Comment from leading Queen Mary researcher at Alan Turing Institute, Professor Ruth Ahnert
The most exciting research innovations happening at the moment are at the interface between the humanities and sciences. The digital humanities and computational humanities are thriving research areas.
But it’s important not to think of the sciences as the saviour of the humanities in these spaces.
The increasing prevalence of large language models mean that we need critical reading skills at scale, to understand the harmful biases that arise form the vast training data being fed to these machines.
AI initiatives desperately need more humanities graduates at the table.
Professor Ruth Ahnert (QMUL) working on Living with Machines Project at Alan Turing Institute
Cultural Historian Tiffany Watt Smith (Drama)’s work is featured in the report:
There is a strong correlation between the skills of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) graduates and key skills valued by employers.
Eight of the 10 fastest growing sectors employ more AHSS graduates than graduates of other disciplines. A Humanities training may not pay back most quickly in the workforce, but it is likely to give good resilience and longevity for longer term prospects.
The number of UK students choosing Humanities subjects suggests they continue to recognise the value of degrees that fit them not narrowly for any one particular career, but which develop the talents and skills needed for a wide range of opportunities.
Welcome to our latest round up of events, opportunities and schemes that may help you meet collaborators, improve your career prospects or simply broaden your horizons.
If you get to the end and apply for an opportunity please let us know and we’ll give you a freebie.
Please let us know if you have any suggestions for the next edition via sed-web@qmul.ac.uk
Don’t forget your careers service is open all semester and can help with finding jobs, applications and interviews. Book an appointment or email your careers consultant Fliss Bush
Join us for Subtexts: Sex, Race and Psychoanalysis, with readings by Katherine Angel and Sita Balani. Katherine Angel, who is the author of Tomorrow Sex Will be Good Again: Women and Desire in the Age of Consent (Verso 2021), will read from her work in progress, a book entitled Poor Freud coming in 2025/26. Sita Balani will read from their forthcoming book on race and modernity, Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race (Verso, May 2023), to consider ‘dangerous women’ and reactionary nationalism.
Collective Vocalisation and the Anthropological Imagination: Zora Neale Hurston, Jacques Roumain and Ousmane Sembène
PGRS has been badly disrupted this semester because of strikes, and our only session will be on 29 March, 17.00-18.00, with a paper presented by Matthew Taunton (University of East Anglia). This will take place in Rehearsal Room 1, ArtsOne.
Collective speech—the act of speaking, chanting, or singing in unison—carries a number of important meanings in modern culture, which my current book project is hoping to map. In the form of prayers, football songs, chants of political protest, and so on, choric utterance is a common feature of modern life, that normally operates (albeit in a variety of ways) as an expression of group solidarity. In this paper I will be exploring how collective speech operates as an object of anthropological investigation.
From the late nineteenth century, anthropologists studying the rituals of indigenous peoples became fascinated by the phenomenon of collective chanting, and European literary writers also pursued this interest in their encounters with (and depictions of) colonial subjects. My paper focuses on three writers—Zora Neale Hurston (USA), Jacques Roumain (Haiti) and Ousmane Sembène (Senegal)—who used the tools of anthropology to investigate the ritual functions of collective vocalisation, producing ethnographies, novels, poems and films that celebrated its role in African folk traditions and their New World derivatives.
As I hope to show, these writers, in distinct and contrasting ways, made collective speech a site of anti-racist and anti-colonial resistance. It is perhaps not surprising that many anthropological descriptions of choral speech involved colonial assumptions and racist tropes: this paper explores how these three Black writers deployed an anthropology of ritual incantation in the service of a critique of racism and colonialism.
As usual, contact us at qmenglishpgrs@qmul.ac.uk if you’re unable to attend in person, but would like to listen in on Zoom. Register to attend on our Eventbrite page. We hope to see as many of you there for the talk – and subsequent bacchanalia – as possible.
Sign up below…
QUORUM with Liv Wynter on Politics, Audiences, and How To Catch A Pig!
Weds 29 March 2023 – Rehearsal Room 2 + Zoom
Join us for an evening where Liv discusses their practice and organising grassroots nights of interdisciplinary performance.
This hybrid roundtable event on global interconnectedness and decolonisation will discuss a range of topics, including Globalisation, movement & circulation of people; institutionalised inequalities & diasporic identities; and rhetorics of immigration, belonging, and national identity.
We are excited to be joined by a panel of expert speakers:
Staff and students involved in previous years have built new connections with residents and community organisations, gained new perspectives, and learned new skills – all of which can benefit their work. The Centre for Public Engagement team will support you in developing activity ideas. Please make use of their information webinars, 1:1 advice sessions, dedicated training, and funding of up to £500 per project. Please visit the Festival of Communities website for details on how you can get involved. The deadline for applications is Thursday 30 March.
Tower Hamlets Annual Arts Sharing and Networking Event for 2023
The council’s Arts, Parks and Events team are delighted to be back at the Art Pavilion in Mile End Park for the first physical, post-covid networking and sharing event! We have invited a range of speakers to address some of the key issues in 2023 and look forward to bringing together the thriving arts community of Tower Hamlets. The borough remains a hub of activity for the creative sector and home to many emerging and established arts organisations. Many of these will be in attendance to share their expertise.
The 2023 Annual Nicolai Rubinstein Lecture in Intellectual History: ‘Sceptical Views of Early Modern Empire in Europe and Beyond: A rereading of Michel de Montaigne’
To be delivered by: Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Distinguished Professor & Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences, UCLA)
Chair: Professor David Armitage (The Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University)
Date: Friday 31 March 2023
Time: 18.15
To be followed by Reception
Venue: Arts Two Lecture Theatre, Queen Mary University of London
Interested in performing your show at The Space? Deadline Today
Our application process is super simple and can welcome shows at various points in their development process! The deadline is NEXT TODAY so don’t wait! https://space.org.uk/perform/
FREE WORKSHOP: Pen to Print: The Road to Publishing Workshop with Claire Buss
An evening of poetry and literary performances by four mesmerising, artfully and politically charged writers, Hasti, So Mayer, Nat Raha, and Shola von Reinhold. Organised by the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London. Free and open to all.
Ann Cvetkovich will be visiting QMUL in April and delivering The Centre for the History of Emotions Annual Lecture. As part of her visit, and as a collaboration between The Centre for the History of Emotions (CHE) and the Sexual Cultures Research Group, she is running a reading group on ‘Queer Affect Studies’ for staff and research students in SED. Note that as this is a reading group there will be some advanced reading required.
The reading group will take place on Wednesday April 5 from 4-6pm, after both Departmental Boards and the Staff SpLD training and before Aoife’s Quorum talk kicks off. The room is TBC, but registration is essential, as capacity is limited (to facilitate this being a reading group).
To register, please email me at s.mcbean@qmul.ac.uk (please no reply-alls to this email).
Ann Cvetkovich is currently Director of the Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She has been Ellen Clayton Garwood Centennial Professor of English and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism (Rutgers, 1992); An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Duke, 2003); and Depression: A Public Feeling (Duke, 2012). She co-edited (with Ann Pellegrini) “Public Sentiments,” a special issue of The Scholar and Feminist Online, and (with Janet Staiger and Ann Reynolds) Political Emotions (Routledge, 2010). She has been coeditor, with Annamarie Jagose, of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Her current writing projects focus on the current state of LGBTQ archives and the creative use of them by artists to create counterarchives and interventions in public history.
Outside QMUL
Save the date! Applications for our randomly-selected work experience placements taking place in May-July open on 3rd April
FREE ONLINE EVENT: What is missing from Theatre, Race & Ethnicity Education?
Host: Bella Enahoro
Date March 29th & March 30th at 11.00 am – 12.00pm
Event Format: At the beginning of the event the host will introduce the key ideas, principles and practices behind the theme of the event and offer provocations for discussion.
There will also be a short extract from a learning module sharing the host’s approach to theatre, race & ethnicity.
There will be opportunities to ask questions of the contributor throughout.
Connect is our global BAFTA membership for people actively building their careers and networks in the film, games and television industries. As a Connect Member, you will receive a wide range of support and networking opportunities. This includes a year-round programme of learning and career development activity, plus access to our stunning HQ, BAFTA 195 Piccadilly in London as a meeting and social space.
POETS PRIZE CLOSING WEDNESDAY: THE WHITE REVIEW POET’S PRIZE 2023
The White Review Poet’s Prize 2023 is now open for entries. This year, we’re thrilled to be able to accept entries from poets based anywhere in the world.
The Poet’s Prize is run in partnership with CHEERIO, and is for English-language poets who are at the crucial stage of creating their debut pamphlet or collection. The Prize was founded in 2017 with support from Jerwood Charitable Foundation. This year’s judges are Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Meena Kandasamy and Deryn Rees-Jones.For the first time, submissions are open to poets resident anywhere in the world, and will close at 11.59 a.m. (GMT) on 29 March 2023. For the full entry guidelines, as well as information on free entries for low income writers, please see our website.
LOCAL NETWORK: Come & find out about the LGBT+ Forum!
Wednesday 29th March 5.30pm Positive East, 159 Mile End Rd, London E1 4AQ New to Tower Hamlets? Looking for more LGBT+ groups and events? Come and find out about the Tower Hamlets LGBT+ Forum!
We would like to welcome anyone who is interested in getting involved in the Tower Hamlets LGBT+ Forum to come along from 5.30pm to find out more over a hot drink. You are welcome to stay for the forum meeting which starts at 6pm.
Patrick Ness’ young adult sci-fi/fantasy series, ‘Chaos Walking,’ is my favourite series of all time for a reason. I first stumbled across it in a charity shop a few summers ago. I was browsing, looking for a cheap read to pass the time on holiday in North Devon, and a long title caught my eye: ‘The Knife of Never Letting Go.’
I was immediately intrigued. For a book of its genre, it had a very elaborate and strange title. I read the blurb and felt my excitement rise. “Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks.” I’d never seen a premise like it, and I was delighted to notice the copy was signed by the author. Even better, it was £1.50.
“Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks.”
Goodreads
What I didn’t realise was how lucky I was discovering this novel. ‘Chaos Walking’ changed so much for me – the way I viewed the craft of novel writing, the way I think characters should be developed in books, and (among many!) the themes of masculinity, genocide and power.
‘The Knife of Never Letting Go’
‘The Knife of Never Letting Go’ is a story that follows Todd Hewitt, a young boy on the cusp of manhood living in a coloniser settlement of men on a planet where a disease has killed all the women and caused all men to hear each other’s thoughts – whether they like it or not. They call it ‘Noise,’ and Patrick Ness’ genius is exhibited in his writing style. The way he writes the novel mirrors the Noise exactly, and feels like you are reading into Todd’s thoughts yourself.
Ness plays with punctuation, repetition, sentence strucutre, spelling and grammar to create this effect. It is not overwhelming – I found it incredibly beautiful and fast paced, which is exactly what I look for in a book series. Despite being a relatively long novel, I devoured it in a couple of days because of the genius writing style.
“She ain’t my girl,” I say, low.
“What?” Doctor Snow says.
“What?” Viola says.
“She’s her own girl,” I say. “She don’t belong to anyone.”
And does Viola ever LOOK at me.
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
‘The Knife of Never Letting Go’ has conflicts that feel genuine and authentic. Todd’s life is turned upside down when he meets Viola – the first girl he has ever seen and the first person he has ever met that doesn’t have Noise. His masculinity and adulthood are threatened by her, but together they grow a deep friendship alongside Todd’s dog, Manchee (whose thoughts you can hear too!), and overcome life-threatening challenges on their journey to safety as they are chased by crazed religious fanatic Aaron.
‘The Ask and the Answer’
‘The Ask and the Answer’ is the sequel to ‘The Knife of Never Letting Go,’ and it takes the narrative places beyond your expectations. Patrick Ness’ command of character over the whole ‘Chaos Walking’ series is incredible – for the first time when reading a YA book, I really felt like the teenaged characters WERE teenagers.
For the first time when reading a YA book, I really felt like the teenaged characters WERE teenagers.
There is so much depth to every single character in this novel. Specifically, with Todd, I appreciated the conflict of what it means to be a man after meeting a girl for the first time, and then how loyalty and selflessness work in their friendship once they are split apart by the Mayor. Emphasis on their friendship. This novel keeps up with the platonic relationship between Viola and Todd, which is truly a breath of fresh air.
I don’t want to give too much away in terms of the plot of the second and third novels, but I want to highlight the complexity and psychology of Mayor Prentiss’ role in this book. He is the villain, but there is always a ‘but.’ Ness leaves you guessing at every twist and turn of this book, and introducing the Spackle pulls in other narratives that really make you think about real-world problems of racism and colonisation. You can never confirm who is good or evil in ‘Chaos Walking.’ It is all a big grey area, and at the end of the day, the characters are human, meaning flawed.
‘Monsters of Men’
‘Monsters of Men’ is the third and final book in the series, and my favourite thing about it was the abundance of POV’s we could access. We read into Todd, Viola, and the Spackle’s thoughts, each with their own distinct voice, and Viola grew exponentially in this instalment.
Viola is such an excellent role model to young women – not because she’s ‘not like other girls,’ but because she IS like other girls. She doesn’t need weapons or physical strength to be a badass. She’s emotional, sensitive, intelligent and heroic, and never compromises her femininity or seeks male approval.
“Choices may be unbelievably hard but they’re never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that’s not how a person with integrity acts.”
Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
Further themes that are explored in this book are war, genocide, imperialism, morality, death and power. It is such a sophisticated and complex narrative, and will challenge you every chapter. I could not encourage people more to read this series. It changed my life, my writing goals and my way of reading. ‘Chaos Walking’ is a masterpiece because it is the most real-life piece of fiction I’ve ever read.
Charlie Pullen suggests we look to the career of Professor Emerita Morag Shiach for inspiration in what the arts and humanities can do within and beyond the university. Here, in an adapted version of his opening remarks to the Practical Experiments in Hope conference in March 2023, he explains why we should view education and creativity as hopeful resources which we can use to combat the enveloping despair of our present moment.
On the dark and rainy morning of Saturday 18 March 2023, colleagues from Queen Mary and beyond joined me at Practical Experiments in Hope – a day of celebration to mark the retirement, in September 2022, of one of the School of English and Drama’s longest-serving and most distinguished colleagues: Professor Morag Shiach.
In whatever capacity we know Morag – whether we’re colleagues from Queen Mary, former students, collaborators from different universities and organisations, friends, family, or some combination of the above – many of us will be aware of the central, decisive role that she has played in the formation of English, Drama, and the institution as a whole here at Queen Mary. Across some thirty-five years – a period in which she served in many leadership positions, from Head of School to Vice Principal for Teaching and Learning and subsequently Vice Principal for Humanities and Social Sciences – Morag’s dedication to the shaping and development of this university and especially to arts and humanities education and research has been unmatched.
Arriving in 1987, Morag came to Queen Mary first as a temporary lecturer in English, before becoming permanent the following year and then, in 1999, Professor of Cultural History. Over that time Morag has been at the forefront of great and progressive changes at Queen Mary as well as an expansion of higher education more broadly. To take the English department as just one example of those transformations: when Morag first came to work here at the tail-end of the 1980s (another low, dishonest decade not unlike our own in the 2020s), the English department took just 25 students a year; now it’s more like 200. When Morag arrived at Queen Mary, we didn’t have a Drama Department – and it was she who played no small part in the founding and growth of what is now a pioneering centre for the study and production of theatre and performance.
But many of us, within the School of English and Drama and further afield, will also know Morag through her work as a notably prolific and incredibly versatile scholar. From her early research on popular culture and feminist studies, and her wide-ranging publications within the field of modernist literature and cultural history, to her more recent turn towards work in the cultural and creative economy, Morag’s career has been marked by a unique degree of flexibility and by a dedication to fostering connections and conversations reaching across disciplines, institutions, and sectors.
That commitment to interdisciplinary study, and that capacity to turn her hand to an extraordinary range of subject areas and methodological approaches, is borne out in Morag’s educational trajectory. She began her academic career with a degree at the University of Glasgow, starting out in English – a department which, quite unlike our own here at Queen Mary today, she found to be ‘disengaged’ and uninspiring – before switching to an innovative programme in Drama and Philosophy, the first student to take such a combination of subjects at that university.
It was at Glasgow, coincidentally, that Morag seems to have developed a taste for university leadership. There she served in numerous student council roles, voicing her progressive views on student politics in the Glasgow University Union paper – as she does here, in this clipping from 1978, which details her work in anti-Apartheid and anti-Nazi movements, as well as her commitment to increasing student grants and improving democratic representation at the university.
(Image Source: University of Glasgow)
From Glasgow, Morag continued her journey across disciplines (and indeed the world) by taking a Master’s degree in Communications at McGill University in Canada, where she read literature, media, and film studies, and wrote a thesis on ideas of ‘the popular’ in cultural studies, the front page of which you can see reproduced below. That MA dissertation led into her PhD at Cambridge on the historical development of a critical discourse on popular culture from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century, which was supervised by the great cultural theorist Raymond Williams.
(Morag’s MA thesis from McGill, University in Montreal, Canada)
On the day of the conference, colleagues in the School of English and Drama and I created an exhibition of just some of the many publications Morag has produced throughout her career. And so, in preparation for this display, I took a trip to the library to see what books I could find. During this trip, I was struck by two things. Firstly, by how well-used Morag’s books clearly are by our students and staff: hardly any page in her volumes is left untouched by pencil markings and sticky notes. And secondly, I was struck by how far I had to walk around the library to find her work. I began, in the history section, where I picked up her first book, an adaptation of her PhD thesis from 1989, Discourse on Popular Culture: Class, Gender, and History in the Analysis of Popular Culture. From there I found myself having to walk to the modern languages section to find her study of the French philosopher and writer Hélène Cixous (A Politics of Writing, from 1991).
After that, I had to walk to sociology to get a copy of her edited volume Feminism and Cultural Studies (1999); and then, to English literature, to pick up various works on modernism, most notably 2004’s Modernism, Labour, and Selfhood in British Literature and Culture, 1890–1930. The search continued: from there I went to economics to find Cultural Policy, Innovation, and the Creative Economy: Creative Collaborations in Arts and Humanities Research (2016). These were just some of the intellectual products of Morag’s career. But by the end of this trip around the library, aside from being quite worn out and weighed down with all these books, I had got such a strong, experiential sense of the sheer range of Morag’s work – this ability to produce highly influential and impeccably researched scholarship within and across disciplinary boundaries. Who amongst us could have their work spread so far across a library?
Morag’s ability to bring together and to create connections between disciplines and practices that might otherwise simply not get much of a chance to talk to each other was demonstrated vividly at the Practical Experiments in Hope conference, which saw assembled colleagues from English, Drama, and Creative Writing, of course, but historians too, and scholars from modern languages, geography, law, and economics, as well as from arts projects, heritage organisations, and museums. So it was then, on that cold and wet morning, we came together at Practical Experiments in Hope to continue that spirit of conversation and interdisciplinarity that Morag had long pioneered through her work.
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And yet, when I first began planning the conference, I was, I must admit, more than a little overwhelmed by the prospect of bringing together this incredible range of interests, experience, and expertise in Morag’s career into just one day. When I sat down with Morag in late 2022, I asked, pleaded really: ‘You’ve done so much, Morag! How can I possibly tie it all together into a single conference?!’ And Morag, with characteristic clarity, composure, and modesty too, replied: ‘Yes, it is quite a lot. But there is a thread running through it all. And it’s that old Raymond Williams thing, of resources of hope. The arts and humanities, literature and the study of literature, education, and creativity as resources for a journey of hope. Resources, as Williams once put it, to make hope practical rather than despair convincing.’
And there we had our keywords for the day. From then on, re-reading Morag’s work, I found that thread which I should have seen all along – not least in an article she wrote for Paragraph in the year 2000, right on the cusp of the millennium, which gave us our title and central theme for the conference. In this fascinating essay, ‘Millennial Fears: Fear, Hope, and Transformation in Contemporary Feminist Writing’, Morag – showing once again her versatility and her willingness to engage with the actualities and difficulties of the present moment – identified in a variety of feminist writers of the time what Raymond Williams might have called a structure of feeling: a particular mood, or effort to respond to fear and despair about the political realities of the day with a defiant, hopeful outlook. Hélène Cixous, Judith Butler, and others, Morag argued, were carrying out through their writing ‘a practical experiment in hope, or perhaps in refusing fear.’ Those writers were meditating on and expressing the possibilities, she said, ‘of the collective and individual construction of hope.’
(Charlie Pullen presenting at Practical Experiments in Hope, 18 March 2023. Photo by Richard Ashcroft)
From the perspective of our own day, over twenty years later, in the face of the horrors of the pandemic, humanitarian crisis, climate breakdown, economic disaster, the systematic divestment of the arts and cultural sector, and, more locally, the devastation of university departments and entire disciplinary communities, the need for such a hopeful energy seems both immeasurably necessary but also increasingly inaccessible, impossible. Despair seems all the more convincing; fear seems impossible to refuse.
I myself am one who, like Connie at the beginning of D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, tends to think of our particular historical moment as a tragedy. ‘Ours is essentially a tragic age,’ Lawrence wrote in 1928, in the fallout of war, plague, economic and political crisis, so much that seems familiar to us. ‘The cataclysm has happened’, he writes, ‘we are among the ruins.’
It’s very telling, however, that when Morag came to write about D.H. Lawrence and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, she drew out and emphasised the rest of what Lawrence says. And here is the opening paragraph of the novel in full:
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover ‘thus begins with catastrophe and ruin’, Morag says in her book Modernism, Labour and Selfhood, ‘but it also begins with the necessity for hard work’. With both disaster and the possibility of carrying on.
Here then we had, at the start of the conference, the beginnings of an answer to the question, ‘why “practical experiments in hope”?’ In what ways might we imagine hope to be a practical and experimental process? What might the arts and humanities broadly conceived have to do with the making of hope in dark times? My answer, riffing on Morag, was because hope is hard work. Because it is, as she says, something we ‘construct’, which we build, which we make practically in the here and now even as the sky has fallen. And that reminded me too of something the science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin said about love: “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone,’ she said: ‘it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.’
Hope, then, might not be something that just sits there waiting to be picked up, but instead the work ofhope might be something we have to do and keep doing. As an experiment, as an open-ended process, we might not know the outcome of this hopeful work, we might not have a smooth road or clear view of the future, but that, I suggested, is the journey of hope, that is the path we must take to discover a new and better future.
My suggestion for us on the day was that we must look to the the balance between, as Lawrence says, cataclysm, ruin, and the hard work of rebuilding; or, as Morag says, between fear and the refusal of fear; or despair and the construction of something better. For in that uneasy balance, I ventured to propose, that is the space of hope, that is the location where our practical experiments in hope take place. And throughout the day, in our speakers’ presentations and through open discussion with everyone there, I invited us to explore, test out, and discover what hope we might still create with the work we do in the arts and humanities, in education, and in our creative practices.
During the day we shared our experiences of teaching and learning with Morag, as students and as lecturers; we reflected on her work shaping educational institutions beyond Queen Mary, such as the founding of our partnership schools like Draper’s Academy; and we discussed the interaction between arts and humanities research with the wider world of the creative economy, including via the class politics of the publishing industry. What became clear to us across the event was the possibility that such a conference, with its potential for facilitating collective discussion, sharing, and forming generative connections between disciplines and practices, might itself constitute one of the most fruitful opportunities for carrying out our own practical experiments in hope.
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Those of us who could be present on the day were there to celebrate Morag, to thank her for all that she’s made possible for us, and to recognise the way her work has shaped and will continue to shape our own work, whatever that is – whether it be academic, administrative, creative, or some blend of all three. And it was in that spirit of tribute that I ended my welcome talk on a personal note – by briefly gesturing to the impact that Morag has had on me, on my life and work, as a student and now a member of staff at Queen Mary. For my own history is very much bound up with the work that Morag has carried out and made possible during her time here at this university.
Arriving as an undergraduate just over ten years ago to study English, I was one of the many, many students who came and still come to Queen Mary from working-class backgrounds and the first in their family to go to university. I couldn’t have known it then, but coming here I was stepping into an institution that had been, over many years, built and shaped to transform the lives of those who might not otherwise get the opportunity to experience higher education, much less to work in it.
While here, even though Morag – then Vice Principal – was not teaching in the department, her presence was felt in the incredibly diverse and stimulating learning I was taking part in, on a degree programme that allowed me to move across methodological approaches and genres of literature and media: my studies led me directly to her work on popular culture when I wrote essays on topics as diverse as the film Titanic or cultural responses to Princess Diana’s death; to Cixous when I studied the reception of ancient myth in modern critical theory; and to Virginia Woolf, especially Morag’s 1992 Oxford University Press edition of A Room of One’s Own andThree Guineas, which did much to foster my own interest in the vexed topic of education in the modernist period.
After that, as a Master’s student at Queen Mary, I came to Modernism, Labour and Selfhood, which became, then as now, a model of the sort of modernist literary scholarship I wanted to do: richly cultural historicist; attentive to the dynamic relationship between literary forms and their changing political and historical context; and committed to the study of alternative and marginal traditions within the literature and culture of the early twentieth century. It was inevitable, then, that I would go straight to Morag for a PhD on modernism and education, her supervision of which – with Scott McCracken – was by turns generous, exacting, and empowering.
(Charlie Pullen, Morag Shiach, and Scott McCracken)
And one of the greatest pleasures of the conference was to see more of Morag’s former students return to Queen Mary to reflect on the power of her teaching and mentorship, including the writer Lynsey Hanley, who in her memoir Respectable: Crossing the Class Divide (2016)writes of her journey from a working-class home on a Birmingham council estate, via a traumatic interview at Cambridge, and eventually to Queen Mary, where she was interviewed much more supportively and given a place by Morag. Hanley recalls the Queen Mary of the 1990s as a beacon of progressive higher education, as a place which ‘resembled far more closely the dream that some of us have of all children getting a good education’, she says: an education ‘which equips them both to function well in the society we have and to take part in building the society we hope for – regardless of their origins.’ If ever there was an articulation of what a practical experiment in hope might be, there it is, in Hanley’s account of the transformative potential of a properly inclusive and socially-directed form of higher education.
After a long and productive career, Morag now gets the chance to enjoy her well-earned retirement. For those of us who remain working at Queen Mary and at universities and the cultural sector more broadly, I suggest Morag’s work still has lessons for us. As our day of discussion, sharing, and conversation unfolded at the conference, and as I reflect on the day now, my final thought for us was and is that we look, for inspiration, to the breadth of Morag’s work, at Queen Mary and beyond, as one quite varied but continuous project committed to the principle that the arts and humanities, education, and creative practice are some of our most vital and enduring resources – the tools and the very basis for our practical experiments in hope.
As a mixed heritage person who has lived in multiple different countries, reading about journeys has always been very personal to me. I have spent more time in airports than I can keep track of and it’s never easy to feel like you’re constantly on the move. That’s part of the reason I love reading so much – literature helps you forget about your surroundings and be rooted in a story that doesn’t force you to leave. Books are reliable and consistent when life isn’t.
However, finding books that reflect the feeling of journeying can be so important to relate to, and you can learn so much from them, whether you’re a person who has been on lots of journeys or stayed in the same place your whole life. The three novels I have listed below take journeys both physically and literally. Yes, they track a physical path that the characters take, sometimes across countries, sometimes in the same country, but they also follow emotional journeys of growth and realisation as the characters discover themselves and are taught life lessons on their journeys.
These novels also tell stories that aren’t often given the spotlight, but are incredibly beautiful and precious to learn about. So, if you’re looking for a new read as the weather gets warmer this Spring, or if you just want to find a novel with an exciting journey-based plot, these books will give you everything you want, plus a little bit more.
1. “Forgotten Fire” by Adam Bagdasarian
I read ‘Forgotten Fire’ when I was around twelve years old, and it has remained with me ever since. The novel is about an Armenian boy called Vahan, set in 1915 in Turkey during the horrific period of the Armenian genocide. Part of the reason the novel struck me so hard is how personal it was. My grandmother on my father’s side was Armenian, and her mother was a survivor of the Armenian genocide. Hearing the story of how she escaped the massacre in her village and then reading about a story similar to hers was very difficult to process but so rewarding and educational.
The writing style of this book is so captivating. Bagdasarian has a real talent for painting pictures with words and immersing you in the rich culture and heritage of the region in which the novel is set. It is based on a true story and the plot follows Vahan’s journey as he travels from home to home to preserve his life in the ethnic cleansing being carried out against his people by the Turkish. He is constantly on the move and his journeys lead him to Constantinople where he tries to find safety after watching his family suffer and die and going through unimaginable horrors.
The novel showcases the inner strength of people in the direst circumstances. The journey Vahan is put on is harrowing, but thousands upon thousands of other Armenians experienced the same horrors during the genocide. My great-grandmother walked on foot to Syria to escape death after her town was massacred and she herself was stabbed by Turkish soldiers twice. I found the journey in this book to be inspiring and haunting.
2. “Inside Out & Back Again” by Thanhha Lai
I loved ‘Inside Out & Back Again’ so much that I read it twice, back to back, and found it even more beautiful the second time I read it. It is a novel written in verse, and was the first novel I’d ever read in that form. The journey in this story is of a young girl, Ha, who is living in Saigon when the Vietnam war breaks out and flees to America with her family to escape. She moves to Alabama, and her journey of immigration as a refugee is so touching – you get to see the wisdom she acquires from going through such a difficult childhood while still retaining that child-like innocence through which she sees life.
“Our lives will twist and twist, intermingling the old and the new until it doesn’t matter which is which.”
Thanhha Lai, Inside Out & Back Again
When I lived in Lebanon, my family worked in very close proximity with Syrian refugees. We would often visit them in their ramshackle homes to have tea and chat, and they would tell us their stories of journeying from Syria to Lebanon to escape the civil war. It made reading about Ha’s culture shock, the way America received her and her experience as a refugee touch my heart so deeply. There are millions of people like her all around the world, and I felt privileged to follow her journey through poetry.
The novel was nominated for several awards including the Newberry Medel in 2012, and Lai certainly deserves it. Her writing style flowed seamlessly and even though it was written in verse, it wasn’t superflous or difficult to follow. The journey was very easy to track and the form only made it more beautiful and emotional.
3. “The Shack” by William Paul Young
This third book is somewhat contraversial. It follows the journey of a man, Mack, who returns to the site of his daughter’s murder after supposedly receiving an invitation from God himself to come to ‘the shack.’ The novel deals with extremely sensitive topics and also follows Mack’s journey of wrestling and reconcilliation with God, who is depicted in a very unconventional and personal way. However, this book is incredibly thought-provoking and interesting. It answers questions with more questions. It makes you question your preconceptions of the meaning of good, evil, and God.
Whether you are religious or not, this novel is a beautiful journey to follow. Mack’s anger, fear and ‘Great Sadness’ is incredibly relatable. His humanity is so touching, and the book attempts to tackle the question of “where is God in a world full of suffering?” What I liked the most about it is that you can make of it what you will. It is not a light read but it is great to properly think about your values and what suffering and goodness mean to you personally.
These three novels tackle journeys in very different ways, but all three are masterfully created. I would definitely consider them some of my favourite books of all time, and highly recommend them to audiences interested in reading something special this Spring!
Finding free things to do in London as a student with a limited budget is no easy feat. Transport alone is an investment, and if you’re wanting to eat while you’re out, London is not cheap. When I lived in London as a child, so many of my core memories were made in museums with my mum and my brothers. She took us there to pass the time because they were fun, interesting, and free.
I’m a firm believer that you cannot outgrow museums.
I’m a firm believer that you cannot outgrow museums. They have such a wealth of knowledge and culture that you appreciate more and more as you get older. A massive advantage of living in London is how many museums there are to choose from, so I have listed my five favourites below along with the reasons why you should visit them while you’re at university to save your wallet on a rainy day with nothing to do.
The Imperial War Museum
The Imperial War Museum is the one that struck me most as a child. There was one interactive exhibit in particular that has remained in my memory: a reenactment of what a World War Two bomb shelter would feel like. It was dark, cramped, and noisy, and really helped me put myself in the shoes of those who suffered in the Great Wars. It has been removed since then, but all the exhibitions are thought-provoking and intense.
The Imperial War Museum is the one that struck me most as a child.
The Holocaust exhibition on the top floor of the museum has received a lot of recognition, and contains a trigger warning before you go in because the content of the exhibition is very sensitive. There are also massive exhibits on both the First and Second World Wars. Old fighter planes hang from the ceiling and the gardens outside the building are quite beautiful. It isn’t exactly a light-hearted visit, but it is massively interesting and important to go see it.
The British Library
The British Library contains some of the biggest treasures in the country. For English majors, there is a display of Shakespeare’s first folio and hundreds of other old, beautiful texts, including the magna carta! However, if you want to bring your engineering friend along, you can observe things like the enigma machine used in World War Two and other pieces of history that aren’t just to do with literature.
Aside from the must-see artefacts, the British Library is the perfect study space. It’s quiet, peaceful, scenic and a nice escape from your usual study zones. It is also, *drum roll*, free! So get down there as quickly as you can for some solo study or with some friends.
The Natural History Museum
As a kid, this one was my favourite because of two words: dinosaur bones. The Natural History Museum is perfect for fans of Jurassic Park and science. I personally am more of an English-oriented person than a science-oriented person, my trips to the museum have always been incredible because of how cleverly set up the exhibitions are.
Two words: dinosaur bones.
The building is stunning, too. You can really get lost in the exhibits, and when I was scrolling through Tik Tok the other day, I saw that the Natural History Museum actually holds a silent disco once a month on the last Friday of each month! Unfortunately, it is not free, and tickets sell out quickly, but it’s a great extra feature if you are wanting to spend on a night out and do something completely different.
Tate Britain
You’ve probably heard of the Tate Modern – the big, rather ugly industrial building on the Southbank housing some of the UK’s most radical modern art. But have you heard of its lesser-known cousin, Tate Britain?
Tate Britain’s exhibitions contain older art as well as modern art. My favourite exhibit in the museum is the old collection starting in the 1500s and finishing in the 1920’s. Other exhibitions pick up from that time period with modern art, but the reason I rate Tate Britain so highly is that there is something for everyone: art fans that refuse to look at anything past the Renaissance and art fans who prefer to relate to the abstract, contemporary stuff.
It is also less intimidating than the Tate Modern. The building is a lot smaller and it doesn’t take too long to work through all the free exhibitions. I’d pick the Tate Britain over the Tate Modern any day!
The Wallace Collection
Finally, the Wallace Collection is the most charming Museum out of the five. Again, it is smaller, meaning it is less of a pain to walk around for hours and hours staring at artefacts. To me, the Wallace Collection simply feels like walking around someone’s fancy house that has been frozen in time – alongside several beautiful exhibitions of art and collections of old artefacts that will blow you away.
When I was little, my brothers and I used to go downstairs and try on the chainmail and armour that was available to the public. When I think back, I can still feel the weight of it on me and smell the cold iron! Since then, I’ve been back for a gorgeous afternoon tea in the conservatory pictured above. The tea is not free but like the silent disco, it is a great event to splurge on for a birthday or a celebration.
London is an incredible place for museums, and we definitely take it for granted. Try and work through these five favourites to keep you entertained during term time and to keep your wallet happy!
Welcome to our latest round up of events, opportunities and schemes that may help you meet collaborators, improve your career prospects or simply broaden your horizons.
If you get to the end and apply for an opportunity please let us know and we’ll give you a freebie.
Please let us know if you have any suggestions for the next edition via sed-web@qmul.ac.uk
Don’t forget your careers service is open all semester and can help with finding jobs, applications and interviews. Book an appointment or email your careers consultant Fliss Bush
From QMUL, Partners & Friends
Free Online Journalism Masterclass with Ru – Creative Skills Academy – 7 March
QUORUM with Dr. Dirk Gindt – A Theatrical Truth and Reconciliation Commission: The Decolonial Labour of Contemporary Sámi performance 8 March 2023 17:30-19:00
Caleb Femi (QMUL graduate) x SLOGhouse present an evening of film, poetry and music. Capturing the energy of a South London party/ club, this event will feature a new short, abstract film, exploring the theme of community, accompanied by performances from SLOGhouse poets and DJs including Latekid& fwrdmtn, Danielle Wilde and Dillon Kalyabe (QMUL). The film, performances and DJ will draw on the new direction of Caleb’s work, building on the themes of his prize-winning collection POOR and dealing with community, designed spaces, archiving and joy. The Albany, Deptford 7.30pm – in-person event is BSL Interpreted. Livestream is livecaptioned. Tickets £10 / Free to Lewisham residents on low incomes
Staff and students involved in previous years have built new connections with residents and community organisations, gained new perspectives, and learned new skills – all of which can benefit their work. The Centre for Public Engagement team will support you in developing activity ideas. Please make use of their information webinars, 1:1 advice sessions, dedicated training, and funding of up to £500 per project. Please visit the Festival of Communities website for details on how you can get involved. The deadline for applications is Thursday 30 March.
Tower Hamlets Annual Arts Sharing and Networking Event for 2023
The council’s Arts, Parks and Events team are delighted to be back at the Art Pavilion in Mile End Park for the first physical, post-covid networking and sharing event! We have invited a range of speakers to address some of the key issues in 2023 and look forward to bringing together the thriving arts community of Tower Hamlets. The borough remains a hub of activity for the creative sector and home to many emerging and established arts organisations. Many of these will be in attendance to share their expertise.
OITIJ-JO: still from ‘Banglatown’ by Farihah Chowdhury
Contemporary women artists, activists, writers and performers, women’s groups and community organisations present a diverse programme of events and exhibitions in galleries, venues, libraries and institutions across the borough.
Issue 66 of careers journal The Publishing Post is here!
Free Online Events at POW (Power of Women Festival) including:
‘A Career Accelerator with Sharmadean Reid MBE’ – 6 March
will look to empower young women who may be interested in pursuing a career in tech but may not be sure where to start. We’d like women students in tech to join us for an insightful panel discussion (diving into the details of what a career in tech can look like for women), a Q&A, as workshop on how to sell yourself on your CV, as well as a chance to talk with Sharmadean and the other panellists for some 1-1 advice on career options.
Youth-led Cutting East Film Festival returns to the Genesis Cinema on 10 and 11 March. The festival has been curated by a talented and local group of 16-21 year-olds.
Our six-week long intensive poetry course offers the perfect opportunity for committed poets to work closely with award-winning tutors in a focused, supportive environment and take their poetry practice to the next stage.
Arab Women Artists Now (AWAN) Festival returns for its eighth edition in March. Held at Rich Mix, the festival will showcase music, spoken word, film and comedy from Arab women artists from across the globe.
The festival opens with a special screening of ‘Beirut, The Aftermath’ + Q&A with director Fadia Ahmad. Ahmad’s documentary captures Beirut in the aftermath of the August 4th blast. Through raw testimonials, individuals from all walks of life recount the day everything collapsed, while showing the resilience of a people who don’t want to give up. Book tickets for the opening night or explore the full festival progamme.
The Shorts School is a FREE four-day online course designed to give you everything you need to know about applying to the BFI NETWORK Short Film Fund, which will reopen later in 2023. Over the course of a week, Shorts School participants will hear insights from BFI NETWORK-funded filmmakers, meet other creatives and participate in roundtables, Q&As, and a networking session to meet peers and potential collaborators. Find out more and book your place here.
Applications for the 30th year of the Deutsche Bank Awards for Creative Entrepreneurs (DBACE) are now open. This could be your chance to secure: Up to £20,000 investment to start or grow your enterprise.
Membership to MeWe360’s Incubator programme, including 12-months of business support with MeWe360 and Deutsche Bank’s high calibre industry & business mentors. DBACE also offers a range of fantastic resources to support you with your application.
ADP returns, with growing opportunities for young people, including a new Young Writer in Residence placement
The Hackney Empire Young Producers Programme part of the Creative Development strand of Creative Futures, providing participants from under-represented backgrounds across the borough with the opportunity to curate and produce an arts and cultural events programme, using Hackney Empire’s infrastructure, performance spaces and technical support. Further details of the 2023 programme will be announced soon.
Teach Meet: Key Stage 3 Drama Assessment – Thursday, 2 March 2023 18:00Register
LGBTQIA+ TOURS AT TATE BRITAIN Enjoy an exciting free tour of Tate Britain that will take you through the queer histories of iconic artworks in the Tate collection. Find out more
Welcome to your March newsletter from the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London.
3 Wonderful Things to Do in March 2023:
Win a £10 book token: Tell us the book that changed your life and you could win on #WorldBookDay See our Instagram Reel to enter (Closes 17:00 GMT on Friday 3 March 2023)
Book a private campus tour or 1-2-1: Talk to a human about your course interests. Register here
“To this day, when speaking to my students I use Lois Weaver’s slogan, “if they don’t get it, that’s ok”, which is an absolute cornerstone of the way I approach work – and I’m very thankful for that.”
Please join us for the launch of Affinities by Brian Dillon at Burley Fisher.
What do we mean when we claim affinity with an object or picture, or say affinities exist between such things? Affinities is a critical and personal study of a sensation that is not exactly taste, desire, or allyship, but has aspects of all. Approaching this subject via discrete examples, this book is first of all about images that have stayed with the author over many years, or grown in significance during months of pandemic isolation, when the visual field had shrunk. Some are historical works by artists such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Dora Maar, Claude Cahun, Samuel Beckett and Andy Warhol. Others are scientific or vernacular images: sea creatures, migraine auras, astronomical illustrations derived from dreams. Also family photographs, film stills, records of atomic ruin. And contemporary art by Rinko Kawauchi, Susan Hiller and John Stezaker. Written as a series of linked essays, interwoven with a reflection on affinity itself, Affinities is an extraordinary book about the intimate and abstract pleasures of reading and looking.
Brian Dillon’s books include Suppose a Sentence, Essayism, The Great Explosion (shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize), Objects in This Mirror: Essays, I Am Sitting in a Room, Sanctuary, Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and In the Dark Room, which won the Irish Book Award for non-fiction. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, London Review of Books, the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, frieze and Artforum.
Collaborative Historical Research in the Age of Big Data: Lessons from an interdisciplinary project Living with Machines
Tue 7 Feb, 5pm Launch of the book, ‘Collaborative Historical Research in the Age of Big Data: Lessons from an interdisciplinary project’ (available open access by Cambridge University Press as part of the Elements Series). The event will be an online roundtable discussion, led by hosts Professor Jane Winters and Professor James Smithies, with the authors, Ruth Ahnert, Emma Griffin, Mia Ridge and Giorgia Tolfo.
Living with Machines is one of the largest digital humanities projects ever funded in the United Kingdom. The project brings together a large interdisciplinary team (39 members over its lifetime to) to leverage more than twenty-years’ worth of digitisation projects in order to deepen our understanding of the impact of mechanisation on nineteenth-century Britain. In contrast to many previous digital humanities projects which have sought to create resources, the project is concerned to work with what was already there, which whilst straightforward in theory is complex in practice. This Element describes the efforts to do so. It outlines the challenges of establishing and managing a truly multidisciplinary digital humanities project in the complex landscape of cultural data in the United Kingdom and shares what other projects seeking to undertake digital history quests can learn from the experience.
This event is part of AI UK 2023. The Alan Turing Institute’s national showcase of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence research and innovation.
Cutting East Film Festival 2023 Thursday 23 March, 14:30
Cutting East Film Festival 2023 takes place 10th and 11th March at Genesis Cinema in East London. Participants have programmed, designed and curated this film and arts festival with a great line-up of free activities including films, spoken word, Q&A, and exhibitions for all the family to enjoy. Come along and enjoy the launch in the evening on 10th March and the festival day on 11th March – the programme will be listed here shortly. For further details, head to Cutting East to find out more and please do follow on socials to be kept up to date with all things Cutting East! @cuttingeast
Messy Archives: a Raphael Samuel History Centre Workshop Thursday 23 March, 14:30
In person only Room 307, Birkbeck Central Building (formerly Students Union Central) Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY.
Archives are often central to historical production, but what counts as an archive? How have scholars and theorists of history understood the material bases of historical sources? Have these concepts changed with political, social, and environmental transformations? Can our everyday landscapes be read as historical archives? What are the archives of the future and what role do archives play in future-making? This workshop explores these questions, and others, by interrogating the experiences of working with/in various archives and by considering problematics raised in archivisation practices and theories.
kitt price (English) is Senior Lecturer in English at Queen Mary. They are the author of Loving Faster than Light: Romance and Readers in Einstein’s Universe (2012). They have also collaborated with Aleksander Kolkowski on sound installations, performances and broadcasts that reanimate archival sources using sound technologies of the past. Recent work includes ‘Mental Radio’, a radiophonic montage based on broadcast telepathy experiments of the 1920s and 30s. Listen here .
The Time of Care: Concluding Conference The waiting is over (?) Tuesday 28March – Wednesday 29March 2023 at Friends House, London
The Wellcome-Trust funded Waiting Times project would like to invite you to register for our end-of-grant, hybrid conference: The Time of Care: Conclusions from the Waiting Times Project.
Waiting Times has explored what it means to wait in and for healthcare by examining lived experiences, representations, and histories of impeded and delayed time and has included work by our very own Martin O’Brien. Martin is the winner of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Visual and Performing Arts 2022. He will be on research leave August 2022-August 2024. He is currently Whitechapel Gallery Writer in Residence 2023
Subversion and survival: navigations through performance and media cultures
Tue 28 March 2023 – Online
Swati Arora (Drama) will talk at this event on: Under Cover: Insurgent Methods of Border Crossing I draw on my forthcoming co-edited book on pluriversal conversations on transnational feminisms to assemble a few thoughts on border-crossing – disciplinary, epistemic, and linguistic. What does border-crossing in performance studies look like? The presentation offers a few insurgent methods of subterfuge and survival as we secure justice for our communities while acknowledging the colonial histories of our institutions.
Swati Arora is Lecturer in Performance and Global South Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. Her work exists at the convergence of performance and visual culture, feminist theory, Black Studies, and dramaturgies of urban space in the global South. Most recently, she published ‘Performing Refusal’ (Injury and Intimacy, MUP) and ‘A manifesto to decentre theatre and performance studies’ (STP). Book hereNews
The Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize is now open for submissions until 5pm BST on 30 June. This year’s multi-award-winning judges are Leila Aboulela (Fiction), Diana Evans (Chair), Caleb Femi (Poetry), and Aanchal Malhotra (Life Writing).
Since 2009 the prize has awarded some of the most exciting new voices in fiction, life writing, and poetry from around the world. Previous winners and shortlistees include Caleb Femi and @azemezi.
The prize includes publication in Wasafiri, mentoring from The Good Agency and The Literary Consultancy and £1000.
Mojisola Adebayo’s Family Tree starts it’s tour in Coventry this month “Beautifully poetic … Adebayo’s deft writing and the layered, nuanced performances allowed us to take solace in community and to look forward to a better future.” To Do List
FAMILY TREE is a beautifully poetic drama about race, health, the environment, and the incredible legacy of one of the most influential Black women of modern times. Fearlessly honest, hilarious, and ultimately transformative, this award-winning play is both a remembrance and a celebration. Read more in this news piece
The call for activities is now open and I encourage all schools, institutes and and teams to take part. It’s a fantastic opportunity to engage thousands of local residents with everything that makes Queen Mary unique: our teaching, research, and a wealth of wider initiatives – everything from environmental sustainability through to arts and culture.
Staff and students involved in previous years have built new connections with residents and community organisations, gained new perspectives, and learned new skills – all of which can benefit their work.
The Centre for Public Engagement team will support you in developing activity ideas. Please make use of their information webinars, 1:1 advice sessions, dedicated training, and funding of up to £500 per project.
Please visit the Festival of Communities website for details on how you can get involved. The deadline for applications is Thursday 30 March.
Peopling the Palace(s) Festival – 3-11 June TBC
Call out for performance makers, helpers, researchers and events for this innovative socially-engaged performance festival in Mile End.
This year’s national festival of the humanities will take place 9–18 November, with the theme Rhyme or Reason.
Small Awards: apply for funding of up to £3,000 to enable activities (deadline: 5pm, Friday 28 April)
Hub Awards: apply for a larger institutional grant of £3,000–£8,000 to coordinate multiple activities as a Festival Hub (deadline: 5pm, Friday 28 April)
Open Call: organise an activity that does not require funding from Being Human (deadline: 5pm, Friday 23 June)
Being Human Cafés: a simple ‘off-the-shelf’ format for an activity that does not require funding from Being Human (deadline: 5pm, Friday 25 August)
Further details, and answers to some frequently asked questions are available on the website.
Applying to Being Human 2023: You can find out more about applying to the festival at our online information session ‘Applying to Being Human 2023’ taking place on Wednesday 15 March, 11:00-12:00. Find out more and sign up.
News
Katherine Angel signs deal for new book: Poor Freud Poor Freud will be an examination of the turbulent history of feminism’s feud with psychoanalysis. It will take stock, anew, of Freud and his fraught legacy in a much-changed world. And it will explore why and how we need to engage with Freud and psychoanalysis today — an engagement that is crucial if we are committed to taking sexual violence and abuses of power seriously. The book will be published by Verso in the UK and Pantheon in the USA.
ENGLISH GRAD & ARTIST POLLY MORGAN: The Telegraph feature Polly Morgan (pictured above), who studied English at QM and is now a super successful artist.
ROARING TWENTIES: Catch episode 10 of Steven Fry’s ‘Secrets of the Roaring 20s’ on Audible to hear kitt price discussing socialist time travel and queer warping of time and space as the British public attempted to get to grips with Einstein’s new theory of the universe.
AUDIOBOOK PIONEER MARIANNE MANTELL: Matt Rubery is featured in New York Times and Washington Post celebrating the life of record label founder Cadrmon Records who released spoken-word.
NOW FESTIVAL: Daniel Oliver (Drama) shares new work at this ground-breaking festival in Hackney Wick’s The Yard Theatre.
ROSIE DASTGIR IN JAPAN: Rosie heads to Tokyo on a writing /research grant from the Society of Authors for a work in progress: a short hybrid memoir around a grid of IG photos I took when I was stranded in Japan during the first phase of the pandemic in 2020.
Follow Rosie on Instagram
Apologies if we missed any listings, do let us know and we can post on social media.
Also if you have any news for our next newsletter please do reply or get in touch.
Being vegan is hard. Being broke, vegan, and busy is even harder. Before coming to uni, I used to laugh at the idea of cooking vegan meals to save money. Surely all those fake meat products are far more expensive than real meat. But then I went on my first grocery shopping trip to Asda, saw the price tag on a kilo of beef and realised I was going to have to make some changes if I wanted to cook within budget.
I soon realised that some of my easiest, cheapest meals came out vegan without me even trying!
I soon realised that some of my easiest, cheapest meals came out vegan without me even trying, and not a single fake-meat product has been used in the process. So here they are: three foolproof, quick, cheap and delicious dinners for the broke, the vegan, or both.
A packet of fresh cherry tomatoes or a can of tinned tomatoes (cherry or plum recommended because they taste nicer than normal tinned tomatoes)
A can of butter beans
Half a big bag of spinach
Salt
Pasta of your choice (I recommend linguine)
Fresh basil (optional)
Method:
Take a big shallow saucepan and cover the bottom of it with olive oil. Add a generous shake of dried basil, oregano and chilli flakes to it. Then add the garlic (crushed) and the onion (diced very small). Once that is sizzling and smelly add a squeeze of tomato paste and stir it in.
Once the onions have cooked down a bit, strain the butter beans and add them to the pan. Stir it all up and let the beans sit in the garlic for a minute or two.
Add your tomatoes to the saucepan and stir it all up. Add as much salt as you like.
Turn the heat down to low. If you’re using fresh cherry tomatoes, cover the pan and let it simmer till the cherry tomatoes are completely squishy. If you’re using tinned tomatoes, just let it sit for fifteen minutes and then taste it. Wash your tomato can with water and pour that water into the mixture.
Take out a pot and bring water to a boil. Once it has boiled, add lots of salt and your pasta. Save a cup of the pasta water when it’s cooked.
Add the pasta water to the saucepan and the spinach. Once the spinach has wilted add the pasta to the pan as well and stir it up. Tear in fresh basil and you’re done!
Hearty Vegetable Chilli
Ingredients:
Olive oil
3/4 cloves garlic
2 onions
Spices: cumin, coriander, paprika, chilli flakes (optional), dried basil, 7-spice (if you can get it)
Salt
Tomato paste
4 fresh tomatoes
2 small courgettes
2 small aubergines
3 medium carrots
A can of tinned tomatoes
A can of kidney beans
A can of black beans
Rice (1 cup should do)
Method:
Take a large saucepan and coat the bottom of it with a very generous amount of olive oil. Add in the garlic (crushed), onions (diced), and dump generous amounts of each spice in as well. Let them all fry together gently till they become lovely and aromatic.
Add a big squeeze of tomato paste to the spicey onion mixture once the onions have cooked down a bit and stir it in. Then add the courgette, aubergine and carrots, all chopped in small chunks. Let them fry with the spices for a while.
Add in the fresh tomatoes, also chopped. Keep stirring until the vegetables soften a bit.
Add the tinned tomatoes, strained kidney beans and strained black beans. Wash your tomato can with water and pour that water into the mixture. Pour in salt to your liking and turn the heat on low. Cover the saucepan and let everything simmer for as long as possible (the longer you leave it the better it tastes).
Take out another pot and cook the rice your preferred way. Because I was raised in an Arab household, I take rice cooking very seriously. It starts with washed basmati rice fried in the bottom of the pot with olive oil till golden. Then add 1.5x the amount of water to the amount of rice and let it boil dry. Once it’s boiled, turn on the lowest heat and steam with the lid on for at least ten minutes.
Once the rice is ready and all the veggies are cooked in the chilli, turn your oven off and enjoy the two together.
Lazy Chickpea Curry
Ingredients:
Olive oil
3/4 cloves garlic
2 onions
Spices: curry powder (I use medium), turmeric, cumin, chilli flakes (optional), ginger, coriander
3 medium carrots
2 small sweet potatoes
Half a big bag of spinach
Four fresh tomatoes
Can of chickpeas
Can of tinned tomatoes
Salt
Rice
Method:
If you’re noticing a trend here, all my cooking starts with olive oil, onion and garlic. In your saucepan, dump a very generous amount of oil to the bottom and fry the garlic (crushed) and the onions (diced). Dump in very generous amounts of each spice and fry gently till the onions have softened a bit.
Add in carrots (chopped small) and let cook. Then add sweet potatoes (also chopped small) and let cook for a few minutes.
Add fresh tomatoes (chopped small), strained can of chickpeas, can of tinned tomatoes and salt. Again, wash your tomato can with water and pour that water into the mixture.
Turn the heat down to low and let the curry simmer while you cook your rice. Use the same method mentioned for the vegetable chilli.
Once the curry has been simmering and bubbling (like the chilli, the longer you leave it the better it tastes), add in the spinach and let it wilt.
Care (for your future) Cafes are an opportunity for students, graduates, and artist friends to drop in and talk about life and livelihood. It is also an opportunity to get to know Air Supply, which is an informal collection of students and graduates who meet regularly to share support, resources, and their experiences of being independent artists and producers.
Air Supply will be producing the Peopling the Palace Festival, Queen Mary University of London 5-11 June.
Café Cafes are a place for people to gather – their wits, thoughts, and comrades in action. They are a temporary venue for communitas, conversation, and activity within a spoken and visible frame of ‘care’.
Did you know that in Lebanon, it’s possible for you to ski down the mountains in the morning and swim in the Mediterranean sea in the same afternoon? The beautiful geography of this country means that most destinations are no more than a two-hour drive away from each other due to how close the mountains are to the coast. So, after living in Lebanon for ten years, I have curated an ultimate guide for the top 5 things to do as a tourist in Lebanon in the winter season.
Skiing
Cedars
Lightshow
Tannourine
Téléphérique
Ski trip!
Skiing in Lebanon is a cultural experience in itself. For one thing, it can be cheaper than skiing in Europe once ski passes, rentals, transport and accommodation are taken into account. And because of how small the country is, you don’t have to travel for any length of time to get from the slopes to the city centre, opening up a range of possibilities for accommodation.
If you are a first-time skier, Lebanese mountains are perfect to learn on because they are not as dramatic as European slopes. The weather is a lot milder, and the mountains tend to be smaller, so learning is a lot less daunting. But if you are an experienced skier, there are several impressive slopes, especially in the Mzaar resort.
The Beirut party vibe also extends to ski culture, so you will constantly be meeting interesting people and finding things to do after a long day on the slopes. Learning to ski in Lebanon spoiled me because I’ve gotten used to going down the slopes in a t-shirt and coming home by dinnertime. It is a must for tourists in the winter!
Snowy cedars
There are several cedar reserves to choose from in Lebanon, but all of them are stunning, especially in the winter months. Snow covers the walking paths to create some of the most magical scenery in the region. The Chouf cedar reserve specifically my family’s favourite, with trees still living up to two thousand years and growing alongside freshly planted saplings.
Lebanon is famous for its cedars – King Solomon used them to build his temple in ancient times, the Bible mentions them as a symbol of strength and they are pictured on the Lebanese flag itself. Unfortunately, cedar trees only cover a very tiny proportion of Lebanese mountains when they used to cover over half of the country’s forests because of the exploitation of Lebanon’s resources by other countries throughout history and general deforestation.
The reserves are committed to replanting the lost forests and slowly bringing Lebanon back to its original glory. Tourists can walk through the forests, take pictures and play in the snow if they visit in the wintertime – a perfect activity for all ages.
Coastal Christmas lights
The city Jbeil, or Byblos in English, is rich in culture all year round with its beautiful markets, beaches and traditional Lebanese architecture. But when the Christmas lights come out in December, Jbeil is transformed into a winter wonderland. Every year, an enormous tree is set up at the entrance of the city and its design is different each Christmas. However, it is consistently creative and impressive.
After seeing the tree, the walk around the city in the evening is stunning, especially along the shoreline. Hundreds of little colourful boats are anchored in the bay, and the ancient citadel is another fascinating tourist spot that looks out over the city and the sea. It is very well preserved and contains a mini-museum of artefacts from the citadel for those who are interested in history.
The opportunity to buy Christmas gifts at the little market stalls after walking through a garden of Christmas lights is a uniquely Lebanese experience considering the religious diversity of the country and the freedom for Christians to celebrate their holidays in the Middle East. Overall, Jbeil is the perfect destination for encouraging your Christmas spirit.
When the Christmas lights come out in December, Jbeil is transformed into a winter wonderland.
Winter waterfall
Lebanon’s natural beauty never fails to amaze, and the Tannourine waterfall during the winter is no exception. It is located in the Baatara Gorge sinkhole in Chatine and has a natural land bridge that people can walk across to see the waterfall closeup. It is a limestone gorge, but in the winter months, it is covered with snow.
When I was younger, it looked to me like something out of CS Lewis’ Narnia world. You cannot swim in the gorge and the drop-down is very dangerous, but watching the powerful waterfall gush down into the pool is truly magical. Adding to that, the hike to get to the waterfall is challenging but great fun, especially when you stop for a snowball fight.
When I was younger, it looked to me like something out of CS Lewis’ Narnia world.
Some of the coolest pictures in my camera roll were taken on that landbridge, and in my opinion, winter is the best time to go and see it because of the snow and how quiet the area around it is. I firmly believe that when visiting Lebanon, tourists must see the depth of beauty in the country’s geography as well as the urban life of Beirut, Tripoli and Tyre.
The cable car and Harissa
Finally, one of my favourite activities to do in winter that is perfect for tourists is the ride up the cable car from Jounieh to Harissa and the jaw-dropping view you get at the top of the mountain. The cable car, or Téléphérique as it is better known, starts at coastal level in the city of Jounieh and travels up the steep slope of the mountain to get to Harissa, where an impressive statue of Mary surveys the city and music echoes from the church built into the base of the statue. Looking out onto Jounieh from here is unbelievable because in the wintertime, due to heavy rainfall, the skyline is crystal clear.
A short walk away from the statue is another church, St Paul’s, which has interesting architecture on the outside with its domes and tall spire. What is completely unexpected, however, is what you find when you walk into the church. Every surface on the inside walls and ceilings is covered with glittering mosaics. They are especially beautiful at dusk when the fading light shines on the golden tiles.
To sum up, from skiing to swimming, Lebanon is an excellent tourist destination for winter travels: extensive cultural experiences and natural sights to see on solo travel, with friends, or as a family!
Welcome to our latest round up of events, opportunities and schemes that may help you meet collaborators, improve your career prospects or simply broaden your horizons.
If you get to the end and apply for an opportunity please let us know and we’ll give you a freebie.
Don’t forget your careers service is open all semester and can help with finding jobs, applications and interviews. Book an appointment or email your careers consultant Fliss Bush.
Don’t forget to come to your CREATING SPACE session this coming Monday in ArtsOne at 1.15pm!
QMUL is hosting an event to bring together QMUL academics, businesses and partner organisations, with invitees from UKRI Innovate to highlight Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. KTPs are a mode of knowledge exchange funding that businesses can utilise to drive business innovation and growth from research. QMUL has a track record in co-creating and being awarded KTP projects particularly from the Faculty of Science & Engineering. We and also Innovate UK are keen to explore and support opportunities from HSS – you are invited to join us and learn more. It is an afternoon event that will share some past and current projects, how the KTP funding works, Q&A and discussion, networking. The event will start with lunch and conclude with drinks and canapé reception.
Location: The Octagon, Mile End campus
Date and time: Tuesday 7 March 2023, 12:00 – 17:30 GMT
Plus don’t miss Whitechapel Gallery’s free Young Creatives Night on 23 February – Book here
First year students don’t miss PASS Drama sessions to connect with your course from next Wednesday 22 February
Join Enactus Society at QMUL to help change the world
Enactus QMUL is part of Enactus UK, the UK’s leading youth social action and youth social enterprise charity, working with thousands of young entrepreneurial spirits hopefully just like you every single year.
So what are you waiting for? Find out more and register at enactusuk.org/join and join the only society that will help you make friends, transform lives and build your future.
Book now for free events at Deptford Literary Festival in March including…
Disability Poetics Join Daniel Sluman & Khairani Barokka in conversation about poetics of disability & experiences that disabled poets share. BSL interpreted. Book here
Queer Poetry at Triangle
Caleb Femi x SLOGhouse present an evening of film, poetry and music
Fitzcarraldo Editions present Short Stories with Vanessa Onwuemezi, Anna Wood and Alice Slater
Creative writers are invited to apply for The Simon Shades Award. The Simon Shades Award was established in the spring of 2019 by Queen Mary alumni Edwin Lampert to honour the life of his very good friend Simon Shades, his generosity of spirit and legacy of contribution to the community.
The Award is an annual, merit-based competition. The goal of the award is two-fold.Firstly, in delivering their project the candidate should have a meaningful experience that is personally and professionally rewarding.
Secondly, the proceeds of the award are intended to fund living expenses and/or tuition fees during the successful candidate’s study.
The first half of the award is paid promptly in support of this aim.
The second half of the award is contingent on the successful delivery of the project as formally agreed with The Brun Bear Foundation Trustees.
Interested candidates are invited to familiarise themselves with the work and backstory of The Foundation in advance of applying.
The award is a one-time award of £1000. It is funded by The Brun Bear Foundation.
To learn more about The Brun Bear Foundation please click here
Burnt Roti Party Fundraiser
‘I’m Sharan Dhaliwal, the editor of Burnt Roti magazine, and we’re looking to hold a party for the South Asian trans and non-binary community. We want to give them a platform to be celebrated and loved since the release of our last issue in 2012.’
LAST CHANCE TO APPLY! Submissions for New Contemporaries 2023 Programme are open until 2pm, Monday 20 February
There are only a few weeks left to apply to New Contemporaries 2023 Programme. We welcome submissions from emerging and early career artists who are final year students, recent graduates and post-graduate students from UK art school and alternative learning programmes. Internationally renowned artists Helen Cammock, Sunil Gupta and Heather Phillipson will select the artists.
Find out more about eligibility and application requirements on our website. You can also find a series of accessible audio and visual resources to support you in making your submission.Apply by 2pm, 20 February 2023.
Join us as we chat with the BBC and their The One Show team about what it’s like to work behind the scenes of this live, topical show. Get some insights about the roles available and find out if you have the skillset needed to join their team. 23rd February, 8pm For more info & to register »
INTRODUCING CREATIVE DNA: AFRICA – London Fashion Week INSTALLATION & CREATIVE RESIDENCY PROGRAMME
This London Fashion Week, Fashion Scout’s collaborating with the British Council in an exciting cross-cultural exchange between Africa and the UK.- Creative DNA: Africa. Spotlighting Africa’s emerging talent the installation features seven designers from seven countries across the continent. Celebrate and be immersed in a visual display depicting creations rooted in eco-consciousness, expression, heritage and cultural nuances narrated through intricate textiles and unprecedented talent. In a first during London Fashion Week, the designers from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe will showcase their distinctive designs to the international fashion scene.
Protein Studios, 31 New Inn Yard, London EC2A 3EY Installation Open: Friday 17 – Sunday 19 February
Date:Tuesday 21 February 2023 Time:11:00 EST | 16:00 GMT
The Publishing Post issue 65 is here! Follow the link to read, or click here to read articles via the website!
Live Art Club: Perform with us!
UK, London – England Do you have part of a new idea, an experiment in working with an audience, a way of moving your body, a series of sounds you’re excited by, an unexpected activation of the space, an interruption of tradition, guttural words that want to explode out of you, a re-performance of a forgotten idea? Do you want to do some thinking through and trying out in a supportive open studio environment?
Sign up through the google form below.
Live Art Club is a monthly open platform for performance art, taking place on the 1st of the month at VSSL – Deptford. It is free to attend and free to participate in. Contact email liveartclubldn@gmail.com website forms.gle/6K1K9vBupX8MJ2ZNA
This is an unpaid opportunity.
Internships and Grad Schemes in Journalism
The Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and the MailOnlineeditorial training schemes close in a couple of days. They’re looking for news and sports reporters, as well as sub-editors. Pay is in excess of £20,000pa and rises after your training.
Homesickness is not talked about enough. Thousands of international students flow in and out of London every year and are expected to assimilate into British culture without a word of complaint. But the turmoil of culture shock makes true assimilation almost impossible – nowhere truly feels like home once you’ve moved countries. Hopefully these tips will be of help to people like me who have struggled with homesickness.
The most important thing to understand is that you are not alone in your situation and it does get better.
1) Handling culture differences
Probably the hardest part about culture shock is feeling isolated and misunderstood by the country you are in. When I moved back to the UK, I felt incredibly unloved by England and its people because no one seemed to care about the specific set of life circumstances that shaped me from living abroad in Lebanon.
I didn’t find British jokes funny because I didn’t get them, and people didn’t get my humour either. I thought no one would ever truly connect with me because they wouldn’t understand my culture. But that’s where my thinking was completely wrong. It wasn’t the people around me’s fault they were ignorant – in a way, my ignorance toward their culture was just as guilty. Their ignorance came from having no exposure to the other culture, and I had no right to be angry at them. If you’re in that position right now, try and have sympathy for the people that don’t understand you so you don’t become bitter.
Friendship is so much more powerful than culture, and the closer you get, the easier it is to educate.
Friendship is so much more powerful than culture, and the closer you get, the easier it is to educate. If you are a British person reading this and know international students, remember how misunderstood they feel all the time, because it is the worst aspect of being new to a country. Try and put yourself in the other party’s shoes, whether you’re the national or international. It goes a long way.
2) Managing your mental health
Don’t avoid calling home. It may feel tempting to bottle everything up because you don’t want to process the difficult emotions of leaving home and fending for yourself in a new country. But that is a recipe for disaster. Keeping out of touch will make you feel even more isolated and alone. When I moved, my mum told me over a tearful phone call that culture shock has a lot of similar symptoms to depression. If your mood is low, your sleep schedule can be affected, you experience an unshakeable loneliness and you withdraw into yourself. What is different about culture shock, however, is that these symptoms are short-term.
The best way to manage them is by outwardly expressing your feelings to someone with a listening ear, writing them in a journal, or simply distracting yourself with hobbies. I used to try and go on walks when I was in a low mood and call a friend from home to stabilise myself. Although it hurt to be in a bad mental state, staying in touch helped me get out of it a lot quicker than I would’ve if I’d kept everything to myself.
With the anxiety that comes with homesickness, the remedy is just putting yourself into those anxious situations to expand your comfort zone, which is not easy to hear when you’re feeling anxious. But it will get easier and easier every time you do it and you may even start to feel like a local the more you establish patterns and habits.
3) Home away from home
What took me the longest to accept was that England could be my home as well as Lebanon, without taking away any of the value of Lebanon itself. Part of me felt that I was betraying my home country if I got comfortable in a new country, but again, I couldn’t have been more wrong. When you are homesick, you try to hold onto what makes you comfortable so much that you can’t create new comforts for yourself in your new environment.
You shouldn’t have to compromise your culture to allow yourself to make London home too. In fact, hold fast to the good things about where you come from and grow in that uniqueness. But refusing to allow the new country to be home alongside your original home means you’ll never settle, so be kind to yourself. Embrace the things about London that you love. Invest in empathetic friendships with empathetic people who actually care about you and your cultural differences. Don’t waste time on people who will never appreciate it.
You shouldn’t have to compromise your culture to allow yourself to make London home too.
You will reach a stage where neither London nor your home country feels completely like home, but try to see the beauty in that. You’re made up of so many stories and experiences from all over the world, and no one else on the planet is exactly like you. However, there are many people who are just as homesick as you are, so remember that you are not alone.
We understand that money is a big issue and barrier to those coming to university and wanted to give a quick guide to ways we can help.
Issue
Ways Queen Mary Can Support
Accommodation
Subsidised accommodation on our one-site main campus in Mile End from £141 pw (shared bathroom) / £171 (ensuite) guaranteed if you apply before 30 June. Accommodation guide Lots of students commute and live at home but we would recommend working
Food
10% off in our local Co-op supermarkets with student TOTUM card Cheap supermarkets nearby including ASDA, Big Sainsbury’s and LIDL. Shop local multiple Asian and world foods markets to buy cheap fresh food.
Money
QMUL Bursary £1,700 or £1,000 depending on income – automatically assessed if you use funding authority (e.g. Student Finance England) for UK students when you apply. Part-time jobs available with Queen Mary Student Union paying London Living Wage on campus that fit with your studies QTemps employment agency for work outside university with student friendly employers as well as opportunities within your career field
Travel
30% Off with Student Oyster Card – You can produce a student status letter online to prove your student status. Cycle to save money we are in Santander Cycle Hire Scheme Use the bus – There are regular buses from our doorstep that go all over London – slow travel gives you time to read too.
Follow us on social media for opportunities, cheap and cheerful London tips and English/Drama news:
Welcome to our latest round up of events, opportunities and schemes that may help you meet collaborators, improve your career prospects or simply broaden your horizons.
If you get to the end and apply for an opportunity please let us know and we’ll give you a freebie.
Please let us know if you have any suggestions for the next edition via sed-web@qmul.ac.uk
Don’t forget your careers service is open all semester and can help with finding jobs, applications and interviews. Book an appointment or email your careers consultant Fliss Bush.
Don’t forget to come to your BREATHING SPACE session this Wednesday!
Sign up and you could win some great prizes in our raffle incluing Rupi Kaur’s Healing Through Words book…
Queen Mary Library Services have organised a session around LGBTQA+ literature in all its forms, to celebrate LGBTQA+ History Month. The session will cover various initiatives, such as the LGBTQA+ collection and the LGBTQA+ online reading lists. There will also be short book talks about inspiring & entertaining resources available from the Queen Mary Library.
As part of LGBTQA+ History Month, the School of Mathematical Sciences are hosting a screening of the Oscar-winning film The Imitation Game. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, this biopic tells the story of one of the most celebrated LGBTQA+ mathematicians in history.
Interesting events from the Mile End Institute (School of Politics and International Relations)
In Conversation with David Lammy MP
Thursday, 9 March 2023 at 18:30 Queen Mary University of London – Mile End Road – London E1 4NS – United Kingdom
100 more by 2030! How to create a more gender-balanced democracy
Thursday, 23 March 2023 at 18:00 Queen Mary University of London – 327 Mile End Road – London E1 4NS – United Kingdom
Chaired by Dr Javier Sajuria (QMUL), we will be joined by Frances Scott (the founder and director of 50:50 Parliament), Professor Rainbow Murray (QMUL) and two other respondents to evaluate how much progress has been made in recent years and formulate strategies to rectify the historic underrepresentation of women in public life.
Do you have any plans after graduation? Not yet? Then try graduate opportunities at Frontline!
Frontline is England’s largest social work charity. Everything we do aims to make life better for children who need a social worker.
Join us as a paid graduate intern
If you love what Frontline is all about and want your career to make a difference, our graduate internship is for you. The role pays a living wage, develops essential career skillsandmakes an impact. Join our charity for a six-month internship and help us recruit the next generation of children’s social workers.
Apply to the Frontline programme
The Frontline programme offers two years of intensive, paid training and a fully-funded Master’s degree with Lancaster University to develop the skills you’ll need to be a social worker.
You’ll help protect children living in the toughest circumstances and families struggling with a range of pressures, giving them the support and commitment, they deserve and changing the course of their lives. This is the work that makes a difference. This is social work.
With this opportunity you can:
Complete a funded master’s degree and earn while you study
Build essential career skills
Gain an insight into social work
Gain useful insights at our career events
Our career events will give you an opportunity to learn about benefits of joining the Frontline programme and get top tips for your application.
Join the debate, join the Night of Ideas! Free events including an opener with Zadie Smith
Hélène Duchêne, Ambassador of France to the UK and writer Zadie Smith will open the 7th edition of the Night of Ideas on Thursday 9 February, at the Institut français in London.
The BFI Future Film Festival is the UK’s largest festival for young, emerging filmmakers. The festival runs across four days with events and screenings taking place both online and in-venue at the BFI Southbank, all of which are focused on helping talented young filmmakers aged 16 to 25 to break into the film and screen industries.
The Times Final Year Student Survey – paid work interviewing for The Times
The Times Final Year Student Survey team are looking for students to work as Interviewers on our upcoming project. The role requires them to find 25 final year students at Queen Mary and carry out a short face to face survey about their graduate job hunting experience. The data from this research will directly inform The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers 2023.
Students are well paid for a few hours of their time and will gain a full CV reference. Applicants must be well-connected with final year students, organised, and confident in talking to fellow students. Places are expected to be filled quickly, so get in contact as soon as possible to avoid disappointment!
Camden People’s Theatre, SPRINT line-up has just been announced! London’s best established carnival of new and unusual theatre brings you 40+ shows from bold emerging artists over just 3 weeks
Since the 90s, this festival has been hurling out fireballs of theatrical brilliance in all directions, many of which have gone on to illuminate UK and world theatre. This year’s roster of new shows, works-in-progress and ideas tottering to their feet is as thrilling as ever – and we can’t wait to share it with you.
SPRINT: Tue 7 – Mon 27 Mar 2023 Tickets £12 (or catch 2 shows in one night for only £16) NW1 residents go for £10 – Students go for £8
We’re hiring!Could you be our next Deputy General Manager (Operations)? We’re looking for a highly driven self-starter who works well as part of a committed & collaborative team and who has the organisational ability to support and sustain the work of the 200 artists coming through our doors each year. You do not need to have done this job before.
Seed commissionsWe’re offering nine £1000 seed commissions (+ a whole bunch of support) to theatremakers from backgrounds currently underrepresented in contemporary theatre: specifically global majority artists, artists with disabilities, d/Deaf artists and/or artists from working-class backgrounds. Applications close Mon 30th Jan at 10am
We’re hiring!Could you be our next Deputy General Manager (Operations)? We’re looking for a highly driven self-starter who works well as part of a committed & collaborative team and who has the organisational ability to support and sustain the work of the 200 artists coming through our doors each year. You do not need to have done this job before. Applications close Thu 9th Feb at 10am
Seed commissionsWe’re offering nine £1000 seed commissions (+ a whole bunch of support) to theatremakers from backgrounds currently underrepresented in contemporary theatre: specifically global majority artists, artists with disabilities, d/Deaf artists and/or artists from working-class backgrounds. Applications close Mon 30th Jan at 10am
OFFER: exclusive 25% early bird discount available on all four original masterclasses. Use the code: EARLYBIRD23 at checkout. Offer ends at midnight on Friday 27th January. Limited places available.
Applications to volunteer with Wateraid at some of the UK’s top festivals are now open!
Last year was our biggest festivals season to date, and we’re looking forward to making 2023 just as memorable. From intimate events like foodie-favourite Smoked & Uncut, to epic experiences (yes, including Glastonbury!), there’s something for everyone – and we really hope you can apply to join us.
Applications will remain open until 5pm on Tuesday 21 February, and teams are not filled on a first-come-first-served basis. Please make sure you read all the information on our website and our festival volunteering FAQs first, then take your time with your application – we’ll be allocating roles based on your skills, experience, and previous support for WaterAid.
Festivals we’re planning to attend in 2023*
Glastonbury Festival Somerset, 20 – 26 June | Smoked & Uncut: Lime Wood Hampshire, 8 July (Saturday only) or 7 – 9 July (weekend) | Camp Bestival: Dorset Dorset, 27 – 31 July | Glastonbury Abbey Extravaganza Somerset, 5 August | Boomtown Fair Hampshire, 9 – 14 August | Smoked & Uncut: The Pig at Bridge Place Kent, 12 August (Saturday only) or 11 – 13 August (weekend) | Green Man Brecon Beacons, 16 – 21 August | Camp Bestival: ShropshireShropshire, 16 – 21 August | Shambala Northamptonshire, 23 – 28 August | Pilton PartySomerset, September (date TBC)*Dates indicated are dates volunteers will need to be onsite, and are all subject to change and cancellation.
The Harper’s Bazaar short-story competition is open for entries! Following their history of supporting original fiction, you are invited to submit your story on the theme of ‘notes’. You could have your work published in the magazine, and win a two-night stay in the Peak District! Here’s the topline…Deadline: 26 February
Introduction to Community Organising with Citizens UK: Intensive One Day Training
Citizens UK are bringing their intensive one day introductory course in community organising to Queen Mary’s Mile End Campus on Wednesday 8th February, 9:15am-5pm.
Community organising training will give you the tools to make change as part of your school, college, university, charity, faith group or community group. Topics covered include: leadership, negotiation, power, storytelling, building public relationships, listening and action!
Rich Mix London, 2 – 27 February 2023 Certain Blacks, the East London arts development organisation founded with the aim of nurturing diverse artists, returns for their 9th festival this February having been awarded Arts Council England Notional Portfolio funding specifically to support diverse-led organisations. Heroes presents performances from artists that inspire, entertain and educate including a night supporting female musicians and an evening curated by the legendary Ruff Sqwad. The festival includes a rare visit from LT Beauchamp (AKA Chicago Beau), an esteemed Chicago blues and jazz innovator who played on the 1970 album Certain Blacks by the Art Ensemble of Chicago from which the London organisation takes its name. Four very different shows at Bethnal Green’s Rich Mix from 2-17 February incorporate adventures in sound and performance, stand-up, theatre, hip hop, spoken word and grime.
Each week is a different workshop and different artist perspective to discover! No prior experience or expertise needed, just enthusiasm & good queer vibes!
Kakilang: HOME X Barbican Pit Theatre / Online. 21—25 Feb 2023
Combining theatre, music, gaming and VR technology, discover the virtual world of HOME X live in the Barbican’s Pit theatre or online.
The show connects performers in Hong Kong and London in real-time using depth-sensing cameras that capture 3D video. It explores themes of roots and belonging, destruction and renewal, featuring moving real-life experiences of home and migration. Kakilang (formerly Chinese Arts Now) are an award-winning organisation who produce work platforming East and Southeast Asian artists.BOOK KAKILANG NOW
Female Leadership in Publishing
The FLIP is a non-profit platform to inspire people in publishing with insight and honesty from brilliant women. We want to help build transparency, representation and equality across the industry by shining a light on great examples of success, providing a space to debate challenges and giving a voice to those finding their way in their careers.
We’re delighted to announce the incredible line-up of panels for #OpenBooks, your first chapter into the book industry. A series of free, accessible online events for young people who are exploring the first steps in their career, OpenBooks launches 22 and 23 February!
KICKSTART YOUR CAREER WITH HOMEGROWN advertising careers scheme
Looking to work in advertising but don’t know where to start? ‘Need experience to apply’ but don’t yet have any experience?London Living Wage not cutting it? Worried about fitting in?
If you’ve ever been made to feel like a ‘Black Sheep’, then BBH wants to hear from you.
Homegrown is BBH’s early careers programme with a difference: a paid 4-month placement in the production, strategy and/or account management departments. We offer a competitive starting salary above the London Living Wage that factors in the higher rental and living costs in London. Plus, you will become part of our exclusive Homegrown alumni network which offers ongoing mentoring.
Calling aspiring bloggers, event planners, oral history interviewers, storytellers, fundraisers, researchers, social media campaigners, film and audio editors. Volunteer to help with the 10th anniversary event.
How to Become an Actor Session – £10 – Online – 23 Feb
Learn all the secrets of becoming a successful actor in this jam-packed session!
We’ll cover everything you need to know, from mastering the skills to nailing the audition. Expect to leave feeling inspired and armed with the knowledge to kickstart your acting career. See you there!
Melanie Bigold (Cardiff University) ‘Books of her own: Women’s Libraries and Book Ownership in the Long Eighteenth Century’
What role did women play in the expansion and consumption of print culture between 1660-1820? Drawing on evidence of over 300 women’s libraries, including detailed records from fifty women’s book and library lists comprising some 30,000 titles, this paper will offer some preliminary details about what we have been missing in relation to women and their books in the long eighteenth century.
Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, Tuesday 7 February, in person, 5.30-7pm. Registration required.
Royal Society of Literature Free Online Event – Careers in Literature – 14 March
Hear from a renowned literary agent; a freelance literature programmer and producer; an acclaimed poet who balances a career in marketing with a career in writing; and an editor and academic who works with numerous literary magazines. We hope their journeys will inspire you as you embark on your own career in literature.
This programme is an opportunity for young people to get hands on experience in media, production and podcasting. Trainees will be officially trained on the logistics of recording; such as sound quality and handling audio equipment. Editing and production, including learning how to seamlessly edit in Audacity and post production. And marketing and distribution, learn how to identify your audience, create an online presence and monetisation!
Our podcast training programme will train a maximum of 15 young people throughout the duration of March.
If this sounds like something for you, click apply and start your journey into podcasting and media production.
Amaliah Book Club: Sister Outsider – Audre Lorde
We’re bringing together the Amaliah sisterhood to dissect the themes raised in Audre Lorde’s work, including navigating intersectional identities, Black feminism, how to build coalitions, self-love, imperialism, and much more. Yassmin will take us through the night with prompts and questions to guide us through these topics and to understand how embracing our differences can be a vehicle for personal and societal change.
Join our incredible 2023 Careers Fair, this year featuring 55+ employers wanting to talk to YOU! Not only that, but we have our Charity & Community Marketplace, with 25 wonderful organisations offering support across mental health, sexual health, activism plus gorgeous independent LGBTQ+ retail stalls.Check out all our confirmed exhibitors here
2.8 Million Minds: Network building events for art, young people and mental health, in London.
What different ways are young people, artists, health professionals and everyone else using art for mental health?
The Residency is an artist-led programme equipping emerging Black and Black mixed heritage creatives with the skills to develop creative careers in photography, film-making and music
Take your career to the next level with this programme for emerging creatives, supported by Apple.
In this three-act performance by Global Generation Fellows of Story Garden, a thriving community garden behind the British Library, performers will share personal water-based memories, reveal the heritage of the river Fleet, and explore its mythology.
Global Perspectives: Nation and Migration in (Im)Mobile Times
Tue 7 Feb 2023, 18:30 – 19:45
Online and in-person (The Royal Society)
For the next event in the Global Perspectives series, Professor Brenda Yeoh FBA joins Professor Simon Goldhill FBA in conversation to discuss the relationship between nation and migration and the implications of the migrant-led diversification of populations and societies. Free
A reminder that the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry 2023 is currently OPEN for entries, until 28 February. With three categories – page, performance and film – a long-list is announced on social media a few weeks after the closing date followed by a short-list in late March. The category winners and overall winner will be announced at the Out-Spoken Awards show at Southbank Centre, central London, on Thursday 6th April 2023. The overall winner will receive £700.
Visit Treason: People, Power & Plot – a free exhibition
The National Archives, Kew, until 6 April
From the cook who poisoned the porridge and the young girl tried as a witch, the exhibition showcases moments which have helped shape modern Britain and demonstrates the changing nature of justice through the ages. View a unique selection of history-defining documents, and see the stories of traitors, including Guy Fawkes and Anne Boleyn, brought to life.
The Study Room is our core resource, and it is housed at the LADA space in Bethnal Green. Containing over 8,000 items that include out-of-print books and rare documentation, it is the world’s largest collection of research materials on Live Art.
As of Thursday the 2nd of February 2023, the Study Room is open to visitors on Thursdays and Fridays, offering two 3-hour sessions (11am – 2pm and 2pm – 5pm) which must be booked in advance.
Please make sure to read our Covid protocol before arriving at LADA.
You can find more information about the Study Room and book a visit here.
Mousetrap Theatre Project’s annual Youth Leadership in the Arts Conference is back!
Mousetrap Theatre Project’s annual Youth Leadership in the Arts Conference is back, and it’s coming to the London Coliseum this half term – Wednesday 15 February 10.30am-5pm. Open to anyone aged 15-24. YLAC2023 will be hosted by members of Mousetrap’s Youth Forum. The programme will be focused on Empowerment & Resilience, and will include sessions on wellbeing in the arts, inclusivity, freelancing, overcoming imposter syndrome and much more!
This year’s line-up will include talks, panel discussions, workshops and an opening and closing speech from a VIP guest TBA! Over the course of the day, you will have the chance to listen to lively, inspiring conversations between industry experts, and gain lots of valuable tips and knowledge to help boost your career. Your £5 ticket will grant you access to events in this year’s programme and lunch will be provided. We will email you before the conference to allow you to select which sessions you would like to attend. Click below to find out more and book your place!
CDMT Careers Conference and Showcase Performance 2023
The CDMT Careers Conference and Showcase Performance is the UK’s premier event for young people who wish to pursue a career in professional dance, drama and musical theatre!
The Mixed Museum We are a digital museum and archive that contributes to widening knowledge about Black and ethnic minority British history through sharing and preserving the social history of racial mixing in Britain for future generations. Visit the museum online
Where to find All-You-Can-Eat Buffets in London The best all-you-can-eat buffets in London… Bring an appetite! Read the post
What can Alice in Wonderland teach us about childhood? Could reading Conversations with Friends guide us through first love? Josh Cohen delves deep into the most memorable and vivid characters in literature, showing us ways to be wiser, more open and more self-aware.
We have started to collate a fixed resource hub on our website with details of organisations, networks, funding opportunities, and more, to support our members, practitioners, and any organisations working across the Capital. This living resource is just at the start, for the sector and will be regularly updated, however please sign up for our fortnightly newsletter to receive further information on one-off training and funding opportunities.
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