ENGAGEMENT
22nd June - 15.45 to 17.00
RJF: Race and the Struggles of Higher Education
Room 0-04
Organised by Techne's Racial Justice Fellows, this session explores the topic of race and higher education. Speakers will discuss decolonisation of higher education, the experience of ethnic minority students and the intersection between race and gender. Students will be invited to reflect on the unique experience of ethnic minorities in higher education and ask the expert panel questions.
Dr Shzr Ee Tan is a Senior Lecturer and ethnomusicologist (with a specialism in Sinophone and Southeast Asian worlds) at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is committed to decolonial and EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) work in music and the performing arts, with interests in how race discourses intersect problematically with class, gender and recent debates on posthuman digitalities, climate change and multispecies thinking. Dr Shzre Ee is working on a variety of projects, including musical theorising on decolonisation and issues of cultural appropriation. Including investigations into racist reactions to the ‘problem’ of China as a politico-cultural heavyweight/ new imperialist influence. In her broader work on decolonization she stakes a commitment to collaborative ethnography.
Prof. Ravinder Barn is professor of social policy in the Department of Law and Criminology at RHUL. Following a PhD into ‘Race, ethnicity and children in public care’, from the University of Warwick, she became a lecturer at the age of 27. Over the last several decades, she has established a strong track record in policy-relevant impactful research in relation to racial/ethnic, social and gender inequalities. She is the author/editor of eight books and over 100 journal papers or book chapters. She writes on gender, ethnicity, child and youth welfare and criminal justice. Her research on child welfare and migrant groups and gender-based violence is highly regarded nationally and internationally. Ravinder is a mixed-methods researcher. Her academic base is interdisciplinary and spans social policy, sociology, social work and criminology. Ravinder is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Professor Dibyesh Anand (He/Him) is the Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Westminster. A professor of International Relations, he is the author of monographs ‘Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination’ and ‘Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear’ and has spoken about, and published on, varied topics including Tibet, China-India border dispute, Hindu nationalism, Islamophobia, and conflict in Kashmir. He is passionate about challenging the divide between academia and activism and identities as queer in personal and political terms. He is the co-chair of University’s EDI Committee and BME Network and an elected member of the Court of Governors and the Chair-Elect for International Studies Association's LGBTQA Caucus. He is on Twitter @dibyeshanand
Alternative Approaches to Publication
Windsor Auditorium
During this panel-performance hybrid, we will be thinking through the different possibilities of what ‘publication’ might be. Looking beyond the spheres of the academic journal, panellists will discuss their experiences working in a range of publication fields including performance, installation, film, sound-work, alongside collaborations with museums, galleries, schools, and community groups. Each panellist will offer a micro-performance/presentation showcasing a mode of publication they have explored.
Briony Hughes is a poet, visiting tutor, and Techne PhD candidate based at Royal Holloway, researching hydropoetics. Briony also teaches on the Creative Writing MA programme at Brunel University. Her publications include Dorothy (Broken Sleep Books) and Microsporidial (Sampson Low), and she has two additional publications forthcoming in 2023. Her limited edition bookworks have been collected by the National Poetry Library, Senate House Library, and the Kings College London Special Collections. She is a co-founder of the Crested Tit Collective and editor at Osmosis Press.
Karenjit Sandhu is a poet and artist. Her publications include her debut poetry collection young girls! (the 87 Press), and flowers won’t grow (Sampson Low) in collaboration with SJ Fowler. Her work also appears in Magma and Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry. Karenjit’s forthcoming publication Poetic Fragments from the Irritating Archive will be published by Guillemot Press in 2022. Her performance work has led to collaborations with the Sir Denis Mahon Foundation, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Flat Time House and Camden People’s Theatre (London), Arnolfini (Bristol) and Galerie Eric Dupont (Paris). Karenjit is Poet in Residence at the University of Surrey.
Emma Mitchell is a writer and comedian whose work centres on the body and its relationship to culture and experience. She has performed worldwide as a comedian, burlesque artist, pole dancer and trapeze artist. In 2014, she wrote and performed her first critically-acclaimed one-woman show, The Naked Stand Up. She produces the performance art show Naked Girls Reading, London, and has appeared on Late Night Woman's Hour discussing nudity and her work. She is currently a doctoral researcher in Creative Writing at Brunel University London where her research focusses on experimental forms as a vehicle to express lost female voices.
Rowan Evans is a poet, composer and sound artist. His most recent chapbook is The Last Verses of Beccán (Guillemot Press, 2019), which won the Michael Marks Award for poetry. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2015 and a selection of his work appears in Penguin Modern Poets 7: These Hard and Shining Things (Penguin, 2018). Rowan is editor of Moot Press and artistic co-director of the performance company FEN. He is currently completing practice-based PhD research in modern poetry and early medieval language at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Sarah Cave is a writer, editor and lecturer who has published two collections, An Arbitrary Line and Perseverance Valley, as well as four pamphlets and two book length collaborations. Sarah's work regularly appears in journals, anthologies, and exhibitions, as well as performing work and leading workshops at several festivals, reading series and universities nationally and internationally.
Strangers Within
Room 0-05
Strangers Within is an interdisciplinary anthology edited by Therese Henningsen and Juliette Joffé to be published by independent publishing house Prototype, and launched at Whitechapel Gallery in 2022. It explores the idea of documentary as encounter through essays, stories, interviews and other responses by filmmakers, artists, and writers. The texts engage with the risks of encounter, unsettling assumptions about the distinctions between host and guest; stranger and friend; self and other; documentarian and protagonist. Opening up a series of questions about the mystery of another person, whose difference and unknowability is already a part of one’s self, the anthology offers a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the convergences between encounter, hospitality and autobiography.
Contributors to the anthology include: Trinh T Minh-ha, Annie Ernaux, Xiaolu Guo, Toni Morrison, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Marc Isaacs, David MacDougall, Adam Christensen, Khalik Allah, Ruth Beckermann, Umama Hamido, Gareth Evans, and more.
This session will be centred around Therese and Juliette’s own contributions to the project. It will include clips from films related to the research. The presentation will be followed by a screening of a film by one of the contributor’s to the anthology, organised in association with HARI. The film screening will be open to both Techne researchers as well as the public.
Therese Henningsen is a filmmaker and researcher. She is working on a practice-led PhD at the department of Media Arts at Royal Holloway University. Closely linked to her own research on documentary as encounter, she is working on the interdisciplinary anthology Strangers Within in collaboration with filmmaker Juliette Joffé. Therese is a member of the film collectives Sharna Pax and Terrassen, both engaging with the social life of film.
Juliette Joffé is a filmmaker based in Brussels. Her films have been shown in festivals such as Visions Du Réel Nyon, FIDMarseille, Open City Documentary Film Festival, Astra Film Festival among others. Her first film Maybe Darkness was awarded a Wildcard For Best Documentary by The Flemish Film Board allowing her to direct The Hero With A Thousand Faces which won Best Short Film Film at Mostra Internazionale Di Cinema Di Genova. She has recently finished the mid-length essay film Next Year we will leave.
Research Speed Dating
CANCELLED
After over two years of online Techne Congresses, we're looking forward to all being together in the same building again. We know that many of you will never have had the chance to meet other Techne students in person and make those all-important research connections and friendships. This session will provide an opportunity for you to briefly meet lots of your fellow Techne students in a 'speed dating' style setup, where you will have a few minutes to introduce yourself and your research before moving on to the next person. Come ready to chat!
Engagement and Placements
Room 0-03
This session will give you an opportunity to think about ways of engaging with our partner organisations, and what the benefits are of undertaking a placement. Participating organisations will include The National Archives, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Historic Royal Palaces and the Wellcome Collection. Members of the Techne admin team will also be there to give advice about undertaking placements as a Techne student.
Dr Lisa Taylor is the Doctoral Partnerships Manager for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Kew PhD students are supervised by specialists in particular teams – notably for Techne students, in Ethnobotany and Plant Humanities – but Lisa sits in the Education team to act as a bridge with our various university, DTP and other partners. Having completed an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD, she is passionate about bringing research to life through collaboration and open to discussing any opportunities of interest and use to students, from placements to more informal opportunities to engage with Kew.
Dr Sean Cunningham is Head of Medieval Records at The National Archives. Sean has broad experience of 15th- and early 16th-century government history, records and research methodologies. He is especially interested in the interconnecting processes of government and how they functioned through representative agencies, officials and individuals in the period 1399–1558. His research has investigated aspects of political, military, legal, and financial history and records in that period. He is one of the leading historians on the reign of Henry VII (1485–1509), and has published and lectured widely on many aspects of this reign and the key figures who helped to establish Tudor power in England and Wales before the Reformation.
Sophie Schneider is a graduate trainee in the Research Development Team at Wellcome Collection. Wellcome Collection is free museum and library in London that explores health and human experience. Research sits at the heart of Wellcome Collection, helping us to understand our collections through engaging innovative perspectives, knowledge and understandings of the social and cultural contexts of health. We particularly value the new methodologies and approaches to our collections and our work offered by practice-based arts research. As a graduate trainee, Sophie can speak not only of the opportunities at Wellcome, but to her own experience of developing an emerging career path at Wellcome Collection.
Daniel Jackson is the curator for Hampton Court Palace in Surrey; one of the greatest palaces ever built. He is responsible for six acres of scheduled monuments and listed buildings, and 650 acres of historic parks and gardens. An archaeologist by training he joined Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity responsible for the management of six former royal residences, in 2012. He has worked on a series of major conservation and infrastructure projects including the opening of the Cumberland Art Gallery, the final phase of the award winning Base Court conservation project and the creation of the new Magic Garden. HRP regularly offers placement opportunities and we are always keen to hear from students interested in working with us.
Tour of the Royal Holloway Arboretum
Meet by the reception
desk in the foyer
Take a break from the lecture theatre and get some fresh air with a tour of the university’s arboretum, a hidden gem on the edge of the campus containing a number of rare and unusual species and associated wildlife habitats. The Royal Holloway External Spaces team will guide a walk through the tree collection that was originally curated in the mid-20th century by the former Botany Department, and discuss how the site management is being adapted to consider the changing climate and evolving need of the College population.
Ask Liz
Windsor Building Foyer
Do you have any questions relating to your career development, or want to ask the advice of a careers professional? If you’re free during this session, our Techne careers consultant Liz Wilkinson will be around to informally answer questions and talk to you about your career development. You can find her in the foyer near the reception desk throughout this session.
Liz Wilkinson is a Senior Careers Consultant at The Careers Group, with specialisms in postgraduate and academic careers and digital employability. Formerly Director of Careers and Employability at Royal Holloway for 15 years, Liz Wilkinson led a multidisciplinary team of 18 staff to empower 10,000 students to launch themselves into graduate careers. The quality of the Liz’s professional work has been recognised by an AGR national award for Best Preparation for Work in Higher Education.
