By Kim Caris-Roberts Flow n Flux “BIG BROTHER HOUSE, THIS IS DAVINA, YOU ARE LIVE ON CHANNEL 4, PLEASE DO NOT SWEAR!” This month there really was only one place to begin. Each and every one of us at Flow n Flux wanted to acknowledge how scary the world seems right now, in the wake of the war in the Ukraine; watching war unfold can make us feel powerless and the range of emotions can be complex. We needed to acknowledge that. Were there any ‘right words’ for the current climate? We concluded not. We expressed and shared our concerns and we are thankful we have a safe space to do this.
We then began to explore March’s theme: Reality TV. Big Brother seemed to have been the most common first experience of the genre, mentioned a number of times in our individual offerings from the free-writing activity, which enabled interesting free association using 9 words to gently guide us in our flow. “It’s always been my guilty pleasure”, a statement many of us identified with. Why guilty? We discussed the topics of ‘contestant’ exploitation, whether the burgeoning genre which shows no signs of slowing offers opportunities once unheard of to generations, we questioned does Reality TV alleviate any need for talent?, what constitutes reality TV? Perhaps one unexpected answer: Football.
Referring to The White Pube Podcast: The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, we continued to explore our oft’ complicated relationship with this genre of TV. After much discussion one member proudly proclaimed “I am dropping my shame around Reality TV: I love it!”.
Our last task was to create a Dragon’s Den-esque pitch for a new Reality TV show which embedded Feminist thought…Cue one group who pitched a plethora of misogyny offenders fighting it out for the opportunity to repent for their harms to cries of “In the pit! In the Pit!” that will forever echo in my ears every time I watch The Hunger Games.
For April we consider the questions of difference which have been central to the way that the feminist movement articulates itself. Specifically, we will explore difference among women, in particular, along the lines of race, class and sexuality, as well as national and geopolitical location. We will consider feminism, using Black feminism as our centre, in order to look critically at the current cultural landscape.
Little Extras April 1st-31st- Autism Awareness Month April 1st-31st Stress Awareness Month April 7th – World Health Day April 25th-29th National Stalking Awareness Week April 25th-1st May Lesbian Visibility Week
If you want to join FnF mailing list, please email: flownflux@gmail.com
Cumberland Lodge offers doctoral students in the UK a unique opportunity to benefit from a close association with our work and discussions for two years.
The Cumberland Lodge Fellowship offers doctoral students who are firmly committed to promoting social progress the chance to set themselves apart, by deepening their understanding of pressing societal issues from a cross-sector perspective, and developing valuable skills in public engagement, networking, communication and interdisciplinary working.
Every year in the spring, nine Cumberland Lodge Fellows are selected through a competitive application that is open to doctoral students from universities and higher education institutions across the UK. A tenth is nominated by the Council for At-Risk Academics, which supports international academics who are at risk of persecution, conflict or violence in their home countries to study or work in the UK. Our Amy Buller PhD Scholar, who is supported financially to complete a PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London, also becomes a Cumberland Lodge Fellow for the duration of their three-year Scholarship.
A unique opportunity
Launched in 2014 and originally known as the Cumberland Lodge Scholarship, the Cumberland Lodge Fellowship is designed to fit around the demands of doctoral research. It is open to students of any age who are enrolled on a doctoral programme (on a part-time or full-time basis), and to those undertaking professional doctorates as well as more traditional paths of study.
Cumberland Lodge Fellows play an active role in our interdisciplinary conferences, consultations, public lectures and other programmes, and receive ongoing mentoring and support from our staff.
They have the chance to network with senior figures in public life and to participate in, or help to lead discussions with, people of all ages, backgrounds and perspectives that ultimately inform recommendations for practical action and policy change.
What’s involved?
Ten new Fellows join us each year in September, at the start of the academic year, beginning with a residential weekend retreat at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park, to which the previous year’s cohort of Fellows are also invited.
Cumberland Lodge Fellows have the chance to be involved in our conferences, consultations, seminars, report launches and retreats, with support from Cumberland Lodge staff. This may include:
leading workshops and/or chairing panel discussions
taking part in cross-sector discussions
proactively networking with fellow delegates at Cumberland Lodge events
supporting Cumberland Lodge staff with event facilitation
writing engaging newsletter articles and blog posts
supporting the promotion of our programmes and outputs to the wider public.
Fellows also have the opportunity to contribute to the development of our programme of events and activities, and are expected to act as an ambassador for our work and programmes, at university and beyond.
Personal development
Fellows are invited to apply for a Personal Development Grant of up to £300 during the two-year fellowship period, to use creatively to enhance their skills and promote progress towards more peaceful, open and inclusive societies.
How to apply
To apply for a 2022-24 Cumberland Lodge Fellowship, please download and complete the application form in the resources section of this webpage, and return it to: Fellows2022@cumberlandlodge.ac.uk
Applications must be received by 12noon on Friday 8 April 2022.
If you are shortlisted for interview you will be informed by Tuesday 26 April, and interviews will take place online via Zoom on Thursday 5 May 2022. Please note that, due to the high number of anticipated applications, we are unable to provide feedback if you are not invited to interview. If you have not heard back from us by Tuesday 26 April, we regret that you have not been shortlisted for interview. If you have any questions that are not answered above, please email us at: programmeteam@cumberlandlodge.ac.uk
Eligibility
To take part in our competitive application process, you must be able to demonstrate that you are:
committed to promoting more peaceful, open and inclusive societies, through your academic research and/or other activities
committed to enabling social progress
studying for a doctorate at a UK university (in any academic discipline or area of study), for the duration of the Fellowship period* (expected completion not before June 2024)
able to provide the names of two referees (one academic, i.e. your doctoral supervisor, and one non-academic) who will vouch for your eligibility and support your application
able to attend the initial residential Fellows’ Retreat at Cumberland Lodge, on 9-11 September 2022
committed to the full two-year programme (even if you complete your doctorate before August 2024).
You should also demonstrate an openness to working across disciplines and engaging with a wide range of subject matters, and explain how you think a Cumberland Lodge Fellowship will benefit your work and life, both now and in the future.
* Please note:
We accept all types of doctoral study equally, including full-time, part-time and non-traditional pathways or professional doctorate programmes. You will most likely (but not necessarily) be in the first year of your doctorate.
If you are currently registered for a Master’s degree and hope to go on to study for a doctorate, you are not yet eligible to apply.
If you are on an agreed pathway to doctoral study, but have not yet transferred from Master’s to doctoral status, you are eligible to apply, providing your supervisor can confirm you are already working to doctoral standard, as part of your application.
We do not provide financial assistance for tuition fees or maintenance, but we do provide Fellows attending our events with meals, accommodation and economy-rate travel expenses to and from our events within the UK, from our charitable funds.
Meet our Fellows
Follow the links below to find out more about our current Fellows.
A group of London-based peers working in the areas of scholarly communication, research data management, librarianship, publishing, and institutional repositories decided to collaborate across institutional boundaries for London Open Research Week 2021: having experienced frustrations with the fractures and divides across the topologies of openness, we have worked together to try and forge a broad event for practitioners and research communities.
Predicated by our experiences at and beyond the four institutions collaborating in London Open Research Week, and working with the theme of this year’s International Open Access Week, It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity, we have curated a diverse and engaging programme of live, online sessions that are free to attend.
Feminist perspectives from Early Career Researchers, critical perspectives on openness, and the increasing tensions arising in the realm of research evaluation and (biblio)metrics and the various intersections with open research will be included, amongst a wealth of international insights from scholars and professionals across the sector.
We welcome you to join us to share in the ideas and benefits that come from commons approaches; as a rich field, working collaboratively and exchanging experiences and ideas beyond our usual operational, departmental, and institutional limitations, we hope to explore the tensions that exist between our current conception and operation of openness in direct relation to structural equity in order to build upon and challenge the equitable premise that ‘open’ is often understood to imply.
PhD researchers at Birkbeck working on the history of the college are organising a major conference to mark the institution’s 200th anniversary.
Useful Knowledge, to be held at Birkbeck in February 2022 (ahead of the College’s bicentenary in 2023), will feature talks by leading historians and critics including Sir Richard Evans, Sally Alexander, Jerry White and Marai Larasi.
The conference, being organised by Professor Joanna Bourke’s ‘Birkbeck Knowledge‘ research group, is set to focus on the long history of the college, but also on the past, present and future of part-time and mature higher education more broadly.
Further information will be made available shortly and information about the Call for Papers is available below.
Call for papers
Birkbeck Knowledge’s PhD researchers Jonny Matfin and Ciarán O’Donohue have also launched a Call for Papers (CfP), aimed at all academics with an interest in the history of part-time and mature higher education.
“We’re aiming to include as wide a range of academics as possible, to discuss what we believe is a vitally important area of university history.”
Jonny and Ciarán
Deadline for the Call for Papers: 5pm, Thursday 30 September
Dear Members and Contacts of the Birkbeck Graduate Research
School,
We are delighted to share with you a call for papers for our
interdisciplinary AHRC Midlands4Cities-funded virtual seminar series, ‘Culture,
Things, and Empire’. We will be hosting 5 online Zoom seminars (20-minute
papers and 40 minutes of discussion) and 1 masterclass for all registered
participants surrounding issues and themes such as race, gender, class, and
materiality in the fields of imperial, colonial and global studies. The series
will take place between November 2020 and April 2021. Registration to attend
the seminars will also open soon here: https://culturethingsempire.wordpress.com/
I am a mature student, just beginning the second year of my
PhD in Early Modern History, so I am currently preparing my first research
chapter for my upgrade from MPhil to PhD. My research focuses on accuracy and
the value of accuracy in seventeenth-century English news sources, with
particular reference to the period between 1649 and 1685. It was always work
that was going to have some resonance in the 21st century; “fake
news” is very definitely not a modern invention.
One of my main topics looks at the 1665 Great Plague and the
Fire of 1666. I am interested in whether both producers and consumers of news
approached accuracy any differently when dealing with natural disaster as
opposed to news about political, civil and military strife, of which there was
a good deal in the seventeenth century. When I decided, with my supervisor (Dr
Brodie Waddell), to make this my first research chapter, neither of us had any
idea that I would be working on it during a 21st century pandemic
and a national lockdown….. and that archive access might be a bit trickier
than normal. So many thanks are due to Brodie for advice on how to deal with
that and to all the archives and their staff that have re-opened in the past
few months.
At the start of lockdown in March 2020 I decided to keep a “Covid
journal” prompted by a number of academics I follow on twitter. I used to be a
journalist and I am trying to be a social and cultural historian, so I figured
that keeping a diary might give me some insight into those diary keepers,
commonplace book authors and letter writers whose news consumption habits I was
trying to understand.
Historians should be rightly cautious about making
comparisons between the past and the present, so I am very careful about
drawing direct comparisons.
However, despite the considerable advance in medical science
and news technology in the last three hundred and fifty years, the search for
reliable information and the debates about how to act on that information have
a familiar ring.
People in seventeenth century London tracked the weekly
Bills of Mortality, as we have all followed the graphs at the daily government
news conferences. The efficacy of shutting people up in their houses once a
case of plague was discovered was debated from the street to the medical
journals. News came at the seventeenth century citizen from a huge range of sources,
orally from neighbours, business partners, customers, from Authority – the
King, Parliament and the City Authorities, from newspapers, which as well as
editorial content, ran huge numbers of adverts for all sorts of plague cures
and preventatives.
Those citizens of seventeenth century London, who remained
in the city, had to juggle a lot of conflicting information, with the need to
maintain daily life and work, and if I have learnt one thing in the last six
months it is to have considerable respect for how they managed to do that.
I joined Birkbeck as a PhD student in January 2019. Being one of the few people who started halfway through the traditional academic year, initially I found it quite a solitary experience. Luckily, the BGRS were very supportive when Alex Leggett and I decided to start the Birkbeck PhD Network within the Students’ Union to help PhD students meet, network, and find information and support.
For a typical Birkbeck student – busy, juggling many
responsibilities, often in employment alongside their studies – finding ways to
connect with others may be an overwhelming experience. While the BGRS training
events are a great opportunity to meet other PhD students across College, the
networking is usually done within the constrains of a workshop: you may chat
with someone or even have a coffee together during the break but then usually
just rush off to your next appointment.
Within the PhD Network, we are trying to provide an informal
space for meeting others, socialising, discussing our experiences as PhD
students, and supporting each other on the PhD journey. While we cannot
physically meet while the COVID-19 restrictions are in place, we are trying to
make up for it with our WhatsApp chat, which you can join by dropping us a line
at SU-PhD-Network@bbk.ac.uk, and Facebook group.
Our aim is to bring together people from different departments, different backgrounds, and with different experiences to enable a deep multidisciplinary conversation. Besides, talking to people from other disciplines sometimes opens an unexpected perspective on your own research (and meetups with other PhD students provide an opportunity to practise your “elevator pitch”!). Serious talk aside, we also try to make sure everyone has a comfortable space just to discuss anything the PhD community can provide support with.
On top of that, the Network frequently acts as a point of
contact between the PhD community and the BGRS since we can collect comments
and queries and bring them up with the BGRS via email or at PGR reps meetings
anonymously.
Please use the links above to get in touch and we look
forward to welcoming you to our community.
Whether it concerns colleagues, friends, family or your life partner … it is good to know on which points you (dis)agree. Not so much to possibly distance yourself from that person, but to be able to work more effectively on the relationship. One way to do this is to ask yourself and the other person questions. Below is a book tip, which also includes references to research data, for light-hearted but instructive conversations.
In these unprecedented times, reflection on yourself and on your environment may be of greater value than ever. You may have been in isolation or quarantine with your partner for weeks, gaining new insights into how your personalities relate to each other. While studies show that similarities or complementarities in partners’ personalities may not determine a successful relationship (Eysenck & Wakefield, 1981; Groves, 2016; Rosowsky et al., 2012), it is nice to keep personalities in harmony. Or perhaps you have seen your colleagues in a different light due to a changing work situation. It is good to keep in mind that guarding the bond with each other at work is important if connectedness with colleagues is a factor for your job satisfaction.
As a headhunter/recruiter, I bring people together and I am actively busy with reaching out to others to make suitable matches. As a PhD student, I bring ideas together about intra-household dynamics between men and women to eventually publish as articles and complete my thesis. Already having a lot on my plate, I was still curious about finding ways to reach out to others by sharing insights – whilst undertaking PhD research – about interpersonal relationships. This prompted me to bundle research-based statements about men/women issues and put them in book form. Indeed, the book tip mentioned above is therefore a shameless plug for my “Talk Data to Me” book, but if even only one statement could provide additional insight, understanding and knowledge between you and your intimate (as the book contains sexual references) interlocutor, then this plug is worth it. In the spirit of this book, I provide “Battle of the Sexes” quizzes for groups, with statements that are also based on research data but are suitable for non-intimate individuals, such as colleagues. For example, I was recently invited to an online networking event where attendees competed for the most correct answers to my “yes/no” statements. The winners were the ones who, despite the limitations of not physically being in the same space, managed to bond with each other through video connection and live chat. If (the spirit of) my book could be a means to find online connection for these non-intimate persons, then my wish for you is that the hard copy of the book would create big sparks between you and the person who (possibly) suits you.
Eysenck, H.J., & Wakefield, J.A. (1981). Psychological factors as
predictors of marital satisfaction. Advanced Behavioral Research and Therapy,
3, 151-192.
Groves, K.K. (2016). The role of spirituality in happy fifty-year marriages.
Texas A&M University-Commerce.
Rosowsky, E., King, K.D., Coolidge, F.L., Rhoades, C.S., & Segal, D.L.
(2012). Marital satisfaction and personality traits in long-term marriage: An
exploratory study. Clinical Gerontologist, 35, 77-87.
Hi my name
is Ogechi, I am currently a first year PhD psychology student at Birkbeck and
an NHS Mental Health worker. My previous
studies are Master of Public Health (MPH) and BSc (Hons) Biomedical Science.
My PhD journey has been great so far, acquiring new skills and knowledge in psychology. I have been very lucky to be a part of the Department of Psychological Sciences, and am grateful to my supervisor and mentor. My research is on medical help-seeking behaviours amongst the BME community which crosses over to my line of work in the NHS on a daily basis.
As well as registering my systematic review on Prospero, lecturing about what I do in work gave me a sense of joy to share the knowledge and attitude around how health psychology interventions are practised in NHS and NHS Mental Health settings. In these uncertain times, it can be quite challenging, but it is very important that everyone looks after their mental health during this time.
Balancing work and studies can be quite challenging as a mature student, but I’m determined that this will bring more benefit to the world of research and the field I am heading towards. COVID-19 has brought the world to a standstill and has shown us the possibilities of adjusting to this potential new normal. It has also highlighted the health inequalities and disparities seen in the BME community which is in line with my research, medical help-seeking and the barriers experiences by this group making it very relevant to today’s climate.
I hope the
next time I write another blog post, it will be me sharing my published
systematic review for all of you to share and read.
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. If I could also draw your attention to a couple of calls for papers/participation that are currently open.
Journal recruiting members for next Editorial Board
Brief Encounters is currently recruiting the next Editorial Board to oversee the creation of issue 5 – see below press release:
Seaside, Ruin and De-Industrialisation on the Cleveland Coast
Friday 10th to sunday 12th of January
Redcar/Cleveland
Following the critical excursion Beyond the Heartlands and building on themes of de-industrialisation, landscape and ruin, the ‘Space Place Time’ research collective are calling for participants for a two-day critical excursion to Redcar and Cleveland. Completed in 1846, the Middlesbrough and Redcar Railway hoped to attract tourism, but like much of the region, Redcar’s expansion came with the 1850 discovery of iron ore in the Eston area of the Cleveland Hills. The engine of Britain’s Industrial Revolution, Redcar was simultaneously home to a Victorian pleasure pier. The pier’s demolition in 1981 can be seen as an allegory of the decade’s slum, which saw the simultaneous decline of both industries.
The Frankfurt Exotic: broken objects and porous walls in Naples
Beginning of April (deadline to apply 15 Jan)
Naples, Italy
Following the critical excursion Re-mapping the Arcades
Project in Glasgow, and building on the field engagement with the work and
cities of Walter Benjamin, we are calling for participants in a critical
excursion in Naples: The Frankfurt Exotic: broken objects and porous walls in
Naples. This critical excursion will take place over 4 nights at the beginning
of April 2020 and will involve a series of workshops, walking tours and
screenings with the anticipated outcome of a publication recording
conversations, presentations, works in progress, creative responses and
translation work.
Friday 17th of January (from 12:00) – Norfolk Heritage Centre
Saturday 18th January – Blickling Estate
The second of the CHASE DTP-funded Bookscapes workshops, offering PhD students advanced training in palaeographical, codicological and bibliographical skills, will take place on 17th-18th January 2020, hosted by the University of East Anglia and led by Tom Roebuck and Sophie Butler. At the Norfolk Heritage Centre, on day one of the workshop, attending students will have the opportunity to engage with the collections of the original Norwich City Library (founded in 1618). The workshop will move to Blickling Estate on the second day, where the students will focus on the techniques and history of bookbinding and the history of the book. The second day’s workshop will be led by Nicholas Pickwoad, one of the leading experts on bookbinding and an adviser to the National Trust on book conservation.
Numbers for the workshops are strictly limited. We encourage all interested PhD students to contact bookscapes@kent.ac.uk as soon as possible. You can also follow us on twitter at https://twitter.com/bookscapes.
—
CHASE Essentials – Thesis Boot Camp
Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd of February
University of Sussex
Are you a mid- or late-stage doctoral researcher, struggling
to make progress with your thesis? Do you keep putting off your writing? If so,
Thesis Boot Camp could be the solution. Deadline to apply – 17 January.
Aural Diversity 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.
Session #1 | Thursday 13 February | 1000-1800 | Goldsmiths,
University of London – Register
here
Session # 2 | Thursday 27 February | 1000-1800 | Room 264,
Senate House, London – Register
here
Session #3 | Thursday 12 March | 1000-1800 | Goldsmiths,
University of London – Register
here
Plenary | Thursday 26 March | 1500-1800 | Keynes Library,
Birkbeck, University of London – Register
here
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Ethnography and Film. Exploring Labour, Technology and Mediation in the Egyptian Film Industry
19 Feb (14:00-20:30)
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.
Call for proposals | The Essay Film Festival: Research, Critique, Practice
As part of its new
collaborative partnership with CHASE, the Essay Film Festival is inviting
proposals from doctoral students for a student-led symposium exploring
essayistic forms and their relationship to academic research, social critique
and artistic practice.
The conference will combine
research presentations and film screenings, including examples of practice-led
researchers talking through, questioning and “essaying” their own work. This
event will follow the sixth edition of the Essay Film Festival, which will take
place at Birkbeck Cinema, ICA, Goethe-Institut and Institut Français, from 26
March to 4 April 2020.
The symposium will be held at Birkbeck Cinema in May 2020
(exact date to be confirmed), more than a month after the end of the festival.
The idea of the conference is, therefore, to provide a space for critical
reflection and debate, with a certain detachment from the EFF programme itself,
as well as to propose and discuss new directions for the festival in the
future.
Call for Papers | Critical Race Studies and the Premodern: Archive and Seminar
23rd to 24th March – University of East Anglia 8th to 9th June – University of Sussex
Universities of East Anglia and Sussex are hosting two postgraduate
training workshops on critical race studies and the pre-modern. The first of
these will be held at the University of East Anglia, 23-24 March 2020, and will
focus on teaching and pedagogy; the second will be held at The University of
Sussex, 8-9 June 2020, and will focus on research. Both events are designed to
develop students’ professional skills. We invite expressions of interest from
all postgraduates working in the Humanities (giving papers, designing and
chairing sessions, attending).
