly inaccessible scales of experience. With this narratological method, she considers two realist accounts of flood, where conditions much exacerbated by human intervention render long-term crises as immediate emergencies in which the “narrating” moment becomes especially protracted: George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004). Though written at very different moments in the history of climate crisis, these novels similarly showcase realism’s capacity to make diffuse crisis perceptible in the expanded present by inhabiting, dislocating, and reflecting upon multiple points of view—without disavowing a shared sense of history, or giving up on the hope of a shared world.
Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, London: How to form a national collection. The Prado Museum and the National Gallery, London
The lecture is named in honour of Peter Murray, who founded Birkbeck’s Department of History of Art in 1967 and is part of Opening Up Art History: 50 Years at Birkbeck, a series of events celebrating the Department’s 50th anniversary.
In Times of Love and Hate is a new podcast series from Birkbeck Voices. In this episode, Professor of History Joanna Bourke discusses the worldwide conversation on sexual harassment in the wake of recent high-profile allegations, and whether it has the momentum to produce a cultural shift.
The episodes in this series are brought to you by academics from Birkbeck’s MA Public Histories, MA History of Medicine: Minds, Bodies and Cultures, MSc War and Humanitarianism, BA Human Geography, BA Archaeology and Geography, and BA Intercultural Communication and Language. They will explore with you how the turbulent times we live in can be better understood, lived and survived using the tools of investigation and critical enquiry that students and academics alike employ through study and research at Birkbeck.
If you would like to apply for one of the studentships mentioned in this podcast, please visit the website: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/history/prospective-students/phd-mphil/research-funding
In this episode of Birkbeck Voices, we're joined by Sarah Childs, Professor of Politics and Gender at Birkbeck.
Professor Childs discusses the benefits of equal gender opportunity in parliament, the current system of quotas for women in politics and a report she recently put forward that recommends a change to the law on job-sharing for MPs.
She has worked extensively on representation theory and policies surrounding gender politics and currently advises the new Commons Reference Group on Representation and Inclusion(http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/other-committees/reference-group-representation-inclusion/).
Find out more about studying politics at Birkbeck: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/2018/undergraduate/programmes/UUBAPOLT_C
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
In the winter of 2019-20 Tate Britain will be staging a major survey exhibition of the art of William Blake (1757-1827). It will be the latest in a succession of exhibitions which have presented Blake to the general public, including the Tate’s own shows in 2001 and 1978, and seminal earlier projects in 1876, 1927 and 1947. Blake himself was an exhibitor, most importantly with his one-man show of 1809, but also contributing to mixed exhibitions at a number of points in his career, lastly in 1812. Tate curator Martin Myrone reflects on this history of exhibition, as a way of thinking about Blake’s shifting status and reputation among the public, as an engine of change in curatorial and scholarly thinking, and as a decisive influence on the artist’s place in the cultural canon. He also sets out the thinking behind the forthcoming show, which will seek engage with this history of exhibition as well as presenting a comprehensive view of this much-loved and much-scrutinized artist.
Dr Stefan Engels from Birkbeck's Department of Geography discusses his field of palaeoclimatology, focussing on abrupt climate change during and following the last ice age as seen through the eyes of insects.
He will discuss this further at a free public lecture on 12 December at City and Islington College as part of Birkbeck's Big Ideas series. Book your free place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbecks-big-ideas-insects-and-ice-ages-how-and-why-we-reconstruct-past-climate-change-finsbury-tickets-39181416672
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
Naureen Abubacker from the Widening Access team at Birkbeck discusses leading the development of the Compass Project, a ground-breaking initiative that is driven to improving access to higher education for forced migrants, and also funds places for 20 asylum seekers to begin their studies in the UK.
One of the students, Gifty from Zimbabwe, also joins us to chat about her experiences with the programme and how she has settled into life in London.
Read more about the #BBKCompass Project: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/new-birkbeck-initiative-provides-life-changing-education-opportunities-for-asylum-seekers
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
In Times of Love and Hate is a new podcast series from Birkbeck Voices. In this episode, Antoine Bousquet discusses whether war can ever be humanitarian, the effects of changing technology on combat and the humanity that wartime can bring.
The episodes in this series are brought to you by academics from Birkbeck’s MA Public Histories, MSc War and Humanitarianism, BA Human Geography, BA Archaeology and Geography, and BA Intercultural Communication and Language. They will explore with you how the turbulent times we live in can be better understood, lived and survived using the tools of investigation and critical enquiry that students and academics alike employ through study and research at Birkbeck.
Theatres of Contagion: Infectious Performance: On Thursday 11 and Friday 12 May, we hosted an international conference exploring themes of contagion and infection in performance and across disciplines, asking: how have theatre and performance represented, examined or been implicated in the transmission and circulation of medical and psychological conditions? How has our understanding of these relationships and phenomena changed over time, across cultures, including via developments in interdisciplinary practice and inquiry? Scholars and artists from across the world gave presentations addressing contexts from the medieval period to the contemporary, and keynote lectures and performances were given by Bridget Escolme (QMUL), Dickie Beau, David Slater and Entelechy Arts, Stephen Frosh (Birkbeck), Richard P. Mann (Leeds), Emily Senior (Birkbeck) Matthew Weait (Portsmouth), and Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (Oxford). Download abstracts and biographies here.
Theatres of Contagion: Infectious Performance: On Thursday 11 and Friday 12 May, we hosted an international conference exploring themes of contagion and infection in performance and across disciplines, asking: how have theatre and performance represented, examined or been implicated in the transmission and circulation of medical and psychological conditions? How has our understanding of these relationships and phenomena changed over time, across cultures, including via developments in interdisciplinary practice and inquiry? Scholars and artists from across the world gave presentations addressing contexts from the medieval period to the contemporary, and keynote lectures and performances were given by Bridget Escolme (QMUL), Dickie Beau, David Slater and Entelechy Arts, Stephen Frosh (Birkbeck), Richard P. Mann (Leeds), Emily Senior (Birkbeck) Matthew Weait (Portsmouth), and Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (Oxford). Download abstracts and biographies here.
Theatre Conversation: Approaching socially engaged practice (Tuesday 10 May 2016) creative producer and Centre Fellow Elizabeth Lynch convened a discussion on how artists are approaching the creation of socially engaged practice now. The event asked: as the 2010s unfold, who are the new allies in making socially engaged practice? How do artists know what they are doing is working? What is shifting or changing as a result of artists’ interventions, and what has to be disrupted? Participants included Omar Elerian (Bush Theatre), Alinah Azadeh (artist), Miriam Nelken (Creative Barking & Dagenham) and Simon Poulter (Close & Remote).
Theatres of Contagion: Infectious Performance: On Thursday 11 and Friday 12 May, we hosted an international conference exploring themes of contagion and infection in performance and across disciplines, asking: how have theatre and performance represented, examined or been implicated in the transmission and circulation of medical and psychological conditions? How has our understanding of these relationships and phenomena changed over time, across cultures, including via developments in interdisciplinary practice and inquiry? Scholars and artists from across the world gave presentations addressing contexts from the medieval period to the contemporary, and keynote lectures and performances were given by Bridget Escolme (QMUL), Dickie Beau, David Slater and Entelechy Arts, Stephen Frosh (Birkbeck), Richard P. Mann (Leeds), Emily Senior (Birkbeck) Matthew Weait (Portsmouth), and Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (Oxford).
Keynote by Maaike Bleeker for the Conventions of Proximity in Art, Theatre and Performance symposium in May 2016 co-hosted by Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre and Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture, and supported by Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image. Over a day and a half, artists and writers shared their work on proximity as an idea and as a practice. From the early modern to the contemporary, in examples drawn from southeast Asia to the global north, the symposium explored proximity in relation to a diverse range of topics, including digital networks, architectural design, home, public space, cinema, loneliness, friendship, listening, darkness, museum display, and music.
Dr Jessica Borge discusses her research into the London Rubber Company, the dominant producer of dipped latex products in Britain including Durex condoms, the cultural barriers to selling condoms, and the strategic marketing activity that sought to overcome this.
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - https://soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
In Times of Love and Hate is a new podcast series from Birkbeck Voices. In this episode, Jean Marc Dewaele is talking about communication: in particular, the difficulties that arise in communicating love and hate in a second or foreign language.
The episodes in this series are brought to you by academics from Birkbeck’s MA Public Histories, MSc War and Humanitarianism, BA Human Geography, BA Archaeology and Geography, and BA Intercultural Communication and Language. They will explore with you how the turbulent times we live in can be better understood, lived and survived using the tools of investigation and critical enquiry that students and academics alike employ through study and research at Birkbeck.
This is the first session of J. Beverley’s Masterclass organised by the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies (CILAVS) during Birkbeck’s Arts Week, May 2017. John Beverley is Distinguished Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh.
That the conjunction of postcolonial struggle and structuralism in the 1960s produces a kind of earthquake in academic knowledge and institutions, particularly in the domain of what the French call the human sciences. The shock effect of that earthquake may be named for sake of convenience "theory," and the disciplinary outcome of theory “studies" (cultural, postcolonial, queer, women's, Africana, Atlantic, global, global Pacific, etc.). The core issue is the relation of culture and politics, or to use Raymond Williams' term "cultural materialism". As the revolutionary vanguardist political formations of the 1960s, epitomized by the armed struggle in Latin America, collapse or are defeated, theory and studies nourish and in turn are nourished by new forms of politics, based on the principle of multicultural hegemonic articulation. One compelling form of this possibility are the new governments of the so-called Pink Tide in that emerged in Latin America in the first decade of the new century, which incorporated into their strategy elements of both poststructuralist and postcolonial thinking.
However, the tremors of the earthquake of "theory" have subsided. The politics of theory are resisted from both the right--in the form of a kind of "left neo-conservatism"-- and the left--in the form of deconstructive or libertarian ultraleftism. New theories of cultural agency emerge, often with a Deleuzian inspiration or provenance. (e.g. Hardt and Negri on the "multitude," "affect" theory. "posthegemony") and new, less overtly political forms of "studies" (media, visual culture, digital humanities, neo-philology etc., etc.). This first session will focus on the conjuncture that produces of the "earthquake"--the coincidence of postcolonial military and political struggle and the advent of Structuralist theory of the sign. We will spend a moment recalling in particular the radical character of Saussure's theory of the linguistic sign and its consequences for thought and political practice.
For more information - bbk.ac.uk/cilavs/audio-visual-resources
This is the third session of J. Beverley’s Masterclass organised by the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies (CILAVS) during Birkbeck’s Arts Week, May 2017. John Beverley is Distinguished Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh.
That the conjunction of postcolonial struggle and structuralism in the 1960s produces a kind of earthquake in academic knowledge and institutions, particularly in the domain of what the French call the human sciences. The shock effect of that earthquake may be named for sake of convenience "theory," and the disciplinary outcome of theory “studies" (cultural, postcolonial, queer, women's, Africana, Atlantic, global, global Pacific, etc.). The core issue is the relation of culture and politics, or to use Raymond Williams' term "cultural materialism". As the revolutionary vanguardist political formations of the 1960s, epitomized by the armed struggle in Latin America, collapse or are defeated, theory and studies nourish and in turn are nourished by new forms of politics, based on the principle of multicultural hegemonic articulation. One compelling form of this possibility are the new governments of the so-called Pink Tide in that emerged in Latin America in the first decade of the new century, which incorporated into their strategy elements of both poststructuralist and postcolonial thinking.
However, the tremors of the earthquake of "theory" have subsided. The politics of theory are resisted from both the right--in the form of a kind of "left neo-conservatism"-- and the left--in the form of deconstructive or libertarian ultraleftism. New theories of cultural agency emerge, often with a Deleuzian inspiration or provenance. (e.g. Hardt and Negri on the "multitude," "affect" theory. "posthegemony") and new, less overtly political forms of "studies" (media, visual culture, digital humanities, neo-philology etc., etc.). This third session will examine finally, the waning of the politics of theory in the new century: and the major forms of its critique of (deconstruction, neo-conservatism, Deleuzian and anarchist ultraleftism ), from both the right of the left ("left conservativism") and the left of the left, if that distinction holds meaning. That will bring us to the edge of the present, where the "theory,” along with Marxism and psychoanalysis, has lost practically all purchase. At a moment when the neoliberal consensus that emerged in the 1990s is in a state of crisis (or, some would say, reorganization), what are the new possibilities for a politics of theory? We'll look at some contemporary arguments for egalitarianism and utopianism.
For more information - bbk.ac.uk/cilavs/audio-visual-resources/
This is the second session of J. Beverley’s Masterclass organised by the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies (CILAVS) during Birkbeck’s Arts Week, May 2017. John Beverley is Distinguished Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh.
That the conjunction of postcolonial struggle and structuralism in the 1960s produces a kind of earthquake in academic knowledge and institutions, particularly in the domain of what the French call the human sciences. The shock effect of that earthquake may be named for sake of convenience "theory," and the disciplinary outcome of theory “studies" (cultural, postcolonial, queer, women's, Africana, Atlantic, global, global Pacific, etc.). The core issue is the relation of culture and politics, or to use Raymond Williams' term "cultural materialism". As the revolutionary vanguardist political formations of the 1960s, epitomized by the armed struggle in Latin America, collapse or are defeated, theory and studies nourish and in turn are nourished by new forms of politics, based on the principle of multicultural hegemonic articulation. One compelling form of this possibility are the new governments of the so-called Pink Tide in that emerged in Latin America in the first decade of the new century, which incorporated into their strategy elements of both poststructuralist and postcolonial thinking.
However, the tremors of the earthquake of "theory" have subsided. The politics of theory are resisted from both the right--in the form of a kind of "left neo-conservatism"-- and the left--in the form of deconstructive or libertarian ultraleftism. New theories of cultural agency emerge, often with a Deleuzian inspiration or provenance. (e.g. Hardt and Negri on the "multitude," "affect" theory. "posthegemony") and new, less overtly political forms of "studies" (media, visual culture, digital humanities, neo-philology etc., etc.). In this second session, we will look at two of the major products of the politics of theory in the academy. In the 1980s and 1990s, Cultural Studies and Subaltern Studies (a subset of postcolonial studies). We will see that both involve a critique of academic knowledge from the position of "excluded," and the basis for a new kind of politics of the left, based in the social movements. However, both in turn are re-institutionalized in the academy, in a kind of paradoxically syntonic coincidence with neoliberal globalization (especially the case in cultural studies).
For more information - bbk.ac.uk/cilavs/audio-visual-resources
Using digital analysis, Dr Laura Jacobus has revealed that two portraits of an early 14th-century Paduan businessman, created by different artists 25 years apart, had identical underlying bone structures. She shows that the sculptures are the first known examples of portraits using mechanical means to show an exact physical likeness of their subject – something which did not become a standard feature of portraiture until the advent of photography six centuries later.
In this podcast, Dr Jacobus talks about the significance of these findings, how the approach taken by Enrico Scrovegni fitted into the broader artistic trends of the time and how this served as an antecedent to today’s portrait-saturated society, where creating an exact physical likeness or a portrait’s subject is the norm.
- '“Propria Figura”: The Advent of Facsimile Portraiture in Italian Art'; L Jacobus; Art Bulletin, Issue 2 (2017)http://bit.ly/2iFuSbM
- Dr Laura Jacobus http://bit.ly/2vjQCLJ
- Department of History of Art http://bit.ly/2uZcxsc
- Courses in history of art http://bit.ly/2um8hoC
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - https://soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
In Times of Love and Hate is a new podcast series from Birkbeck Voices. In our first episode, Professor Marina Warner talks about the importance of language, and particularly language woven into stories, which can shape our shared understanding and deepen our abilities to negotiate with one another as we navigate through times of love and hate.
The episodes in this series are brought to you by academics from Birkbeck’s MA Public Histories, MSc War and Humanitarianism, BA Human Geography, BA Archaeology and Geography, and BA Intercultural Communication and Language. They will explore with you how the turbulent times we live in can be better understood, lived and survived using the tools of investigation and critical enquiry that students and academics alike employ through study and research at Birkbeck.
School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy - http://bit.ly/2uTrzCA MA Public Histories - http://bit.ly/2uMdTbz MSc War and Humanitarianism - http://bit.ly/2va2ymM BA Human Geography - http://bit.ly/2vdKpEn BA Archaeology and Geography http://bit.ly/2wcYAa0
For the last fifteen years, both alone and in collaboration with Tim Crouch (An Oak Tree, Adler & Gibb), theatre-maker Andy Smith has been involved in creating a large body of work. He refers to this as a ‘dematerialised theatre’ – a theatre that attempts to do more with less. This is a recording of the discussion that took place after the talk.
For the last fifteen years, both alone and in collaboration with Tim Crouch (An Oak Tree, Adler & Gibb), theatre-maker Andy Smith has been involved in creating a large body of work. He refers to this as a ‘dematerialised theatre’ – a theatre that attempts to do more with less. This talk reviews some of the principles of the practice, and explores some of its origins.
For the last fifteen years, both alone and in collaboration with Tim Crouch (An Oak Tree, Adler & Gibb), theatre-maker Andy Smith has been involved in creating a large body of work. He refers to this as a ‘dematerialised theatre’ – a theatre that attempts to do more with less. This talk reviews some of the principles of the practice, and explores some of its origins. Andy will read and discuss some examples of his work.
Daniel Monk from Birkbeck's School of Law discusses what the law has to say about sibling relationships, including inheritance and care laws. He is currently undertaking the first major study on siblings in law, which will draw on research emerging from a number of disciplines that has highlighted the importance of siblings for children’s development, wellbeing and identity.
Daniel will be speaking further on the topic in a free public lecture on 5 July 2017, as part of Birkbeck's Big Ideas series. Find out more and book your free place here: goo.gl/LSfTbx
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - https://soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies was proud to host this launch of Professor Isobel Armstrong’s latest publication, Novel Politics. Democratic Imaginations in Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2016).
The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies was proud to host this launch of Professor Isobel Armstrong’s latest publication, Novel Politics. Democratic Imaginations in Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2016).
The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies was proud to host this launch of Professor Isobel Armstrong’s latest publication, Novel Politics. Democratic Imaginations in Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2016). Here is a recording of David Feldman's talk at the event
The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies was proud to host this launch of Professor Isobel Armstrong’s latest publication, Novel Politics. Democratic Imaginations in Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2016). Here Cora Kaplan introduces the event.
Dr Bruna Seu from Birkbeck's Department of Psychosocial Studies and Glen Tarman, Head of Global Advocacy at CARE International discuss some of the issues raised by Dr Seu's new book, written with Dr Shani Orgad (LSE) Caring in Crisis? Humanitarianism, the Public and NGOs (2017, Palgrave Macmillan).
The issues raised by the book include the limitations of the "hit and run" approach to fundraising, where donors are bombarded with traumatic images designed to elicit financial donations without opportunities for further engagement with the issues at play; the challenge of not only increasing the overall value of donations from within the existing part of the British public which donates, but also the propensity of the wider public to become involved at all; and how to best respond to the desire for connectedness with the recipients of aid, which many participants in the research for the book expressed.
• Caring in Crisis? Humanitarianism, the Public and NGOs -http://bit.ly/2rUWi1D • Dr Bruna Seu - http://bit.ly/2sEkn9X • Department of Psychosocial Studies - http://bit.ly/2rYoXxV • Courses in psychosocial studies - http://bit.ly/2rUxpTs • Courses in international development - http://bit.ly/2stQo6b
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - https://soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
In the concluding session of the conference on ‘Languages of Internationalism’, hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group, members of the project both past and present reflect on how language can be a tool of communication, solidarity and unity, as well as a force of division and alienation. Participants included: Jessica Reinisch (Birkbeck), Dora Vargha (University of Exeter), Brigid O’Keefe (Brooklyn College), Johanna Conterio (Flinders University), Ana Antic (University of Exeter), David Brydan (Birkbeck), Heidi Tworek (University of British Columbia), and Elidor Mëhilli (Hunter College).
‘Languages of Internationalism’ aimed to shed light on the centrality of language to people’s pursuit and experiences of internationalism. Language is at the heart of every international enterprise, but as the conference showed, it presents obstacles and dilemmas, as well as opportunities. Many of the papers emphasised frictions and tensions which emerged over the use of languages in international settings. Discussions showed how language could be a tool of communication, solidarity and unity, as well as a force of division and alienation. But the conference also made clear the centrality of language in the performance, experience and pursuit of internationalism.
For more information - bit.ly/2rC0u61
As part of a conference on ‘Languages of Internationalism’, hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group, Dora Vargha (University of Exeter), Elidor Mëhilli (Hunter College) and Rachel Applebaum (Tufts University – recorded in discussion only) examine the languages of socialist internationalism. The panel, chaired by Johanna Conterio (Flinders University), addresses languages of health and disease in Hungary, the power of Russian in Albania, and Russian as a foreign language in Cold War Czechoslovakia.
‘Languages of Internationalism’ aimed to shed light on the centrality of language to people’s pursuit and experiences of internationalism. Language is at the heart of every international enterprise, but as the conference showed, it presents obstacles and dilemmas, as well as opportunities. Many of the papers emphasised frictions and tensions which emerged over the use of languages in international settings. Discussions showed how language could be a tool of communication, solidarity and unity, as well as a force of division and alienation. But the conference also made clear the centrality of language in the performance, experience and pursuit of internationalism.
For more information – bit.ly/2rC0u61
As part of a conference on ‘Languages of Internationalism’, hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group, Katherine Reischl (Princeton University) and Yuliya Komska (Dartmouth College) examine practices of translating across borders, focusing on the publishing histories of M. Il’in’s The Story of the Great Plan and H.A. and Margret Rey’s Curious George. The panel, chaired by Sophie Heywood (University of Reading), addresses how publishers viewed images and languages as mediums which could be easily translated across borders.
‘Languages of Internationalism’ aimed to shed light on the centrality of language to people’s pursuit and experiences of internationalism. Language is at the heart of every international enterprise, but as the conference showed, it presents obstacles and dilemmas, as well as opportunities. Many of the papers emphasised frictions and tensions which emerged over the use of languages in international settings. Discussions showed how language could be a tool of communication, solidarity and unity, as well as a force of division and alienation. But the conference also made clear the centrality of language in the performance, experience and pursuit of internationalism.
For more information – bit.ly/2rC0u61
As part of a conference on ‘Languages of Internationalism’, hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group, Heidi Tworek (University of British Columbia), Humphrey Tonkin (University of Hartford), Lisa McEntree-Atalianis (Birkbeck) and Sebastian Gehrig (Oxford) discuss language and expertise across international organisations in relation to the League of Nations, United Nations, and the states of East and West Germany. The panel, chaired by Jessica Reinisch (Birkbeck), addresses the emergence and uses of language within these organisations.
‘Languages of Internationalism’ aimed to shed light on the centrality of language to people’s pursuit and experiences of internationalism. Language is at the heart of every international enterprise, but as the conference showed, it presents obstacles and dilemmas, as well as opportunities. Many of the papers emphasised frictions and tensions which emerged over the use of languages in international settings. Discussions showed how language could be a tool of communication, solidarity and unity, as well as a force of division and alienation. But the conference also made clear the centrality of language in the performance, experience and pursuit of internationalism.
For more information – http://bit.ly/2rC0u61
As part of a conference on ‘Languages of Internationalism’, hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group, Jocelyn Olcott (Duke University), Christine Vargha-Harris (Illinois State University – discussion only) and Emma Lundin (Birkbeck) examine the language adopted by international feminist movements in relation to the examples of the 1975 International Women’s Year conference and Swedish and South African political activists from 1968-1994. The panel, chaired by Philippa Hetherington (University College London), addresses how shared these languages were and the extent to which language difficulties were a hindrance at international events.
‘Languages of Internationalism’ aimed to shed light on the centrality of language to people’s pursuit and experiences of internationalism. Language is at the heart of every international enterprise, but as the conference showed, it presents obstacles and dilemmas, as well as opportunities. Many of the papers emphasised frictions and tensions which emerged over the use of languages in international settings. Discussions showed how language could be a tool of communication, solidarity and unity, as well as a force of division and alienation. But the conference also made clear the centrality of language in the performance, experience and pursuit of internationalism.
For more information – http://bit.ly/2rC0u61
As part of a conference on ‘Languages of Internationalism’, hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group, Marc Volovici (Princeton University), Nick Underwood (University of Colorado Boulder) and Carmen Mangion (Birkbeck) discuss the search for a shared language in relation to the examples of German as a Zionist lingua franca, Yiddish in interwar Paris, and the language of governance amongst Catholic networks and communities. The panel, chaired by David Brydan (Birkbeck), addresses how shared these languages were.
‘Languages of Internationalism’ aimed to shed light on the centrality of language to people’s pursuit and experiences of internationalism. Language is at the heart of every international enterprise, but as the conference showed, it presents obstacles and dilemmas, as well as opportunities. Many of the papers emphasised frictions and tensions which emerged over the use of languages in international settings. Discussions showed how language could be a tool of communication, solidarity and unity, as well as a force of division and alienation. But the conference also made clear the centrality of language in the performance, experience and pursuit of internationalism.
For more information – http://bit.ly/2rC0u61
As part of a conference on ‘Languages of Internationalism’, hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group, Diana Georgescu (University College London), Pey-Yi Chu (Pomona College), Beatrice Wayne (New York University) and Dina Fainberg (City, University of London) discuss language and communication during the Cold War. The panel, chaired by Dora Vargha (University of Exeter) highlight frictions and tensions which emerged over the use of language in international settings.
‘Languages of Internationalism’ aimed to shed light on the centrality of language to people’s pursuit and experiences of internationalism. Language is at the heart of every international enterprise, but as the conference showed, it presents obstacles and dilemmas, as well as opportunities. Discussions showed how language could be a tool of communication, solidarity and unity, as well as a force of division and alienation. But the conference also made clear the centrality of language in the performance, experience and pursuit of internationalism.
For more information - http://bit.ly/2rC0u61
As part of a conference on ‘Languages of Internationalism’, hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group, Allison Korinek (New York University) and Justin Jackson (New York University) discuss the role of language in constructing the French imperial interpretariat in Algeria, and the work of interpreters in providing local linguistic knowledge during the U.S wars and occupations in Cuba and the Philippines from 1898-1913. The panel, chaired by Ana Antic (University of Exeter) addresses the role of language in constructing empire.
‘Languages of Internationalism’ aimed to shed light on the centrality of language to people’s pursuit and experiences of internationalism. Language is at the heart of every international enterprise, but as the conference showed, it presents obstacles and dilemmas, as well as opportunities. Many of the papers emphasised frictions and tensions which emerged over the use of languages in international settings. Discussions showed how language could be a tool of communication, solidarity and unity, as well as a force of division and alienation. But the conference also made clear the centrality of language in the performance, experience and pursuit of internationalism.
For more information – http://bit.ly/2rC0u61
As part of a conference on ‘Languages of Internationalism’, hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group, Brigid O’Keefe (Brooklyn College) and Claire Shaw (University of Bristol) discuss the rise and fall of Esperanto in the early Soviet Union and international sign language during the Cold War. The panel, chaired by Humphrey Tonkin (University of Hartford), addresses how international these languages were.
‘Languages of Internationalism’ aimed to shed light on the centrality of language to people’s pursuit and experiences of internationalism. Language is at the heart of every international enterprise, but as the conference showed, it presents obstacles and dilemmas, as well as opportunities. Many of the papers emphasised frictions and tensions which emerged over the use of languages in international settings. Discussions showed how language could be a tool of communication, solidarity and unity, as well as a force of division and alienation. But the conference also made clear the centrality of language in the performance, experience and pursuit of internationalism.
For more information – http://bit.ly/2rC0u61
‘Queer British Art 1861–1967’ is the first exhibition dedicated to British LGBTQ art, and marks the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England. Clare Barlow, the exhibition’s curator, will introduce the exhibition.
Speaker: Clare Barlow joined Tate in 2014. As Assistant Curator, British Art 1750–1830 she is part of the pre-1800 team of Curators and Assistant Curators who are responsible for developing and researching Tate’s collection of artworks from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. She has also worked on a number of exhibition and display projects, including British Folk Art (2014) and Fighting History (2015). Before working at Tate she was Assistant Curator, 18th and 20th Centuries at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Non-fiction has risen to prominence in recent years. In this event, discuss why this might be with Birkbeck writers Katherine Angel and Julia Bell, and poet Sarah Howe. Our panellists will ask questions about truth-telling and artifice, representation and voice, in relation to both prose and poetry.
Mike Berlin, a specialist in the social history of London, discusses the history of Birkbeck as a place of refuge throughout the twentieth century, and how refugees have shaped the College. He also discusses how this legacy is continuing with the Compass Project - an initiative which will fund the study of twenty asylum seekers, beginning in autumn 2017.
For more information on the Compass Project, go to: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/about-us/outreach/compass-project
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - https://soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
Following the political turbulence of the last 12 months, Birkbeck’s 2017 Arts Week programme tackles some of the most topical issues facing society today through theatre, literature, poetry, photography, cinema and debate.
Running from Monday 15 to Friday 19 May, the annual celebration of arts and culture will feature more than 50 free events for the public to attend.
In this podcast we give listeners a taster of the thought-provoking and intriguing topics that they will encounter during Arts Week.
Dr Leslie Topp talks about political landscapes in Bengal, Nazi Germany and New York City, while Dr Joseph Brooker describes the fantastical work, The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien as "Alice in Wonderland meets Kafka, in Ireland".
Arts Week - www.bbk.ac.uk/artsweek
Professor Dewaele talks about how multilingualism can benefit children and societies and debunks some of the common myths about multilingual child-rearing.
Professor Dewaele's new book, Raising Multilingual Children, is available now and is published by Multilingual Matters.
Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication - www.bbk.ac.uk/linguistics Courses in linguistics - http://bit.ly/2pfqwLq Courses in foreign languages - http://bit.ly/2putF61
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - https://soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
Ian Haywood - Professor of English at Roehampton University - responds to Josephine McDonagh's lecture on ‘The Political Picaresque: Sunshine and Shadow, and Radical Responses to Migrancy and Settlement around 1850’
Dr Jason Edwards, Lecturer in Politics at Birkbeck, discusses the role of populism across a range of recent political events - from Brexit, to the election of Donald Trump, to the rise of the far-right Front National in France - as well as commenting on how populism is playing out in the UK general election campaigns.
He also discusses populism in the context of wider ideas about sovereignty and control.
For more information about Politics at Birkbeck, go to: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/politics
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - https://soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
Josephine McDonagh: ‘The Political Picaresque: Sunshine and Shadow, and Radical Responses to Migrancy and Settlement around 1850’
Jocelyne Saab is a journalist, photographer, artist, scriptwriter, producer and film director. She has spent more than four decades documenting conflict and deprivation, especially the civil war in her native Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s. Her Beirut Trilogy was a highlight of the Essay Film Festival’s 2017 programme.
Essay Film Festival - http://www.essayfilmfestival.com/ Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/culture/ Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/research/birkbeck-institute-for-the-moving-image Birkbeck Arts Week 2017 - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/about-us/events/arts-week Courses in film studies - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/course_search?q=film
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - https://soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Writing ‘Outsiders’ into the History of International Public Health, a roundtable discussion addressed what difference adding outsiders makes to the way historians write the history of public health and the history of internationalism more broadly. The discussion also questioned the adequacy of existing standard narratives of international public health and the ways in which historians can instead tell these narratives from below. The panel, chaired by Jessica Reinisch (Birkbeck), included Susan Gross Soloman (Toronto), Peter Jackson (Glasgow), Paul Weindling (Oxford Brookes) and Patrick Zylberman (EHESP).
The workshop examined what impact factoring in “outsiders” would make to the way historians write the history of international public health. In addition, the workshop sought to ask what close study of “outsiders” and the processes of marginalisation can tell us about the international system of public health – its rules (written and unwritten), its reach, and its commitment to inclusiveness?
For more information – http://bit.ly/2oYYqjs
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Writing ‘Outsiders’ into the History of International Public Health, Jessica Pearson (Macalester), Dora Vargha (Exeter) and Ana Antic (Exeter) addressed inclusion and exclusion in international health networks. The panel, chaired by David Brydan (Birkbeck), discussed life beyond the WHO, both for colonial powers and for many socialist states. In addition, debate turned to the importance of distinguishing between global public health and international public health.
The workshop examined what impact factoring in “outsiders” would make to the way historians write the history of international public health. In addition, the workshop sought to ask what close study of “outsiders” and the processes of marginalisation can tell us about the international system of public health – its rules (written and unwritten), its reach, and its commitment to inclusiveness?
For more information – http://bit.ly/2oYYqjs
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Writing ‘Outsiders’ into the History of International Public Health, David Brydan (Birkbeck), Paul Weindling (Oxford Brookes) and Maria Zarifi (Hellenic Open University) examined the history of public health in the so-called ‘outsider’ states of Franco’s Spain, Nazi Germany, and Greece. The panel, chaired by Johanna Conterio (Birkbeck), also incorporated debate on the centrality of public health to state building and the role of nationalism in international public health.
The workshop examined what impact factoring in “outsiders” would make to the way historians write the history of international public health. In addition, the workshop sought to ask what close study of “outsiders” and the processes of marginalisation can tell us about the international system of public health – its rules (written and unwritten), its reach, and its commitment to inclusiveness?
For more information – http://bit.ly/2oYYqjs
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Writing ‘Outsiders’ into the History of International Public Health, Susan Gross Solomon (Toronto), Johanna Conterio (Birkbeck) and Sarah Marks (Birkbeck) examined public health in Soviet Russia during the inter-war years. The panel, chaired by Ana Antic (Exeter), fostered discussion on the extent of the performative aspect of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ as labels in relation to international gatherings and congresses, as well as to what extent the Soviets can be classified as having truly been ‘outsiders’ during this period.
The workshop examined what impact factoring in “outsiders” would make to the way historians write the history of international public health. In addition, the workshop sought to ask what close study of “outsiders” and the processes of marginalisation can tell us about the international system of public health – its rules (written and unwritten), its reach, and its commitment to inclusiveness?
For more information – http://bit.ly/2oYYqjs
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Writing ‘Outsiders’ into the History of International Public Health, Jessica Reinisch (Birkbeck), Lion Murard (French National Centre for Scientific Research), Yitang Lin and Thomas David (University of Lausanne) and Davide Rodogno (University of Geneva) discussed the political dimensions of international health. The panel, chaired by Dora Vargha (Exeter), addressed the theme of giving and taking in international public health and examined who can be regarded as an ‘outsider’.
The workshop examined what impact factoring in “outsiders” would make to the way historians write the history of international public health. In addition, the workshop sought to ask what close study of “outsiders” and the processes of marginalisation can tell us about the international system of public health – its rules (written and unwritten), its reach, and its commitment to inclusiveness?
For more information – http://bit.ly/2oYYqjs
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Debating the Cold War, Piers Ludlow (LSE), Elidor Mehilli (Hunter College, NY) and Angela Neilson-Nagy (Blackheath High School/Birkbeck) discuss the legacies of the Cold War and if it ever really ended. The panel, chaired by Jessica Reinisch (Birkbeck) also address how we understand and communicate the history of the Cold War to younger generations.
The panel included discussion on the extent to which new historiographical approaches have informed, or, more frequently, failed to inform, current teaching materials and curricula in UK secondary schools. The challenge, panellists agreed, was to integrate the complex, heterogeneous and multi-centred historiography of the Cold War, into a narrative which remained comprehensible and engaging for students and the general public.
For more information – http://bit.ly/2nkGWiQ
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Debating the Cold War, Alma Steingart (Harvard), Jonathan Oldfield (Birmingham), Jon Agar (UCL), Iris Borowy (Shanghai), Sarah Marks (Cambridge), Lukasz Stanek (Manchester) and Waqar Zaidi (Lums) discuss what was Cold War science? The panel, chaired by Dora Vargha (Birkbeck) asks: can we talk about ‘Cold War science’?
Histories of Cold War science and medicine have focused on Big Science, nuclear and atomic science, and space exploration. But science in the two blocks has featured in the historiography in very different terms: on one side stand accounts of Western science funding, the relationships of science and the military, and health effects of nuclear programmes and accidents; on the other, studies of a terrain where science was led astray and corrupted by politics, and marked by crippling shortages of materials and expertise. A “declensionist narrative” of decline, desiccation and degradation (borrowing a term from the environmental historian Diana K. Davis) can be found in accounts of Eastern, but rarely of Western, approaches to knowledge and science. This panel will seek to identify possible ways of comparison, and consider the significance of collaborative projects, shared research agendas and other contact points between scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain.
For more information – http://bit.ly/2nkGWiQ
The first person in his family to attend university, Warren has overcome significant hardship to achieve his academic goals. Having found himself estranged from his parents, homeless and addicted to amphetamines, it was a chance introduction to two books on philosophy “which taught me what my less-than-ideal background did not: how to live well, the nature of responsibility, what it means to live a good life, how to treat others. It is a debt I will never be able to repay in full".
Further information: Department of Philosophy - http://bit.ly/2ou2tTV Courses in philosophy - http://bit.ly/2ocGXns
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - https://soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
Catherine Heard, Director of the World Prison Research Programme at the Institute for Criminal Policy Research at Birkbeck, discusses how imprisonment is used in 10 different countries around the world, and the harms of excessive use of imprisonment.
Further information: ICPR - http://bit.ly/2opUlDT Catherine Heard - http://bit.ly/2nndhUL School of Law at Birkbeck - http://bit.ly/2nEFl88
Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is.
Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - https://soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on ‘Debating the Cold War’, Sandrine Kott (Geneva), Dean Vuletic (EUI), Kristy Ironside (Manchester), Bela Tomka (Szeged) and Peter Romijn (Amsterdam) address the question: was there a welfare state in the East as well as the West?
The panel, chaired by Johanna Conterio (Birkbeck), explores the thesis, proposed by Jan Gross, Timothy Garton Ash and others, that Communism was based predominantly on repression, the abuse of political power, and a lack of popular legitimacy and ‘freedom’. The discussants examine potential points of comparisons between Western and Eastern states and their responsibilities for their citizens, including interpretations of social security, education, welfare, health care, social mobility, and taxation, and ask about effects and consequences of similarities and differences. As part of this comparative perspective, the panel looks at how Communism was experienced and lived in Eastern Europe, and explore questions surrounding legitimacy and dissent in both East and West.
For more information - http://bit.ly/2nkGWiQ
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on ‘Debating the Cold War’, Polly Jones (Oxford), Anita Prazmowska (LSE), Diana Georgescu (SSEES), Dina Fainberg (Amsterdam) and Anatoly Pinsky (St Petersburg/Helsinki) discuss did ideology matter during the Cold War? The panel, chaired by Ana Antic (Birkbeck) explores the common juxtaposition between the supposed waning significance of ‘ideology’ in the West with the overly rigid ideological regimentation of the East; the notion that while ideology permeated every aspect of private and public lives in the East, the Western private self was shielded from ideological influences, or that there was no dominant political ideology in the West.
The panel also examines other, partially contradictory, themes from established Cold War narratives including, the rejection of Marxism in Eastern Europe especially among intellectuals after the major disappointments of 1956 or 1968 and the idea that Marxism was never genuinely adopted except by a small number of brainwashed party cadres.
For more information - bit.ly/2nkGWiQ
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Debating the Cold War, Julia Lovell (Birkbeck), Anne Deighton (Oxford), Jussi Hanhimaki (Geneva) and Oscar Sanchez-Sibony (Macau) discuss how global was the Cold War? The panel, chaired by Jessica Reinisch (Birkbeck) address the growing research on the Cold War as a global phenomenon.
The majority of narratives and frameworks are still focused on the relationship of the United States and the Soviet Union. This panel discussion therefore aims to take stock of the contributions of global history to Cold War historiography. It asks: what conventional Cold War concepts does a global approach reinforce, which ones does it contest? What are the conceptual and methodological challenges of constructing a global history of the Cold War? How does shifting perspectives away from the US-Soviet binary change our understanding of the Cold War, its stakes and the relationship of the two superpowers and to what extent can we leave the binary behind?
For more information - bit.ly/2nr1LcQ
Professor Helen Graham of Royal Holloway, University of London delivers this keynote lecture on the Spanish Civil War and Transnational Mobilisation. This lecture uses the lives of five individuals to explore the significance of the Spanish Republican cause to the continental wars of social change which took place between 1936 and 1948. Professor Graham also examines what the Spanish Republican defeat of 1939 meant for all five over the long term, as they suffered physical displacement and psychological and existential estrangement. With this in mind, the talk concludes by exploring open questions about what might constitute an honest reckoning today with the history and memory of Spain, and of Europe’s dark mid-twentieth century. The lecture is introduced by Paul Preston (LSE).
The lecture was part of a two-day conference on the international history of the Spanish Civil War organised by the Reluctant Internationalists research project, in collaboration with the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies at the LSE. Bringing together over thirty scholars from the UK, Europe, the US and further afield, the conference set out to explore the origins and experiences of transnational mobilisation during the conflict and the immediate post-war period.
For more information - bit.ly/2o8m23X
Speaker Charlotte Ribeyrol (Sorbonne University; Trinity College, Oxford)
Abstract: This paper focuses on the chromatic anachronism of William Burges’s Great Bookcase (1859-62, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) which was first exhibited in the Medieval Court of the 1862 International Exhibition. Modelled on a surviving piece of polychrome French Gothic furniture, and painted by no fewer than 14 promising artists (including Edward Burne-Jones and Simeon Solomon), it represents the Pagan and Christian origins of art and yet some of the colours used were modern pigments devised by an expanding chemical industry. A fellow exhibitor of painted furniture at the Medieval Court, William Morris shared a similar passion for medieval France, which his early poetry construed as a golden age, contrasting with the bleakness of the industrial present. However some of his poems also introduce effects of chromatic disjunction and anachronism, notably in ‘Golden Wings’, which H.H. Statham analysed in 1897 as ‘characteristic of a decorator poet’, quoting the expression ‘red brick lip’ as ‘a sign of the times’ rather than of the architecture of the age of Chrétien de Troyes. Drawing on the complex description and inscription of these shifting chromatic materialities, I wish to show how the convergence of Victorian debates on ancient forms of polychromy and the colours of industrial modernity shaped Morris’s and Burges’s early poetic and artistic practice.
Matthew Winterbottom - curator of late nineteenth-century British sculpture and decorative arts at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford - responds to Charlotte Ribeyrol's paper on ‘”Red brick lip”: Morris, Burges and the poetry of architecture’
Professor Steve Edwards (Birkbeck)presents his work on daguerrotypes for The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies.
Steve Edwards is Professor of History and Theory of Photography in the Department of Art History at Birkbeck. His publications include: The Making of English Photography, Allegories (2006) and Martha Rosler, The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems (2012). His work has been translated into 11 languages and he is an editor of Oxford Art Journal and the Historical Materialism book series.
Dr Eddie Bruce-Jones from Birbkeck’s School of Law has a new book, Race in the Shadow of Law: State Violence in Contemporary Europe. The book is available now and published by Routledge.
The book looks at structural and institutional racism in Germany, and how the work of Black-led anti-racism activists has tried to combat this.
The main case in the book is that of Oury Jalloh, a Sierra Leonean man who, in 2005, burned to death in a police cell in the city of Dessau while in the German asylum system with temporary leave-to-remain. The circumstances of Jalloh’s death remain unclear more than a decade later, despite a campaign to establish them, with which Dr Bruce-Jones was involved as a legal observer.
Through the case of Jalloh and others who have died at the hands of the police in Germany, Dr Bruce-Jones draws connections between contemporary legal knowledge practices and colonial systems of thought, arguing that many people of colour experience the law as a part of a racial problem, rather than a solution, to racial injustice.
For the first time in academic legal scholarship, Dr Bruce-Jones’ book positions Black and anti-racist perspectives at the centre, rather than the margins, of critically thinking through the intersection of race and law.
Further information:
Race in the Shadow of Law: State Violence in Contemporary Europe - bit.ly/2mvbT1p
Dr Eddie Bruce-Jones - bit.ly/2mvcsZ9
School of Law - bbk.ac.uk/law
Courses in law - bit.ly/2lLNiHc
.
[Research] Professor Jan Rueger from Birkbeck’s Department of History, Classics and Archaeology has published a new book: Heligoland: Britain, Germany and the Struggle for the North Sea.
Heligoland is a small island in the North Sea, but its diminutive size belies its importance in the history of Anglo-German relations. A British colony for much of the nineteenth century, the island became a metaphor for Anglo-German rivalry after Germany acquired it in 1890. Turned into a naval fortress under the Kaiser and again under Hitler, it was fought over in both world wars. Heavy bombardment by the Allies reduced it to ruins until the Royal Navy re-took it in May 1945. It was finally returned to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1952, and became a popular holiday destination.
Tracing this long history of contact and conflict from multiple perspectives, in Heligoland Professor Rueger brings to life this fascinating and revealing microcosm of the Anglo-German relationship in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Heligoland: Britain, Germany and the Struggle for the North Sea is published by OUP and is available now.
Dan Reagan studied for a MA Manpower studies at Birkbeck in 1969. Now aged 84, he reflects on his educational journey and his time at Birkbeck, and offers advice to today's students.
Today we offer a range of business psychology courses at Birkbeck - bbk.ac.uk/orgpsych
This talk explores some of the many links between sculpture, writing and dance in fin-de-siècle Paris through a study of Arthur Symons’s involvement with the works of Auguste Rodin and avant-garde dance as represented by Loïe Fuller and Isadora Duncan. As spatial arts, engaging in and exploring three-dimensional space, sculpture and dance impinge on the physical space of the spectator. Although one art is solid and static, the other evanescent and ephemeral, the approximations between the two arts were many at the turn of the century. The Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 became the epicentre for the display of the moving body, whether as modern machine with sophisticated stage effects or as erotic bodies captured in drawing, photography, and sculpture.
Alexandra Gerstein (Courtauld Institute of Art) is curator of ‘Rodin and Dance: The Essence of Movement’ at the Courtauld Gallery. More information about the exhibition is available on the Courtauld Gallery website.
This latest episode of Birkbeck Voices gives some fascinating listening for the cold winter evenings
• The Calendar: Following two high-profile screenings of the latest film from Birkbeck’s Derek Jarman lab [jarmanlab.org] Professor Colin MacCabe, Chair of the research and film-making lab, talks to us about The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger [from 46 seconds]
• Birkbeck People: Dr Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Reader in Law, talks to us about the Colombian peace process, and his involvement in talks between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) during the 1990s [from 9 mins 30 secs]
• Research Focus: Professor Jacqueline Barnes, who was recently made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, talks about her research into the environmental factors that affect early childhood development, and the challenges of ensuring that successive government policies take scientific evidence of their efficacy into account [from 21 mins 40 secs]
This month the College swings back into action, with classes starting across campus:
-
We hear from Spike, who's about to embark on a Law degree at Birkbeck (bbk.ac.uk/law)
-
International student Madeline is returning for the second year of her creative writing and English degree (bbk.ac.uk/english/study-here/creative-writing-courses)
-
Student Union's (SU) LGBTQ+ officer, Tommy discusses how the SU can support new students (www.birkbeckunion.org)
This latest episode of Birkbeck Voices, coming to you from a sunny Gordon Square, has plenty to hold your interest:
-
Research Focus: Dr Caroline Kamau (bit.ly/2cpZhmV) speaks about her study on the working conditions of junior doctors, and their connection to patient mortality.
-
The Calendar: Mike Berlin (bit.ly/2cI8Ssv) about his forthcoming history study day on the Great Fire of London
-
Birkbeck People: MA Language Teaching student, Viktorija Reimontaite speaks about her day job as manager of the Bloomsbury Farmers’ Market - lfm.org.uk/markets/bloomsbury
Long after the event, the Great Fire of 1666 continues to resonate with Londoners. The City’s ever changing skyline with its glittering towers still pivots around the dome of Wren’s St. Paul’s. London’s streets and houses continue to show the influence of post fire plans and building codes.
Ahead of a study day organised by Birkbeck and the Museum of London on 24 September, Mike Berlin of Birkbeck's Department of History, Classics and Archaeology talks about the impact of the fire on the lives of ordinary Londoners, the elusive history of the famous plans for re-building London after the fire and the role of anti-Catholic and other conspiracy theories in the post-fire period.
Victorian Psychology Now is a series of events convened at Birkbeck, University of London, that aims to bring together scholars and students from a range of disciplines to investigate new critical directions for researching Victorian psychology; and to explore how ideas, convictions and practices associated with Victorian psychology are being lent new focus in relation to contemporary understanding of relations between mind and body, brain and consciousness, emotion and reason.
Victorian Psychology Now is organised by Dr Carolyn Burdett and Dr Heather Tilley, and generously supported by a Birkbeck Wellcome Trust ISSF grant.
You can find the programme with the session descriptions at this link: https://victorianpsychologynow.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/victorian-psychology-now-symposium-programme1.pdf
Victorian Psychology Now is a series of events convened at Birkbeck, University of London, that aims to bring together scholars and students from a range of disciplines to investigate new critical directions for researching Victorian psychology; and to explore how ideas, convictions and practices associated with Victorian psychology are being lent new focus in relation to contemporary understanding of relations between mind and body, brain and consciousness, emotion and reason.
Victorian Psychology Now is organised by Dr Carolyn Burdett and Dr Heather Tilley, and generously supported by a Birkbeck Wellcome Trust ISSF grant.
You can find the programme with the session descriptions at this link: https://victorianpsychologynow.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/victorian-psychology-now-symposium-programme1.pdf
Victorian Psychology Now is a series of events convened at Birkbeck, University of London, that aims to bring together scholars and students from a range of disciplines to investigate new critical directions for researching Victorian psychology; and to explore how ideas, convictions and practices associated with Victorian psychology are being lent new focus in relation to contemporary understanding of relations between mind and body, brain and consciousness, emotion and reason.
Victorian Psychology Now is organised by Dr Carolyn Burdett and Dr Heather Tilley, and generously supported by a Birkbeck Wellcome Trust ISSF grant.
You can find the programme with the session descriptions at this link: https://victorianpsychologynow.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/victorian-psychology-now-symposium-programme1.pdf
Victorian Psychology Now is a series of events convened at Birkbeck, University of London, that aims to bring together scholars and students from a range of disciplines to investigate new critical directions for researching Victorian psychology; and to explore how ideas, convictions and practices associated with Victorian psychology are being lent new focus in relation to contemporary understanding of relations between mind and body, brain and consciousness, emotion and reason.
Victorian Psychology Now is organised by Dr Carolyn Burdett and Dr Heather Tilley, and generously supported by a Birkbeck Wellcome Trust ISSF grant.
You can find the programme with the session descriptions at this link: https://victorianpsychologynow.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/victorian-psychology-now-symposium-programme1.pdf
This latest episode of Birkbeck Voices features a diverse mixture of upbeat projects, sobering research, and beautiful music.
• Research Focus: Researchers Dr Fiona Candlin and Professor Alex Poulovassilis describe their newly-funded (more than £1million!) project into mapping the UK’s lesser known museums
• The Calendar: Ahead of her Birkbeck Big Ideas event on 10 August (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events-calendar/forced-marriage-and-2018honour2019-killings-in-britain), Dr Christina Julios described her research into honour killings and violence in the UK
• Birkbeck People: Development and Alumni Assistant, Lucie Hickey, shares her passion for writing and performing music
Birkbeck BA Theatre and Drama student Karen Hobbs describes her experience of being diagnosed with cervical cancer during her studies, and how she used the experience to develop a comedy show, which she is taking to this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Writer and academic Vybarr Cregan-Reid discusses his new book, Footnotes: How Running Makes us Human (Ebury Press, 2016), a literary and philosophical study of running and modern life. He will read from a chapter about why so many people dislike running in a gym, and how the treadmill began its life as the harshest form of punishment short of the death penalty, endured by many, including Oscar Wilde.
Hear speakers from the National Portrait Gallery, Guildhall Art Gallery, the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, and the Salvation Army Archive, who host prestigious internships with the Birkbeck MA in Victorian Studies. They discuss the joys and challenges of collecting, curating, preserving and researching the Victorians.
Speakers: Who was Emma Riches? Caroline Smith from Bethlem Museum of the Mind finds out.
Katty Pearce, Assistant Curator at the Guildhall Art Gallery, gives us a taste of Albert Moore’s Pomegranates.
Ruth Macdonald from The Salvation Army Heritage Centre talks about ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’
Dr Jan Marsh and Elizabeth Heath from the National Portrait Gallery talk about The Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue: mapping visual biographies across the nineteenth-century art world.
Arctic archives, broken lands, and Victorian relics are some of the topics our panelists discussed in this exciting event, which marked the publication of Adriana Craciun’s Writing Arctic Disaster: Authorship and Exploration (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Speakers include Adriana Craciun (UC Riverside), Felix Driver (Royal Holloway) and Michael Bravo (Scott Polar Institute, Cambridge). This podcast is of Michael Bravo.
Arctic archives, broken lands, and Victorian relics are some of the topics our panelists will discussed in this exciting event, which marks the publication of Adriana Craciun’s Writing Arctic Disaster: Authorship and Exploration (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Speakers include Adriana Craciun (UC Riverside), Felix Driver (Royal Holloway) and Michael Bravo (Scott Polar Institute, Cambridge). This podcast is of Adriana Craciun.
Arctic archives, broken lands, and Victorian relics are some of the topics our panelists discussed in this exciting event, which marked the publication of Adriana Craciun’s Writing Arctic Disaster: Authorship and Exploration (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Speakers include Adriana Craciun (UC Riverside), Felix Driver (Royal Holloway) and Michael Bravo (Scott Polar Institute, Cambridge). This podcast is of Felix Driver.
What is the future for Europe? Using a mix of cultural, philosophical and political approaches, this evening will seek to answer the question of quo vadis Europa. Can the European project be saved? Which are the cultural ties upon which the EU can build? Can we identify new forms of post-statal political organisation, in order to secure civility in the disorganised world beyond state sovereignty.
Will the central forces of crisis undermine the European project in its entirety? Are there particular steps that can be taken to overcome current concerns, for example the ongoing problem of democratic deficit? What roles can law and legal theory play in guiding the European Union into the future?
For more information - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/lawontrial
.
This event placed the crisis of migration within the EU within a broader context of economic and political upheaval within the member states and aspirant member states of the European Union, as well as within countries far beyond the EU. The current migration crisis within the EU is both a global phenomenon and a further cause of doubt and concern about the political, social and cultural responses of the EU to the drawing of the boundaries of the Union. Does the EU have the capacity to master crisis? This panel of young critical European lawyers explored this multi-faceted crisis from the varying national perspectives of the candidate countries of the Balkans, Greece, Germany and the UK.
For more information - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/lawontrial
.
In the run up to the EU Referendum, Birkbeck School of Law is putting on a week-long series of free public events to debate the top issues facing voters. Law on Trial 2016: The EU at the Crossroads runs from 13-17 June - bbk.ac.uk/lawontrial
This time on Birkbeck Voices, we speak to the key organiser behind the programme of events, Professor Michelle Everson (bit.ly/1TXoAAd), to see what’s in store at Law on Trial 2016
To book your free place at a Law on Trial 2016 event - bbk.ac.uk/lawontrial
In the wake of a packed and thoroughly successful Arts Week 2016 - bbk.ac.uk/artsweek - Birkbeck Voices offers a performance-based taste of how two events went:
- Theatre Scratch Night: MA Text and Performance - http://bit.ly/25lvp41 - students perform an extract of an original piece of theatre
- Moving People: Creative Writing and the Refugee: Dr Steve Willey - http://bit.ly/1szKA83 - performs two powerful pieces of poetry which he wrote after doing fieldwork in the West Bank.
To experience more highlights from Arts Week 2016 - bbk.ac.uk/artsweek
Ahead of #BBKArtsWeek 2016 (bbk.ac.uk/artsweek - 16-20 May) Birkbeck Voices gives a snapshot of what to expect at the annual celebration of art and culture:
-
Overview: Arts week coordinators Professor Sue Wiseman and Dr Louise Owen give a broad overview of this year’s packed programme.
-
Local Government Sustaining the Arts: Southwark Councillor Paul Fleming MP gives an insight into what he will touch on at his Arts Week event on Monday 16 May - ow.ly/4nsv2j
There are 50+ free public events at Arts Week - please book your place now - bbk.ac.uk/artsweek
There’s plenty to delve into in this latest edition of Birkbeck Voices:
-
Research Focus: Researcher Mark Panton speaks about his thesis on sports stadiums and urban regeneration http://ow.ly/4n6PPw
-
Birkbeck People: Outreach officer Faith Williams talks about her role and the pioneering project she’s leading with Haringey Council - http://ow.ly/4n6PZF
-
The Calendar: Recruitment manager, Eleanor Martin talks about the formal launch of the Birkbeck Talent recruitment service - http://ow.ly/4n6Q4F
In this paper I investigate the role of the Victorian wood engraver and their business of artistically producing someone else’s lines. Is this mechanics, or creation? From drawing to autograph, the line is a powerful element of the way we understand artistic identity. The line is essential to aesthetics; without it there can be no boundary, no form, no artwork. Curling into letters and forms, the line connects writing and the image. An expressive gesture, the line is what links the body of the artist – their hands and eyes in particular – with the artwork as object. Mainstream Victorian wood engravers such as Dalziel had the job of creating another person’s line, and according to common beliefs about artistic identity and work, this is a paradox, which undermines many of our assumptions about what lines mean in art.
The latest edition of Birkbeck Voices features everything from volcanology to making deals with the Devil!
-
Research Focus: Professor Colin Teevan speaks about writing for the stage (in his forthcoming, Kit Harington - starring, production of Dr Faustus – http://ow.ly/ZlOA1) and screen (in his award-winning drama Rebellion - http://ow.ly/ZlOuU).
-
Birkbeck People: Dr James Hammond speaks about his pioneering volcanology research in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
-
The Calendar: Professor Nick Keep opens the door on the programme for Science Week 2016 - http://ow.ly/ZlOFt
This seminar, presented in collaboration with the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre at Birkbeck, will explore the new material Martha Weiss discovered while researching the current must-see exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, marking the bicentenary of the birth of Julia Margaret Cameron, 150 years after she first exhibited her work there. Colin Ford has worked extensively on this important photographer, most notably in the comprehensive catalogue Julia Margaret Cameron: Complete Photos (Getty, 2002).
This time, we’re focusing on the new edition of BBK Magazine, the college’s annual review which features an array of feature articles and profile interviews from across the college community. You can find the magazine online here - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/about-us/downloads/bbk34.pdf
On the podcast we take a deep dive on three of the spotlight features in this year’s magazine:
-
Research Focus: American playwright Anna Ziegler speaks about bringing Birkbeck scientist, Dr Rosalind Franklin, to the West End stage
-
Birkbeck People: Entrepreneurial student Fiona Button talks about her new educational product
-
The Calendar: Professor David Feldman discusses the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism’s latest exhibition and book focusing on Blood. Copies of the book can be purchased here - https://www2.bbk.ac.uk/blood/
This time on Birkbeck voices, there’s plenty to listen to:
-
Research Focus: Hilary Benn’s recent speech at the House of Commons - http://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2015/dec/03/hilary-benn-airstrikes-vote-speech-full-must-confront-isis-evil-video - is mulled over by the Department of Politics’ regular podcast, Westminster Watch - https://soundcloud.com/british-politics-centre/westminster-watch-episode-8-4-december-2015?in=british-politics-centre/sets/westminster-watch
-
Birkbeck People: We hear the dulcet tones of the Birkbeck Singers at one of their rehearsals. To find out more about the choir, please visit their webpage - http://www.birkbeckunion.org/groups/the-birkbeck-singers
-
The Calendar: Prof Tom Cox speaks about the forthcoming Cancer & Employment seminar. Find out more - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events-calendar/esrc-seminar-on-cancer-employment-the-legal-and-insurance-context
This year's Annual Law Lecture was delivered by Bianca Jagger and is titled: 'Why we must defend the Human Rights Act'.
The Conservative Party's 2015 manifesto commits the government to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a 'British Bill of Rights'. Bianca Jagger discusses why she feels these proposals would substantially weaken the power of individuals to bring cases against the government and could sever the link between the UK and the European Court of Human Rights. Replacing the Human Rights Act and with a diluted national 'Bill of Rights' would jeopardise some of the safeguards that hold our government to account. Furthermore, as claims of threats to national security increase, it is essential to ensure there are adequate protections against the expansion of state power and surveillance.
About Bianca Jagger:
In addition to being President and Chief Executive of her Human Rights Foundation, Bianca Jagger holds the offices of Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador; IUCN Bonn Challenge Ambassador; Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation and Member of the Executive Director's Leadership Council of Amnesty International USA.
For more information about the Birkbeck School of Law - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/law
John Ruskin’s account of the gothic spirit, from the central chapter of The Stones of Venice, ‘The Nature of Gothic’ (published in 1853), is highly influential and much fêted. Such influence has long been recognized over figures such as William Morris, over the architectural practices of Victorian Britain, and over political economic thought, especially after Ruskin’s 1862 publication of ‘Unto This Last’, which develops the earlier work’s critique of laissez-faire economics. But Ruskin’s innovative theorization of the concept of the gothic in ‘The Nature of Gothic’ has never been connected with gothic literature itself. This is a significant oversight, as this paper will demonstrate, one that has left a fundamental shift in Victorian gothic literature unrecognized, and that has allowed the eighteenth-century, consistently negative associations of the gothic to stand unchallenged in the very different world of post-Ruskinian gothic literature. Ruskin’s considerable influence over gothic fiction will be reconstructed, in this paper, by analysis of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1853), Sheridan Le Fanu’s In a Glass Darkly (1872) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1886).
It’s all going on in this month’s edition of Birkbeck voices. Listen in to catch the following interview:
-
Research Focus: A chat with Dr Tim Smith ahead of his BFI event investigating romantic movies and audience’s emotional responses. (To book a place at the public event on Saturday 14 November - https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=morethanafeeling&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=)
-
Birkbeck People: Inspirational student Joshua Moses shares his story for the forthcoming Birkbeck Journeys series
-
The Calendar: American writer Siri Hustvedt talks to us about her work, and what it’s like to be guest of honour at a conference all about you. Find out more - http://blogs.bbk.ac.uk/events/2015/10/26/exploring-the-mind-body-problem-an-evening-with-siri-hustvedt/
Westminster Watch is a podcast in which members of the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College discuss current issues in British politics. It is aimed at those with an interest in British politics in general and students on Birkbeck's BA Politics module,
Contemporary British Politics, in particular. In episode 5, Dr Dermot Hodson and Dr Ben Worthy discuss the House of Lords threat to veto the government's tax credit cuts and the Bank of England's controversial role in the Brexit debate.
For more information: www.bbk.ac.uk/politics
Westminster Watch is a podcast in which members of the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College discuss current issues in British politics. It is aimed at those with an interest in British politics in general and students on Birkbeck's BA Politics module, Contemporary British Politics, in particular.
In episode 4, Dr Dermot Hodson and Dr Ben Worthy discuss the challenges facing the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information and SNP leader Nicolas Sturgeon’s balancing act over a second independence referendum.
For more information: www.bbk.ac.uk/politics
Westminster Watch is a podcast in which members of the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College discuss current issues in British politics. It is aimed at those with an interest in British politics in general and students on Birkbeck's BA Politics module, Contemporary British Politics, in particular.
In episode 3, Dr Dermot Hodson and Dr Ben Worthy discuss the secretive role of the Privy Council in British politics and what Prime Minister David Cameron didn’t say about the EU in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference.
For more information: www.bbk.ac.uk/politics
As a new term dawns at Birkbeck, we’re out and about in the College’s community speaking with academics and students about what’s keeping them busy. This latest edition features:
-
Research Focus: A conversation with organizational psychologist Dr Almuth McDowall about current research into fathers and their difficulties in striking a work-life balance. Dr Almuth McDowall - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/orgpsych/staff/academics/mcdowall
-
Birkbeck People: A new first year undergraduate student talks about her first week of term.
-
The Calendar: Now that it’s open, we visit the Fallen Woman exhibit at the Foundling Museum to give you a taste of what to expect - http://foundlingmuseum.org.uk/events/fallen-woman
Westminster Watch is a podcast in which members of the Department of Politics at Birkbeck discuss current issues in British politics. It is aimed at those with an interest in British politics in general and students on Birkbeck's BA Politics module, Contemporary British Politics, in particular.
In episode 2, Dr Dermot Hodson and Dr Ben Worthy discuss Parliament’s role in the Syrian crisis and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell’s speech at the Labour Party Conference.
For more information: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/politics
Westminster Watch is a podcast in which members of the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College discuss current issues in British politics. It is aimed at those with an interest in British politics in general and students on Birkbeck’s BA Politics module, Contemporary British Politics, in particular.
In episode 1, Dr Dermot Hodson and Dr Ben Worthy discuss Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour Leader and Robert Chote's reappointment as head of the Office for Budget Responsibility.
For more information: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/politics
Here’s our second edition of Birkbeck Voices’ new magazine format, featuring conversations with academics, students and members of staff in our three regular platforms:
-
Research Focus, which this month features Professor Matt Cook - http://ow.ly/Roivb - who will be talking about his recent study on Queer Domesticities.
-
Next, Birkbeck Alumna Miriam Phillips talks about her educational journey in the Birkbeck People section
-
And lastly, Professor Lynda Nead - http://ow.ly/RoiFX - takes this month’s The Calendar slot, talking about her involvement in the forthcoming Fallen Woman exhibition at the Foundling Museum - http://ow.ly/RoiVw
Birkbeck Inaugural Lecture - 17 June 2015
Professor Adam Gearey - Professor of Law
Although we are all equal in the eyes of the law, modern jurisprudence has been profoundly myopic towards the brute realities of poverty and material inequality. This lecture explores those peculiar figures, from Jack London, through to George Orwell and the poverty lawyers of the 1960s and 70s who have 'gone underground' and engaged with poverty in the US and UK. What can these accounts of living amongst and acting for 'the poor' tell us about the unwillingness of jurisprudence to deal with social degradation and 'lives that slide out of view'.
For more information about Birkbeck's Department of Law - www.bbk.ac.uk/law
Professor Adam Gearey - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/law/our-staff/ft-academic/gearey
Birkbeck Voices introduces its new magazine format this month, featuring conversations with academics, students and members of staff in our three regular platforms:
-
Research focus: Conversations with academics about their pioneering areas of research
-
Birkbeck People: We dive into the Birkbeck community, and come back to the surface with some funny anecdotes and inspirational stories in tow
-
The Calendar: We find out what’s going on in the College’s packed programme of events
For our inaugural edition of the new format we’ll be chatting with:
-
Professor Jean-Marc Dewaele about his research on language and emotion (Research Focus) - http://ow.ly/PTVBd
-
Dr Wendy Hein about being selected as this year’s winner of the BETA award (Birkbeck People)- [http://ow.ly/PTVOB]
-
and hearing about the recent London and the Nation event (The Calendar) - http://ow.ly/PTVSZ
In this lecture, Dr Amy Harrison from Birkbeck, University of London, aims to share findings from the field of positive psychology on the science of happiness. It also explores what makes us happy and how we lead happier lives.
Psychology has tended to focus on exploring people’s problems and difficulties, looking at what has gone wrong in people’s lives rather than their resources, strengths and what might be going well.
Positive psychology is a field of psychological science which has sought to promote and develop research into the factors that make people happy, the impact of focusing on strengths, having an optimistic outlook on our wellbeing, and exploring the small things that we can all do to boost our levels of happiness.
EnfieldThinks Pop-Up Learning Shop was a temporary space that aimed to bring the local community a series of thought-provoking events designed to engage and inspire.
For more information - www.bbk.ac.uk/popup
In this lecture, Associate Lecturer David Tross from Birkbeck, University of London, explores ideas around happiness and well-being at work.
How do we achieve meaningful and challenging work? How can employees increase happiness at work and create conditions for wellbeing and engagement? Theories of human needs and psychological wellbeing relate to personal and professional developments are explored through relevant research and case studies.
EnfieldThinks Pop-Up Learning Shop was a temporary space that aimed to bring the local community a series of thought-provoking events designed to engage and inspire.
For more information - www.bbk.ac.uk/popup
In this lecture, Associate Lecturer David Tross from Birkbeck, University of London, explores the often neglected area of our leisure time.
How does happiness and wellbeing relate to what we do? What are the pressures on our lifestyle and what does work/life balance look like? Ideas around the importance of social connections are explored in reference to our own personal preferences, as well as the positive and negative influences on mental and physical wellbeing including the way we construct our identities.
EnfieldThinks Pop-Up Learning Shop was a temporary space that aimed to bring the local community a series of thought-provoking events designed to engage and inspire.
For more information - www.bbk.ac.uk/popup
Birkbeck Inaugural Lecture - 18 June 2015
Professor Rick Cooper - Professor of Cognitive Science
Understanding the human mind, given its complexity, requires drawing upon many tools and many sources of evidence. I will discuss how computational modelling of the cognitive processes underlying action and thought, and of how those processes break down following neurological injury, can help shed light on the organization and operation of the mind. Along the way I will discuss software for constructing cognitive models and touch upon a range of methodological issues, including the appropriate level of abstraction of cognitive theory and the role of falsification in the development of such theories.
For more information about Birkbeck's Department of Psychological Sciences - www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology
Professor Rick Cooper - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/richard-cooper
Birkbeck Inaugural Lecture - 15 June 2015
Professor Karen Hudson-Edwards - Professor of Environmental Geochemistry and Mineralogy
Global biogeochemical cycles describe the processes by which elements circulate from sources to sinks within the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere, and the fluxes associated with these transfers. These cycles give vital information to help understand and manage pollution, nutrients and climate change, and to evaluate natural and anthropogenic effects on these issues. This presentation will give an overview of the extreme cycling of key nutrients and pollutants, explain the geochemical and mineralogical processes by which these elements are circulated and outline future challenges for research.
For more information about Birkbeck's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences - www.bbk.ac.uk/geology
Professor Karen Hudson-Edwards - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/geology/our-staff/karen-hudson-edwards
Birkbeck Inaugural Lecture - 1 June 2015
Professor Carolyn Moores - Professor of Structural Biology
Just as our bodies have a skeleton providing support and strength, so also do the cells of our bodies; this framework is called cytoskeleton, and it is involved in many cell functions - movement, definition of architecture, and multiplication. My research team studies the three-dimensional shape of the cytoskeleton (called microtubules) using an electron microscope, a powerful tool ideally suited to visualising these nano (very tiny) structures.
My talk, for a general audience, will describe some of our recent discoveries that shed light on how healthy cells work, but also how mulfunctions of the cytoskeleton cause disease.
For more information about Birkbeck's Department of Biological Sciences - www.bbk.ac.uk/biology
Professor Carolyn Moores - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/biology/our-staff/academic/carolyn-moores
Birkbeck Inaugural Lecture - 4 June 2015
Professor Matthew Longo - Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience
Spatial distortions have long been known to characterise early representatives of the senses in the brain. Recent studies have revealed traces of these distortions in higher- level aspects of perception and cognition.
I will describe this research, focusing on distorted representation of body size and shape. In particular, I will describe distorted body representations underlying touch and proprioception, as well as in our concious body image. Delusions and misperceptions of the body are a conspicuous feature of several neurological and psychiatric conditions. The research I will discuss shows that distorted body represntations are also ubiquitous aspect of healthy mental life.
For more information about Birkbeck's Department of Psychological Sciences - www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology
Professor Matthew Longo - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/matthew-longo
This year’s Birkbeck Arts Week, held at the School of Arts from 18 to 23 May, was a huge success, with members of the public flocking to see, and take part in, a packed programme of lectures, workshops, performances and screenings.
Following up on the last Arts Week special podcast, Birkbeck Voices made it along to 43 Gordon Square during the week itself to experience the buzz at a handful of events.
Here’s the line-up for the podcast: • We spoke to Dr Jaqueline Riding, Birkbeck alumna and historical consultant about her work on Mike Leigh’s highly acclaimed movie, Mr. Turner • This is followed by some reaction from participants at the Visual Artists Today Symposium • And we wrap up with a few words from Dr Rosie Cox who spoke at the Gendering Austerity symposium
For more information about:
• Arts Week 2015 - www.bbk.ac.uk/artsweek • Dr Jaqueline Riding - www.jacquelineriding.com • Dr Rosie Cox - http://ow.ly/NIDA0
Birkbeck’s Arts Week returns this month with a vibrant and packed programme of free-to-attend public events - www.bbk.ac.uk/artsweek
Running in and around the School of Arts in the heart of Bloomsbury from May 18 to 23, Arts Week 2015 comprises a cultural smorgasbord of nearly 50 events, including lectures, performances, screenings, workshops and discussions.
With the week just round the corner, this edition of the podcast features interviews with three Birkbeck academics that will be running events:
-
Dr Silke Arnold-de Simine, who will be speaking on the matter of Ruins - http://ow.ly/MWCPl
-
PhD researcher and lecturer in Arts Management, Niki Zanti, who is one of the team behind the Visual Artists Today symposium - http://ow.ly/MWCPl
-
Dr Liane Strauss, who gives a special poetry reading ahead of the Moons, Magpies and London poetry event - http://ow.ly/MWDd3
For more information about this years #BBKartsweek and a full programme of events - www.bbk.ac.uk/artsweek
Professor Nikolaus Wachsmann, Birkbeck, University of London.
On the 29 April 1945 US troops entered the grounds of Dachau concentration camp, near Munich, where they found 32,000 inmates from over 30 European nations. Among them was Edgar Kupfer, a 39-year-old German political prisoner. A few hours after his liberation, Kupfer noted in his diary: ‘I shall celebrate this all my life as a second birthday, as the day, when I received the gift of life anew.’
In this lecture, Professor Wachsmann will explore the second life of Edgar Kupfer and the lives of others who survived the concentration camps, estimated at up to half a million people. In particular, he will consider the first months and years after liberation, looking at the fate of survivors, at the testimony and memory of the camps, and at the punishment of perpetrators. He will conclude by looking at the legacy of the camps since the 1950s.
For more information about the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism based at Birkbeck, University of London - www.pearsinstitute.bbk.ac.uk
Professor Jay Winter, Yale University
Remembrance is not a human right but the precondition for the effective establishment and maintenance of a regime of human rights. In this lecture Professor Winter explores the central role played by Holocaust remembrance in the framing and passage of one of the foundational human rights documents of the twentieth century: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Jay Winter will focus on the role of the French jurist, resistance leader, and Jewish statesman, René Cassin, architect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968.
For more information about the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism based at Birkbeck, University of London - www.pearsinstitute.bbk.ac.uk
Professor Mary Fulbrook, University College London in conversation with Professor Jane Caplan, St Anthony’s College, University of Oxford and Birkbeck, University of London.
Two of Britain’s foremost historians on Germany and the Nazi era, Mary Fulbrook and Jane Caplan, discuss Mary Fulbrook’s new book, A Small Town Near Auschwitz - Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust, exploring the wider historical issues it raises and Fulbrook’s own conflicts of interest, in her professional and personal roles, as she uncovered a story behind a family she had known all her life.
In A Small Town Near Auschwitz, Mary Fulbrook re-creates the story of Udo Klausa, the principal civilian administrator of Bedzin, a town that lies just 25 miles from Auschwitz. Klausa was a 'perfectly ordinary' family man. Yet he was also responsible for implementing Nazi policies towards the Jews in his area – processes that were the precursors of genocide. Through the ghettos of Bedzin and a neighbouring town 85,000 Jews passed on their way to slave labour or the gas chambers.
The story that unfolds is important because in many ways it is so typical. Across the Third Reich other ordinary administrators, just like Klausa, facilitated the murderous plans of a relatively small number of the Nazi elite. Everyday racism unwittingly paved the way for genocide. These men 'knew' and yet mostly suppressed this knowledge, performing their day jobs without apparent recognition of their own role in the system, or – despite evidence of growing unease, certainly in Klausa’s case – any real sense of personal wrongdoing, responsibility, or later remorse.
For more information about the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism based at Birkbeck, University of London - www.pearsinstitute.bbk.ac.uk
Professor Miri Rubin, Queen Mary, University of London
The Life and Passion of William of Norwich, written in the twelfth century by Thomas of Monmouth a Benedictine monk, contains the earliest accusation that Jews killed a Christian child for hate of Christians and their beliefs. Such accusations were repeated over the centuries, in Europe and beyond. Believed by some and dismissed by others, they sometimes led to violence.
Miri Rubin’s lecture demonstrates the involvement of scholars and monks, bureaucrats and opportunists in attempts to make the accusation work. The story of child murder – first told in Norwich around 1150 – is as revealing about Christians as it is about Jews, both in the Middle Ages and since.
For more information about the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism based at Birkbeck, University of London - www.pearsinstitute.bbk.ac.uk
Professor Jeffrey C. Alexander, Yale University
In this talk, Professor Alexander, one of the world’s leading social theorists, seeks to analyse the on-going conflict among the dominant majority groups in Europe over how immigrant groups, particularly Muslims, should be incorporated into the civil sphere. Alexander is particularly concerned with shedding light on the growing antipathy to multiculturalism.
For more information about the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism based at Birkbeck, University of London - www.pearsinstitute.bbk.ac.uk
This General Election is the most unpredictable in decades. From the SNP in Scotland to UKIP’s assault and the Green insurgency, this election is full of uncertainties. We tried to make sense of a contest even pollsters are seeing as too close to call.
Birkbeck staff from the Politics Department each gave a five-minute pitch and bite size assessment on a different aspect of the election, chaired by Professor Tony Wright. Did we piece together who could win?
Staff will look at a variety of topics including: • What Will be the UKIP Effect? • How Will the Greens Do? • Will Algorithms Win the election? • Who is the Average Voter (it isn’t a man)?
Order of Speakers: Rosie Campbell, Diana Coole, Jason Edwards, Ben Worthy and Eric Kaufman Chair: Tony Wright
For more information about the event - http://ow.ly/MEBVd
Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon, Assistant Dean for Strategy (Equalities) in Birkbeck’s School of Science talks to us about her aspirations for gender diversity within Birkbeck, and why it is so important for the College and the country to address the current ‘leaky pipeline’ which sees women leaving science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine in large numbers.
For more information about Birkbeck's School of Science - www.bbk.ac.uk/science
Professor Mike Oaksford, Head of Birkbeck’s Department of Psychological Sciences, talks about how our academics’ research is making an impact in society, following the REF 2014 results in which all of the department’s research was awarded the top rating for impact. Professor Oaksford describes how the department supports researchers at all stages of their careers and creates an environment which is conducive to conducting this world-leading research.
For more information about Birkbeck’s Department of Psychological Sciences - www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology
Bryony Merritt talks to Professor Stephen Frosh about Birkbeck's performance in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF).
For more information about our REF results - www.bbk.ac.uk/news/ref-results and research at Birkbeck - www.bbk.ac.uk/research
Undergraduate and postgraduate students at Birkbeck are benefiting from generous funding thanks to support from ArcelorMittal – the world’s leading steel and mining company. In this podcast, Ian Louden, Head of Brand Worldwide, at ArcelorMittal, explains how the scholarships are part of the company’s regeneration efforts in east London. These began with the building of the distinctive 114.5m high ArcelorMittal Orbit sculpture for the Olympics in London two years ago.
Three of the scholarship students then describe their own experiences studying Environmental Management, Arts Policy and Management, and Crystallography, at Birkbeck. They describe their personal circumstances, ambitions and emphasise the opportunities opened to them as a result of the funding.
This month's podcast was recorded from an event held on 11 November to unveil a portrait of Professor Eric Hobsbawm at Birkbeck. The event also gave supporters of the Hobsbawm Scholarship Fund the opportunity to meet the first students to receive support from it.
PhD History student Fabio Antonini explains what difference the Hobsbawm Scholarship has made to him and why he was drawn to study at Birkbeck in a department that was shaped by the teaching and research of Professor Hobsbawm over the 60 years that he worked at Birkbeck.
Professor Hobsbawm's friends and former colleagues, Hywel Francis MP and Professor Sir Roderick Floud share their memories of Eric, and explain why they support the scholarship fund.
Julia Hobsbawm, Professor Hobsbawm's daughter who has loaned the portrait to the College, talks about the painting and why she and her family decided to set up a postgraduate scholarship fund in her father's memory.
Finally, Professor David Latchman CBE, Master of Birkbeck, talks about why Professor Hobsbawm is such an important figure in the College's history and how Birkbeck is working to make access to postgraduate study available for everyone.
Find out more about the Hobsbawm Scholarships: www.bbk.ac.uk/hobsbawm-scholarships
View the portrait of Professor Hobsbawm: www.bbk.ac.uk/hobsbawm-portrait
Professor Hilary Fraser, Executive Dean of the School of Arts at Birkbeck and Geoffrey Tillotson Chair of Nineteenth-Century Studies, explores some of the areas covered in her new book: Women writing art history in the nineteenth century. Looking like a woman. She explains the social and technological changes which allowed art history to develop as a new intellectual discipline during the nineteenth century and how female art historians played an important role in this development. She discusses the barriers to recognition of women’s expertise in art history, and how they often used unconventional vehicles to develop their ideas such as novels, travel guides and journalism.
Links for more information: Professor Hilary Fraser - http://ow.ly/D5OCW Book: Women writing art history in the nineteenth century - http://ow.ly/D5OOu
University research leads to scientific and medical advances and a better understanding of society. Today the impact of such work is increasingly being analysed, in part because of the requirements of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) – an audit of the quality of research in the UK higher education sector.
Professor Stephen Frosh, Pro-Vice-Master for Research and Chair of the REF Working Party at Birkbeck, highlights the pragmatic and philosophical purpose of research in this podcast interview. He speaks about the REF ahead of the results being announced this December, and highlights case studies included in Birkbeck’s submission, including work on cancer therapies and the use of eye-tracking to help restore a damaged painting. Professor Frosh, based in Birkbeck’s pioneering Department of Psychosocial Studies, also talks about his own research on intergenerational trauma.
Links: Professor Stephen Frosh - http://ow.ly/BV3Tm Department of Psychosocial Studies - www.bbk.ac.uk/psychosocial
Birkbeck is offering £2,500 fee reductions for its innovative MA in Film Curating, which starts this October and responds to the changing relationship between film and art. The course will address the changes created by the expansion of digital technology, including the growth of moving images in galleries and art exhibitions.
To celebrate the birth of this new postgraduate qualification, Professor Laura Mulvey, of Birkbeck’s Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies, discusses, in this podcast interview, the changing role of film and the opportunities to curate new material from archive and modern films. She describes how students will be able to use the facilities at Birkbeck’s award-winning cinema, and the highlights of the course, which include a visit to the Berlin Film Festival.
Links: MA in Film Curating - http://ow.ly/BhBsx Professor Laura Mulvey - http://ow.ly/BhBEC Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/culture
The future of history was centre stage at a major two-day conference called History after Hobsbawm, organised by Birkbeck and the journal Past & Present. Speakers discussed the arguably unprecedented influence of Professor Eric Hobsbawm upon the study of history, and also mentioned topics likely to occupy historians in the years ahead, including energy and climate change.
In this podcast interview, Dr Brodie Waddell, of Birkbeck’s Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, discusses the highlights of the conference and how it was documented via social media. He also pays tribute to the scholarly achievements of Hobsbawm, who began teaching at Birkbeck in 1947 and served as its President from 2002 until he died in 2012.
Links: Department of History, Classics and Archaeology - http://ow.ly/yMEA9 History after Hobsbawm - http://ow.ly/yMEpc Past & Present - http://ow.ly/yMEuM
London was transformed by the Great War. The capital was bombarded from the air for the first time and 668 people lost their lives in raids by Zeppelins and German aeroplanes. But death and destruction were also accompanied by an unprecedented economic boom, and the rise of women as they entered the workforce in huge numbers.
All these major developments are explored in this podcast by Professor Jerry White, of Birkbeck’s Department of History, Classics and Archaeology. He shares the findings and personal stories from his new book, called Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World War. Ahead of the centenary of the outbreak of the war this August, White also emphasises that the war was a just war, but could have ended sooner if peace negotiations had been pursued more vigorously.
Getting the most out of your studies is important, whatever your age or background. In this podcast, Professor Pat Tissington shares his latest research about what helps, and what hinders, progress at university. His findings are based on a nationwide student survey and are published in his new book, entitled Study skills for business and management: how to succeed at university and beyond, which he co-authored with Christos Orthodoxou.
Professor Tissington continues by describing his own varied career, which has included six years in the British army, and working in sales. He explains how he can relate to Birkbeck’s mature students wanting to change careers as he only started his university studies at age 29. Having joined Birkbeck last year as its Head of Organizational Psychology, Professor Tissington talks about the ‘honour’ of leading the Department and its new Postgraduate Certificate in Coaching.
Inspiring talks and workshops about happiness, work, local history and more are taking place at Birkbeck’s pop-up university in Willesden Green until 31 May. In this podcast, Annette McCone, Birkbeck’s Widening Access Manager, explains why this hub for outreach activities was created to offer local residents the opportunity to explore new topics and find out about studying at Birkbeck.
David Tross, associate lecturer at Birkbeck’s School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy, also describes his 10-week series of talks about happiness, which are taking place at the pop-up university in Queens Parade, Willesden Lane, NW2 5HT.
For more information about the free events led by Birkbeck’s academics at the pop-up university see the online programme - http://ow.ly/w9JHk
To mark International Women’s Day 2014, in this podcast we hear from an all-female line-up of Birkbeck academics and the College’s President, Baroness Joan Bakewell.
Baroness Bakewell discusses her experiences as a female student at Cambridge in the 1950s and one of the first female television presenters at the BBC. She shares reflections on her recent meeting with Burmese opposition politician Aung San Suu Kyi (0:00 – 8:50).
Dr Rosie Campbell (Department of Politics) reveals the results of her study into barriers to mothers entering Parliament and shares her ideas for a possible solution (8:50 seconds – 13:30). Read a blog post about this research.
Dr Janet McCabe (Department of Media, Film and Cultural Studies) talks about the “unremitting surveillance” of female ageing in celebrity culture today (13:30 – 18:50). Read an article on the topic of celebrity and ageing by Dr McCabe in The Guardian.
Dr Sarah Lamble (School of Law) questions why there hasn’t been more progress in improving the experience of women within the UK’s Criminal Justice System (18:50 – 23:00).
Dr Ioanna Boulouta (Department of Management) shares insights from her research into why having more women in the boardroom might affect a company’s corporate social responsibility results (23:00 – 27:40). For more information on Dr Boulouta’s research into gender balance on corporate boards and corporate social responsibility see her paper Hidden Connections: The Link between Board Gender Diversity and Corporate Social Performance
Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith (Department of Psychological Sciences) offers advice about building a career in the male-dominated world of science, and observes that thing are improving in terms of gender equality (27:40 – 31:00). Read a blog post with tips on finding work-life balance by Professor Karmiloff-Smith.
Steve Biko – leader of the Black Consciousness Movement – was one of the key figures in the liberation struggle in South Africa. The radical student leader, who arguably rivalled the importance of Nelson Mandela during the 1960s and 1970s, is the subject of a new biography by Dr Derek Hook, of Birkbeck’s Department of Psychosocial Studies.
In this podcast, Dr Hook explains the significance of Biko’s anti-apartheid campaign and his death in police custody. He also discusses his own dilemma about writing the book from his perspective as a white South African. He explains how the process of writing the book became an intellectual and historical project, rather than a political attempt to represent the views of Biko.
Links: Dr Derek Hook - ow.ly/tYbBI Birkbeck Department of Psychosocial Studies - ow.ly/tYbHk
Last summer’s riots (2011), good and bad capitalism, and the life-changing opportunities created by Birkbeck all feature in Birkbeck Voices – the first in a new series of monthly podcasts.
Professor Mike Hough, co-director of Birkbeck’s Institute for Criminal Policy Research, discusses the effectiveness and fairness of the criminal justice system, with particular reference to last year’s riots (0:00-6:48 ).
Professor Bill Bowring, of Birkbeck’s School of Law, explains how civil liberties are increasingly under threat during these times of austerity, and he refers to the growth of the police tactic of “kettling” (6:58-10:09).
Dr Andreas Liefooghe, Assistant Dean of Birkbeck’s School of Business, Economics and Informatics (BEI) , shares his thoughts about Business Week, and his own experiences of returning to education as an adult (10:19-19:10).
Sarah Weir, CEO of The Legacy List – a charity supporting the long-term social, cultural and physical regeneration of the Olympic Park – explains how Birkbeck enabled her to forge a new career in the arts after banking, and why she is supporting Birkbeck’s activities in Stratford (19:20-23:16).
Kirstein Gourlay concludes by saying Birkbeck gave her a “second chance” to fulfil her “dream”. Following her Certificate of Higher Education in Social Policy and the Care Sector, she has gained confidence and skills, and become involved in local politics (23:17-28:49).
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-podcast-august-2012
Birkbeck alum Rob Williams re-lives the excitement of winning silver at London 2012, and academics talk about sport and business, and intensive law courses in this latest episode.
Rob Williams talks about rowing for Team GB in the lightweight men’s four in a thrilling Olympic showdown this summer. He also shares his research in electron microscopy as he has just completed his PhD at Birkbeck and UCL’s Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology (0:00-06:38).
Sean Hamil, a Director of Birkbeck’s Sport Business Centre, continues the Olympic theme by discussing the presentations at the 5th International Sport Business Symposium hosted at the College (06:38-15:29).
Finally, Dr Stewart Motha, of Birkbeck’s School of Law, describes the new intensive postgraduate law courses, taught over two cycles of two weeks (in April and June). In particular, he mentions his teaching on Law, Democracy and Human Welfare: Global Perspectives (LLM) (15:29-25:26).
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-podcast-october-2012
New research about the advantages of part-time study is shared in this episode, which also features a discussion about the films of J.M. Barrie – the author of Peter Pan.
Claire Callender, Professor of Higher Education Policy at Birkbeck, explains how part-time students benefit professional and personally from their studies well before they graduate. She co-wrote the longitudinal study Futuretrack: Part-time students, and draws on its findings in the interview (00:00-09:03).
Ian Christie, Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck, continues by talking about the films of one of Bloomsbury’s most famous residents – J.M. Barrie. He describes how the ‘Bloomsbury Group’ were interested in film, and talks about the presentation and film screening he organised as part of the recent Bloomsbury Festival (09:04-16:05).
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-november-2012
Interviewees discuss how the Department of Politics celebrated its 40th anniversary, and how a new project is investigating the links between Down’s syndrome and dementia.
Dr Alex Colas, of the Department of Politics, describes the events staged for the landmark birthday, including Professor Deborah Mabbett’s lecture about austerity under Margaret Thatcher and the Coalition Government, and a talk he chaired about the dilemmas of humanitarianism (0:00-7:26).
Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith, of the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, continues by explaining exciting new research to see whether understanding Down’s syndrome can help prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Birkbeck is part of the new £2.5m London Down’s Syndrome Consortium funded by the Wellcome Trust (7:27-16:04).
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-podcast-december-2012
The history of pain from the 18th century to the modern day and reflections on Barack Obama’s presidency of the US are shared by researchers in this podcast.
Professor Joanna Bourke , of the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, talks about how people have described and perceived pain in recent centuries. She also highlights the interdisciplinary discussions at the recent 'Pain and its meanings' symposium organised by the Birkbeck Pain Project and the Wellcome Collection.
Professor Robert Singh, of the Department of Politics, discusses the achievements of Barack Obama during his first four years in office, and sets out the challenges to be faced in his second term. He draws on knowledge from his recent book, entitled Barack Obama’s Post-American Foreign Policy: The Limits of Engagement.
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-podcast-january-2013
Match-fixing in the beautiful game and Be Birkbeck – a new membership scheme to promote public debate – are both discussed by academics in this podcast.
Dr Andy Harvey, of the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre, gives his reaction to the headline-grabbing Europol announcement about hundreds of suspicious football matches. He also explains his research efforts to counter the illegal practice of match-fixing as part of his Don’t Fix It! project, which will lead to a Code of Conduct, education programme, and an anonymous reporting mechanism for players and officials (0:47-12:50).
Professor Miriam Zukas, Executive Dean of the School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy, introduces Be Birkbeck – a membership scheme to share our research and promote discussion. She describes how the initiative, which starts at £5 per month, enables members to attend lectures about controversial subjects in academia and be part of Birkbeck’s community (12:58-17:57).
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-podcast-february-2013
The health of migrants, and the impact of imperialism and racism, are both discussed by the authors of new books in this podcast.
Dr Jasmine Gideon, of Birkbeck’s Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies, speaks about the health problems faced by migrants, including the trauma and stress experienced by refugees (0:00-8:22). Her research focuses on Latin American migrants in London, many of whom try to solve their health conditions outside the NHS by visiting unregulated doctors or returning to Latin America for treatment. Dr Gideon is the co-editor of Migration, health and inequality.
Dr Kalpana Wilson, of LSE’s Gender Institute and a visiting lecturer at Birkbeck’s Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies continues by highlighting how the racism and unequal power relations continue to shape development (8:23-19:03). She summarises arguments and possibilities, and makes a case for transnational political solidarity, drawing on key themes in her book, Race, Racism and Development: Interrogating history, discourse and practice.
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-podcast-new-books-on-international-development-focus-on-migration-health-and-racism
Baroness Joan Bakewell, Birkbeck’s new President, talks about the importance of part-time study and her excitement about joining Birkbeck in this 12-minute podcast. The distinguished journalist and Labour peer is injecting renewed energy into Birkbeck’s campaign to champion the vital benefits of part-time study for the economy, employers and employees when national figures show a sharp drop in part-time student numbers. Baroness Bakewell also shares her memories of the late Professor Eric Hobsbawm, Birkbeck’s former President and her supervisor at the University of Cambridge in the early 1950s.
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-podcast-baroness-joan-bakewell-birkbeck2019s-new-president-speaks-up-for-part-time-students
Professor Glaucius Oliva, head of the Science without Borders initiative, speaks about his time as a PhD student in the crystallography department at Birkbeck in the 1980s and his future plans for the ambitious Science without Borders programme. Science without Borders is an initiative of the Brazilian government which aims to send 100,000 undergraduate and postgraduate Brazilian students to study at top universities around the world. Dr Jose Lopes, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of São Paulo, shares his experiences of studying at Birkbeck under the Science without Borders initiative.
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-podcast-science-without-borders-and-birkbeck2019s-links-with-brazil
David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science, talks about the links between universities, industry and government in excerpts from a speech delivered at the Triple Helix International Conference – an event co-hosted by The Big Innovation Centre, Birkbeck, and UCL Advances.
Luciana Berger, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy, then describes her fascinating and enjoyable experiences studying an MSc in Government, Policy and Politics at Birkbeck. She praises the diversity of the student body and explains her support for part-time education.
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-podcast-mps2019-views-david-willetts-discusses-research-and-luciana-berger-speaks-about-birkbeck
Professor David Latchman, Master of Birkbeck, shares his interest in genetics, findings from his research, and describes the courses on offer through Clearing this August in this 12-minute podcast. He describes how his work in the laboratory has contributed to the origins of promising trials of a new therapy for melanoma, a deadly skin cancer. Professor Latchman explains how studying the Herpes Simplex virus at BioVex – a company he co-founded – has led to research developing anti-cancer drugs by pharmaceutical giant Amgen following a buy-out (00:00-09:46).
Details about the unprecedented number of courses, 39 in total, which are offered at Birkbeck through Clearing this August are also discussed, as are the advantages of combining work during the day with evening study (09:47-10:40). Professor Latchman concludes by welcoming Birkbeck’s new state-of-the-art campus in Stratford, which is to open this autumn (10:41-12:01).
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-podcast-fighting-cancer-with-genetics-and-applying-to-birkbeck
Professor Philip Dewe, Vice-Master of Birkbeck, describes the state-of-the-art campus opening in Stratford this autumn, and Birkbeck’s commitment to providing higher education in east London. University Square Stratford is a unique collaboration between Birkbeck and the University of East London and it is conveniently located in the centre of Stratford. The £33m five-storey building includes teaching and performance spaces, and student support services.
Professor Dewe also speaks about Birkbeck Connects – a series of three events in Stratford’s Cultural Quarter this September to celebrate the opening of the new campus. Local artists, writers, academics and creative entrepreneurs will gather to explore the impact of rapid change in east London.
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-podcast-birkbeck2019s-new-campus-in-east-london
Gloria Miqueles – a Chilean activist and Birkbeck alumna – shares her extraordinary and inspirational account of surviving prison and torture during Augusto Pinochet’s brutal regime. She explains her memories of the coup in 1973, and her involvement in the resistance.
Miqueles later moved to London in exile and studied for an MSc in Development Studies at Birkbeck. She recently spoke about her own experiences and those of other women involved in the resistance at a conference at Birkbeck called Chilean women: 40 years on.
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-podcast-remembering-the-chilean-coup-40-years-on
Demographic research rarely dominates the headlines, but the comparison of the last two censuses has proved to be an exception. In this interview, Professor Eric Kaufmann, of Birkbeck’s Department of Politics, describes his analysis of the figures, which show that the proportion of white Britons in London’s population fell from 58% to 45% between 2001 and 2011. He explains that the decline is not the result of ‘white flight’, but the consequence of long-term demographic trends as white Britons are continuing to migrate out of London at historic rates and the ethnic minorities are not.
Professor Kaufmann also talks about how ethnic minorities combine multiple identities regarding their ethnicity and nationality, and recognises that there are multiple versions of the same national identity.
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/birkbeck-voices-podcast-london2019s-changing-population-and-national-identity
On 23 January 2014 a team at the world-leading ‘Babylab’ at Birkbeck launched a new Europe-wide study of the early emergence of autism and ADHD. With over £2.5 million in funding, the team are now embarking upon the Studying Autism and ADHD Risk in Siblings (STAARS) project, which will map brain development from birth in order to identify the earliest signs of these lifelong social communication and attention disorders.
Dr Emily Jones explains the benefits that earlier diagnosis would bring to individuals with autism and ADHD and their families. She explains what the study is looking for and the techniques that the research team will be using to understand what is happening in infants’ brains. Charlotte Warner, whose son was involved in a previous study at the Babylab, talks about what it is like to involve your child in scientific research, and why she felt it was important to do so.
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-research/podcasts/birkbeck-voices-podcast-studying-autism-and-adhd-risk-in-siblings-staars-project
On Wednesday 27 November 2013, novelist Alan Hollinghurst spoke about his writing and his Booker Prize-winning novel, The Line of Beauty, to an audience of Birkbeck students and alumni.
Find out more about Birkbeck's School of Arts: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/
Recent international climate change talks and the heightened risk of climate change-related flooding in the UK are discussed in this podcast. Dr Diane Horn, of Birkbeck’s Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies, speaks about these matters, including her latest research, which was published in Nature, about the limitations of the Flood Re insurance scheme.
Dr Horn describes the advantages and disadvantages of the Flood Re scheme currently being finalised by insurers and the Government. In particular, she notes that Flood Re does not provide any incentives to reduce inappropriate development on the floodplain, and highlights the need for planning policies to include better strategies for climate change adaptation.
Relevant links: Dr Diane Horn (http://ow.ly/rV7mZ) Birkbeck’s Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies (http://ow.ly/rV7vF) Nature.com - November 2013 (http://ow.ly/rV7Bk)
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbeck-voices-podcast/focusing-on-climate-change-and-flood-insurance