Statistics workshop
2021-07-22 - 2021-07-23
We are delighted to announce some FREE statistics and R training workshops to support our ECRs and PhD students and their professional development. The workshops will take place via Microsoft Teams in July and below you can find the programme for each course.
Please make sure you hold the dates and register by simply clicking the registration links below by Thursday 15th July.
Please contact Elena Carp with any questions at E.Carp@reading.ac.uk

Link registration: Statistics workshop

Statistics workshop – Day 1
Date: 22nd July 2021
Time: 13.00 – 17.00
Statistics workshop – Day 2
Date: 23rd July 2021
Time: 13.00 – 17.00

Application of Parametric and non-Parametric test
Statistical Tests e.g. ANOVA, T-test
Design, Sample Size, Power
Exercises via Mentimeter

Developing Statistical Analysis Plan for Grant writing
Exercise

Link registration: Statistical Introduction to R workshop

Statistical Introduction to R workshop – Day 1
Date: 26th July 2021
Session 1: 09.00 – 12.00
Session 2: 13.00 – 16.00
Statistical Introduction to R workshop – Day 2
Date: 27th July 2021
Session 1: 09.00 – 12.00
Session 2: 13.00 – 16.00

Session 1:

Introduction to RStudio
Analysing Data
Data types and Structures

(Practical will be along side theory)
Session 2:

Understanding Factors
Loops in R
Creating Functions
Best practise for Writing R codes

(Practical will be alongside theory)
Session 1:

One and two independent sample t-test
ANOVA & One-way repeated measures ANOVA
MANOVA
Chi-Square test

Session 2:

Linear Regression
Multiple Regression
Logistic Regression
Ordered logistic regression.

(Practical will be alongside theory)

Dwoskin, Disability and… Autobiography: Trying to Kiss the Moon
2021-07-22 19:00 - 21:00 (Europe/London)
This is the the third in a series of screening and discussion events exploring the experimental filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin’s complex relationships with disability and creativity, memory and materiality. This event is co-hosted by the LUX and the Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures (CFAC) and supported by the Arts Committee and the Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives Fund of the University of Reading.
While feminist critics often associated Dwoskin’s films with the male gaze, he was equally prepared to turn the camera on himself. He conceived of TRYING TO KISS THE MOON (1994) as an autobiographical film, after seeing a cache of his father’s home movies, shot during his childhood in New York, many of them showing him before he contracted polio and lost the use of his legs. These inspired reflections on, among other themes, disability and diaspora.
And yet the finished film is far from straightforwardly autobiographical. As Laura Mulvey has written, TRYING TO KISS THE MOON “tells the double story of memory, bringing together the beauty of its documents and the sadness of its elusiveness”. Seemingly objective documents – both his father’s and his own home movies and still photographs – do not speak for themselves, even to those who were there at the time.
Instead, TRYING TO KISS THE MOON is a kind of bricolage that never smoothly integrates its constitutive parts. The documents are material objects, imperfect, incomplete, and made to seem so through Dwoskin’s painterly technique. Finished on the cusp of the digital era, it can be seen as a farewell to analogue formats. It won praise from Raymond Bellour, and Nicole Brenez saw in the home movies “magical moments” presaging the rest of Dwoskin’s career: “everything is already there!”
The event will begin with an introduction and communal viewing at 7pm on Thursday 22 July, followed by a discussion with Jenny Chamarette (author of Phenomenology and the Future of Film), Rachel Garfield (author of Experimental Filmmaking and Punk), and Henry K. Miller (editor of The Essential Raymond Durgnat) from the AHRC-funded project, ‘The Legacies of Stephen Dwoskin’s Personal Cinema’, led by Rachel Garfield.
TRYING TO KISS THE MOON has closed captions, and the live discussion will be BSL interpreted and live captioned. The discussion will last no longer than 60 minutes.
Book online here

Cerebral Haemodynamics Symposium
2021-07-23 13:00 - 17:30
CINNergies is hosting the online Cerebral Haemodynamics Symposium on Friday 23rd July from 13.00 to 17.30. The event will be hosted by Dr Gabriella Rossetti and includes the following external speakers:
Dr Mariel Kozberg (Vascular Neurology Fellow, Massachusetts General Hospital)
In Vivo imaging of vascular function in small vessel disease
Prof Paul Mullins (Director of Bangor Imaging Unit, Bangor University)
Using hypoxia to probe the coupling between metabolism, neural activity, and cerebral blood flow
Prof Gopikrishna Deshpande (Professor, Auburn University)
Haemodynamic response alterations and implications for resting state analyses
For further details please see the event poster or visit the event page for the symposium programme.

Statistical Introduction to R workshop
2021-07-26 - 2021-07-27

Open Research Forum
2021-09-15 10:00 - 11:30
Join the University’s Open Research Champions to learn about and discuss Open Research. All members of the University are welcome to attend. Visit the event page for details and booking.
We have two excellent talks lined up for our September meeting:
Organising ourselves for world domination: how junior academics can work together to improve research culture (Jess Butler, Senior Research Fellow at Centre for Health Data Science, University of Aberdeen)
We are delighted to welcome Jess Butler, who will discuss how funders and grassroots organisations are seeking to change research culture, and how early career researchers can be empowered to promote change in their own universities. Jess is a passionate advocate for research improvement and an inspiring communicator.
The UNESCO Open Science Recommendation, Open Research and ethics (Marzia Briel, PhD student, School of Law)
Open Research Champion Marzia Briel will discuss the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (in draft). The Recommendation defines shared values and principles for Open Science, and identifies measures on Open Access and Open Data, with proposals to bring citizens closer to science and commitments to facilitate the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge around the world. Marzia will bring her expertise in research ethics and the law to bear on discussion of this important legal instrument.

ALT+SHIFT+ARCHIVE: Unpacking the Past, Present and Future of Digital Archives
2021-09-20 - 2021-09-30 | Online event
Join us for an online digital archiving symposium!
Taking the form of an asynchronous discussion culminating with a series of three live online Q&As, the event situates ‘real world’ archiving in the context of academic and creative work.
Based on the digital forensics and data exploration branch of the AHRC-funded project ‘The Legacies of Stephen Dwoskin’, our presenters and discussants include members of the project team (Universities of Reading, Glasgow and Sheffield) along with the National Library of Scotland, Jisc, DPC, DCC, Transport for London Archive, and a range of scholars and artists.
BOOK HERE
The online discussion platform will open on 20 September.
The live Q&A sessions will be held on 28 Sept, 29 Sept and 30 Sept, from 4.30pm to 6.30pm (UK time).
Additional information
We aim to discuss a broad spectrum of questions, challenges and opportunities, for example:
– Snapshot of archiving in the real world – ‘practice’ in the sense of doing digital archive work?
– Creator of the archive as a creative practitioner – what challenges does that bring in the real world at the moment, and what challenges could that bring?
– Research applications for digital archives – how have they been used and what methods might we bring into the future?
– Re-activating the archive: making use of digital archives as a source of creative practice – examples and case studies?
– How we collaborate when we work on digital archives – how we build the teams that do the work that digital archives present us? What makes for an effective collaboration?
– How do we deal with ‘not knowing’, when we are doing interdisciplinary work?
Our discussants will offer critical perspectives based on their experience and knowledge.
Please follow us on Twitter @ArchiveAlt and on Instagram @alt.shift.archive for more details.
Find out more about the Dwoskin project here https://research.reading.ac.uk/stephen-dwoskin/

Reading Abbey at 900: Revealing Reading Abbey’s Archaeology
2021-09-28 19:00 - 20:30 | Whiteknights campus, University of Reading, Whiteknights Campus, Reading, RG6 6AH, United Kingdom
Reading was home to one of Europe’s greatest medieval monasteries, established in 1121 by Henry I. It has been subject to many small-scale archaeological excavations yet remains poorly understood. Archaeologist and architectural historian Tim Tatton-Brown digs deep into the archaeological archives to shed new light on the development of Reading Abbey, including the probable location of the tomb of Henry I.
Tim Tatton-Brown has published widely on the archaeology and architecture of England’s most prestigious medieval buildings. He has held the role of consultant archaeologist for Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral, Lambeth Palace, St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and several other cathedrals, as well as consultant archaeologist for the Oracle Shopping Centre re-development in Reading.
Admission free. Booking essential. Please note this will be a LIVE public lecture.
To book your place visit, reading.ac.uk/events
We hope you will be able to participate in this special event. For additional queries, please contact events@reading.ac.uk

Royal Meteorological Society Masterclass Sea Ice in the Climate System
2021-10-06 15:00 - 16:30 | Online event
SPEAKER | Dr David Schroeder, Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, University of Reading
This session is part of the Royal Meteorological Society’s Masterclass Series The Oceans and Atmosphere: Maritime Meteorology and Climate, strengthening our understanding of the interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere in partnership with the University and sponsored by Fleetweather.
This Masterclass Series will cover broad topics relevant to marine meteorology such as tropical cyclone
development and the latest science relating to conceptual models; changes in Arctic sea ice and future projections that will impact marine routing through the Arctic; and recent developments in ocean modelling
and atmospheric/ocean coupling in numerical weather prediction.
The webinars are free of charge but please register to attend.

Decolonising Bereavement Studies: Diversity and Social Justice in the Aftermath of Death
2021-10-07 13:00 - 14:00 | Online event
Jane Ribbens McCarthy (The Open University)
Human Geography Research Cluster Seminar Series 2021/22
Death, dying and disposal are well-established topics of study, both academically in the humanities, arts, and social sciences and from medical perspectives, including the practice of palliative care. Bereavement studies, however, occupies a much more ambiguous space as a site for multi-disciplinary academic work, being very heavily dominated by individualised and medicalised perspectives, particularly psychiatry and psychology, and connected to ‘communities of practice’ in bereavement services. Such approaches are underpinned by the humanitarian desire to assist and support people experiencing something termed ‘grief’.
Recent work on family deaths in Senegal, however, has shown the limitations of such terms as ‘bereavement’ and ‘grief’, rooted in Anglophone linguistic contexts, and has challenged dominant assumptions in ‘bereavement studies’. At the same time, following on from the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, work to address issues of decolonisation within the academy has gained new momentum.
This presentation begins to bring these ‘decolonising’ endeavours, and ‘bereavement studies’ into dialogue, seeking to open up conversations in a field that is currently very heavily dominated by particular perspectives that developed in affluent Minority worlds at a particular point in historical time. Such conversations demand new concepts, raise many new questions framed within different paradigms, and create opportunities for addressing issues of diversity and social justice in the aftermath of death, with the potential for further insights for climate justice for the benefit of all.
For further information, contact Ruth Evans (details below)

Royal Meteorological Society Masterclass Understanding Marine Environments
2021-10-13 15:00 - 16:30 | Online event
SPEAKER | Dr Samantha Lavender, Director, Pixalytics Ltd
This session is part of the Royal Meteorological Society’s Masterclass Series The Oceans and Atmosphere: Maritime Meteorology and Climate, strengthening our understanding of the interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere in partnership with the University and sponsored by Fleetweather.
This Masterclass Series will cover broad topics relevant to marine meteorology such as tropical cyclone
development and the latest science relating to conceptual models; changes in Arctic sea ice and future
projections that will impact marine routing through the Arctic; and recent developments in ocean modelling
and atmospheric/ocean coupling in numerical weather prediction.
The webinars are free of charge but please register to attend.

Royal Meteorological Society Masterclass Tropical Cyclones in the Climate System
2021-10-20 15:00 - 16:30 | Online event
SPEAKER | Professor Pier Luigi Vidale, University of Reading
This session is part of the Royal Meteorological Society’s Masterclass Series The Oceans and Atmosphere: Maritime Meteorology and Climate, strengthening our understanding of the interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere in partnership with the University and sponsored by Fleetweather.
This Masterclass Series will cover broad topics relevant to marine meteorology such as tropical cyclone
development and the latest science relating to conceptual models; changes in Arctic sea ice and future
projections that will impact marine routing through the Arctic; and recent developments in ocean modelling
and atmospheric/ocean coupling in numerical weather prediction.
Please register to attend the seminar.

Celebrating Black History Month: Sharing lived experiences of Oxford Road, Reading
2021-10-21 13:00 - 14:00 | Online event
Human Geography Research Cluster Seminar Series 2021/22
Find out more about the High Streets Heritage Action Zone (HSHAZ) storytelling project in west Reading.

Visualising the Database: Early Modern Women’s Complaint Poetry Index
2021-10-28 17:00 - 18:00 | Online event
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) is pleased to host this talk by Michelle O’Callaghan and Jake Arthur introducing the new online database of Early Modern Women’s Complaint Poetry
This online event is free and open to all. Please register your interest to receive the Zoom link here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/181636629047
Michelle O’Callaghan is Professor of Early Modern Literature at the University of Reading. Her most recent book Crafting Poetry Anthologies in Renaissance England: Early Modern Cultures of Recreation (Cambridge, 2020) builds on her digital edition, Verse Miscellanies Online, co-edited with Alice Eardley, and is a study of the craft of making printed poetry anthologies published in the second half of the sixteenth century in England, showing how these anthologies helped to shape recreational cultures within the nation’s households, drawing men and women together from across the social classes.
Jake Arthur is a DPhil candidate and Clarendon Scholar at Oxford University. His thesis examines early modern women’s work in translation and paraphrase and seeks to reclaim the expressive and intellectual possibilities of ‘derivative’ works. The preliminary title of the thesis is ‘“The stuffe not ours”: the work of derivation in women’s writing, 1560–c.1664’. In collaboration with Sarah C. E. Ross, he is co-editor of the poetry section of the forthcoming Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing. With Rosalind Smith, he has co-authored a chapter in Early Modern Women and Complaint: Gender, Form and Politics (2020) which considers the implications of digital resources for the traditional first-line index in relation to early modern women’s complaint poetry. He works as a researcher on the ARC funded project Marginalia and the Early Modern Woman Writer, and on the ARC and Marsden funded project, Woe is She: Early Modern Women and the Poetry of Complaint.

Executive Freedom in Descartes
2021-10-28 18:00 - 18:15 | Online event
Sir Anthony Kenny: Executive Freedom in Descartes
Philosophy Department Cottingham Lecture
Sir Anthony Kenny was born in Liverpool in 1931 and was educated at Upholland College and the Pontifical Gregorian University. He was ordained priest in 1955 but returned to the lay state in 1963. Since then he has lived in Oxford. From 1963 to 1989 he was at Balliol College, Oxford, first as Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, and then as Master of the College. Subsequently he became Warden of Rhodes House, President of the British Academy, and Chair of the Board of the British Library. He is the author of some forty books on philosophy and history, including the four volume New History of Western Philosophy published by Oxford University Press.
The Inaugural Cottingham Lecture is the first in an annual lecture series in honour of John Cottingham, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Reading. Professor Cottingham was for many years Head of Department and then Director of Research and Graduate Studies in the Department. He has published over thirty books on early-modern philosophy, moral philosophy and the philosophy of religion. From 1993-2012 he was editor of the journal Ratio. He is an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford.

Exploring Authenticity in Contemporary Literatures in English
2021-11-01 08:00 - 2021-11-02 17:00
Culture in general, and literature in particular, seem to be concerned with authenticity, or lack of it, more than ever: authenticity in politics, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and nationality. In contemporary fiction, especially, there appears to be a turn away from fiction as traditionally understood, and a move towards authenticity as an ethical marker of subjectivity. The popularity of such narratives seems to suggest that we long for things we experience as lost, searching for an identity, be it individual or collective, that eludes us. But what is authenticity and what does it entail in a globalised world? How is authenticity constructed and deconstructed in contemporary literature? In a ‘post-truth’ world – a world of ‘fake news’, viral conspiracy theories and catfishing – is the concept of authenticity redundant, or more vital than ever? The aim of the Symposium is to explore ideas of authenticity in their various manifestations in literatures in English. The online event will take place over two half days on 01-02 November 2021.
The organisers invite proposals of no more than 250 words for twenty-minute papers from scholars of all career stages. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Authenticity and gender
Authenticity and sexuality
Authenticity and ethnicity
Authenticity and nationality
Authenticity and the global/the local
Realism, hyperrealism, naturalism
Authenticity in the postmodern world
Authenticity and intertextuality: concepts such as original literary work, reproduction, printed representation
Ghostwriting, diaries, biographies, autobiographies, autofiction
Authenticity and adaptation
Authenticity and creativity

The keynote lecture will be given by Professor Daniel Lea, Oxford Brookes University.
When submitting your abstract, please also include a brief biographical sketch of up to 50 words. Proposals must be submitted to Jeni Giambona, by Friday 10 September 2021.
To register click here. Registration is free of charge.

Beckett Week 2021
2021-11-04 - 2021-11-06 | Whiteknights campus, University of Reading, Whiteknights Campus, Reading, RG6 6AH, United Kingdom
The Samuel Beckett Research Centre are delighted to announce that their annual Beckett Week will take in November at Minghella Studies on the Whiteknights Campus of the University of Reading. Beckett Week events will include:

SPECTRAL LANDSCAPES: ABSENCE, TRAUMA AND NATIONHOOD
Thursday 4th November and Friday 5th November
BECKETT INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION SEMINAR
Saturday 6th November

For further details please visit the Beckett Week page.

Did the defendant use a gun? The philosophical foundations and practical consequences of applying corpus analysis in legal interpretation
2021-11-04 15:00 - 16:00 | Microsoft Teams
The Reading Centre for Cognition Research (RCCR) is delighted to announce this new 2 year project: Did the defendant use a gun? The philosophical foundations and practical consequences of applying corpus analysis in legal interpretation.
This project will explore attempts to use the techniques of corpus linguistics to guide interpretation of legally contested terms (a fuller project overview is included below). We are very keen to hear from any University of Reading researchers (staff or postgraduate students) who might be interested in these issues. Please contact the PI, Nat Hansen (n.d.hansen@reading.ac.uk) if you would like to discuss the project further.
The first (team-building) project meeting will take place virtually (on Teams) at:
Thursday, Nov 4, from 3-4pm
All are welcome.

Beckett International Foundation Research Seminar
2021-11-06 10:30 - 16:45 | Whiteknights campus, University of Reading, Whiteknights Campus, Reading, RG6 6AH, United Kingdom
The Beckett International Foundation at the University of Reading is pleased to announce that the Beckett Research Seminar will take place on Saturday, 6 November 2021.
The event will be held in Minghella Studios, Whiteknights Campus, University of Reading.
As in previous years, our speakers represent a mixture of early career researchers as well as established scholars, local and international, reflecting current research into Beckett’s work. We hope that the programme will, as in the past, attract a wide and varied audience.
The charge for the day is £20 per participant (£10 unwaged), which includes lunch and refreshments throughout the day.
Please register by 2pm on Friday 29 October 2021 using the following link:
https://www.store.reading.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/faculty-of-arts-humanities-social-science/english-literature-department/beckett-international-foundation-research-seminar-2021
For further information, please visit the Beckett Research Seminar page.

FoodSEqual: FoodSystem Research PhD discussion
2021-11-10 17:00 - 18:00 | Microsoft Teams
Do you have ideas for a FoodSystem Research PhD?
Please note: this event is for academic staff only. FoodSEqual is one of four consortia funded to deliver UKRI’s ‘Transforming UK Food Systems’ SPF programme. This 5 year project brings together academic researchers, food industry, policymakers, charity organisations and disadvantaged communities working together to tackle food inequalities and ‘ reimagine ’ how food products policy and supply chains can be developed in a sustainable way that is good for the planet.
The project is co-creating a framework and new food products to ensure that affordable, sustainable nutritious food is available to all. Two 3 year PhDs co- funded by Cranfield University and University of Reading to complement the project will be available from October 2022.
Interested?
Academic staff are invited to join the project team on 10 November 2021 (from 17:00) via Teams to propose/discuss topic ideas for these PhDs.
Contact Jane Bradbeer (Project Manager) (j.h.bradbeer@reading.ac.uk) for joining instructions.

Expanding the design canon: fresh perspectives on women in type and publishing
2021-11-10 18:30 - 20:30
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) is delighted to collaborate with the St Bride Foundation to celebrate recent contributions to the field of graphic design history, which seek to shake established narratives to expand the design canon. Our panel of speakers will share their thoughts on the imperative to reconsider women’s depiction in received design histories, and will highlight some past and present contributions by women to the fields of type, graphic design and publishing. The evening will also feature the launch of an exciting new website comprising a visualisation of the findings of the ‘Women in Type’ Leverhulme Trust funded project.
Invited Guest Speakers:
Martha Scotford – ‘Research and Distribution: What Worked for Me’
Briar Levit – ‘Reorienting Approaches to Disseminating Design Histories’
Rathna Ramanathan – ‘Tara Books: Working with Marginalised Voices Across Cultures’
‘Women in Type’ project speakers:
Fiona Ross, Alice Savoie & Mathieu Triay – Women in Type: highlighting the contribution of women to type history
Online event via Zoom. Booking via this link.

Drone Stories
2021-11-11 13:00 - 14:00 | Online event
Human Geography Research Cluster Seminar Series 2021/22
Presentation by Anna Jackman, Lecturer in Human Geography
Dr Anna Jackman is a feminist political geographer interested in technological visibilities, volumes, relations and futures, as approached through the unmanning of everyday, urban and military life in the drone age. In this presentation, Anna will share some ‘drone stories’ from her research. Turning to the sites and scales of the home and body, she’ll reflect on how the drone’s growing domestic(ation) enacts complex (non-human) agencies while enabling and amplifying a range of uneven social relations.
Presentation followed by commentary, Q&A.
Discussant: Dr. Thomas Grisaffi
Thursday 11 November
1-2 pm MS Teams
Join on your computer or mobile app – Click here to join the meeting
Or call in (audio only) +44 20 3443 6294,,972099234# United Kingdom, London
Phone Conference ID: 972 099 234#
Find a local number | Reset PIN

PiCoBoo: A Research Project and an Open-Access Database
2021-11-11 17:00 - 18:00 | Online event
Dr Francesca Tancini, University of Newcastle
PiCoBoo: a research project and an open-access database
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) is pleased to host this free online event which is open to all. Please register your interest to receive the Zoom link here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/181636629047
The PiCoBoo project aims to assess the significance of 19th-century European picturebooks, printed in colour for children, as a catalyst for major cultural and social changes.
It makes accessible a large corpus of picturebooks, so far dispersed across countries and institutions, only partially retrievable through local catalogues, not always correctly described and in a not-uniformed way. The database now provides almost 600 books, with hundreds of digitised images included and not retrievable elsewhere on the web.
PiCoBoo project has been hosted by the Children’s Literature Unit at Newcastle University, in partnership with Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books, and with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Complex Lives: Developing the application of biography to the past
2021-11-17 14:00 - 17:30 | Microsoft Teams
A joint University of Reading and British Museum Webinar.
Speakers for the seminar:
J.D. Hill (British Museum)
Duncan Garrow (University of Reading)
Laura Perucchetti (British Museum) and Abidemi Babalola (British Museum)
Mary Lewis (University of Reading)
Caroline Cartwright (British Museum)
Amara Thornton (University of London)
Peter Bray (University of Reading)
The full programme can be seen here.

Tracing the Nigerian Civil War through Heinemann’s African Writers Series archives: an undergraduate research project and its afterlife
2021-11-18 17:00 - 18:00
Dr Sue Walsh and Ms Temiloluwa Ogdugbesan
Tracing the Nigerian Civil War through Heinemann’s African Writers Series archives: an undergraduate research project and its afterlife
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) is pleased to host this free online event which is open to all. Please register your interest to receive the Zoom link here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/182683369877
As is well known, Heinemann Educational Books’ African Writers Series was particularly significant for the development of postcolonial literature in Africa and when the series was first established in 1962, Nigerian authors, including its editorial adviser Chinua Achebe, were among its most significant contributors. But, when in 1967, civil war broke out as the south-eastern part of Nigeria (Biafra) attempted to secede from the rest of the country, Heinemann was left in a potentially difficult position; publishing a significant number of authors from the secessionist side of the conflict (including Achebe himself) whilst trying to maintain its offices in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
This summer I supervised an undergraduate research project funded by the University of Reading, in which a second-year student, Temiloluwa Odugbesan, conducted research into where and how the civil war was discussed in the papers of the publishers (held in the Heinemann archives at the University of Reading’s Special Collections) during the civil war period (1967-70). The purpose of the project was two-fold: 1) to conduct some initial research that would support my longer term research into how Heinemann handled the implications of the civil war for its business in Nigeria; 2) to introduce undergraduate students and others not familiar with the AWS archives to them, through the production of a short series of blogs and an online exhibition to be hosted on the University of Reading’s Special Collections website.
This is the story of that research project, what Temiloluwa found and how she put together an engaging set of blogs and a fascinating online exhibition intended to introduce people to some of the greats of Nigerian literature, to the African Writers Series Archives, and to give some brief background to the civil war and its implications for the publishers at Heinemann and their authors.
Sue Walsh
I’m a lecturer in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading. My original specialism is in children’s literature and theory and I am a member of the Graduate Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media, and I have published a monograph in this area (Kipling’s Children’s Literature: Language, Identity and Constructions of Childhood, was published in 2010 by Ashgate)
More recently however, having been born in New Bussa in north-western Nigeria in 1967, I have always been interested in Nigerian literature and particularly in the literature of the civil war period. I teach a third year module in Nigerian prose literature (from Achebe to Adichie) and have become more and more engrossed in archival work, looking into what Heinemann’s papers can tell us about this period and its impact on the authors and publishers.
Temiloluwa Odugbesan
I’m a current 3rd Year Spanish and Economics BA student and, during the summer of my second year, I undertook a unique research project ‘Tracing the Nigerian Civil war through Heinemann’s African Writers Series’.
My name is Temiloluwa and I am one of the Nigerian speakers for this event, which you may have been able to tell by my devastatingly wonderful name. I look forward to sharing my research project with you because not only is it relevant but also because the African Writers Series holds a special place in my heart as it celebrates Nigerian literature alongside many other great works. Growing up I have always appreciated literature and to explore it from an indigenous perspective this past summer has been amazing, you truly get to see how every writer has their story.
Furthermore, through understanding the context this adds to the ambience and feel of the writers – more to come in the talk!

Vanished: Hope and Histories of Extinction
2021-11-18 18:00 - 19:30 | Online event
History Department Annual Stenton Lecture 2021
Dr Sadiah Qureshi (University of Birmingham): ‘Vanished: Hope and Histories of Extinction’
We are so familiar with extinction that it is hard to imagine a world where nothing was believed to be extinct. We are accustomed to stories of extinction from playing with toy dinosaurs to museum visits. For decades, anyone visiting the Natural History Museum in London immediately encountered, Dippy the dinosaur. From July 2017, visitors are greeted by ‘Hope’, the blue whale. She dives from the ceiling towards the crowds in an astonishingly beautiful reminder of the fragility of the natural world in the Anthropocene. Below her, in the alcoves of the vast entrance hall, visitors can see collected specimens of extinct and endangered species, from the mastodon to coral.
Yet, the science of extinction is modern. Up until the eighteenth century, well-known losses, such as the Mauritian dodo, were attributed to human actions. In the later eighteenth century, working from the extensive natural history collections in Paris, George Cuvier argued that fossilised elephantine beasts such as the Mastodon were a different species to their living relatives. This research helped establish the notion that extinction was both endemic and widespread in earth’s history and quickly underpinned new ideas about loss and endangerment in the modern world. In the twentieth century, the rise of ecology and conservation movements in the 1960s and 1970s created a new awareness of anthropogenically-induced species loss and we are currently witnessing a new era of activism with the emergence of Extinction Rebellion.
We now know that rapacious exploitation of natural resources is directly contributing to the habitat loss, overconsumption and pollution underpinning many modern extinctions, from the great auk to the Yangtze dolphin. For millenia, each loss permanently diminished the natural world. Yet, within the last decade, the serious prospect of de-extinction has arisen. Scientists are racing to resurrect lost species while their supporters dream of mammoths roaming the earth once more.
Drawing on scientific writings, activist art and museum collections and displays, this Stenton Lecture will explore how naturalists established the notion that extinction was an endemic natural process and the lasting legacies of this shift for current debates about climate change, the ‘sixth extinction’ and the future of our planet.’

Dr Qureshi’s lecture will be accompanied by a Stenton workshop in partnership with the British Museum entitled: ‘Collecting and Nineteenth-century Empires’.
Confirmed speakers include Mirjam Brusius (German Historical Institute); Kate Nichols (Birmingham); Ricardo Roque (Lisbon); Subhadra Das (Galton Collections, UCL), Marenka Thompson-Odlum (Glasgow/ Oxford), Amara Thornton (UCL), as well as speakers from the British Museum.

Stenton Workshop: Collecting and nineteenth-century Empires
2021-11-19 14:00 - 18:00
History Department Annual Stenton Lecture & Workshop 2021
The Stenton Lecture, ‘Vanished: Hope and Histories of Extinction‘, will be delivered at 6pm on 18 November. The Stenton Workshop will be held on the 19 November. Dr Sadiah Qureshi (University of Birmingham) is the Stenton Lecturer for this year.
Dr Qureshi’s lecture will be accompanied by a Stenton workshop in partnership with the British Museum entitled: ‘Collecting and nineteenth-century Empires’. This workshop will be held on 19 November.

Session one: 2pm – 3pm
Chair: Alexandra Green (British Museum)

Isobel MacDonald (British Museum): Acquiring Empire?: A data-driven examination of the British Museum’s processes of acquisition, 1814-1914
Amara Thornton (School of Advanced Study, London): Histories of Archaeological Collecting in the Caribbean

Break: 3pm- 3.15pm
Session two: 3.15pm- 4.15pm
Chair: Imma Ramos (British Museum)

Kate Nichols (University of Birmingham): Indigenous dispossession and settler colonial art galleries: Anguish at the National Gallery of Victoria
Gaye Sculthorpe (British Museum): Engaging and mobilising Aboriginal objects in UK collections

Break: 4.15pm – 4.30pm
Session three: 4.30pm – 6 pm
Chair: Rohan Deb Roy (Reading)

Subhadra Das (Galton Collections, UCL): Displays of power: historical perspectives on natural history collecting at University College London
Mirjam Brusius (German Historical Institute): What’s wrong with the Field? Race, modernity, and the history of collecting
Ricardo Roque (Lisbon): Collecting and the work of inscription in the nineteenth-century racial sciences

Registration for these events
Both the Stenton Lecture and the Stenton Workshop will be held online. To register for the Stenton Lecture and/or the Stenton Workshop, please visit this registration page.
For further information please contact Dr Rohan Deb Roy

Walker Institute / Microsoft UK collaboration launch and COP26 next steps
2021-11-24 14:30 - 17:30 | ICMA Centre, Large Lecture Theatre
Join the Walker Institute to celebrate the launch of our new collaboration with Microsoft UK and explore how public-private partnerships can better build climate-resilient societies, particularly in the Global South. A panel of experts from different disciplines and backgrounds will reflect on the outcomes of COP26 and the implications it has for the future of climate-change risk management. With a focus on public climate partnerships and the role of research, technology and capacity-building, we will consider how we can help people manage climate risk in a sustainable way.
Registration and full programme.
Registering for this event via the Eventbrite website means that your personal data will be processed by Eventbrite, Inc. in accordance with their privacy policy

The moral and emotional politics of food banking in (post)pandemic London
2021-11-25 13:00 - 14:00 | Online event
Human Geography Research Cluster Seminar Series 2021/22
Dr. Harry Pettit, David Robins Research Fellow in Urban Geography, Geography and Environmental Science
This presentation asks the question of how among food bank volunteers and employees a deep ethic of care towards food bank guests can co-exist alongside pervasive judgement regarding their neediness and expectations? Using 6 months of ethnographic fieldwork at an independent food bank in north London during the pandemic, I argue that volunteers and employees are constantly caught between an emotional compulsion to satisfy guest needs, the scarce and uneven availability of resources, and a set of rules designed by management to delimit food bank use. This produces an incessantly messy guest relationship, within which judgement towards their behaviour becomes one predominant way of squaring the moral and emotional dilemma of being unable to meet their needs. I want to suggest that this messy moral and emotional politics has broad consequences for the imaginaries of welfare.
Click here to join the meeting

David King: Authoring the Visual Narrative by Design
2021-11-25 17:00 - 18:00
Professor Rick Poynor
David King: Authoring the Visual Narrative by Design
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) is pleased to host this free online event which is open to all. This research seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place on the University of Reading campus (room TBC) and online. Please register your interest to receive the Zoom link here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/182700621477
David King (1942-2016) occupies an unusual position in British graphic design and publishing. At the Sunday Times Magazine, where he worked for 10 years, he was both a designer and a visual journalist, developing, researching and sometimes photographing his own stories. In 1972, he co-authored his first book, about Trotsky, and he went on to build up a world-class private collection of graphics and photographs from the Russian revolutionary period (now owned by Tate), which he used in his own work. As an expert visual researcher with an ever-developing command of the subject, he designed and authored a range of catalogues and books about Russian and Soviet history, among them The Commissar Vanishes (1997), Ordinary Citizens (2003) and Red Star Over Russia (2009). King was a leading example of “the designer as author”, able to conceive and construct visual narratives that would never be attempted by text-led historians or designers who lacked his deep historical knowledge. This talk will trace the development of King’s visual practice as an author, consider the visual signature he derived from constructivism, and assess the combination of visual and editorial skills that enabled his publishing projects. What are the implications of King’s body of work for a more complex form of visual authorship?
Rick Poynor is Professor of Design and Visual Culture at the University of Reading. He was the founding editor of Eye, the international review of graphic design, and co-founder of the Design Observer website. His most recent books are David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian (Yale University Press, 2020) and National Theatre Posters: A Design History (Unit Editions, 2017). His other books include Obey the Giant: Life in the Image World (2001), No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism (2003) and Jan van Toorn: Critical Practice (2008). Occasional Papers will publish Graphic Cultures, his fourth volume of essays, in 2022.

Persecuting Society? Defining the 'Orthodox Republic' in the Age of Justinian
2021-11-25 17:00 - 18:00 | TBC
Department of Classics 11th Annual Percy Ure Lecture
Professor Peter Sarris (University of Cambridge): Persecuting Society? Defining the ‘Orthodox Republic’ in the Age of Justinian
All are welcome to join University of Reading’s Classics Department for the 11th Annual Percy Ure Lecture, to be delivered by Peter Sarris, Professor of Late Antique, Medieval and Byzantine Studies at Cambridge University. This lecture honours Professor Percy N. Ure, who founded the department.
Admission free. Booking essential
We are hoping to hold this event in person, but will revert to an online lecture if necessary.
