Category: Highlighted events

BGRS events

New CHASE Training opportunities

The following CHASE training opportunities are available to all Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck, regardless of whether you are funded by CHASE or not.

CHASE conference presentations workshop – limited places available

Monday 5 – Tuesday 6 November, Birkbeck, University of London | 1000-1700

A two-part workshop on writing and giving conference papers which combines an introduction to academic conferences, writing abstracts and preparing presentations, with a practical session on the second day (run as a mock-conference) in which the participants have the opportunity to rehearse the delivery of sample presentations, handle questions and receive feedback. Josie has given this workshop in over 30 universities in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Introduction to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA)

Wednesday 7 November 2018 | Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH

Since its founding in 1946, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) has presented ground-breaking projects across the arts, situating contemporary culture within the socio-political conditions of the times. As a professional partner of CHASE, the ICA is delighted to offer training and placements to CHASE-funded and affiliated students. This event provides a valuable introduction to the ICA, with a particular focus upon the Institute’s film programme and documentary film festival, Frames of Representation (FoR.) This will be led by Nico Marzano, film programmer and curator at the ICA, who will also be available to answer questions about upcoming placement opportunities working on FoR 2019.

Students will have the opportunity to visit Version History, the first solo exhibition in a major UK institution by artists, filmmakers and designers Metahaven, featuring an expansive new moving-image commission as part of an overview of their hybrid investigations into overlapping geopolitical, technological and emotional conditions. More details about the exhibition can be found here.

CA is generously offering 20 tickets to attend a film screening in the evening. The tickets will be allocated to the first 20 who register for the introduction.

Making Films for your Research:
Innovative Audio-Visual Practices – A CHASE Doctoral Training Day.

Birkbeck Cinema, 10.00-17.30 on Saturday, November 17, 2018, followed by a wine reception

Filmmaking research is a form of practice research that enquires into production practices, techniques, modes and genres used in cinema, television and online. The outputs are films that may include fiction, documentary and hybrid forms. Filmmaking research pushes at the boundaries of traditional filmmaking and traditional research methods by adopting distinct approaches to professional and critical practices. Filmmaking research is a developing area and films produced within the academy are growing in number. There is an increasing engagement with filmmaking as research method and films as outputs, by researchers from a range of disciplines. Film can provide a powerful means to explore issues, disseminate research and create impact.

In this event, we will screen examples of innovative audio-visual filmmaking research practice, have presentations by filmmaker-researchers about their work, and hold round tables.

Screen Studies Day

King’s  College London (Strand Campus) on 17th November 2018

This is a full-day event (9:30-20:30) aimed at PhD students doing research in film and screen media. The training offered will be most beneficial to students in the earlier stages of their studies.

The event is open to students from all CHASE institutions and is free to attend.

November Film Festival

22-25 November | Close-Up Film Centre in London

November Film Festival is an international festival for experimental film and artists’ moving image run by CHASE students.
There will be 8 programs of films in total, two on each day. A full program will soon be made available on: https://www.novemberfilmfestival.org/
The screenings will be free to attend and registration for them will be on first come first serve basis through the festival website.
On Saturday the 24th at 9pm, there will be a networking dinner event for CHASE students and the visiting filmmakers, for which you can register below.

Open Access Week 2018: (22 – 28 October)

open access week

Throughout 22-28 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:

Using Open Access resources

Malet Street G20, Birkbeck, 1–2pm, Tuesday
23 October 2018

We often think about Open Access in relation to publishing and disseminating research, but this session considers how you can use open access resources in your search for information whether that’s to write an essay, complete an assignment or as part of your literature review. This session aims to give an introduction to open access resources as a source of information rather than as a publishing option.

Open Access board game

Malet Street G20, Birkbeck, 2.30–5pm, Tuesday 23 October

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.

Open knowledge: process, ethics, possibilities – Panel discussion

Keynes Library, Gordon Square, 7-9pm, Tuesday 23 October

Open Knowledge: process, ethics, possibilities; an International Open Access Week panel of speakers from Birkbeck, SOAS and LSE, brought together by Birkbeck Library.

The speakers are drawn from academic, publishing, library and scholarly communications communities, and will investigate the practicalities and ethics of opening up access to knowledge, as well as the potential to widen engagement with research and to experiment with publishing.

Understanding Green and Gold Open Access

Malet Street B04, Birkbeck, 3–4pm, Wednesday 24 October 2018

What is Gold Open Access? How does it differ from Green? And where on earth do Diamond and Platinum fit in? We will try to clear up confusion about the range of Open Access options available to you as both a researcher and author.

Get a DOI for data, or a ORCID id for your publications

G20 Malet Street Birkbeck, 3-4pm, Thursday 25 October 2018

If you are creating data and publishing articles, you may have considered creating a researcher identifier, such as an ORCID iD.
ORCID iDs allow you to connect all your published material, back to you.
We can also help you create digital object identifiers (DOIs) for your research data.

You are welcome to this drop-in session to get a DOI for your data or to create an ORCID iD. Read more about research data management, ORCID and other researcher identifiers.

Your views: “What would the world look like if access to knowledge was free?”

open access word cloud

As part of Open Access Week, the Birkbeck Library are looking for your views on the theme above.

  • Would your research or studies be easier?
  • How would this impact the developing world?
  • Do we need to be more radical to achieve this?

To take part, you can fill out a postcard available in the library, or via Twitter using @BirkbeckLibrary #OAWeek

Objects in Space, Subjects in Time: The Material Cultures of Postcolonial History

A place reserved is for a Birkbeck Arts or Humanities PhD student on this fully funded CHASE doctoral training opportunity: Objects in Space, Subjects in Time: The Material Cultures of Postcolonial History.

This is a series of six workshops across the year which explore global, transnational and postcolonial pasts by engaging with material collections and texts or objects in museums and exhibition spaces across London, as well as training in creating vlogs and media projects. For full details see below.

Travel costs, participation costs and refreshments are all included and funded by CHASE.

How to apply

To apply for this place, please send the following to Kat Hill (Katherine.hill@bbk.ac.uk) by Monday October 15th (Midnight).

  • Max. 1000 word statement explaining why you would be a suitable candidate and how it will enhance your research.
  • Short supporting statement from your supervisor

Persona Information required:

Name
Email
Programme of Study
Year of PhD
Title/Area of Research
Supervisor

Objects in Space, Subjects in Time: The Material Cultures of Postcolonial History
  • Kat Hill and Rebecca Darley (History, Classics and Archaeology – Birkbeck)
  • Suzanna Ivanic (Kent)
  • Luke Lavan (Kent)
  • Liz James (Sussex)

A series of six workshops across the year which explore global, transnational and postcolonial pasts by engaging with material collections and texts or objects in museums and exhibition spaces across London. The journeys of objects or the changing shape and use of spaces can offer a powerful means of unpicking, understanding and then conveying meaningfully and compellingly to a range of audiences the processes and legacies of empires. Encountering the objects and spaces proposed in these workshops emphasizes not only the intellectual perspectives of post-colonial theory upon the past, but also brings to light in the most concrete terms those shadows of empire in the present that post-colonial theory was developed to expose and challenge.

These workshops will include one international conference, four object-based sessions making use of London’s unparalleled collections, and two sessions dedicated to the processes of translating research into different arenas. You will have the chance to examine a range of material and objects in dedicated study sessions with curators and experts, and
over the course of the series, you will produce a video, blogpost or other public-facing reflection, drawing on your own research and the materials in these workshops. You will receive training from the Derek Jarman Lab, Birkbeck’s media department, on how to produce an effective media project and have the opportunity to contribute to a podcast with a top broadcaster, as well as present your ideas on the sessions to a non-academic audience.

The focus in all of the workshops will, therefore, be on the complex material histories of empires, as vehicles for migration, trade, translation and the imposition of political authority, and simultaneously on developing a constant awareness of the sub-structures of knowledge creation that underpin any approach to the past. They will combine to give you fresh ways to think with objects and to challenge categories and ideologies of colonialism, not only as they were historically constructed, but also as they continue to shape the world today.

For any questions please contact Kat Hill (katherine.hill@bbk.ac.uk) or Rebecca Darley (r.darley@bbk.ac.uk)

What will you get from these sessions?

  • Engage with materiality and object-based history
  • Engage with diachronic global and transnational histories
  • Think about place and space as historical concepts
  • Develop presentation and public engagement skills
  • Broaden knowledge of heritage spaces and public museums
  • Network with other researchers, senior scholars and other stakeholders

How to Break the Glass Ceiling?

How to Break the Glass Ceiling?

18:30 – 21:00, Thursday 27 September 2018

All Birkbeck PhD students are welcome to attend this event – if you would like to attend please register using the link above.

The event purpose organised by Birkbeck University in partnership with the IoD Central London branch, is to answer all those questions through a panel discussion from a diverse panel of Academics, Entrepreneurs and Directors. This event is aimed at women who want to meet like minded people as well as learn some new development tricks. Men are most welcome to attend.

Overview

Have you ever wondered why so many companies/universities heads were not representative of their own employee/customer/student mix? What is gender culture? What are the tools and tips which can be taken from the current business and academic environment?

The evening will consist of:

18.30
Arrival and networking

18.45
Leader panel: Short presentations from the panel on their ideas of breaking the glass ceiling

19.00
All panel discussion

19.30
Question and answer session with closing remarks

19.45
Networking reception

Women in Psychological Sciences Lecture Series

Prof Clare Elwell
From PhD Student to Professor – Part Time

4pm 12th June 2018
B01 Clore Management Centre
Torrington Square
Birkbeck, University of London
WC1E 7JL

Drinks Reception to Follow

Clare Elwell is a Professor of Medical Physics in the Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering at UCL, and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London. She is Director of the Near Infrared Spectroscopy Research Group in the Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory at UCL and develops novel optical systems for monitoring and imaging the human body. Her research projects include studies of acute brain injury in adults, children and infants, autism, migraine, malaria and sports performance.

Her most recent project is the use of near infrared spectroscopy to investigate malnutrition related brain development in rural Gambia, resulting in the first functional brain imaging of infants in Africa. She started the Globalfnirs Initiative (www.globalfnirs.org) to support the application of NIRS in global health projects. She currently leads the Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) project which is developing brain function for age curves for Gambian and UK infants from birth to 24 months of age with the aim of informing targeted interventions to improve long term neurocognitive outcome. She is a founder member and President of the Society for Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy, and President of the London International Youth Science Forum.

Clare has won the UCL Provost’s Public Engagement Award, Medical Research Council Science Suffrage Award, Inspirational Teacher Award at the UK Inspirational Awards for Women, and the Women in Science and Engineering Research Award. Most recently she was awarded the UCL Engineering Engagement Outstanding Contribution Award and a British Science Association Media Fellowship. She is Founder and Trustee of the charity Young Scientists for Africa (YoSA, www.yosa.org.uk).

She has two children and has worked part time for a total of 18 years. Clare is a keen advocate for supporting women in STEM.

Free open basic introduction to critical realism with Priscilla Alderson

On Wednesday 27 June (11.00 am – 5.00 pm) and Thursday 28 June (9.00 am – 12.30 pm) Priscilla Alderson PhD will be delivering a basic introductory course to critical realism based on the books and doctoral seminars of Professor Roy Bhaskar (the founder of critical realism) at the Institute of Education UCL main building.

Free and open to all, the course will include: problems and contradictions in social science; how basic CR concepts help to resolve them; structure and agency; connecting macro and micro, qualitative and quantitative, local and global research; researching transformative change over time.

Critical realism can be applied to any methods and topics of social research. There will be time for students to discuss their own work during the programme.

To register for this exciting course please contact Bob: r.gist@ucl.ac.uk

 

Winner Keith Jarrett on Three Minute Thesis Competition 2018

There is one question in particular I dread: What’s your PhD on? It usually follows the other eye-rolling what do you do? I know it should be simpler, much simpler; I know the person asking doesn’t want my life story; I know why colleagues make up answers at random, and I nearly always regret not making something up too, or at least having a more straightforward project.

I’m what’s called an interdisciplinarian, that rare species who doesn’t feel fully at home in one department or another, who can’t remember if he should be using MHRA or Harvard referencing – the two departments are at odds with each other over this – and, worse still, whose practice-led research provokes shouts of You get to write a NOVEL for your PhD?! (Two other impossible questions follow: What’s your novel about? How many words have you written?)

I sign up to the Three Minute Thesis competition mostly because I’ve been challenging myself do things I’m not comfortable with. Explaining Oneness Pentecostalism and its migratory journey from the US via the Caribbean into London, and the subsequent effect on cultural and religious identity in the capital is one such thing. There’s jargon to unpick and I struggle to get to the point.

The point I’m trying to get to now is that it takes effort to communicate succinctly, especially when you’re in the middle of a PhD that completely takes over your life.

In the workshop, all participants are told to create a three-point story of our research. I listen to the fascinating work my colleagues are doing, colleagues who are also passionate, who also want to be able to share their world with wider audiences. I feel proud to be part of this community of student researchers. There are three whose work is so compelling to me – and completely unrelated to mine – that I read further about it. Later, at the competition, I see how they’d developed their stories into presentations, engaging with an audience who want to hear what they do, as much as I do. I was surprised to win, elated.

I hope even more PhD students get involved in the competition next year. I recommend it for everyone, as we all need to be able to present in from of mixed audiences. I’m also looking forward to following the competition, looking at more of the other videos from participants around the world.

 

Keith (Department of English and Humanities) was named overall winner for his entry, “The migration of meaning: writing a new London Caribbean culture”.

You can watch the full video for his talk here.

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

F

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