Call for proposals and expressions of interest: BIMI-Pitt Research Workshop
The second edition of the biennial research workshop organised by Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) and the University of Pittsburgh Film Studies Program will take place Tuesday 9 May to Thursday 11 May 2017.
The idea of the workshop is to bring together faculty and postgraduate students from Birkbeck and Pittsburgh to share their ongoing research, to get to know each other in person, and to develop collaborative research projects together.
The first edition, “Cinema and the City”, May 2015, was a productive and enjoyable occasion, which has already generated several joint research initiatives, including journal publications, student and staff exchanges, public lectures, curatorial projects, and study days.
The forthcoming edition, entitled “Urban Change”, pursues the broad theme of cinema and the city, while addressing more precisely how moving image culture – in all its changing forms and formats, both aesthetically and technologically speaking – has responded and continues to react to the on-going economic, social and political transformation of urban environments. These environments are understood as physical spaces but also as places to live, work, love and play, both individually and in terms of interpersonal and community relationships. While Pittsburgh and London remain potential urban topics for exploration, the geographical and historical coordinates of this workshop are entirely open, and participants are invited to explore contexts and examples drawn from around the world.
The workshop is open to staff and students from across the range of research areas and disciplines that BIMI is committed to representing as part of its mission at Birkbeck: not just Film and Media, nor exclusively Arts, but equally Law, History, Philosophy, Politics, GEDS, Psychosocial Studies, Applied Linguistics, and Psychological Sciences.
If you would like to participate in the workshop please send a one-page outline of your project marked “BIMI-Pitt workshop” to bimi@bbk.ac.uk by Thursday 6 April 2017.
You are encouraged to present your research as a work in progress rather than a finished “output”, and to explain how your project could be shared with and developed alongside colleagues from other disciplines and institutions.
Time-slots will be generous and there will be time for discussion and socialising during the course of the three-day event.
As the workshop will take place in Birkbeck Cinema, you may wish to suggest material that you would like to show in that setting, including 16mm and 35mm prints, as well as digital formats.
Alternatively, if you would like to attend the workshop as an audience member or potentially as a respondent or chair, please let us know by email (bimi@bbk.ac.uk), as it was the quality of discussion and conversation that made the last workshop such a memorable event.
Michael Temple, Director, and Matthew Barrington, Manager, Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and Essay Film Festival