sed-web@qmul.ac.uk for social media, marketing, publicising your work or events
2) You can contact us via Live Chat (11am-3pm):
Find the Live Chat (tawk.to) box on our homepage (you may see it elsewhere too, e.g. on QMplus): https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sed/
Live chat is available between 11.00 a.m. and 3.00 p.m. Monday to Friday.
3) Attend any of our Welcome Week drop-in sessions
Come along to one of our drop in sessions where we can offer help and advice. These drop in sessions will be held on MS Teams.
4) Book a drop in session with our Student Support Officer
You can book a drop in session via QMplus with our Student Support Officer Suzi Lewis. These sessions will be held via MS Teams.
5) Pre-booked appointment
Because of current social distancing restrictions in the Arts One Building, it is not possible at present to receive visitors to our Reception without a pre-booked appointment. If you arrive in person and you have not booked an appointment, we may not be able to see you.
We will have a small team available at the School Reception on the third floor of the Arts One building (room 3.40: follow the signs at the top of the stairs) to take brief queries from students who are unable to find the answer to their query elsewhere or via the online options available. The team will :
Answer your queries, where possible, or direct you to the most appropriate source of advice (including the online options listed above)
Recommend other University support services that can help
In order to ensure you are seen quickly and safely please book a timed slot to see a member of the team by emailing sed-information@qmul.ac.uk. The reception will be open from 11:00 a.m. – 3.00 p.m. Monday to Friday.
Welcome to 2020 at Queen Mary. We want to get you excited about studying and exploring London and culture online as part of your university experience.
COMPETITION TIME: Win a copy of our alumnus Gabriel Krauze’s Booker Prize longlisted book Who They Was plus selection of titles he quotes in the book including James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room.
Enter by commenting with a question on this Instagram post when our Alumni Engagement Coordinator Nathalie Grey is interviewing Gabriel.
CONGRATULATIONS: The winners of our #SEDHallofFame dissertation photo competition were Fahima Begum and Jessica Amie Cooper (pictured in main image above).
Events
OCTOBER VIRTUAL OPEN DAY & CAMPUS TOURS – 3 OCTOBER 2020
Book now for our virtual event online which will include subject talks, tasters and a chance to ask questions about our inspiring and inclusive courses.
To launch and celebrate the publication of On Seamus Heaney (Princeton University Press, 2020), leading historian and biographer, Roy Foster, will appear, via Zoom, in conversation with award-winning British poet, Ruth Padel. With opening words from Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History, and Susan Rudy, Director, Centre for Poetry.
A Season of Bangla Drama (Drama) secured a £15k emergency Arts Council England funding for A Season of Bangla Drama – an online version to be called Home Seasoning. Our technical team in Drama will be applying the pedagogical strategies developed over lockdown to this exciting new challenge: migrating all 15 companies online in blended programming, configuring prerecorded shorts (based on what would have been live pieces) with online interaction and debate.
Brian Dillon (Creative Writing) will read from Suppose a Sentence, a critical and personal reflection on the art of the sentence in literature at a sold out event at Bold Tendencies in Peckham on Thursday 10 September. Read more about the book
Patrick Flanery (Creative Writing) has recently launched a short documentary film about South African artist Kate Gottgens. It was produced with her Cape Town-based gallery, SMAC.
Hari Marini (Drama) is participating in Tear in the Fence Festival in September. She will be reading some of my texts from 28 Paths of her in the session Migration, Exile and Place on Saturday 12 September.
‘Ramayya negotiates this reality by simultaneously reflecting on the horrors faced by marginalised peoples, and tying these concerns to the suffering and power of the ancient goddesses.’
Poplar Union Our friends at local arts venue Poplar Union are organising a digital performance festival Outside In Arts Festival and you can apply to get a paid commission to be part of it.
All Clearing applicants are guaranteed a room in Queen Mary halls, or with one or our partner providers.
Applications should ideally be submitted online by Wednesday 19 August (midnight BST), because room allocations for Clearing applicants will begin on Thursday 20 August.
Room allocations are made in date order of application submission.
In order to submit your housing application you must be placed at Queen Mary, i.e. you must be holding an unconditional firm (UF) offer.
The Admissions Office will send the login details for the housing application system to applicants, once their status is confirmed as UF on UCAS.
There may be a few hours delay in you being able to apply for housing after you receive your login details from Admissions. If you experience any significant delay, please email residences@qmul.ac.uk.
PLUS: We can’t wait to welcome our new students on A-level results day next Thursday 13 August. We have our fingers crossed for students getting results. If you’re thinking of joining one of our inspiring programmes through clearing please do join one of our catch ups and we can help. We are on UCAS embargo so can’t send batch email from tomorrow until results day but you can contact us.
Our student of the month for August is Maria Messias Mendes English with Creative Writing.
Online Events
RESULTS DAY AND CLEARING CATCH UPS
We are hosting some English and Drama drop-in sessions for incoming students who are either offer holders, in clearing or want to make a new application. We’d love to see you there: Results Day & Clearing Drop In #1 – 13 Aug – 11am Results Day & Clearing Drop In #2 – 13 Aug – 4pm
This is the online launch of the special issue of Wasafiri: Japan Literatures of Remembering, published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the end of the World War Two in the Pacific.
The discussion will reflect on the transformations of Japanese identity in literature, exploring themes of time, memory and diversity. We are fortunate to be joined by Mimi Hachikai in Japan who will be reading her poetry alongside her translator Kyoko Yoshida.
Gabriel Krauze (English alumnus) has been longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020 for his debut novel about London gang life, Who They Was, which is published in September 2020.
Hari Marini (Drama) is featured in a special issue of Journal of Greek Media and Culture 3.2 (Oct 2017) ‘Dramaturgies of change: Greek theatre now‘ edited by Marissia Fragkou & Philip Hager and it is now free-to-download for a month.
Daniel Oliver (Drama) has released online lockdown TV show Dadderrs with Frauke Requardt via The Place. They maintain social distancing by reimagining their 2019 stage show ‘Dadderrs’ within their own home as a digital boxset. The show has a 4 star review in the Guardian here.
Lois Weaver (Drama) will be talking about her history of queer performance culture and current work for one Manchester International Festival‘s online support sessions.
Lydia Wilcox (Live Art Master’s Student) has been announced as runner up on the Association of Art History Dissertation Prize for the essay ‘ ‘Messy Bitches: The Use of Mess in Contemporary Feminist Performance’.
Penelope Woods (Drama) is part of a project team organising workshops on colonialism and the senses with local schools in Tower Hamlets as part of Being Human Festival in November 2020.
We can’t wait to welcome new undergraduate students from 14 September 2020 for welcome week!
Please see below for key info for undergraduate students and do get in touch if you have any questions.
Key Information
Enrolment
For September 2020, all student enrolments will be completed online in absentia and you will not have to attend campus in order to become fully enrolled. Once you have enrolled be sure to join Senate House Library too!
Your IT account will usually be set up within 14 days so please do keep an eye out for activation emails on and after results day.
Welcome Week
Welcome Week from Monday 14 September 2020 is a time to get to know your course, personal advisor and discover all the things you can be part of at Queen Mary.
We will be publishing details of welcome week here soon.
First Week of Teaching / Your Timetable
Your timetable will begin on week commencing Monday 21 September 2020 and you should get this shortly before then along with your IT login. Be sure to check your junk mail for the email you registered with UCAS so you don’t miss anything important.
All online classes on your timetable are compulsory unless they say optional just as they would be in person.
Early career researchers seeking support for their application to the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme are invited to get in contact with us as soon as possible
Deadline for applications: midday on Wednesday 16 September 2020
The School of English and Drama invites early career researchers seeking support for their application to the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme to get in touch by submitting:
(1) an explanation of the reason(s) for your choice of Queen Mary as the host institution (150 words maximum)
(2) an outline of your proposed programme of research (1,500 words maximum)
(3) details of your planned research outputs, e.g. monograph, journal article(s), book chapter(s), digital resources, events, other (please specify) (300 words maximum)
(4) a list of existing publications (1 page maximum)
(5) a CV (2 pages maximum)
Please submit the above documents to Dr Huw Marsh, Research Manager, sed-research@qmul.ac.uk, by no later than midday on Wednesday 16 September 2020. Please state ‘British Academy PDRF’ in the subject line.
your research track record and professional track record (where relevant);
your academic record;
the research outputs you propose, how you will structure, pursue, and complete it in the time frame, and its importance;
the relevance of QMUL SED to your research and vice versa;
who you would like as a mentor and why.
You are strongly encouraged, before submitting your application and time permitting, to find a mentor, provisionally agree their support, and get some feedback from them on a draft application.
All outline proposals will be considered by our Directors of Research and those that we give institutional support to will have approximately one month to finalise their online application, due in mid-October 2020 (precise date tbc by the British Academy).
Bad English investigates the impact of increasing language diversity, precipitated by migration, globalisation, and new forms of communication, in transforming contemporary literature in Britain. Considering writers whose work engages experimentally, playfully, and ambivalently with English’s power, while exploring what it means to move between forms of language, it makes the case for literature as the pre-eminent medium to probe the terms of linguistic belonging, and for a diverse and growing field of writing in Britain defined by its inside/outside relationship to English in its institutionalised forms.
Bad English offers innovative readings of writers including James Kelman, Tom Leonard, Suhayl Saadi, Raman Mundair, Daljit Nagra, Xiaolu Guo, Leila Aboulela, Brian Chikwava, and Caroline Bergvall. Drawing on insights from applied linguistics and translation studies as well as literary scholarship, it will appeal to students and academics across these disciplines.
The Comic Turn in Contemporary English Fiction explores the importance of comedy in contemporary literature and culture. In an era largely defined by a mood of crisis, bleakness, cruelty, melancholia, environmental catastrophe and collapse, Huw Marsh argues that contemporary fiction is as likely to treat these subjects comically as it is to treat them gravely, and that the recognition and proper analysis of this humour opens up new ways to think about literature. Structured around readings of authors including Martin Amis, Nicola Barker, Julian Barnes, Jonathan Coe, Howard Jacobson, Magnus Mills and Zadie Smith, this book suggests not only that much of the most interesting contemporary writing is funny and that there is a comic tendency in contemporary fiction, but also that this humour, this comic licence, allows writers of contemporary fiction to do peculiar and interesting things – things that are funny in the sense of odd or strange and that may in turn inspire a funny turn in readers. Marsh offers a series of original critical and theoretical frameworks for discussing questions of literary genre, style, affect and politics, demonstrating that comedy is an often neglected mode that plays a generative role in much of the most interesting contemporary writing, creating sites of rich political, stylistic, cognitive and ethical contestation whose analysis offers a new perspective on the present.
I’m a storyteller and my time is dedicated to do justice to the stories I tell.
Tell us about your time at QMUL. What have been your highlights?
My time at QM has been truly special. I‘ve had the chance to learn so much about literature but also the craft of writing.
How has your course at Queen Mary helped you to progress into the world outside? What’s next?
My course has given me the tools to pursue my passions and develop further even after I have left university.
Aside from course content what have been your favourite elements of the experience of studying here as a whole?
I have found theatre to be really complimenting to my studies and many of my fondest memories of the last few years have been in rehearsal rooms.
Tell us about your life outside Queen Mary including any projects, ambitions or jobs you’ve had.
I love painting, dancing and singing so I try to find time to do that.
What could be improved to enhance future students’ experience at Queen Mary?
I think being open to change is key for a more positive future. This does not mean just adapting but critically thinking about what change is positive and useful and which one might be damaging.
The School of English and Drama at QMUL is delighted and proud that our alumnus Gabriel Krauze has been nominated for the 2020 Booker Prize longlist.
Gabriel studied English at Queen Mary University of London graduating in 2009 and Who They Was is his debut novel. He grew up in London in a Polish family and was drawn to a life of crime and gangs from an early age. Now in his thirties he has left that world behind and is recapturing his life through writing. He has published short stories in Vice and recently took part in our Show & Tell – inspiring mini talks series. Listen to his talk below…
Gabriel gave a talk at Show and Tell at All Points East Festival in 2019
The blurb describes the book best:
This life is like being in an ocean. Some people keep swimming towards the bottom. Some people touch the bottom with one foot, or even both, and then push themselves off it to get back up to the top, where you can breathe. Others get to the bottom and decide they want to stay there. I don’t want to get to the bottom because I’m already drowning.
This is a story of a London you won’t find in any guidebooks.
This is a story about what it’s like to exist in the moment, about boys too eager to become men, growing up in the hidden war zones of big cities – and the girls trying to make it their own way.
This is a story of reputations made and lost, of violence and vengeance – and never counting the cost.
This is a story of concrete towers and blank eyed windows, of endless nights in police stations and prison cells, of brotherhood and betrayal.
This is about the boredom, the rush, the despair, the fear and the hope.
This is about what’s left behind.’
About Gabriel
Gabriel Krauze came of age among the high rises and back streets of South Kilburn. He was not an observer on the periphery of violence. He was – personally – heavily involved in gangs, drugs, guns, stabbing and robbery – all while completing an English degree at Queen Mary University of London in 2009.
Who They Wascomes directly from that experience and as such it is confronting, exhilarating, morally complex, and utterly unique.
Quotes about the novel include:
‘An astonishingly powerful book. Krauze is an immense new talent’ Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of Love
‘A timely and vital exploration into London’s violence crisis by someone who experienced the sharp end of it. I cannot conjure another work which captures this culture in such depth – or with such brutal honesty – as only lived experience can tell. ’ Graeme Armstrong, author of The Young Team
‘Gabriel Krauze is an unbelievably talented writer. No one manages to blend “literary beauty” and “an uncomfortable feeling that he’s actually quite scary” like him’ Joel Golby
Creative Writing PhD Karina Lickorish Quinn’s debut novel Mancharisqa, or The Dust Never Settles will be published by Juliet Mabey at Oneworld Publications after a competitive auction.
Mancharisqa is an ambitious and formally inventive literary epic about haunting and counterhistories, adopting the traditional Andean concept of cyclical time in a manner reminiscent of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and the novels of Bolaño, suffused with the surreal atmosphere of Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled.
Mancharisqa formed part of Karina’ PhD thesis, which she completed at School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London under the supervision of Director of Creative Writing, Professor Patrick Flanery and Head of English, Dr Rachael Gilmour.
Anaïs Echeverría Gest flies to Lima to oversee the sale of her childhood home, La Casa Echeverría. It is a house full of ghosts, literal and otherwise, of her ancestors and of the maid who fell to her death from its balcony, around whom myths circulate and from whom miracles are sought. Everything that happens – in Anaïs’s childhood, her return to the house in the present day, and in all the stories in between – begins to overlap until the stories are all inextricably entwined. The novel ends with a birth, an earthquake, and the discovery of something disturbing beneath that cursed yellow house on the hill – the past will not remain silent and the ancestors demand to be reckoned with.
Juliet Mabey, the acquiring editor at Oneworld, comments, ‘I fell completely and utterly in love with this mesmerising, intense, multi-layered novel as soon as I started reading. The tone is wonderfully mystical and haunting, with echoes of other great Latin American writers without feeling remotely derivative. A stunningly original saga of an expansive, complex, troubled family in Peru, it is conveyed with a lightness of touch that belies its debut status, and I could not be more thrilled to feature Karina’s astonishing writing on my literary fiction list. There is really nothing else like it.’
“I’m thrilled to be joining Oneworld and their list of remarkable, talented authors. I have long admired Juliet Mabey and Oneworld for their commitment to introducing readers to a range of cultures and voices from across the world. And thank you to my wonderful agent, Seren Adams, for believing in me and my work. Mancharisqa could not have found a better home.”
Karina is a bilingual, Peruvian-British writer. She has a BA from Oxford University, an MA from UCL, and recently completed her PhD in Creative Writing here at Queen Mary University of London. Her short fiction is featured in Un Nuevo Sol, the first major anthology of British-Latinx writers, published by Flipped Eye Publishing. Her work has also appeared in Longitūdinēs,The Offing, Asymptote, The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, and Palabritas. In 2016 she was shortlisted for The White Review’s short story prize.
NSS: We have donated £175 each to World Wildlife Fund and Student Minds on behalf of our students for completing the National Student Survey. Thanks to everyone who completed this!
New Head of Drama: We would also like to welcome Professor Dominic Johnson (pictured above left) as our new Head of Drama. Read more about his work in the interview here.
Our student of the month for July is English student Eve Bolton.
Automation & Cultural Production 17 July, 6-8pm (BST), Online– Free Seb Franklin and Annie McClanahan join Nick Ridout (Drama) for a conversation about automation and cultural production. Register here
Possession & Performance 24 July, 6-8pm (BST), Online– Free Paul C. Johnson and Rebecca Schneider join Nick Ridout for a conversation about possession and performance. Register here
Possession & Subjectivity 31 July, 6-8 pm (BST), Online – Free Kyla Wazana Tompkins and Roberto Strongman join Nick Ridout for a conversation about possession and subjectivity. Register here
Online Porch Sitting – Split Britches 28 July, Online – Free via Barbican Join queer-feminist theatre icon, Lois Weaver (Drama), in this re-imagined online version of her Porch Sitting. Sit, think, dream, wonder and take part in conversation around our collective future. Photo by Alex Legge (Drama alumna). Find out more
Bloomsbury has at times in its history been much associated with visionary, utopian thinking and writing. This walk with Dr Matthew Ingleby will explore that history. From socialists and anarchists to feminists and queer artists, the neighbourhood has inspired a distinctly futural imagination, which has allowed readers to see how things might be, not only what they empirically, provably are.
Nadia Atia (English) and Malachi McIntosh (Wasafiri Magazine based at QMUL) presented on Iraq and Teaching Migration and Empire respectively at British Empire in English Studies event at University of Kent.
Julie Rose Bower has had her second ASMR video published by Victoria and Albert Museum and it features work using our Drama department’s very one ambisonic microphone. This video has costumes worn by Vivien Leigh, Sandie Shaw, PJ Harvey, Belinda Wright and Adzogbo dancers. JRB was also named as one of the artists you need to know for ‘carving out space to reflect on the world today’ in Elephant magazine.
Jerry Brotton (English)’s Mapping the Future programme is on BBC iPlayer now. In the programme he navigates the transformation from paper to digital mapping, from print to pixels, asks what is being gained and lost and in whose interests the evolution serves.
Dr Duckie aka Ben Walters (Drama PhD)’s Dr Duckie website is full of useful information about the project focused on the concept of ‘Homemade Mutant Hope Machines’ – a way of describing how people without much clout can start to build better worlds on their own terms.
Feather Pen (Blog by English student Aysel Kasap) are pleased to announce their new travel column, Seoul Searching by Ruby Punt, a QMUL student about her year abroad in South Korea! New entries are coming every month starting from July 15 on featherpenblog.com.
Olga Kravchenko (Drama alumna) is interviewed by our alumni team on her about being CEO of Musemio, a virtual reality app that connects children with content from museums around the world and seeks to turn them into museumgoers of the future.
PEACH Magazine has officially opened up for applications for their 2020/21 committee. If you are interested in being part of the only Queen Mary Student Medium that is solely dedicated to publishing students’ creative expressions, then click here to learn more about the different roles and how to apply. The deadline to apply is 31 July 2020, 11.59 pm. You can also follow PEACH on: Instagram / Twitter / Facebook.
Charlie Pullen (English PhD) shared a touching tribute by Lynsey Hanley in the 90s about English at Queen Mary in this tweet.
Stage 3 Theatre Company:Stage3 Extended is a platform which continues to encourage activism through creative responses for an extended week after a commemorating event has occurred. We believe that we should keep the activist momentum alive. Their first project was ‘Refugee Week Extended’ and this Saturday (11 July) they are launching the next one – ‘Remembering Srebrenica Extended’. Stage 3 Company is a performance-based activist group, tackling a vast range of political, social and humanitarian issues from immigration and discrimination to identity, belonging and empathy. Established in April 2018, as part of STAGES (PPP, QMUL), the group has since then performed at numerous venues around the UK.
Rosie Vincent (Drama Alumna) and her organisation Roman Road Trust’s Transform The Common Roomcampaign successfully reached target to provide a new community space. After receiving the maximum pledge of £50,000 from the Mayor of London, they then received an amazing pledge of £10,000 from the Tower Hamlets Innovation Fund and then a brilliant pledge of £5,000 from the Centre for Public Engagement at QMUL!
Jeremy Weller (Drama Master’s Student)’s work for Beyond Walls around art and mental health including an NHS Residency and Edinburgh Festival 2018 Production: Where it hurts is available to explore online here. Find out more about his work on his website and Instagram.
Performance, Possession & Automation – a collaborative research project led by Nick Ridout and Orlagh Woods, in collaboration with Joe Kelleher, Fiona Templeton and Simon Vincenzi – invites you to three online conversations.
Automation & Cultural Production
17 July, 6-8pm (BST)
Online
Seb Franklin and Annie McClanahan join Nick Ridout for a conversation about automation and cultural production.
Instead of imagining a future in which our lives are managed for us by robots or AI, it may be time to think instead about how automation is already deeply embedded in our everyday lives. Automation is not replacing human beings, but it may be changing how we work and act, and how we think and feel about ourselves and other people.
Clickhere, to book your place and for further information.
Paul C. Johnson and Rebecca Schneider join Nick Ridout for a conversation about possession and performance.
What if possession is a totally modern idea? Could it be a way for people who live modern lives in a supposedly secular culture to describe modes of being that don’t fit with their ideas of what it is to be yourself? How does performance help us think about possession? Are performance and possession both ways of becoming an automated or programmed self?
Clickhere, to book your place and for further information.
Kyla Wazana Tompkins and Roberto Strongman join Nick Ridout for a conversation about possession and subjectivity.
Might possession and other experiences in which people seem to lose control of themselves – like intoxication or narcosis – expand our understanding of what it means to be a subject, beyond the bounded subjectivity assumed and promoted in so-called ‘Enlightenment’ thought? Do subjects always and everywhere have to fit neatly into bodies?
Click here to book your place and for further information.
Performance, Possession & Automation is a research project exploring automation and possession as two ways of thinking about what happens to human subjects who act in ways that they do not themselves fully control. How can making and thinking about performance contribute to thinking about these ideas?
This project is supported through the Collaborations Fund of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and The Centre for Public Engagement, Queen Mary University of Londonin partnership with Fierce Festival and Hampstead Theatre.
