Author: ubcg56b

Graduate Research School Manager

Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference: ‘Age of Distraction’

Age of Distraction

Graduate Conference

8 + 9 June 2018

This conference explores distraction and all its meanings and implications. Distraction is commonly thought of as a growing concern or even a sickness of modern society and digital culture. From mindless scrolling to heavy consumerism, the pursuit for entertainment and satisfaction is insatiable, leaving us vulnerable to ruling corporations. Does our lack of control transform us into a conformed mass that is susceptible to tabloid media and the rise of populism? On the other hand, distraction is not necessarily steeped in negativity. In fact, it has had a long and fascinating history. Its German equivalent, ‘Zerstreuung’, comes from the idea of dispersion. At the start of the twentieth-century, Walter Benjamin defined the term as ‘floating attention’, where experience is caused by chance rather than concentration. Does lack of focus in fact allow a sense of freedom and inspiration?

Confirmed speakers include:

Food and refreshments will be available.

Call for papers (extended deadline 7 May)

Please send a 200 word abstract for papers of 15 minutes and a 50 word biography to bisr@bbk.ac.uk

Topics may include:

  • History of distraction
  • Distraction and its oppositions
  • Distraction and/in Education
  • Distraction and madness
  • Modes of Extremism: online or in reality?
  • Democracy, populism, and online social networking
  • Freedom of speech v. government and/or regulatory control
  • Misinformation and fake news
  • Dystopia/ an Orwellian society
  • Distraction and creativity
  • Escapism, dream and day-dream
  • Feigned ignorance or ‘Turning a blind eye’
  • Emotional responses
  • Procrastination, boredom and solitude
  • Wandering and ‘killing time’
  • Inspiration, chance and serendipity

Free tickets for Birkbeck Arts and Humanities PhD students: Frames of Representation 2018 @ The ICA, 20-28th April

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CHASE is delighted to be academic partner with The ICA for Frames of Representation 2018, a global documentary cinema festival. As part of this partnership, we have arranged two exciting seminars featuring CHASE academics in conversation with film-makers whose work is showing at the festival.

We also have tickets for a one day symposium on April 28th featuring, amongst others, Oscar winning sound editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now).

CHASE has been given a number of free tickets for the week of events and screenings. These tickets are open to all arts and humanities PhD students at CHASE institutions and will allocated on a first come, first served basis. Have a look at the programme here and request your free tickets here.

Now in its third year, FoR is a global documentary cinema festival. The theme this year is landscape and the festival features a number of UK and European premieres, as well as masterclasses with film-makers. We have also arranged two CHASE seminars that will feature CHASE academics in conversation with film-makers whose work is screening at the festival.

Free tickets are available for ALL film screenings and masterclasses throughout the festival as well, of course, as the CHASE seminars and a half day symposium on the theme of landscape on the closing weekend of the festival. Regardless of your research interests, you are bound to find something, if not many things, of interest.

Any queries, please email enquiries@chase.ac.uk

Close Reading + Digital Humanities: A Dialogue (20 April)

Close Reading and Digital Humanities: a dialogue

20 April, 2-5pm

Erik Ketzan

Digital practices in literary studies have been at the forefront of recent debates about what it means to ‘read’ at scale. Meanwhile, conventional literary studies has followed the modernist paradigm of ‘close reading’, insisting on close textual attention.

On April 20, 2-5pm, Birkbeck School of Arts will host an afternoon event, Close Reading + Digital Humanities: A Dialogue. Space is limited — please register to attend.

This afternoon brings together scholars of close reading and digital humanities to investigate how one can inform the other, chart common goals and navigate potential tensions and anxieties. By discussing the tradition of close reading in literary studies alongside emerging digital approaches to text — such as corpus-based analysis (analysis based on electronic collections of text), detecting text re-use (automatic detection of text that appears in two texts, or multiple times within one text), semantic analysis (automatic classification of the meaning of words), automatic collation (comparison of texts, for instance variants of fiction)  — we hope to identify new research topics and find new ways to tackle old problems.

Each speaker will present for 25 minutes with Q+A, followed by a panel discussion.

Professor Martin Paul Eve

Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing
Birkbeck, University of London

Erik Ketzan

PhD Candidate: Digital Humanities
Birkbeck, University of London

Dr. Richard Robinson

Associate Professor, English Literature & Creative Writing
Swansea University

Dr. Gabriele Salciute Civiliene

Teaching Fellow in Digital Humanities Technologies,
Department of Digital Humanities
King’s College London

Erik Ketzan is a PhD Candidate in Digital Humanities, Birkbeck.

Thesis Boot Camp experience

Thesis Boot Camp experience

Mara Arts

Over the course of three days early April, a group of Birkbeck PhD students were able to participate in a ‘thesis boot camp’, organised by the CHASE consortium. Thesis boot camps originated in Australia and are designed to give PhD candidates a concentrated period of time to focus on their writing, and produce as many words as possible.

The boot camp was hosted by the University of Sussex on the Feltham campus, and the event was expertly facilitated by writing skills trainer Dr Catherine Pope. Around 30 doctoral students attended the whole weekend, hailing from seven different institutions.

We started at 4pm on a Friday afternoon, with introductions and a few words from Catherine to display some persistent writing myths. We were reminded that the aim of the weekend was to produce as many words as possible, and not to craft perfect prose or fully edited chapters. Catherine also taught us the ‘Pomodoro technique’ of doing 25 minutes of concentrated writing, followed by a short break. This was going to prove very useful over the course of the weekend!

Then it was time to get writing. We started with telling another student what we were hoping to achieve that session, which was followed by five minutes of ‘freewriting’ on the topic ‘What do I want to achieve this weekend?’ Freewriting is writing whatever comes into your head, non-stop, without any regard for spelling, grammar or punctuation. It helps to get the writing juices flowing. The rest of the evening, until 8pm, was spent writing.

We had two big classrooms at our disposal: one ‘writing room’ where each student had a desk, and where we were asked not to talk to create a good working environment. The room next door was the break room, which had a constant supply of drinks and snacks, and which we could use whenever we wanted to chat, relax, or play games. Lunches and dinners were also served in the breakroom. Having all meals catered for, and being away from the demands of your domestic environment, really helped to stay focused on the research. As most participants were staying in the same hotel (also generously funded by CHASE) it was easy to unwind together over a drink in the evenings.

On Saturday and Sunday the schedule was much the same. We started at 10am each day with telling our ‘accountability partner’ what that day’s goal was, and then did a bit of freewriting to get going. The rest of the days were split up in sizeable chunks of writing time. Participants could also request a one-to-one session with Catherine to discuss a particular issue they had with their research. On Saturday there was a guided walk in the fields adjacent to the campus, to get some much-needed fresh air. We also spent some time in group discussions each day, to share common PhD student problems such as tricky supervisors or managing work-related stress; and to swap writing tips.

When we finished at 4pm on Sunday, Catherine gave us some tips on how to keep our writing momentum going. Although everyone was pretty worn out after so much hard work, many participants were hoping to attend another boot camp session soon. They are a great way to get over tricky writing hurdles and start good writing habits.

Mara Arts is a PhD student in the Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck.

AHRC-funded PhD studentship

AHRC-funded PhD studentship: Confronting a masculine military ideal: the experiences of LGBTQ service personnel 1914–now

This AHRC PhD Studentship is in Collaboration with Imperial War Museums (IWM) under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership programme. The partner institutions are Birkbeck and the IWM.

The studentship will be supervised by Professor Matt Cook at Birkbeck and Rebecca Newell of IWM. This full-time studentship, which is funded for three years at standard AHRC rates, will begin on 1 October 2018.

Using material from across the IWM’s collection, including the sound collection, and with a particular focus on the museum’s private papers and oral history archives, this project will examine narratives of LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer/Questioning) experience in the military for all or part of the period from 1914 to the present day.

Subject to AHRC eligibility criteria, the scholarships cover tuition fees and a grant (stipend) towards living expenses.

Deadline to apply: 8 July 2018

#vitaehangout: Making the most of PhD placements

#vitaehangout: Making the most of PhD placements

Tuesday 20 March at 12-1pm

Preparations are underway for a #vitaehangout ‘Making the most of PhD placements‘ which takes place on Tuesday 20 March at 12-1pm GMT.

The panel represents different perspectives ranging from those who have undertaken a placement to an institutional and funders view.

Panellists

  • Steve Colburn, Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-East England (CHASE)
  • Ysabel Gerrard, University of Sheffield – placement at Microsoft
  • Rob Hardwick, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
  • Rob Keegan, South West Doctoral Training Partnership (SWDTP)
  • Sarah Middle, Open University/CHASE – placement at the British Library

How to take part

The informative lunch hour will be a useful and effective investment of time. It’s very easy to take part, just register your interest and you will be emailed a live YouTube link nearer the time in readiness for the event. Questions can be posted before or during the event for the panel to answer.

Ableism in Academia: The Break-Out Session

Ableism in Academia: The Break-Out Session

Friday 23rd March 10am – 5pm

On Friday 23rd March, UCL Institution of Education is hosting the event Ableism in Academia. Due to popular demand, this event is now full. Since interest was so great, an alternative, break-out session is now being offered at Birkbeck where the live presentations will be viewed on the big screen, enabling discussion and interaction.

Venue: Birkbeck, University of London

Bookings: To confirm your place at the break-out session, please visit this link

Programme

10.00 – 10.40: Keynote:

  • Fiona KUMARI-CAMPBELL Policy and legal responses to social inclusion

10.40 – 11.00: Invited speaker:

  • Nicki MARTIN The Leadership Foundation for Higher Education research

11.00 – 11.10: Comfort break

11.10 – 12.20: Accepted submissions:

  • Wendy MERCHANT – Excellence, Rigor and Resilience
  • Rosalind JANSSEN – Living with microscopic colitis
  • Gillian LOOMES – The questioning aspie
  • Ian GENT – Depressed academics
  • Carla FINESILVER – Invisible disability, unacknowledged diversity

12.20 – 1.30: Lunch break

1.30 – 3.00: Accepted submissions:

  • Thomas KADOR – Academics who can’t read (remote)
  • Ben LUNN – Ableism in Music Academicism (remote)
  • Jeanne BARCZEWSKA – Teaching voice (remote?)
  • Oliver DADDOW – Colour blindness and accessibility in academia
  • Jennifer RODE – Greyhound racing and the academy
  • Elisabeth GRIFFITHS – Invisible disabilities, disclosure and being an ‘insider’ in disability research
  • Jason DAVIES – Disabling grief in academia

3.00 – 3.20: Comfort break

3.20 – 4.30: Workshop

  • Facilitated by Mike Higgins, Equality Diversity & Inclusion Manager at UCL.

4.30: Closing words

  • Prof Michael ARTHUR, President and Provost of UCL

Unfortunately, catering will not be provided but attendees are welcome to bring along their own refreshments or come and go throughout the day.

Background information

Academia prides itself on productivity, innovation and rigour. It also purports to promote inclusivity and diversity.

However, as disabled, chronically ill, and neurodiverse academics know, ableism – discrimination in favour of able-bodied people – is endemic in academia. Rather than embracing difference as a reflection of wider society, academic ecosystems seek to normalise and homogenise particular ways of working and of being a scholar.

Against this background, this interactive symposium provides a forum to discuss the pressures and challenges faced by disabled, chronically ill, and neurodiverse academics. By engaging in debate around academic ableism, including how it intersects with gender, race, class, age, and sexuality, we aim to create a policy-facing manifesto that will challenge academia’s existing notions of able-bodied perfection and provide impetus for change.

Event aims

  • To be pioneering regarding inclusivity and accessibility
  • To allow for debates and discussions
  • To use personal experiences and theorisation for the creation of a manifesto for universities to use.

Contact details

For further information about the break-out session, please contact Sarah Sherman s.sherman@bloomsbury.ac.uk

For further information about the main event, please contact Nicole Brown nicole.brown@ucl.ac.uk

New CHASE Training Opportunities

The following training opportunities are available to all Arts and Humanities research students at Birkbeck.

CHASE Creative Writing Residency

18 – 25 May | Near Kings Lynn, Norfolk

A creative writing residency to provide an opportunity for creative writers across the CHASE network to build creative writing skills, further CHASE creative writing projects, develop pedagogical skills and build relationships across the network.

The Residency is a one-week program for creative writers from 18th to 25th May at the Great Barn Farm near Kings Lynn. The week will consist of daily student led workshops and writing classes on theory and practice with a masterclass on the 19th from Sarah Hall, who has published six novels, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The week will also include scheduled time for participants to further their own creative projects. It will conclude with a group discussion on teaching best practices and draft guidelines.

Possibilities: Media as process and actant

Title: Continuous corpo-realities <-> diagramming probabilities and possibilities!

Friday 9 March | 10.00-17.00 | University of Sussex

How do digital tools, environments and research co-construct each other? How can you trace the materiality of your research?  How might you diagram the interdependencies of your research sites? What are some of the possible re-mappings and re-imaginings that might occur?

 

 

Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) 2018

2018 Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) at Birkbeck

Your chance to provide feedback

All current Birkbeck research students have been sent a personal invitation to take part in PRES 2018. The survey will close on 30 April 2018. Birkbeck is now participating in the PRES on an annual basis and the latest survey opened on 8 February 2018. Further information about the PRES survey at Birkbeck is available on the Birkbeck surveys page.

We are grateful to all who take time to submit a response. The PRES is an important way for the BGRS and for Birkbeck to understand the views of postgraduate researchers in order to address issues of importance and so that we can continue to do what you value.

£100 Amazon Voucher Prizes

If you submit a response to PRES 2018 you will have a chance to win £100 in Amazon vouchers.

How your responses to the PRES are being used

In the 2017 PRES survey we received 331 responses which was a significant increase on the response rate for 2015 PRES where we received 227 responses. The Birkbeck Graduate Research School (BGRS) and each of the Schools were asked to consider the responses from the 2017 PRES and to create action plans to address key issues raised in the survey.

These action plans were considered by the College’s Postgraduate Research Student Reps and by the Research Student Sub-Committee and work is underway to address issues raised.

Highlighted examples of activities since PRES 2017

Birkbeck Graduate Research School (BGRS)

  • A revised BGRS website was launched in 2017 which provides clearer information to all research students, prospective research students and staff. The BGRS website will continue to be developed over the coming months and now includes a BGRS Blog.
  • The BGRS has launched a Moodle site specifically for research students and is actively developing the contents over 2017/18. The contents of the BGRS Moodle site include:
    • Highlighted information for new PhD students
    • A detailed overview of training and professional development available to Birkbeck PhD students
    • Lecture capture, slides and handouts from BGRS training sessions
    • Access to BGRS Research student forums
    • Details of Birkbeck Postgraduate Research Student (PGR) Reps
    • A summary of Careers and employability resources for PGR students
    • Information about internship, teaching and demonstrating opportunities
    • Video resources for postgraduate researchers and other useful information.
  • The BGRS is organising an average of 1 social event each term to allow PhD students to meet with each other and has also piloted a series of Shut Up and Write sessions. Future events in 2017/18 include a repeat of the successful three minute thesis competition that this year will take place alongside a poster competition.
  • The BGRS has launched Training Needs Analysis for Birkbeck research students.

School of Arts

  • Generic email addresses have been established for PGR Reps to ensure continuity and a dedicated programme/ departmental Moodle group is being implemented.
  • The Research Student Collective, run by students from different departments, is being used to enhance opportunities to share work informally, and all programmes are responding to Staff Student Forum feedback about how to support a strong sense of cohort within a year group and across the years.
  • A PGR Toolkit has been added to the School PGR Moodle site along with weekly reports on the week in arts and improved events calendar.
  • A programme of lunchtime training sessions and conversations for supervisors is being implemented in 2017-18, including a session on mental health, a forum for practice based research supervisors and sessions on how to support specific moments in the research student journey.

School of Business, Economics and Informatics

  • Library resources continue to be improved  and updated. Recent database subscriptions include PsychINFO and Mintel. In cases where an article/book is unavailable via existing databases this may be sourced via an inter‐library loan usually sponsored by departments.
  • MRes students have been given provided with access to the BEI PhD room
  • Training requirements for research students will include identification of training requirements for teaching activities.
  • Computing resources are being assessed to check for updates/ repairs where needed.

School of Law

  • School induction information has been updated to include more information about structure, useful contacts and management lines.
  • Future improvements to rooms and computing resources is being explored.
  • A new School Sub-Committee has been established to consider research student issues.
  • Processes for communicating teaching opportunities are being evaluated.
  • The School’s  graduate research seminars will be developed and further established.

School of Science

  • A new centralised Moodle resource is being created for Psychological Sciences students to include schedules of the many seminar series open to postgraduate research students.
  • A new training workshop for final year Psychological Sciences students will be provided on the examination and viva process.

School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy

  • The School’s PGR Committee ran an interdisciplinary research event on 4 November 2017 aimed at meeting student demand for interdisciplinary events and fostering intellectual exchange across the School and beyond.
  • SSHP appointed a new Research Student Representative who is in close contact with student reps from all SSHP departments. Together, the reps are working together on plans for future social events and scholarly exchanges.
  • The SSHP Support Fund will be advertised more widely to ensure that students make the most of the resources that are available.