Category: BGRS training/ event announcements

Highlighted CHASE Training Opportunities

The following events and opportunities are available via the AHRC funded CHASE Doctoral Training Programme. All of the opportunities below are open to all Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck, regardless of whether they are funded or self-funded.

Performing Theory Series – Nuclear Hallucinations

Thursday, 24 October 2019 | 17:00  20:00

Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW
MRB Screen 1

This event inaugurates a new academic year for those of us doing Screen related research, by hearing from practitioners about the relationship between their ideas and their images.

Fathima Nizaruddin will be here to screen and discuss her 2016 film,  Nuclear Hallucinations.

Discussion and reception to follow.

Find out more and register here

Translation x Creative Writing

Various dates from 28 October | 1400-1600 | University of East Anglia

This series of masterclasses is by translators of creative writing for creative writers and is designed to provide insight into these acts of translation that many if not all creative writers engage with. The sessions are small group and are led by the world’s leading translators – including two Booker Prize nominees and one Booker winner. Sessions will be craft focused. Session leaders include Jeremy Tiang, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Duncan Large, Daniel Hahn and Marilyn Booth who will share their expertise and insights exclusively on the topic. Each masterclass will explore from a different perspective the relationship between translation and creative writing – which, although inextricably connected, are rarely considered together.

Find out more and register here

CHASE Latin for Medieval and Early Modernists 2019/20

4-8 November & 1-5 June 2020 | University of East Anglia

The CHASE Latin for Medievalists and Early Modernists course is a series of workshops and residential weeks designed to provide Latin tuition from beginner to intermediate levels, as well as facilitate the discussion and development of Latin methodologies and research practice. A grasp of Latin is essential to cutting-edge work in medieval and early modern studies but tuition is often hard to come by – we aim to provide CHASE scholars with the necessary skills to produce top-quality research and to form a network of Latin scholars throughout the academy.

Find out more and register here

FACT///.Mapping Feminists Coding Practices Symposium

Wednesday, 20 November 2019 | Sussex Humanities Lab, University of Sussex

‘Mapping Feminists Coding Practices’, a one-day symposium at the Sussex Humanities Lab, University of Sussex, is the first in a series of events that explore feminist coding practices and the historic context of feminism and technology. It explores some of the affordances and resistances of computational technology. Its aim is to develop a wider understanding of current practices and research which make positive interventions into and within computation, in its widest possible interpretation, from a feminist perspective. 

Find out more and register here

Fifty Years of Skinner’s “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas”

Friday, 29 November – Saturday, 30 November 2019 | University of Sussex

This programme takes the opportunity of the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most influential article on intellectual-historical methods, Quentin Skinner’s “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas” (1969), to introduce doctoral participants to the methodological commitments within the field, engaging them in cutting-edge critical reflection on method. Participants will gain a thorough foundation in the available methods in the history of ideas, engage in debates regarding method, and participate in the critical evaluation of such methodologies, considering possible alternatives. 

Find out more and register here

If you have any questions about the above training, please email enquiries@chase.ac.uk

Digital Inclusion: Bridging Divides Conference – Bursary places available for PhD students

14 November

We have been made aware of a opportunities for PhD students to attend the Digital Inclusion: Bridging Divides Conference at Cumberland Lodge.

The Digital Inclusion: Bridging Divides Conference brings together academics, policymakers, future leaders, the private sector, civil society and community practitioners in order to explore innovative and effective ways of promoting equal access to high-quality digital education and political participation across society. Conference participants will investigate how intelligent technology can foster a greater sense of community and inclusion in a digital world, and increase social and political opportunities.

The Conference will start at 10 am on Thursday, 14 November, and finish at 4 pm on Friday, 15 November 2019. Participants are expected to attend the whole event.

Conference costs

Attendance at this conference is supported by their charitable funds and includes overnight accommodation at Cumberland Lodge on 14 November and all meals during your stay.

Registrations of interest in attending are incited, but attendance will be by invitation only, to ensure broad and balanced representation. If you would like to be part of this conference, please click on the ‘Make Enquiry’ button on the event webpage to let them know how and why you would like to contribute.

Travel bursaries available

They are pleased to be able to offer five bursaries for this conference, to support PhD students working in relevant fields with the costs of travelling to and from Cumberland Lodge. All conference costs, accommodation and meals will be provided free of charge.

To find out more about the conference and to download the bursary application form, please visit their website. The deadline for applications is Monday 14 October. 

Open Access Week 2019

Throughout 21-25 October Birkbeck PhD students are invited to attend events organised by the Birkbeck Library as part of International Open Access Week.

These events will let you learn about developments which are of increasing importance to your current and future research. The programme includes the following events – registration is via the following links.

Changes and challenges in transformative open access agreements

Monday 21st October, 11.00-11.30, Library Training Room

This session will give an overview of the changes and challenges in publishing models, for libraries with the move from traditional subscriptions, to a hybrid of subscriptions and open access, to transformative agreements which seek to offset article processing charges (APCs).

Data Management Plans for students

Tuesday 22nd October, 11.00-12.30, Library Seminar Room

This is an interactive 1.5hour long session. There will be discussion and opportunities for questions.

This session is aimed at Postgraduate Research Students including Doctoral and Masters Research Students, who are creating or reusing data, or who may require ethical approval, and would like to create a Data Management Plan (DMP) to help guide them through their project.

These plans 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.

Research Data Management and Open Access – drop in session

Wednesday 23rd October, 13.00-16.00, MAL 420

If you have questions about open access publishing, where you should put your research data, what Plan S is and what it means at Birkbeck, then pop in to this session to find the answers. David McElroy is our Research Data Support Manager and Paul Rigg our Senior Assistant Librarian (Repository & Digital Media Management) and they will be on hand to talk through any queries that you have. This is an open session, no booking required.

If you have questions about open access publishing, where you should put your research data, what Plan S is and what it means at Birkbeck, then pop in to this session to find the answers. David McElroy is our Research Data Support Manager and Paul Rigg our Senior Assistant Librarian (Repository & Digital Media Management) and they will be on hand to talk through any queries that you have. This is an open session, no booking required.

Plan S – what is it and what does it mean for Birkbeck?

Wednesday 23rd October, 16.00-17.00, Library Seminar Room

Plan S aims to significantly shake up the current Open Access publishing ecosystem. This session will give a brief overview of who’s behind it, what the “plan” is, what the “S” actually means, and how it could affect us.

Making the most of Scopus

Thursday 24th October, 11.00-11.30, Library Training Room

Come and get an overview of some of the analysis tools (journals, search results, authors) in the database Scopus.

Open Access board game

Friday 25th October, 12.30-13.30, Library Training Room

open access board game

Come and play the Open Access board game to get a better understanding of what Open Access is and how it works. You are welcome as a team of up to 4 people or as an individual to join others.

DANDELION – Call for editors

https://dandelionjournal.org/

Dandelion seeks new EDITORS to assist in the editing of the journal’s new volume. Current Birkbeck School of Arts Postgraduate Students are encouraged to join the Editorial Team for the academic year 2019/20. No publishing or editorial experience is necessary: you will learn editorial skills as you go. Although, if any, these will be a valuable asset.

Your research area should lie within, or across, the fields of: History of Art, Museum Cultures, Film, Media and Cultural Studies, English and Humanities, and Cultures and Languages. You can be at any stage in your research. We are looking for:

General Editors

Suitable for PhD students

General Editors will start the production of the new Volume in the Autumn Term of 2019 (or soon after), and will be responsible for the editorial supervision of the next Dandelion volume. They will be selecting the new theme and writing the Call for Papers, setting the timetable for the issue, commissioning articles, and sharing production management tasks.

Subject Editors

Suitable for MA or PhD students

Subject Editors will be required to edit and copyedit two or three articles (of between 1,500 and 8,000 words); the timing of this work will be confirmed by the appointed General Editors. You will be asked to attend two or three editorial meetings with the rest of the team. You will also be welcome to contribute to events planning, design, typesetting etc. Subject Editors are assigned to articles, and therefore advise contributors, according to their subject area expertise.

Find out more

The outgoing Editors will be happy to meet the new team to discuss the handover and for further advice.
If you are interested then we would love to hear from you. Please send an email expressing your interest in either editorial role, and detailing any relevant experience you may have, by 11th October to mail@dandelionjournal.org. In your email please include details of which research programme you are enrolled in, and the research area you are focusing on. If you have any questions then please do get in touch – we will be happy to answer them.

We look forward to hearing from you.

The editors
Donatella Valente and Jenny Turner
www.dandelionjournal.org

Academic Open House

The Access and Engagement Department sits at the heart of Birkbeck’s commitment to improving the access and success of non-traditional students in London. We work with groups who may otherwise feel excluded from taking a step into higher education, including trade union members without a formal qualification above level 4; FE and adult education college students; forced migrants and those who have been out of education for a number of years.

Birkbeck’s academic and research community can support our work in a range of ways, including:

  • delivering free community lectures and/or learning activities;
  • running workshops to support those facing organisational change at work;
  • helping people to develop the skills they need to successfully navigate structural inequality;
  • offering insights into community priorities through their research.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Find out more

To find out more and discuss possible collaborations, the Department is holding an Academic Open House event on Thursday 26th September from 3-5pm in Malet Street B02. The event is open to PhD candidates, Early Career Researchers and academics at Birkbeck. We will present further information about our work across London and our priorities for 2019/20, and there will be the opportunity for discussion with other academic colleagues and members of the Department.

Big IdeasDownload
Academic Open HouseDownload

Register to attend here

To register your interest, please complete the following short form: https://bbk.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/open-house-register-of-interest
For refreshments purposes it would be helpful to know how many are able to attend the Open House event, but even if you are unable to join us on the 26th, we’d still love to hear from you so please do complete the form so we can keep in touch about future opportunities.

CHASE Essentials

CHASE Essentials

CHASE Essentials training is available to all Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck, regardless of whether you they are funded by CHASE or not.

About this training

CHASE Essentials is a year-round programme of training and development workshops and residential programmes and is part of the training opportunities available to all arts and humanities doctoral researchers at CHASE institutions.

Arts and Humanities PhD students at CHASE member institutions can apply for expenses using the form here (Word document, best viewed on a laptop or desktop). Approval for the travel claim must be sought in advance.

Other training opportunities are available here www.chase.ac.uk/development

Highlighted AHRC CHASE Training Opportunities

Mining Back: Data Skills for Researching Corporations and Governments

Saturday 14 September | 12:15-13:25
Goldsmiths, University of London | RHB 307  

Dr. Anna Feigenbaum, Principal Academic in Digital Storytelling, Bournemouth University (designed with Tom Sanderson, The Centre for Investigative Journalism)
 
While corporations and governments gain more and more access to our data, ‘researching up’ or investigating governments and corporations is often riddled with obstacles. While the move in recent years toward open data has brought with it increased transparency and information access, not all information is equally available. Critical documents remain hidden behind paywalls, blocked by confidentiality agreements, or deemed too sensitive to be brought into public view. Even when Freedom of Information requests return results, they can come back worded in generalisations or dressed up in retractions.
 
These challenges prompt researchers and campaigners to employ creative methods for legally obtaining data from governments and corporations. In this workshop we bring together key strategies for investigative research, showcasing a range of data sources, as well as freely available and easy to access tools that can be used to ‘mine back’ or obtain and analyse data of government and corporate elites. Geared toward non-coders, qualitative researchers and those with limited budgets and resources, these strategies for ‘mining back’ include advanced searching techniques, data scraping from a webpage, liberating PDF tables, and creating visual power-maps.  
 
This workshop will focus on the reproductive technologies industry in the UK, but most of the skills and resources we will introduce are adaptable across any research project engaged in investigating corporations or governments. 

Students wishing to attend please email with confirmation: grace.tillyard@gmail.com

CHASE Latin for Medieval and Early Modernists 2019/20

Monday 4 – Friday 8 November 2019 & Monday 10 – Friday 14 June 2020 (plus two single day workshops – TBC)

The CHASE Latin for Medievalists and Early Modernists course is a series of workshops and residential weeks designed to provide Latin tuition from beginner to intermediate levels, as well as facilitate the discussion and development of Latin methodologies and research practice. A grasp of Latin is essential to cutting-edge work in medieval and early modern studies but tuition is often hard to come by – we aim to provide CHASE scholars with the necessary skills to produce top-quality research and to form a network of Latin scholars throughout the academy.

Residential week 1 will be held from Monday 4th to Friday 8th November 2019 and residential week 2 will be held from Monday 10th to Friday 14th June 2020, both at UEA. Two single-day workshops will take place in London between the residential weeks with dates TBC. Please note that accommodation for the residential weeks is booked in advance, and so if you subscribe to a residential week and are subsequently unable to attend it is important to notify us as soon as possible.

The skills developed in this course over the past two years have enabled CHASE researchers to pursue previously unavailable avenues of research, and besides structured language tuition we include classes on palaeography and archival research to ground our linguistic work in practice.

Although this course primarily teaches on classical Latin it will feature texts from a wide range of historical periods and is suitable for medievalists, early modernists, and scholars from any background whose research engages with the language.

Register here

A new call for student-led training initiatives

expression of interest invited

Propose your own training initiatives

The BGRS is pleased to announce a call for current Birkbeck research students to seek funding and support to pilot training initiatives in 2019/20. This call offers current Birkbeck PhD students the chance to propose training that will benefit themselves and their peers and to develop and deliver them with support from the BGRS. Funding awarded will be used to support well-defined initiatives which will deliver training accessible to all Birkbeck PhD students.

Submit an expression of interest

Current PhD students are invited to submit a brief expression of interest by 27 September. If you think of a training idea after this date you can still submit an application but we suggest that you contact the BGRS so that we can provide advice and support.

Develop a proposal

BGRS support in October will give you the chance to consider your ideas in more detail and will provide you with the support needed for you to prepare and submit a full proposal by 15 November.

In developing their own training initiatives those awarded funding will be able to build professional relationships with other research students and staff, improve their organisational skills and meet the training needs they identified.

If you have any queries about this call for student-led training proposals please do contact the BGRS in the first instance

When considering your training ideas it is recommended that you look at previous events listed on the BGRS and BPSN timetables to see whether any similar training has been run before and to get ideas about the format and type of training that you think would be useful.

Further information and how to apply

Further information about this call and the expression of interest form are available below:

BGRS Student-led training initiatives – overviewDownload
Expression of interest formDownload
BGRS-Student-led-training-initiatives-full-application-formDownload

If you would like your proposal to be considered please submit the form by 15 November to graduateresearchschool@bbk.ac.uk

Highlighted CHASE opportunities

The following events and opportunities are available via the AHRC funded CHASE Doctoral Training Programme. All of the opportunities below are open to all Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck, regardless of whether they are funded or self-funded.

+ 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century – Placement available

Applications for this placement are open to all arts and humanities PhD student at Birkbeck, regardless of whether they are funded by CHASE. The successful applicant will receive a stipend, fee reimbursement and the opportunity to claim expenses. The deadline for applications is 29 March.

Art at the Frontier of Film Theory: Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen

22 March – 25 May 2019

From 22 March to 24 May, Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and the Essay Film Festival is hosting a unique programme of research events about the work of filmmakers and film theorists Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen. The programme comprises an exhibition at Birkbeck’s Peltz Gallery, a film season, a series of ‘In Conversation’ events and Gallery Workshops, a Curators’ Talk, and a student-led Symposium.

 CHASE training opportunities

Media Skills Training – 5 spaces available

19 March | 0900-1700 | Camden, London

This interactive workshop leads from identifying the elements of a good media story in academic research, through the challenges of dealing with the media and the competing pressures of academic and journalistic methods to final on-camera interviews and playback analysis. Run by Media Players International, this one-day workshops will help you understand what makes for good communication through the general media. It also directly address the issues of impact and media strategy required by the Research Excellence Framework.

Performing Theory: Speaking in Tongues

Friday 29 March | 1400-1700 | Birkbeck Cinema

This series of Master Classes aims to present a wide variety of approaches to the artistic production of ideas in audio-visual form.  We are inviting performance artists and moving image makers whose work (written, performed, filmed) manifests theoretical innovation.  The latter part of the 20th century produced body of Anglo-American writing and work that are recognised today as canonical as with Hollis Frampton, Maya Deren, Peter Gidal for example.  With this series we want to produce a sample of this kind of interplay between ideas and creating that are underway today.  In so doing, we hope to open the field of play between theory and works to create new conversations.

The inaugural session in the series is Speaking in Tongues: a lecture-performance by Christopher Harris. Throughout his career artist and filmmaker Christopher Harris has used film and video installations to re-stage and explore African American accounts of history. Using experimental film techniques, Harris brings disparate mediums into dialogue with one another, in order to present multiple perspectives highlighting experiences of the African diaspora.

BAME Creative Writing Masterclass Series – further session added: Sabrina Mahfouz

Wednesday 27 March | 1400-1600 | The Enterprise Centre, UEA, TEC 0.02

Sabrina Mahfouz has recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and is the recipient of the 2018 King’s Alumni Arts & Culture Award. She has been shortlisted for The Stage Award for Best Solo Performance, a Women in the Creative Industries Award, an Arts Foundation Award for Performance Poetry and has won a Sky Arts Academy Award for Poetry, a Westminster Prize for New Playwrights and a Fringe First Award. She also writes for children and her play Zeraffa Giraffa won a 2018 Off West End Award.

Sabrina is the editor of The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write, a 2017 Guardian Book of the Year and currently nominated for The People’s Book Prize. She is an essay contributor to the multi-award-winning The Good Immigrant and is currently writing a biopic of the legendary ‘Godfather of Grime’, rapper and producer Wiley, for Pulse Films.