general lecture

Inaugural Lecture - Professor Susan Collins

From In Conversation (1997) which provided a live link between the street and the internet and Transporting Skies (2002) which relayed sky live, in real-time, between Penzance and Sheffield, to more recent pixel-by-pixel transmissions from remote locations including Fenlandia (2004), Seascape (2009) and London 2013; the lecture will present a number of works which each in different ways rely on an ‘open system’ or structure for their realisation. The lecture will also explore issues raised by the works including the role of belief in their construction and interpretation; the relationship between time, landscape and technology, and reflect on what it means materially to record a digital image and transport it across space and time.

Susan Collins is Professor of Fine Art and Director of the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, where she founded the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in 1995. She works across public, gallery and online spaces often employing networking and time as primary materials. The work is exhibited widely nationally and internationally with key works including the BAFTA nominated Tate in Space for Tate Online, Fenlandia, and Seascape. Public commissions include Underglow, a network of illuminated drains for the Corporation of London.

Transporting Skies - Professor Susan Collins (Slade School of Fine Art)

A live panel discussion at UCL, 10 March, 2014
Video: http://youtu.be/mBqgLK9dTk4

There are just 85 black professors out of 18,510 in the UK and the number has barely changed in eight years. The percent of black professors (0.4%) shows a striking disparity with the proportion of black students, which has increased steadily each year and now stands at 6%.

What does it mean when the generation that produces knowledge is so unrepresentative of the generation that consumes it? This panel debate will be chaired by Professor Michael Arthur, UCL President and Provost. It will aim to ask difficult questions and explore even more challenging solutions.

Speakers:
Chair: Professor Michael Arthur, UCL President and Provost
Nathan E. Richards, freelance digital journalist, doctoral researcher at Goldsmiths University and director of 'Absent from the Academy'
Dr William Ackah, Birkbeck, University of London
Dr Lisa Amanda Palmer, Newman University
Dr Shirley Tate, University of Leeds
Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias C̶o̶l̶e̶m̶a̶n̶, UCL
Deborah Gabriel, Founder and CEO of Black British Academics

Further info:
http://events.ucl.ac.uk/event/event:xe-hobmesz1-pt3gqx/why-isnt-my-professor-black

Why isn't my professor black? UCL panel discussion

'Memorandoms' of James Martin, the only extant first-hand account of perhaps the most famous escape by convicts transported to Australia

Website:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/publications/martins-memorandoms/martins-memorandoms.html

About Dr Tim Causer (UCL Bentham Project):
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/about/staff/causer

Voice of James Martin: Matt Kyle
Australian narrator: Travis Edwards
Director: Rob Eagle
Researcher: Jack Dean
Sound recording: Ben Stevens​

Further info
The most well-known escape of prisoners transported from England to Australia in the 18th Century has been brought to life, thanks to handwritten accounts by the convicts unearthed in the collections of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham at UCL and now published online for the first time.

The Memorandoms of the convict James Martin are the only first-hand account of the famous escape, which has been the subject of a number of books and a television drama. The document is written in three different hands, potentially of three of the convicts involved, and recounts their fascinating -- and, ultimately, tragic -- tale in full.

Escape from Australia: a convict's tale

Crime fiction expert Barry Forshaw has talked to or interviewed virtually every writer in the Nordic Noir field for various newspapers, magazines, TV and radio, as well as for his book on Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Death in a Cold Climate. 

He has a fund of insights (and anecdotes) about the authors and their work, and is equally au fait with the work of the publishers and translators who are helping to make the field the hottest in the entire crime fiction genre. 

If you're an aficionado of Nordic Noir, you have something to learn from Barry! Chaired by Dr Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen (UCL Scandinavian Studies).

Nordic Noir Book Club blog:
www.scancrime.wordpress.com


Nordic Noir: Crime in Translation with Barry Forshaw

Lunch Hour Lectures - Spring 2014

Professor Maxine Molyneux, UCL Institute of the Americas

Among the eight Millennium Development Goals were women's empowerment and gender equity. This lecture, marking International Women's Day, focuses on the Latin American region, assessing the progress that has been made, and the obstacles that women still face in achieving greater equality and justice, sexual and reproductive rights and measures to tackle violence against women.

You can also watch this lecture on the UCLLHL YouTube channel at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2k8LFxb8nQ



Gender equality and women's rights in Latin America (6 Mar 2014)

Lunch Hour Lectures - Spring 2014

Dr Maryam Shahmanesh, UCL Infection and Population Health

What can female sex workers in India teach us about the structural drivers of the HIV epidemic? This talk explores how underlying social and political factors contribute to female sex workers vulnerability to HIV and poor sexual health outcomes.

You can also watch this lecture on the UCLLHL YouTube channel at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F43ebh6Mbf8

A tale of two cities: sex work in India (4 Mar 2014)

Speakers: Adrian Hearn (Melbourne), Ariel C. Armony (Pittsburgh); Chair: Paulo Drinot (UCL-IA) - This presentation examines Latin American perceptions of deepening Chinese trade and investment. China’s growing influence in Latin America is evident in the growth of bilateral trade to $240 (£143) billion in 2013, and a new wave of investment announced during Xi Jinping’s July 2014 regional tour. Alongside mining and energy, agriculture has become critical to Sino-Latin cooperation, driven by unprecedented demand for food as Chinese cities progress toward the target of one billion residents. Chinese acquisition of Latin American land for food production has proven more contentious than investment in other primary sectors, mainly because of local suspicion of Chinese state-owned enterprises. In Brazil, which provided 45 per cent of China’s 2013 soybean imports (amounting to 33 million metric tons worth $17.2 billion), President Rousseff has warned that 'inane xenophobia' may ward off Chinese investment.


UCL Americas Seminar: China and LatinAmerica: from Cyberspace to the Farm Gate

This paper, originally given as the Luis González lecture at the Colegio de México in early 2014, compares the (neglected) military dimension of the Mexican Revolution to the First World War in Europe, using the concept of 'total war' as the bridge; it defines 'total war' (in two distinct senses) and argues that, notwithstanding the dismissive comments of some historians of Mexico - for whom the armed revolution was a chaotic fiesta de balas, a 'carnival of bullets' - the revolution involved very costly mass conventional warfare. The argument, involving both demographic and military analysis, concludes that, in Mexico as in Europe, total war profoundly affected society, leaving a legacy of violence, veteran activism, and an incipient 'social pact' that underpinned the social reform and state-building of the 1920s and '30s.

UCL Americas Seminar: Mexico - Europe 1914 Total War

In this episode, Awa and Lavin discuss diasporic consciousness, focusing on the themes of belonging, identity, and home. Drawing on their experiences and reflecting on Warsan Shire's poem "Home," they explore what it means to feel at home.

Diaspora Diaries Episode 2: Diasporic Consciousness

Discussion of Gargi’s research and the new module designed to open conversations about how we might understand the interplay between global politics and the global economy in this moment of rapid realignment.

Speakers:
Gargi Bhattacharyya, Paige Patchin, Luke de Noronha

In Conversation with the SPRC: Geopolitics, catastrophe and trying to comprehend the world

Live dissections, Leonardo da Vinci and vodka on the brain ... 

Professor Dilwyn Knox (UCL School of European Languages, Society and Culture) provides some background to 'Neuroscience in the Renaissance', on 26 May. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/festival-of-culture/events/neuroscience-and-renaissance

The focus of the session is natural philosophers’ understanding and depiction of the human brain during the Renaissance.

Neuroscience in the Renaissance

What role does writing play in an age of austerity and rapid digital evolution?

Dr Nick Shepley talks about One Day in the City, UCL English’s bi-annual celebration of London and Literature, the high-octane conclusion to the UCL Festival of Culture on 27 May.

Come and listen to, question and rub shoulders with some of the greatest living poets, novelists and writers in London: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/festival-of-culture/events/one-day-in-the-city




One Day in the City

From the Civil Rights movement to the modern efforts to legalize gay marriage, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution has been central to many of the most important issues in American history. UCL historian Adam Smith takes us through its significance. |

Read along while listening at our Medium: bit.ly/2aEpNZE |

Narrated by Adam Smith and Vidish Athavale | Music by Sergey Cheremisinov and Kai Engel |

Adam is a Senior Lecturer in the History Department at UCL and a frequent broadcaster on BBC Radio 4. An expert on the nineteenth century United States, his latest book is ​'The Stormy Present: Conservatism and American Politics in an Age of Revolution, 1848-1877', shortly to be published by the University of North Carolina Press.

Why Martin Luther King had the US Constitution on his side | Adam Smith

Iwan Morgan, Ronald Reagan’s first British biographer, discusses Reagan’s life from small-town Illinois boyhood, through his Hollywood years, to his political career – first as California governor, then as national conservative spokesman, and finally as US president – in his newly published book.

Iwan Morgan's 'Reagan: American Icon' Book Launch

Professor John Mullan (UCL English) reads one of his favourite festive poems,  T. S. Eliot’s, ‘Journey of the Magi’ (1927).

A specialist in 18th-century literature, Professor Mullan is also a broadcaster, journalist and host of the Guardian’s Book Club.

For more information about studying literature, visit the UCL English website: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/english

T.S. Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’

For Valentine's Day, Professor Helen Hackett (UCL English) reads two love sonnets from Lady Mary Wroth's collection Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621). 

Wroth was the first Englishwoman to write a sequence of love sonnets, a prose romance (the Urania) and a tragicomedy (Love's Victory).

Professor Hackett is an expert on 16th and 17th century literature, with a special interest in women's writing.

Lady Mary Wroth's 'Pamphilia to Amphilanthus'

The IAS is a space dedicated to intellectual freedom where disruptive thinking is not only allowed but encouraged and supported. It is a centre of advanced research, debate and dialogue across any kind of boundary, intellectual or institutional. It’s a forum where difficult, even intractable, social questions can be exposed to the scrutiny of rigorous critical enquiry from a variety of perspectives

This Soundcloud channel showcases content produced by the Institute of Advanced Studies and its research centres.

Note on the logo: the blue and green background is a detail of a banner (300x120cm; oil paint, oil pastel and compressed charcoal on canvas) that artist Lucile Haefflinger produced for and which is on display at the IAS.

Transporting Skies - Professor Susan Collins (Slade School of Fine Art)

UCL Institute of Advanced Studies

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