Five new awards have been announced for Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) PhD
students who start their studies at Birkbeck during 2020. The studentships will
help address the under-representation of BAME students at PhD level in all
disciplines.
Julian Swann, Pro-Vice Master of Research said:
“I am delighted that we have been able to fund these new research awards for BAME students. Birkbeck has a long history of widening access to higher education and compared with other institutions, we have a relatively high proportion of BAME students but representation at doctoral level is significantly lower than across our student population as a whole. I hope that these awards will help to address this and support more BAME students to lead research at the highest levels.”
The financial support will cover tuition fees and living expenses for
UK-based BAME students for the duration of their course.
Successful candidates will need to have a strong academic background and/or
exceptional research potential and to have been offered a place on a relevant
doctoral programme.
This interactive session will include discussion and opportunities for questions. It will cover all the basics of Research Data Management including:
why thinking about data management is a good idea
what the risks are
why planning for the long term helps
what you can do about any issues or requirements that you identify
This event will be useful for any students embarking on research, or established academics looking to improve their understanding of how to manage their data.
Researching LGBTQ+ Communities: openness, ethics and consent
What ethical implications do researchers working with LGBTQ+ communities need to consider? How do we navigate tensions in the drive to make data open? How do we manage consent in this context?
Birkbeck academics Dr Fiona Tasker (Reader in Psychology) and Ralph Day (doctoral researcher in contemporary history) will discuss their research, and how they work with their potentially sensitive data.
Fiona has published extensively on topics including family relationships, identity development of adults and children, and children’s social and emotional development in both non-traditional and new family forms and LGBTQ parenting.
Ralph’s current research focuses on queer sexualities and the telephone in Britain from the 1970s to the 1990s through a study of the telephone information and support service London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard.
This event is being organised as part of Love Data Week and as part of the Library’s LGBT+ History Month programme.
Data Management Plans for Postgraduate Research Students
This session is aimed at postgraduate research students and Master’s research students, who are creating or reusing data, or who may require ethical approval, and would like to create a Data Management Plans (DMPs) to help guide them through their project.
DMPs are also important documents for funded research, with many funders requiring them as part of a bid. Being familiar with the process of creating DMPs is therefore a useful research skill. We will use example plans and online tools to create DMPs, and look at how to improve them.
This social is an opportunity for Birkbeck staff and
researchers to meet up and share ideas informally over lunch. The event aims to
promote discussion and collaboration, and will allow colleagues to share their
own research, join or establish research groups, and learn more about the
possible funding schemes available to support them.
We will have a few short talks followed by an opportunity to
chat and network with colleagues.
Prof Felicity Callard will introduce the Birkbeck Institute
for Social Research (BISR) and our exciting new Experimental Collective
initiative, which is designed to support new interdisciplinary collaborations
across the College which in some way address ‘the social.’ The deadline to
apply for funding for this initiative is Friday 28th February,
so please do ask on the day if you have any queries for us.
Dr Andi Fugard will introduce the Birkbeck Social Science
Methodology (BSSM), which aims to encourage creative developments in
methodology by bringing people together from across the social sciences, arts,
and humanities. Dr Lina Džuverović will introduce the Curatorial Research Lab,
a two-term initiative based in the Peltz Gallery, established to foreground
curatorial research activity across Birkbeck’s School of Arts and associated
research communities. Finally, we will hear about public engagement with research
from Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon, winner of the 2018 Birkbeck Public Engagement
Award for Transforming Culture, which recognises exemplary research engagement
activities which have aimed to stimulate change within our culture or society.
If you have an initiative or research project you would like
to introduce to the group, please do let us know, and we’d be happy to add your
name to our list of speakers.
Places are limited, so please RSVP to bisr@bbk.ac.uk
to reserve a seat. Lunch will be provided – do let us know when booking if you
have any allergies, dietary or access requirements.
CILAVS, the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies, is based in the School of Arts and brings together Birkbeck researchers from the departments of Cultures and Languages, History of Art, Film Media and Cultural Studies, Geography, Law, Politics and Psychosocial Studies. Created in 2007, it is now an established hub for research networks in the UK and overseas, promoting the best research on the history and theory of visual culture in the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds and supporting research in the cultures of Iberia, Latin America and the Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Lusophone continent.
The Centre has
attracted very substantial research grants from AHRC, British Academy,
Leverhulme Trust and other bodies, including private donors, and enabled
collaborative doctoral partnerships with organisations outside of higher
education, including the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Royal Society and Victoria
and Albert Museum. CILAVS has also brought to London some of the most
important artists, filmmakers and scholars in the Iberian and Latin American
fields: Carlos Monsiváis, Pedro Costa, Luis Camintzer, Roger Bartra, Jean
Franco, Cecilia Vicuña, John Beverley, Karim Aïnouz and Trifonia Melibea
Obono Ntutumu, to name just a few.
Opportunities for PhD students
CILAVS offers a rich and varied programme of
activities including talks, workshops, film
screenings and festivals. It has also organized conferences, book launches,
exhibitions at Birkbeck’s Peltz Gallery and many other public events in
collaboration with other Research Centres in the School of Arts, Birkbeck
Institutes and beyond.
The Centre is
very keen to involve interested Research students from across the College in
its activities and will offer support in the organisation of student-led
activities including, for example, reading groups, workshops, talks and
conferences. Javier Vicente Arenas, currently CILAVS’ student representative
and member of its steering committee, says:
Doctoral research can be a very solitary undertaking. However, for those working or interested in the fields of Iberian and Latin American Studies, CILAVS offers a unique opportunity to meet other students, share our ideas and interests, and showcase our research and academic achievements. This can lead to unexpected synergies among students while having a positive impact on our research and CV. Moreover, CILAVS is keen to support students’ initiatives, so do get involved!
We will love to hear from any Research students at Birkbeck working on any aspect of the cultures of Iberia, Latin America and the Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Lusophone continent. If interested, our contact details are below.
The Public Engagement Team provides advice, opportunities, and funding for engagement with research. The team was established to support Birkbeck’s commitment to making research results available to society. By working together with researchers, external partners, and organisations, we aim to create opportunities for knowledge exchange.
We would like to let researchers know that applications for our annual Public Engagement Awards are now open. This award recognises the inspiring public engagement work undertaken by Birkbeck researchers at various levels of their career, including doctoral researchers.
The deadline for applications is midnighton Sunday 23rd February 2020. The Awards Ceremony will be held in April 2020.
We welcome applications in the following six categories:
PhD/Early Career researcher
Communicating Research
Collaboration
Community Engagement
Engaged Practice
Transforming Culture or Public Life
Winners will be awarded £250 towards their research.
Please refer to the Public Engagement team website for more information on the awards and Public Engagement with research at Birkbeck.
Applications and guidelines for the 2020 awards are available below, but please do not hesitate to get in touch with the Public Engagement team if you have any questions.
The team will be attending a research networking event hosted by the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research on Thursday 6th February, 12-2pm (G04, 43 Gordon Square) if you’d like to speak to them in person. You can contact bisr@bbk.ac.uk for more details or to reserve a seat.
Please note: This opportunity is for current Birkbeck PhD students only
Birkbeck’s Access and Engagement team are looking for a PhD candidate to conduct some research into the experience of students who have been supported by the Access and Engagement team in their entry or transition into Higher Education. They are looking for candidates who have experience of qualitative research and facilitating focus groups.
This research will help the department to review its activities and ensure that the support on offer to prospective students from groups which are underrepresented in Higher Education is effective and useful.
Full details of the role
A full job description and details about the role are available below and include instructions for how to apply. If you have any questions about the role please email h.gartrell@bbk.ac.uk.
The deadline for applications is Sunday 9 February.
Faith & Belief
2040: Fostering Social Cohesion Conference – Bursary places available for PhD
students.
Opportunities for PhD students to attend a two-day residential conference, Faith & Belief 2040: Fostering Social Cohesion, at Cumberland Lodge on 23-24 April 2020.
This conference explores how the ways in which people
identify with faith and belief are changing. Research suggests that the current
transformation constitutes the most fundamental shift for centuries, even
millennia. In the UK, this change has specific contextual parameters,
including, but not limited to: the declining identification by people as
Anglicans and growing numbers of non-denominational Christians; the arising diversity
in those communities with regard to modes of faith and belief practice; the
expansion and growing assertiveness of non-Christian faiths; and the increasing
number of people who are non-religious or have no specific faith or belief (a
trend that is particularly pronounced amongst younger people). Looking ahead to
the likely faith and belief landscape of 2040, this conference aims to prepare
decision-makers and practitioners for challenges and opportunities that might
arise from these transformations.
Mindful of the scale and complexity of the subject, the
conference aims not to define detailed solutions, but to provide a platform to:
Explore the opportunities and challenges that result from the current trajectory of change in the religion and belief landscape, in terms of social cohesion, state institutions and community life;
Consider what short- and medium-term steps might and could be taken by policymakers, faith leaders and religious communities, civil society actors and others to prepare for historical shifts by promoting shared values and inclusive visions of belonging, and to reflect on possible barriers to taking action;
Produce an expert Cumberland Lodge Report with key findings and recommendations, which will be refined at a Consultation and subsequently presented to policymakers, leaders, influencers, civil society and practitioners at a Report Launch in central London.
The conference will start at 10am on Thursday 23 April, and
finish at 3.30pm on Friday 24 April 2020. Bursary recipients are expected to
attend the whole event.
This Conference will be held under the Chatham House Rule in
order to enable frank and productive conversations.
In case you are unfamiliar with
Cumberland Lodge, the charity was founded in 1947 and seeks to empower people,
through dialogue and debate, to tackle the causes and effects of social
division. We convene multi-sector, interdisciplinary conferences, seminars and
panel debates to engage people of all ages, backgrounds and perspectives in
candid conversations on societal and ethical issues that affect us all. We
commission rigorous, interdisciplinary research to guide these conversations,
and we refine key themes of discussion into practical, policy-focused
recommendations. We actively involve young
people in all aspects of our work, to nurture their potential as future leaders
and change-makers.
We 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, shared-accommodation and
meals will be provided.
To find out more about the conference and to download the
bursary application form, please visit our website.
The application form can be downloaded on the right-hand side of the
webpage. The deadline for applications is 12pm
on Monday 16 March 2020.
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
—
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).
“The main
shortcoming of humanistic scholarship is its extreme anthropocentrism”, Edward
O Wilson recently claimed, arguing that this was “a major cause of the alarming
decline in public esteem and support of the humanities”. The humanities have
begun to pay attention to the depredations of the Anthropocene and to our
animality, our animal origins, in the work of
Donna Harraway and Pierre Huyghe, to give two notable examples. However, it
could also be argued that they have narrowed dramatically, to become obsessed
with individual human identity, advancing the causes of particular, discrete
groups of humans. A position one could say is hyper-Anthropocenic, one
following the atomizing, conflict-generating logic of neo-liberalism, which one
can in turn relate to an epidemic of self-obsession and narcissism in the mirror-world
of the culture at large.
Can an increased
concern in the humanities with animals and animality, and therefore with nature,
and by extension science, offer a way out of this impasse? Animals are still at
the centre of our culture; they have always answered out needs, and our
attitude to them is as conflicted as it has always been. The anthropomorphism that
still dominates our attitude to them often takes on sentimental forms, yet it developed
as an entirely utilitarian way to aid hunting in prehistory. When we begin to
consider animals and animality we enter a world of contradictions. We spend
tens of millions on pet food, but still slaughter huge numbers of animals. We could not have survived the last Ice Age without
their furs and skins, and it was increased consumption of their meat that led
to the increased brain size that allowed our bipedalism to advance, and thus to
the descent of the larynx, and thus language; in short, this almost-cannibalism,
this never-ending slaughter, was essential to our becoming human.
George Bataille
said that animals dwell in the world “like water in water”, in an unmediated,
non-destructive, but utterly determined way, and that humans had also once dwelt
in the world in this way. But at some point in prehistory, this changed, and
our exploitation of Gaia began. Questions contributors may want to consider are
where our differences from animals truly lay? Where do we find what remains of our
animalism? Are there times and privileged circumstances in which we too can
dwell in the world ‘like water in water’, and how can we, and should we, create
them? How much closer can we come to animals? Is there anything to be said for
holding up something programmed to pursue its genetic interests, allowing
nothing to stand in its way, without altruism, and beyond good and evil, as a
redemptive model? What possibility is there of having genuine access to the umwelt
of, and somehow experiencing the full ontological reality of what is
biologically different in any case? Can insights about our animality help us
exit the Anthropocene without disaster, and not just ensure our survival, but
even our self-overcoming, and new way of being in the world?
The word
‘animals’ has many ramifications, various morphologies, histories, and synonyms
and antonyms, all of which contributors are free to explore. Topics may be related, but are not limited, to:
Animal
rights
The
Anthroposcene/Post-anthroposcene
Anthrozoology
The post-human
The trans-human
Humanism and anti-humanism
Animal Studies
Animalism
Beastliness
Animal consciousness
Anthropomorphism and totemism
The animal and animalism in philosophy
Anthropocentrism
Animal-human relations
Chimeras and monsters
The fabular
The apocalyptic and the revenge
of nature
The animal in horror and science
fiction
Becoming animal
Evolution
Extinction
Human as animal, animal as human
Submission guidelines
We welcome long articles (of 5000-8000 words), or
shorter ones (of 3000-5000 words). We also welcome reviews of books, films, performances, exhibitions, and
festivals (of around 1500 words).
We also publish interviews that you may wish to conduct with
an author/artist, and artwork
including visual art;
creative writing; podcasts, and video footage
(up to 10 minutes).
We would be happy
to discuss ideas
for submissions with
interested authors prior
to the submission deadline.
