Breakout Sessions 1
Please register for the individual session you would like to attend using the Inkpath registration links listed below. Don't forget that you must have registered to attend the whole Congress on Eventbrite first, before signing up for individual sessions on Inkpath.
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When you are at the Congress, please register your attendance at each session you attend by scanning or entering the Inkpath code, which you will find on the door of each room. If you have any trouble using Inkpath, please come and speak to the Techne Team at the Congress reception desk during the breaks and we will be happy to help.
Visualising the Other: Critical reflections on the role of the body in subverting colonial
ocularcentrism
12.00 - 13:15
Cambridge Room
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The production of the ‘other’ since early modern Western epistemology is rooted in ocularcentrism. This is a process that reached its peak during the eras of slavery and colonialism in which under the guise of scientific positivist knowledge the ‘other’ was visually vivisected and categorised to create systems of control. Much of this knowledge and categorisation of the ‘other’ still circulates within society to this day. In this panel session we will explore how a critique of this history can return agency to those that have been othered. Following Oyèrónké OyÄ“wùmí’s “The gaze is an invitation to differentiate.” (2005) this session will also explore how the body itself can become a site of research in which each sense can interrogate experience. The aim of this session is to interrogate the continued prevalence of ocularcentric tropes and begin to offer differing avenues of phenomenological research.
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Livia Dubon is a London-Florence based, Italo-nicaraguan researcher and independent curator. She is interested in artistic practices researching ideas of belonging, diaspora identity as well as attentive to questions surrounding heritage, coloniality, white privilege, and developing strategies of re-generation and exposing violent epistemologies. A selections of exhibitions she curated are: the research project at Alinari Archive, “Negotiating Amensia” by Alessandra Ferrini (Murate PAC, 28 Nov – 09 Dec 2015) and collective show of artist from Macao (China) “Truly False” (Casa degli Artisti Milan, 17 nov-12 Dec 2021). Livia is currently Ph.D. candidate at Kingston University London with the title “L’orecchio Teso, L’occhio Sordo, a regenerative practice within the IsIAO colonial photographic archive“.
Ivonne Charlotte Marais is a decolonial scholar with a focus on sub-Saharan African material culture and art, museum histories and practice, and colonialism in Africa. She is currently undertaking a Collaborative Doctoral Project with the Horniman Museum and Garden on continued colonial knowledge production in museum archives and displays. She is a trained Art Historian and Anthropologist and therefore sees her practice as interdisciplinary. Much of her research is object lead focusing on object biographies and how material culture is a starting point for discussions around her broader research interests. She has an Honours in Art History from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, a MA in Art History and Archaeology from SOAS and a MPhil in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology the University of Oxford. Ivonne has curated exhibitions in South Africa and London. She is also a published writer on social commentary and lived experience in Isis magazine and SkryfVars. Ivonne has an upcoming chapter on the continuing use of colonial violence in labelling in museum in as yet unnamed monograph on decolonial museum practice. She is the Early Career Subcommittee representative on the Museum Ethnographers Group (MEG) Committee.
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Akosua Paries-Osei is a PhD candidate specialising in enslaved women and ethnobotanical knowledge and colonial and imperial masculinity and the intersection with racialised childhood sexual harm through the lens of sexual disease and harm in West Africa. Her research specialises in racialised child sexual harm and confronts the role of racial science and how it has shaped colonial and post-colonial sexual-maturity laws and sexual health policies. Akosua has worked extensively within this field gaining knowledge and expertise that has informed her research. Currently she is co-editing a special journal on sexual harm with the Child Sexual Abuse Unit at London Metropolitan University. Her paper 'Puberty: The of Biological Difference' was presented at the SH+ME Do No Harm: Researching the Pasts, Presents, and Futures of Sexual Violence conference 2023, funded by the Wellcome Trust. Akosua will be presenting her research on enslaved women's use of anti-fertility botanicals to control their fertility and disrupt slavery in British Jamaica, at the Museum of Natural History in Paris.
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Learning How to Interview – for Interviewers and Interviewees
12.00 - 13:15
Oxford Room
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Interviewing can be a stressful experience – for both the interviewer and the interviewee. This interactive workshop will introduce basic techniques for becoming an effective interviewer – preparation and planning, building rapport, guiding the conversation, using silence, listening and seeing, and giving feedback. Since adopting the interviewer’s perspective is a key skill in preparing to be interviewed, this workshop is also useful for those anticipating upcoming interviews.
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Dr Darcey Gillie is a freelance careers, leadership, and management consultant who runs Techne's career development programme. A former researcher herself, she has worked at various UK HEIs supporting the career and professional development of research students and research staff for over a decade. She also is a careers consultant for research staff at the University of Edinburgh, trains new entrants into the careers profession and is a consultant on EDI, employability, and leadership for the HE sector.
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Ethnic gender diversity at the top of academia and academic institutions, has been identified as one of the areas of need and growth. This panel session explores some of the academic tools that can enable progression and identifies some of the barriers to progression. It will also involve an interactive panel with black female academics at different stages of the academic career. This will enable a space for shared learning through questions and answers.
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Dr Adaeze Okoye is a Principal Lecturer in Law at the University of Brighton. She is the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Lead of the School of Business and Law. She researches issues within the area of corporate social responsibility and has written a significant number of publications in this area. She is also interested in issues around race and gender in research especially inclusion and retention of women researchers, at the early career stages.
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Dr Chinwe Egbunike-Umegbolu is a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. She is currently an Economic and Social Research Council (ERSC) postdoctoral fellow based at the University of Brighton. Chinwe is also an ADR Blogger and the host and producer of Expert Views on ADR (EVA); The podcast/blog, which is in line with her research work, focuses on simplifying the Traditional African Method of Settling Disputes (TAMSD) or Appropriate / Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) to attract more users to settle disputes or conflicts with Mediation, Arbitration, Conciliation, Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), Collaborative Law, Negotiation, Early Neutral Evaluation and Restorative Justice.
Dr Chisa Onyejekwe is presently an Associate Head of School in Bristol Law School, University of the West of England (UWE). She is also, a Senior Fellow Advance HE as well as a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. Her role current role involves leading, mentoring and managing as well as recruiting staff in the Law School. In her previous roles, she has successively led on curriculum development and design, revalidation and set up of Undergraduate and Post- Graduate programmes. Chisa is passionate about mentoring women but specifically black women. Through her roles, Chisa has mentored black women in academia through recruitment and progression.
Spotlight on the Progression of Black Females in Academia
12.00 - 13:15
Derby Room
A Gentle Pause: The PhD and Parenting
12.00 - 13:15
Cornwall Suite
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This is a slow, gentle session for parents, expectant parents, or those that think they might become parents during their PhD journey. With ethic and aesthetic of care at its heart, and the loose topic of 'PhDs and Parenting', the format and content is determined by the collective that attend. We might: chat and drink tea; take relaxed wander and find places to hang out; make a light manifesto about changes to our identities, bodies, lifestyles, priorities, communities, balancing caring responsibilities, [in]eligibility for tax free and 30 hours free childcare; or we might simply rest together. This session is time for current and future parents to pause and reflect on the joys and challenges of this journey.
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Lizzie Fort: Called to dance at an early age through the music of Kate Bush, RiverDance and Rage Against the Machine, Lizzie became a community dance artist-educator-researcher via the path of babysitter, dental nurse, waitress, cleaner, warehouse worker, PR consultant and sports massage therapist. Now a mum and Techne scholar, Lizzie’s PhD explores the radical potential for community dance through the intersection of care, aesthetics, rest and the public realm (www.woolwichwandering.com). She is an experienced teaching artist, Associate Artist and Trustee with Amici Dance Theatre Company, lecturer at Trinity Laban, with previous roles at Royal Academy of Dance and Canterbury Christchurch University.