Call for papers: Talking about feelings in gender and sexuality research

Friday 5 June 2020 Birkbeck, University of London

This cross-disciplinary conference provides a forum for researchers in gender and sexuality studies to discuss how we deal with feelings and emotions, including our own.

After a keynote panel discussion and a series of paper presentations, we will gather into smaller groups for discussions. Current research students at Birkbeck are invited to propose a 15-minute paper presentation or a topic for discussion, which might focus on one or more of the following:

Theoretical models for perceiving and interpreting emotions;
The methods we use to access information about emotions in texts, archives, interviews, and in the field; and how our research methods may have succeeded, failed, and produced unexpected results;
The interplay between research ethics and our emotions;
The sometimes-radical and emotionally-charged roots of our research areas (including, for example, the women’s movement and the gay liberation movement);
Emotionally challenging or affirming/pleasurable encounters and experiences in our research;
How it feels to research gender and sexuality in various institutional contexts (including, for example, universities, archives, and libraries), and at different career stages;
How the conditions for researching gender and sexuality may have changed over time and may vary between places (for example, national, regional or institutional contexts);
The more and less tangible barriers we might face and perceive as researchers in this field.

If you are a current research student at Birkbeck, please send your proposal to Ralph Day (r.day@bbk.ac.uk) by Sunday 15 March 2020.

If proposing a 15-minute paper, please send an abstract of 150-200 words together with a short biographical statement.

If proposing a topic for discussion, please send a brief explanation of the topic together with a short biographical statement. You are invited to lead the discussion session with a short reflection on the topic and to facilitate the discussion.

This conference is funded by the Birkbeck Graduate Research School. There will be no registration fee for this conference, and we expect to be able to cover domestic travel costs for participants delivering paper presentations or leading discussion sessions.

Registration now open: A celebration of 100 years of the Birkbeck PhD: Past, Present and Future

We are excited to announce that registration for the Birkbeck Graduate Research School Conference, ‘A celebration of 100 years of the Birkbeck PhD: Past, Present and Future‘ on 22-23 April, is now open. This exciting event will bring together doctoral researchers and PhD alumni from across the research student community at Birkbeck. Further details will be announced over the coming weeks including a poster competition with prizes.

As part of the conference we are opening a call for current PhD students to contribute – we are looking for volunteers to describe their research focus and methodological approach, with an aim of exposing the range of approaches available, and facilitating discussion on the ways that methodology could be viewed from an interdisciplinary perspective. If you are willing to give a talk please complete this brief form by 24 March. We will endeavour to provide as many opportunities to present as we can but please note we may need to select speakers in order to represent the range of methods.

Register here

BGRS Conference 2020

A celebration of 100 years of the Birkbeck PhD: Past, Present and Future

DAY 1 – Wednesday 22 April (18.00 – 21.00)

OPENING NIGHT: The Birkbeck PhD – Past, Present and Future

A history of the Birkbeck PhD

Joanna Bourke is Professor of History in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, where she has taught since 1992. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. Joanna will speak about the history of the first doctoral research at Birkbeck.

Highlighted current doctoral research at Birkbeck

Some of our current PhD students will present their winning Birkbeck 3 Minute Thesis talks.

The future of PhDs in the UK

Dr Stephen Hill, Director of Research at Research England, will speak about the future of PhDs in the UK.

Paulette Williams, Founder & Managing Director of Leading Routes, will talk about the ‘Broken Pipeline’ report into representation and diversity at PhD level study, and the implications for doctoral research and beyond.

Drinks Reception

Talks will be followed by a drinks reception to celebrate the opening night of the conference.

DAY 2 – Thursday 23 April (09.30 – 19.00)

On the second day you will be able to attend a range of panels and other sessions organised by the conference steering group, which is made up of current PhD students. Sessions will involve Birkbeck staff, alumni and current research students.

SESSION THEMES

Methods and Disciplines

This theme will provide the chance to find out more about research methods and disciplines and will include PhD students giving brief presentations on their research methodology or an aspect of it. PhD students willing to give a talk should complete this brief form by 24 March.

Research impact

Discover about research impact in the context of doctoral studies and continuing research after a PhD.

The PhD and Beyond

This session will provide the chance to hear from former Birkbeck PhD students and staff who will speak about their careers and work beyond their PhD.

CHASE Training opportunities for all Arts and Humanities PhD Students at Birkbeck

Auraldiversities series

Auraldiversities is a series of lectures, workshops and in-situ training sessions seeking to encourage creative and critical attention towards aural diversity within the arts and humanities, with particular focus on an ecology of the ear, designed for all those researching within the Arts and Humanities, especially those with an interest in the creative, social and political dimensions of sound and listening.

These sessions specifically address the need for further study and practice inspired by, and concerning, this specific turn in research and focus on a particular theme led by an academic/practitioner with invited guests selected to represent a range of approaches. A CHASE PhD candidate with associated research interests will also give a presentation.

Sessions are purposefully multifaceted, practical, intuitive and experimental in approach and encourage collaborative work and collective activities:

Session One – Thursday 13 February | 1000-1800 | Goldsmiths, University of London

Session Two: Thursday 27 February | 1000-1800 | Venue TBC

Session Three: Thursday 12 March | 100-1800 | Venue TBC

Plenary: Thursday 26 March | 1500-1800 | Keynes Library, Birkbeck School of Arts

Ethnography and Film. Exploring Labour, Technology and Mediation in the Egyptian Film Industry

Wednesday 19 February | University of Kent

The workshop will offer participants advanced training in ethnography, applied to the context of the Egyptian Film industry. Dr El Khachab’s workshop will outline how researchers can successfully apply ethnographic methodologies, developed in Anthropology, to research issues about arts and media, especially film. Dr El Khachab will outline the strategies he developed during his PhD research to gather observations, interviews and documentary data from creatives and technicians working in the largest and most influential media industry in the Arab world. He will also provide participants an insight into how he adapted the presentation of his findings from his PhD thesis into his forthcoming monograph, The Egyptian Film Industry: Labor, Technology, Mediation.

This workshop is aimed at CHASE students from a variety of backgrounds and developed with an interdisciplinary audience in mind. Hence, attending the training does not require any specialised prior knowledge or skills, apart from an interest in the topic of the workshop.

Find out more and register here

Translation x Creative Writing – Daniel Hahn

Monday 24 February | UEA | 2-4pm

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator with over sixty books to his name. His work has won him the International Dublin Literary Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award, and been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, among others. He is a past chair of the Society of Authors, and on the board of a number of organisations that work with literature and free speech.

Concept: Translation for Non-Translators

Find out more and register here

Future Pathways in Medieval and Early Modern Studies: Academia and Beyond

Friday 6 & Friday 27 March | University of Kent

The intended audience for both workshops is first and foremost students currently undertaking PhDs in any aspect of medieval or early modern studies (including Archaeology, History, History of Art and Literary Studies). Students will be able to register for one or both of the workshops, both of which will be hosted at the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus. The first workshop (‘Beyond Academia’) will take place on Friday 6 March 2020. The second workshop (‘Early Career Academia’) will take place on Friday 27 March 2020.

Beyond Academia | Fri 6 March | Find out more and register here

Early Career Academia | Friday 27 March | Find out more and register

Embodied Approaches to Performing Experimental Music

This training explores embodied approaches to performing experimental music, and methods of observing and reporting on research observations that arise as a result of such performance. It employs an approach to methodological training through practical, hands-on workshops.

Event 4: 16th March 2020 14.00-18.00 with Dr Sean Williams

Event 5: Event 5: 24th April 2020 14.00-17.00 with Dr Lauren Redhead

Essay Film Festival, 2020

The Essay Film Festival, now in its sixth edition, presents a global range of contemporary and restored essayistic works, each exploring the creative zone of possibilities between experimental and documentary modes of filmmaking.

View full programme

This year’s programme features several key themes and strands:

Image from short film: Idhi Katha Matramena (Is This Just a Story?) (India, 1983)

New work by the Otolith Group and restored essay films by Ruchir Joshi and the Yugantar Collective engage with the cultural history and politics of India, providing imaginative and insightful perspectives on the educational projects of Rabindranath Tagore, the wandering Baal musicians, the changing cities of Ahmedabad and Kolkata, and the political struggles of Indian women. A symposium on the work of author and filmmaker Joshi will take place during the festival with guests from India, France and the USA, while Yugantar member Deepa Dhanraj will join researchers from Berlin Arsenal and Goldsmiths to discuss the restoration of the collective’s films.

From Argentina, France, UK and the Philippines come challenging found footage experiments by Leandro Listorti, Frank Beauvais, Sarah Wood and John Torres, which critically examine the status and uses of images today while transforming them into moving and fascinating new creations. A student-led research workshop with guest filmmakers will analyse the theory and practice of found footage in the digital age.

Still from short film: America (Garrett Bradley, USA, 2019)

US artists Garrett Bradley and Cauleen Smith investigate and celebrate the depth and diversity of African-American lives, past and present, with works that, like all good essays, both question the viewer and invite us into an ongoing conversation. Both Bradley and Smith will give lecture-workshops about their practice alongside the screenings of their films.

Developing the theme of ‘the living archive’, a series of events will address the cultural politics of film restoration, featuring works by Jocelyne Saab, Mostafa Derkaoui, Ingemo Engström and Gerhard Theuring, in addition to the restored films of Ruchir Joshi and the Yugantar Collective.

Still from short film: Home in E Major, Tamar Rachkovsky, USA, 2019

Finally, Israeli filmmaker Tamar Rachovsky will join the festival to present and discuss Home in E Major, which looks at complex questions of identity and belonging through the deceptively simple lens of the diary film.

Simple and complex, contingent and reflective, hybrid and critical, the essay film that we celebrate at our festival is a constantly renewed invitation to engage with the world and to see it in new ways.

Michael Temple (Director), on behalf of the Essay Film Festival group: Matthew Barrington (Manager), Kieron Corless, Nicolas Freeman (CHASE intern), Catherine Grant, Ricardo Matos Cabo, Janet McCabe, Raquel Morais, and Laura Mulvey.

The Essay Film Festival is a collaboration between Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and the ICA, with support from the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership.

Birkbeck PhD Awards January 2020

Birkbeck Research Degrees awarded in January 2020

Birkbeck awards over 100 PhDs each year. In January, eleven Birkbeck Researchers were awarded for their work in the following areas:

School of Arts

Department of English, Theatre and Creative writing

1 PhD in English and Humanities

History of Art

1 PhD in History of Art

School of Business, Economics and Informatics

DEPARTMENT OF Economics, Mathematics and Statistics

1 PhD in Economics

School of Science

DEPARTMENT OF Biological Sciences

2 PhDs in Biology

department of Psychological Sciences

2 PhDs in Psychology

School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy

DEPARTMENT OF Geography

1 PhD in Geography

Department of History, Classics and Archaeology

2 PhDs in History

Department of Politics

1 PhD in Politics

New PhD Studentships to boost diversity

5 Studentships for 2020/21 entry

Five new awards have been announced for Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) PhD students who start their studies at Birkbeck during 2020. The studentships will help address the under-representation of BAME students at PhD level in all disciplines.

Julian Swann, Pro-Vice Master of Research said:

“I am delighted that we have been able to fund these new research awards for BAME students. Birkbeck has a long history of widening access to higher education and compared with other institutions, we have a relatively high proportion of BAME students but representation at doctoral level is significantly lower than across our student population as a whole. I hope that these awards will help to address this and support more BAME students to lead research at the highest levels.”

Further information

Further information for candidates is available here.

The financial support will cover tuition fees and living expenses for UK-based BAME students for the duration of their course.

Successful candidates will need to have a strong academic background and/or exceptional research potential and to have been offered a place on a relevant doctoral programme.

Deadline for applications: Monday 11 May 2020

Training for PhD students – Love Data Week 2020

The following events are highlighted to all Birkbeck Research students as part of Birkbeck Love Data Week 2020.

Introduction to Research Data Management

Wednesday 12 February, 11.30-13.00

Register here

This interactive session will include discussion and opportunities for questions. It will cover all the basics of Research Data Management including:

why thinking about data management is a good idea
what the risks are
why planning for the long term helps
what you can do about any issues or requirements that you identify

This event will be useful for any students embarking on research, or established academics looking to improve their understanding of how to manage their data.

Researching LGBTQ+ Communities: openness, ethics and consent

WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY, 18.30 – 19.45

Register here

What ethical implications do researchers working with LGBTQ+ communities need to consider? How do we navigate tensions in the drive to make data open? How do we manage consent in this context?

Birkbeck academics Dr Fiona Tasker (Reader in Psychology) and Ralph Day (doctoral researcher in contemporary history) will discuss their research, and how they work with their potentially sensitive data.

Fiona has published extensively on topics including family relationships, identity development of adults and children, and children’s social and emotional development in both non-traditional and new family forms and LGBTQ parenting.

Ralph’s current research focuses on queer sexualities and the telephone in Britain from the 1970s to the 1990s through a study of the telephone information and support service London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard.

This event is being organised as part of Love Data Week and as part of the Library’s LGBT+ History Month programme.

Data Management Plans for Postgraduate Research Students

Friday 14 FEBRUARY, 11.30 – 13.00

Register here

This session is aimed at postgraduate research students and Master’s research students, who are creating or reusing data, or who may require ethical approval, and would like to create a Data Management Plans (DMPs) to help guide them through their project.

DMPs are also important documents for funded research, with many funders requiring them as part of a bid. Being familiar with the process of creating DMPs is therefore a useful research skill.
We will use example plans and online tools to create DMPs, and look at how to improve them.