Programme - Monday 10th January
10.45 to 12.00
New trajectories: how a Techne placement can reinvigorate your PhD... and expand your career options - Charlotte Warne Thomas, Summer Phillips, Simon Josebury
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Techne students Charlotte Warne Thomas, Summer Phillips and Simon Josebury discuss how their Techne placements have changed their PhD trajectories and/or their career options for post PhD.
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12.30 to 13.30
Keynote: Make a new beginning: Creating a better world through inclusion in the arts and humanities - Jessica Gagnon
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“We can start all over in the new beginning
We can learn, we can teach, we can share
The myths, the dreams, the prayers
The notion that we can do better
Change our lives and paths
Create a new world”
Tracy Chapman, “New Beginning”
How do we collectively imagine a better world and forge new paths together, if we do not first discuss inclusion? Who has been welcomed to do the imagining and whose voices, ideas, hopes, and dreams are still missing? This keynote will explore what a more inclusive arts and humanities could bring to a new beginning in a post-pandemic world.
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Dr Jessica Gagnon (@Jess_Gagnon) is an educational sociologist, focused on inequalities in higher education. She has worked in higher education in the US and UK for more than 20 years. Jessica is a first-generation student from an American working-class, single mother family. She currently serves as co-chair for the Gender and Education Association, an international, intersectional feminist academic charity founded in 1997, focused on achieving gender equality within and through education. Jessica is a lecturer in the Manchester Institute of Education at the University of Manchester.
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13.30 to 14.00
Creative Breakout: Radio Drawings
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If you want to try something creative and take a break from your screen, join us for this quick 'creative breakout' session.
How do words you hear play through your mind and body? Have some fun with drama and sketching in Nicola Field's 'Radio Drawings' session. No artistic experience needed! You can see some of Nicola's Radio Drawings on her website at link https://nicolafield.co.uk/projects/visual-life-writing/. Please bring along some paper and a pen or pencil.
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14.00 to 15.15
On the Necessity of Animism: What Does it Mean to Live in a Universe That's Alive? - Nicholas Foxton
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This session looks at the re-emergence of animism in contemporary debates around climate change, the Sixth Extinction and the Anthropocene. Animism, formerly viewed as an early stage of religious belief associated with ‘primitive’ or non-western others is explored as a strategic and timely engagement with non-human persons. I trace a wide range of anthropological, historical and contemporary sources for the attribution of personhood to the non-human and argue that it amounts to an extension of the ethical circle that offers a counter to the Anthropocracy/Anthroparchy.
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14.00 to 15.15
Technecast – Touch & Magic in Place: Re-enchantment through Dance and Folklore - Polly Hember, Julien Clin, Felix Clutson, Rosalind Holgate-Smith, Jon Mason
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This session accompanies a special episode of the Technecast to be published Monday morning, 10 January. Dancer Rosalind Holgate-Smith (Kingston) says “I am listening and attuning with the land, as a means of co-becoming, a means of letting others speak through my flesh, a means of embracing and dancing through enchantment.” She explores touch as an encounter with Otherness. Meanwhile, storyteller Jon Mason (Brighton) asks the question “What if it’s not true?” and draws lessons from balancing enchantment and empiricism in storytelling practice. The afternoon session will reflect on the podcast with a panel discussion and live Q&A.
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The Technecast Team is currently made up of Polly Hember (RHUL), Felix Clutson (Surrey) and Julien Clin (Kingston), but always open to new members. Each month, the team invites Arts & Humanities researchers to present their work around a theme. Kindly supported by Techne, this is a podcasting community that welcomes ideas, pitches and other contributions. The podcast is available through most podcasting apps under “Technecast” or via https://soundcloud.com/technecast.
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14.00 to 15.15
What's Happening in the Job Market for PhDs in 2022 - Liz Wilkinson
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Liz Wilkinson, Techne Careers Consultant and PhD labour market expert will explore:
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What's the current state of the the job and opportunity market in the education, cultural, arts and public policy sectors?
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How can you keep up with fast changing trends and opportunities?
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How can you build your skills and profile to develop your career in 2022?
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15.45 to 17.00
Shape Newham; urban change created through the collective imagination - Tom Coward
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Shape Newham is a £1.5m public space art programme delivering 18 town centre improvements across the London Borough of Newham. The project is facilitated by Architects AOC supported by Office S&M and Carver Haggard in association with the Local Council. All projects are the result of extensive local engagement using a citizen assembly process to determine each local site, priorities and projects. 3 projects were developed with youth groups whilst 40% are led by Newham artists. The projects are being delivered through to summer 2023. Tom will share the process undertaken and ask the workshop to discuss issues of democracy, social infrastructure, regeneration and spatial change.
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15.45 to 17.00
‘Local’ taste and ‘fashioned bodies’ in the United Arab Emirates - Lezley George
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This session includes insights from my Ph.D. research (completed in late 2019) that examines abaya-led fashion in the UAE and investigates how female consumers and designers sought re-enchantment by design, in retail spaces and through online self-representation practices. Pulling forward underexplored strands from this research, I have since written about Emirati/Khaleeji men’s dress and this presentation will connect how subtle deviances in kandura-wearing (emblematic national dress) also reflect men’s re-enchantment with fashion through personal styling.
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15.45 to 17.00
The Entreprenurial Enchanter: Career Options in Creative Entrepreneurship - Liz Wilkinson
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Liz Wilkinson, Techne Careers Consultant and PhD labour market expert will explore:
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What is creative entrepreneurship?
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What factors contribute to success?
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How might you development your creative side-hustle?
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