Centre for Health Humanities Online Seminars
2021-03-24 13:00 - 14:00 (Europe/London)
Janet Walls, ‘The Zodiac Sign as Body in the Late Medieval Period’
Tom Mills, ‘Medieval Leprosy and Bioarchaeology: The Body as a Physical Sign’
Claire Collins, ‘Secreta mulierum? The not so private signs of pregnancy in late medieval England’
To join, email a.s.mangham@reading.ac.uk
Please click here to see the other seminars in our series
Follow us on Twitter @healthhums

Meteorological Masterclass: Heatwaves and Climate Change in Urban Microclimates
2021-03-24 15:00 - 16:30
Wednesday 24 March 2021: Heatwaves and climate change in urban microclimates
Professor Sue Grimmond, University of Reading
The focus of this talk is on heatwaves and how urban areas can exacerbate their impact because of the well-known canopy layer urban heat island effects, and why cities and their residents are particularly vulnerable. Impacts of heatwaves have been very significant if people are not appropriately prepared (as witnessed during the 2003 heatwave across Europe). Attention will be directed to the important impact of scale and an understanding of the dynamics of urban climate, challenges in predictions and advance warning, and strategies and interventions for heat stress mitigation.
Part of the University of Reading /Royal Meteorological Society Masterclass Series: Anticipating floods, droughts and heatwaves. Other dates include:
Wednesday 24 February 2021: Flood forecasting hours to months ahead
Dr Linda Speight: University of Reading
This Masterclass will discuss the very latest work in probabilistic hydrometeorological forecasting – hours to months ahead – and the use and communication of flood forecasts to support decision-making. It will look at how well we can forecast floods at a range of scales and how we can balance lead time and uncertainty to answer the important operational question “when and where will impact occur?”. It will also cover how flood forecasting can be used in locations with limited data to support early action and will close with a discussion on what the future research directions are for flood forecasting.

Wednesday 10 March 2021: Representing convection in Numerical Weather Prediction models and its implications
Professor Bob Plant, University of Reading
The forecasting of convective precipitation remains among the most challenging and mosst stubborn problems in meteorology. In this talk, Bob will review the fundamental scientific challenges, discuss recent progress and advances being made in this field, and highlight some of the implications for operational forecasting.
About the series
These masterclasses are intended to provide additional training for professionals working in Meteorology and Climate Science, and its operational application.
Each masterclass webinar will run from 3pm to 4.30pm, starting with a presentation followed by the opportunity for questions and discussion with the speaker. While the webinars are part of a series, delegates can choose which seminars they attend (attendance at all three is not compulsory).
Registration: Member: £20.00 | Non-member: £25.00
Last year we welcomed 542 delegates throughout the series – view all three seminars on the RMetSoc YouTube channel here.

Griselda Pollock: 'Gesture, Affect and the Post-Traumatic Image, or Raphael in Art and Art’s Histories after the Holocaust and in Contemporary Art'
2021-03-24 17:00 - 18:00
Art & History of Art CLUB Talks
Department of Art, supported by the UoR Arts Committee
Griselda Pollock discusses her pre-recorded lecture entitled, Gesture, Affect and the Post-Traumatic Image, or Raphael in Art and Art’s Histories after the Holocaust and in Contemporary Art.
Griselda Pollock is Professor emerita of Social and Critical Histories of Art (1990- 2020) and Director of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory & History (CentreCATH) (2001-) at the University of Leeds. Griselda Pollock has taught for over 40 years in a School of Fine Art as a feminist, a social-historical art historian and a cultural analyst. In this lecture she creates transdisciplinary encounters between art and history, feminist and trauma theory, making and thinking, and the innovative forms through which the aesthetic and ethical challenges of art in a post-traumatic condition can be explored. Challenging the progressive logic of narrative, periodised art history, she presents and elaborates a new installation in her virtual feminist museum with film, literature and images that relay artists’ engagement with art and history through the relations of time, space and the archive in contemporary art making.
Griselda Pollock develops international, queer, postcolonial, feminist analyses of art’s diverse histories by formulating new concepts with which to deliver ‘feminist interventions in art’s histories’: Old Mistresses: Women, Art & Ideology (1981 New edition Bloomsbury, 2020), Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity & the Histories of Art (1988), Avant-Garde Gambits: Gender and the Colour of Art History (1992), Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts (1992/96), Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories (1999) Encounters in Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive (2007 and After-affects/After-images: Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation in the Virtual Feminist Museum (2013). Her most recent publications include the major monograph and first major art historical study of the artist, Charlotte Salomon and the Theatre of Memory [Leben? oder Theater? 1941-43] (Yale, 2018) and writings on Yael Bartana, Laura Mulvey, Penny Siopis, Monica Weiss and Christine Taylor-Patten. Crossing art, museology, philosophy and film, she analyses the perennial threat of ‘the concentrationary universe’ created by the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century: Griselda Pollock & Max Silverman (eds), the Concentrationary Cinema (2009), Concentrationary Memories (2011) and Concentrationary Imaginaries (2015); Concentrationary Art: Jean Cayrol, the Lazarean and the Everyday in Post-war Film, Literature, Music and the Visual Arts (2019). Forthcoming are books on Memory and Place on the work of Van Gogh, The Agency of Marilyn Monroe and on abstract painting titled Killing Men and Dying Women: Painting and Imag(in)Difference in 1950s New York (Manchester University Press). More information available here:
https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/fine-art/staff/410/prof-griselda-pollock
https://centrecath.leeds.ac.uk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griselda_Pollock
To attend, please contact Dr James Hellings (j.hellings@reading.ac.uk) for more details.

The Transformative Female Publishers of Post-Franco Spain
2021-03-25 17:00 - 18:30
Democratizing Culture and Building a New Consciousness: The Transformative Female Publishers of Post-Franco Spain, Dr Marta Simó Comas (Department of Languages and Cultures)
This presentation will provide an overview of the role played by women publishers in the post-Franco publishing industry and the way in which they engaged intellectually and politically with the profession. In particular, we will consider the cultural practices of two emblematic publishing houses founded and run by women (Rosa Regàs’ La Gaya Ciencia and Esther Tusquets’ Editorial Lumen), and how these contributed both to the emergence of a new progressive and critical attitude among the public, and to the genesis of a new cultural and social paradigm.
Dr Marta Simó Comas is lecturer in Spanish Culture in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Reading.
Please join the seminar here using Microsoft Teams.

ECR Dragons' Den
2021-03-29 15:30 - 17:00
ECR Dragons’ Den – Monday 29th March 15.30-17.00
Do you have a really great idea for a collaborative project? Have you been planning to write a grant but don’t have the pilot data to support your idea? Here is your big chance!
The ECR interdisciplinary group CINNergies, and the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences Research Committee have each donated £2,500 (that’s a total of £5,000) to support ECR-led collaborative pilot projects. Just like the real Dragons’ Den, our panel of “Dragons” will be sitting on piles of money (figuratively) and will choose to support the projects they feel have potential.
Projects must be collaborative and interdisciplinary! So, if there is a project that you’ve got your heart set on and you know of another ECR that you’ve been dying to work with… the time is now!! Spaces are limited so if you would like to apply, please submit a 500 word summary of your project proposal here. Applications will close on the 15th March at 12pm.
Those who are selected to go through to the next round will be required to give a short oral presentation at the event 15:30-17:00 on Monday 29th March.
Click here to join the Dragons’ Den event

Health Services Research and Pharmacy Practice conference
2021-04-08 09:30 - 2021-04-09 14:30 | Online event
This year’s conference will focus on Designing Healthcare: Stimulating Interdisciplinarity and Co-design for Quality Healthcare.There is widespread recognition and support for collaborative-working across disciplinary boundaries to solve real-world problems, with users’ needs firmly embedded within this process. The conference theme centres on design: interdisciplinary working between science and the arts to co-produce research. The conference will stimulate discussion, share experiences and generate ideas to design healthcare.
Abstracts are free to read here: https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpp/riab007

CINN neuromethods: The role of isothiocyanates in health & food preference
2021-04-15 15:00 - 16:00 | Microsoft Teams
The role of isothiocyanates in health & food preference, Luke Bell (Lecturer in Temperate Horticulture at the School of Agriculture, Policy & Development, University of Reading)
Isothiocyanates (ITCs) are produced by plants of the Brassicales order and are commonly found in our diets. High concentrations are produced by crops like broccoli, mustard, rocket, and watercress and have been linked with anti-cancer effects. There has also been research conducted to determine their effects on neurological health and prevention of disease, but only a few compounds have been tested to-date. Some ITCs are also noted for their pungent aromas and flavours and can impact liking and food preferences. They can also induce pain receptors in high concentrations. This has been attributed to taste receptor genotype sensitivity, but recent evidence suggests exposure to ITCs in the diet over time is a stronger determinant of liking. I will present some of my research and ideas in these areas and see if there is any scope for developing collaborations with CINN.

Microsoft Teams meeting: CINN neuromethods Thursday 15-Apr-2021 3pm

“neuromethods” is a weekly meeting held at CINN where we discuss published, ongoing, or planned research, ranging from formal presentations to informal problem-solving over coffee.
If you would like to discuss your work or a research idea (however unbaked), if you would like to join us occasionally, or would simply like to find out more, please email cinn@reading.ac.uk.
neuromethods sessions are listed in the CINN calendar, which you can open in Outlook by searching for CINN.

Can Motion Event Construal be Taught or Restructured? Evidence from Bilinguals and L2 Learners
2021-04-16 13:00 - 2021-04-17 15:30
Registration is now open for our workshop entitled ‘Can Motion Event Construal be Taught or Restructured? Evidence from Bilinguals and L2 Learners‘.
The workshop, organised by Dr Fraibet Aveledo and Professor Jeanine Treffers-Daller, will take place online on April 16th-17th, 2021.
The event is free, but if you would like to attend, please register by providing your contact details. You will then receive the Zoom links prior to the event. To register, please click here.
The workshop programme and abstract booklet are also now available. Further information, please email motionevent2020@gmail.com.

Rationality: reasons and heuristics (RCCR Summer Seminar Series)
2021-04-20 17:00 - 18:30 | Microsoft Teams
Rationality: reasons and heuristics, Emma Borg
Emma is Director of the Reading Centre for Cognition Research and Professor of Philosophy at University of Reading.
This seminar is part of The Reading Centre for Cognition Research’s 2021 Summer Seminar Series: Understanding ourselves and others: reasoning and rationality
The aim of this seminar series is to explore these newer approaches to reasoning and rationality, looking at cutting edge work in the area and asking what these moves might tell us about how we go about understanding the actions of others and ourselves.
A standard picture of humans as generally ordered and orderly thinkers has come under significant pressure in recent years, in particular from the work of Kahneman and others who have stressed our susceptibility to a range of cognitive traps (such as framing or bias). Although the claim commonly associated with this school of thought – that we are ‘predictably irrational’, in Ariely’s phrase – has been rejected by many, even those who seek to defend our status as good reasoners often suggest a more complex and potentially messy set of processes, mechanisms and features than those standardly appealed to in classic folk psychological approaches.
All welcome!
If you have any questions, please email Emma Borg e.g.n.borg@reading.ac.uk
Microsoft Teams meeting – join here
research.reading.ac.uk/cognition-research/

Human Geography Online Research Seminar
2021-04-22 13:00 - 14:00
Join us for our Human Geography online seminar. Sylvia Jaworska, Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics, University of Reading, will be presenting on:
What a corpus-assisted multimodal discourse analysis can contribute to our understanding of the construction of ‘good’ food in the digital?
Thursday 22 April
1-2 pm MS Teams

IFNH Workshop: Building on 2020 EIT Food Projects
2021-04-22 14:00 - 16:45
IFNH Workshop: Building on 2020 EIT Food Projects, Thursday 22nd April (14.00-16.45)
In 2020 the University was involved in a large number of EIT Food projects covering all the EIT Food functional areas – Education, Innovation, Public Engagement and Business Creation. We are very keen to facilitate the sharing of results and lessons learned from this significant project portfolio, to ensure that the wider University community is aware of, and can benefit from, these outcomes. In addition, we are also very keen to support efforts to build further on these EIT Food projects, by exploring opportunities to take projects further forward and/or by exploring opportunities for further collaboration with EIT Food partners.
Please join our online workshop on the afternoon of Thursday 22nd April for an opportunity to hear colleagues share insights from their project experiences and to explore how the University can maximise and build on these.
To attend the workshop, please contact Elena Carp at e.carp@reading.ac.uk.

Languages in Lockdown
2021-04-22 16:00 - 17:30
Over the last year, measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic have affected our lives in unprecedented ways. One notable change has been the amount of time children have spent at home during repeated lockdowns and school closures. In families where more than one language is spoken, this new situation had the potential to change patterns of language use.
In the spring and summer of 2020, a team of researchers in the UK and one in Norway came together to get a snapshot of language use in multilingual families during the first lockdown through a survey. In this webinar researchers from the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (UK), UCL (UK), and MultiLing (Norway) will share some of the insights from this work, and they will be joined on the panel by parents who took part in the research.
We welcome audience participation, and there will be ample opportunity to engage with questions from participants.
This event is being held in conjunction with the Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan (MultiLing), Bilingualism Matters @ Reading and UCL BiLingo. For more information please see the event poster.
This online event is free and open to all. Please register your interest to receive a personal invitation: http://bit.ly/3sqVZqc

Online Children's Spring Lecture
2021-04-27 16:30 - 17:30 | Microsoft Teams
What is it like to be a climate scientist in Antarctica? Join polar scientist Dr Ella Gilbert in our Online Children’s Spring Lecture as she talks about her personal experiences of working in the coldest, driest, remotest continent on our planet. How do you set out to better understand climate change in one of the wildest and most unexplored places on Earth? Expect to hear the answer as Ella reveals the science of the sky using aeroplanes, weather balloons, clouds and much more!

Folk psychology, normative cognition, and the wide distribution of norms (RCCR Summer Seminar Series)
2021-04-27 17:00 - 18:30 | Microsoft Teams
Folk psychology, normative cognition, and the wide distribution of norms, Kristin Andrews
Kristin Andrews is York Research Chair in Animal Minds and Professor of Philosophy at York University (Toronto), where she also helps coordinate the Cognitive Science program and the Greater Toronto Area Animal Cognition Discussion Group. Her research explores the evolution of morality, the pluralistic and normative nature of human folk psychology, animal cognition, and normativity in human and nonhuman animals.
This seminar is part of The Reading Centre for Cognition Research’s 2021 Summer Seminar Series: Understanding ourselves and others: reasoning and rationality
The aim of this seminar series is to explore these newer approaches to reasoning and rationality, looking at cutting edge work in the area and asking what these moves might tell us about how we go about understanding the actions of others and ourselves.
A standard picture of humans as generally ordered and orderly thinkers has come under significant pressure in recent years, in particular from the work of Kahneman and others who have stressed our susceptibility to a range of cognitive traps (such as framing or bias). Although the claim commonly associated with this school of thought – that we are ‘predictably irrational’, in Ariely’s phrase – has been rejected by many, even those who seek to defend our status as good reasoners often suggest a more complex and potentially messy set of processes, mechanisms and features than those standardly appealed to in classic folk psychological approaches.
All welcome!
If you have any questions, please email Emma Borg e.g.n.borg@reading.ac.uk
Microsoft Teams meeting – join here
research.reading.ac.uk/cognition-research/

Online Panel: Experimental publishing and alternative networked cultures
2021-04-29 17:00 - 19:00
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing is hosting an online panel on ‘Experimental publishing and alternative networked cultures’. The panel will be convened by Ruth Blacksell and Lozana Rossenova with contributions from Karen Di Franco, Aymeric Mansoux, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak.
The emergence of experimental post-digital publishing over the past decade has opened up new modes and methods of design practice that have allowed for extended relationships between social and media environments. This panel discussion draws on historical as well as contemporary references to examine such approaches through a range of perspectives, spanning the fields of art, graphic design, digital media and software development. The projects and practices discussed in the presentations and subsequent Q&A will consider the shift away from fixed to more fluid forms of publication and acts of publishing that are contingent upon networked, interactive and hybrid (digital/analog) contexts. Presentations will examine the links between conceptual and performance art practices from the 1960s, which fed into critical debates in art and design discourse – vis-a-vis the role of the active audience/reader/user – emerging in the 1980s and ‘90s with the broader availability of desktop computing and networked communications. Alongside these developments, a thriving landscape of grassroots publishing and alternative networked social relations, with roots in 1960s counterculture, continues to disrupt and re-examine conventions of authorship, copyright, design, dissemination and reception. Looking at practices, processes and projects that embrace and reflect back on a variety of strategies including collaboration, participation and anonymity, as well as forms that can be permanent or transient, provisional and iterative, in nature, this event proposes the need for new, cross-disciplinary vocabularies to enter traditional discourses relating to publishing as practice.
For more information on the contributors, please visit: https://research.reading.ac.uk/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing/event/online-panel-discussion-experimental-publishing-and-alternative-networked-cultures/
This online event is free and open to all. Please register your interest to receive a personal invitation: https://bit.ly/3sVPgVC

CFAC presents Shulie (Dir. Elisabeth Subrin, 1997)
2021-04-29 19:00 - 20:30
Thursday 29th April 2021, 7-8:30pm (online)
The Centre for Film and Aesthetic Cultures (CFAC) at the University of Reading is delighted to host an online screening of Shulie, a shot-by-shot remake of an obscure 1967 documentary on Shulamith Firestone, an American art student who was on the cusp of becoming a major figure within the newly resurgent women’s movement with her 1970 work, The Dialectic of Sex. Director Elisabeth Subrin will join feminist scholars Natalie Thomlinson and Rachel Garfield in conversation after the screening to discuss the legacy of both the film and of Firestone. Called ‘a thing of wonder’ by the New Yorker, Shulie raises fascinating questions about the sometimes difficult place of the feminist past in the feminist present that are still central today, and, in the director’s own words, seeks to ‘investigate the mythos and residue of the late 60s’.
For more information please visit the CFAC website.
This event will take place via Zoom. Please register for a space on the Eventbrite page here for details of how to access the meeting: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/shulie-with-q-and-a-with-director-elisabeth-subrin-tickets-148189810713

The logic of universalization guides moral judgment (RCCR Summer Seminar Series)
2021-05-04 17:00 - 18:30 | Microsoft Teams
The logic of universalization guides moral judgment, Fiery Cushman
Fiery Cushman is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, where he directs the Moral Psychology Research Laboratory. His research addresses the balance between learned and innate contributions to cognition; the human capacity to explain, predict and evaluate others’ behavior; and the architecture of learning and decision-making in a social context.
This seminar is part of The Reading Centre for Cognition Research’s 2021 Summer Seminar Series: Understanding ourselves and others: reasoning and rationality
The aim of this seminar series is to explore these newer approaches to reasoning and rationality, looking at cutting edge work in the area and asking what these moves might tell us about how we go about understanding the actions of others and ourselves.
A standard picture of humans as generally ordered and orderly thinkers has come under significant pressure in recent years, in particular from the work of Kahneman and others who have stressed our susceptibility to a range of cognitive traps (such as framing or bias). Although the claim commonly associated with this school of thought – that we are ‘predictably irrational’, in Ariely’s phrase – has been rejected by many, even those who seek to defend our status as good reasoners often suggest a more complex and potentially messy set of processes, mechanisms and features than those standardly appealed to in classic folk psychological approaches.
All welcome!
If you have any questions, please email Emma Borg e.g.n.borg@reading.ac.uk
Microsoft Teams meeting – join here
research.reading.ac.uk/cognition-research/

Online panel: Translation outreach in schools and the move online
2021-05-05 18:00 - 19:30
This online panel event is free and open to all. Please register your interest to receive a personal invitation: https://bit.ly/3wzSYGK
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing and Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism at the University of Reading, in partnership with Outside in World, the organisation dedicated to promoting and exploring world literature and children’s books in translation, are delighted to invite you to a free online panel event on translation outreach in schools.
Translation workshops and activities with schools are a powerful way to nurture new linguists, promote understanding of multilingualism, raise confidence among multilingual students, and foster inclusive thinking. The panel brings together some of the most exciting people and organisations currently working with schools on translation, and whose activities encompass a wide range of perspectives and languages, including Arabic, French, German, Polish, Russian, Romanian, Spanish, Turkish, and Urdu. Their discussion will reflect on how the move online during the Covid-19 pandemic has generated new ways of working, new opportunities for collaboration, and new resources accessible for teachers.
This event is aimed at teachers of languages across primary and secondary schools, Key Stages 2-5, covering both Modern Foreign Languages and work with learners who have English as an Additional Language. It will also appeal to librarians, educators and all who are interested in translation for children. Participants will learn about some of the major initiatives being led in schools to promote multilingualism and intercultural awareness, and gain ideas and new digital resources for their teaching practice.
Speakers:

Sarah Ardizzone is an award-winning translator from French. Co-founder of Translators in Schools, the Stephen Spender Trust’s flagship education programme, Sarah also consults for its Creative Translation in the Classroom programme. She is a long-term contributor to Pop Up Festivals, including the forthcoming Pop Up Festival of Multilingual Literature.
Gitanjali Patel is a translator, social researcher and co-founder of Shadow Heroes. This organisation explores translation as a social justice practice in schools workshops and training for translators.
Greet Pauwelijn is a linguist, translator and founder of Book Island, an independent publisher known for its beautifully-illustrated and thought-provoking picture books from around the world.
Charlotte Ryland is Director of the Stephen Spender Trust, a charity whose mission includes promoting literary translation and multilingualism. The Trust is currently co-curating the forthcoming Pop Up Festival of Multilingual Literature. She founded the Queen’s College Translation Exchange in 2018, with the aim of bringing multilingual creativity and culture to people of all ages, in particular to inspire young language-learners to continue with their studies through GCSE, A Level and beyond.

Chair:

Clémentine Beauvais is an award-winning writer for children and young adults in French, and a literary translator from English to French. She is Senior Lecturer in English in Education at the University of York.

This event is part of an ongoing seminar series on translation for children led by the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing in partnership with Outside in World. To be kept updated on the series, register your interest here.

Royal Economic Society Annual Public Lecture 2021: Why digital is so disruptive
2021-05-06 13:00 - 14:30
The Royal Economic Society is pleased to announce that the RES Annual Public Lecture will be held online on Thursday 6 May between 1pm – 2.30pm. Bookings are now open.
Established in 2001, our Annual Public Lecture provides an opportunity for school students to watch internationally-renowned economists present their research. Principally aimed at sixth form students, the APL has become an established part of the senior school calendar. This year’s event will be online and co-hosted by the University of Reading and the University of York.
This year’s lecture will be chaired by RES President Dame Carol Propper and delivered by Prof. Diane Coyle CBE, Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Why digital is so disruptive: The Internet can be traced back to 1969, the World Wide Web to 1990, and iPhone to 2007 – yet it is only in the past few years that “digital disruption” has become a big theme in business. In this lecture, Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, and an expert on the digital economy, will explore why digital technology is rewiring the economy – especially now so much activity has been driven online – what economists are learning about its consequences, and how economic policies need to change.
Partners: Royal Economic Society and University of York
For more information please click here.

CINNergies Reading Club - Philosophy of science: do physiology and psychology align?
2021-05-07 09:00 - 12:00 | Microsoft Teams
CINNergies Reading Club
Philosophy of science: do physiology and psychology align?

7th May 2021: 0900-1200 BST
CINNergies are hosting a reading club and debate on the “Brain-Cognitive behaviour problem”. This debate is set to get to the heart of the challenges and potential benefits of interdisciplinary research.
According to nature research: “Cognitive neuroscience is the field of study focusing on the neural substrates of mental processes. It is at the intersection of psychology and neuroscience, but also overlaps with physiological psychology, cognitive psychology and neuropsychology. It combines the theories of cognitive psychology and computational modelling with experimental data about the brain.”
But can this scientific field successfully navigate the complex interdisciplinarity of the issues it is set out to investigate?
Sign up here and see below to access some of the resources we’ll be discussing.

Articles to read
Podcasts to listen to
Webinars to watch

György Buzsáki
The Brain–Cognitive Behavior Problem: A Retrospective

Russ Poldrack
Cognitive Ontologies
(Brain Inspired)

Russ Poldrak
The measurement crisis in cognitive neuroscience
(Reading Emotions 2020)

David Poeppel and Federico Adolfi
Against the Epistemological Primacy of the Hardware: The Brain from Inside Out, Turned Upside Down

György Buzsáki and David Poeppel
(Brain Inspired)

Anastasia Christakou
From molecules to mind

Shimon Marom
Dialogue Across Chasm: Are Psychology and Neurophysiology Incompatible?

CINNergies, part of the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN), is a creative and diverse community of early career researchers who share an openness for and motivation to engage in interdisciplinary research.

Fairbrother Lecture: Living with More than One Language - The Effects of Bilingualism on Mind and Brain
2021-05-11
Dr Toms Voits, UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Language is frequently in the headlines, from worries about people speaking too many languages or too few, to questions of whether bilingualism protects against cognitive decline in later life. Bilingualism has featured prominently in language debates, with stories often over-simplifying a more complex picture.
Join former Reading doctoral researcher Toms Voits on a journey through the uniqueness and complexity of the human brain’s capacity for language. This public lecture will introduce the ways in which two or more languages co-habit within a single mind, how processing allows languages to compete and co-operate, and the much-debated effects of bilingualism on mind and brain. With a focus on research on bilingualism in older adults, the lecture will examine some of the complexities that need to be unpicked in order to understand relationships between ageing, cognitive health and language.
*Due to current restrictions, this year’s Fairbrother Lecture will be delivered as a pre-recorded film that can be viewed online at any time after its release on Tuesday 11 May.
To sign up to receive the link to view the lecture recording please visit the Events page.
For further information contact Dr Joanna John.
For information on Fairbrother Lectures in other years see previous events.

Why do humans reason? (RCCR Summer Seminar Series)
2021-05-11 17:00 - 18:30 | Microsoft Teams
Why do humans reason? Hugo Mercier
Hugo Mercier is a research scientist at the CNRS (Institut Jean Nicod, Paris), where his work with the Evolution and Social Cognition team and the Collective Intelligence team has focused on two main topics: The function and workings of reasoning (see The Enigma of Reason) and How we evaluate communicated information (see Not Born Yesterday).
This seminar is part of The Reading Centre for Cognition Research’s 2021 Summer Seminar Series: Understanding ourselves and others: reasoning and rationality
The aim of this seminar series is to explore these newer approaches to reasoning and rationality, looking at cutting edge work in the area and asking what these moves might tell us about how we go about understanding the actions of others and ourselves.
A standard picture of humans as generally ordered and orderly thinkers has come under significant pressure in recent years, in particular from the work of Kahneman and others who have stressed our susceptibility to a range of cognitive traps (such as framing or bias). Although the claim commonly associated with this school of thought – that we are ‘predictably irrational’, in Ariely’s phrase – has been rejected by many, even those who seek to defend our status as good reasoners often suggest a more complex and potentially messy set of processes, mechanisms and features than those standardly appealed to in classic folk psychological approaches.
All welcome!
If you have any questions, please email Emma Borg e.g.n.borg@reading.ac.uk
Microsoft Teams meeting – join here
research.reading.ac.uk/cognition-research/

Spring Online Alumni Lecture Series: COVID – Stories from the Frontline – Culture Shock: How COVID has changed the arts
2021-05-13 18:30 - 19:30
COVID-19 has caused havoc and upheaval in ways no-one could have foreseen. In our spring online Alumni Lecture Series, we welcome University of Reading graduates from diverse backgrounds and industries to share their experiences and expertise on how the global pandemic has changed their sectors.
The global pandemic has had a devastating impact on the cultural sector – both in the UK and around the world. Diverse activities from live performances and theatre productions to exhibitions and galleries, have seen revenue fall dramatically as venues have closed their doors and gatherings have been limited by lockdowns and social distancing.
University of Reading Vice-Chancellor, Professor Robert Van de Noort wil be joined by successful music agent and executive, Reading graduate Emma Banks (BSc Food Science, 1989), who will share her experiences of how COVID-19 has impacted the music industry. This online discussion will provide an insight into what Emma thinks the short and long-term consequences are for the industry and what lessons she’s learnt from the pandemic.
Emma works for Creative Artists Agency (CAA) – a leading entertainment and sports agency – where she represents many of the world’s leading musicians, including Katy Perry, Muse, Arcade Fire, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Florence + The Machine, and Kylie Minogue.
Attendance free, but booking essential.

Horticultural Quality and Food Loss Network Sandpit Event
2021-05-18 09:00 - 12:30
The Horticultural Quality and Food Loss Network (HortQFLNet) is holding an online Sandpit Event on 18 May (09:00-12:30pm).
This is an opportunity to learn more about the Network and the 2021 Funding Call, meet and network with fellow academic researchers and industry partners, talk to the 2020 Cohort about their experiences of putting together a research proposal and find out ‘What makes the perfect research proposal’.
The Sandpit is open to all – please register here if you would like to attend.
Further information about the Network and Funding Opportunities can be found at HortQFLNet’s website. Please address any specific questions to Jane Bradbeer, Network Manager (SCFP) via info@foodlossnetwork.com.
Follow the Network on Twitter (@HortQFLNet) or connect with us on LinkedIn.

Normative folk psychology and decision theory (RCCR Summer Seminar Series)
2021-05-18 17:00 - 18:30 | Microsoft Teams
Normative folk psychology and decision theory, Joe Dewhurst
Joe Dewhurst is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, where he is working on a perspectival account of mechanistic functions in biology and cognitive science, as well as related projects on emergence and autonomy in the special sciences.
This seminar is part of The Reading Centre for Cognition Research’s 2021 Summer Seminar Series: Understanding ourselves and others: reasoning and rationality
The aim of this seminar series is to explore these newer approaches to reasoning and rationality, looking at cutting edge work in the area and asking what these moves might tell us about how we go about understanding the actions of others and ourselves.
A standard picture of humans as generally ordered and orderly thinkers has come under significant pressure in recent years, in particular from the work of Kahneman and others who have stressed our susceptibility to a range of cognitive traps (such as framing or bias). Although the claim commonly associated with this school of thought – that we are ‘predictably irrational’, in Ariely’s phrase – has been rejected by many, even those who seek to defend our status as good reasoners often suggest a more complex and potentially messy set of processes, mechanisms and features than those standardly appealed to in classic folk psychological approaches.
All welcome!
If you have any questions, please email Emma Borg e.g.n.borg@reading.ac.uk
Microsoft Teams meeting – join here
research.reading.ac.uk/cognition-research/

Pictures on the Move - Infringement of Images
2021-05-19 16:00 - 18:30
Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures (CFAC) presents an Online Film Screening & Discussion Event
Wednesday 19th May 2021
Film Screening available from 4pm. Please watch here on Vimeo
Discussion Event 5pm to 6.30pm
Please register here on Eventbrite
Contributors to the Discussion Event:

Gertrud Koch
James Hellings
Katja Müller-Helle
Johannes Maier

For more information please visit the CFAC event page
To view the HUO (trailer) visit https://vimeo.com/539573503

Conversational experiments: some reflections on Sperber and Mercier (RCCR Summer Seminar Series)
2021-05-25 17:00 - 18:30 | Microsoft Teams
Conversational experiments: some reflections on Sperber and Mercier
Kathryn Francis, Hamish Greening, Nat Hansen
Kathryn Francis is a Lecturer in Psychology, University of Keele, Nat Hansen is Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Reading. Hamish Greening was Research Assistant on Hansen’s project ‘New Online Methods in Experimental Philosophy of Language’.
This seminar is part of The Reading Centre for Cognition Research’s 2021 Summer Seminar Series: Understanding ourselves and others: reasoning and rationality
The aim of this seminar series is to explore these newer approaches to reasoning and rationality, looking at cutting edge work in the area and asking what these moves might tell us about how we go about understanding the actions of others and ourselves.
A standard picture of humans as generally ordered and orderly thinkers has come under significant pressure in recent years, in particular from the work of Kahneman and others who have stressed our susceptibility to a range of cognitive traps (such as framing or bias). Although the claim commonly associated with this school of thought – that we are ‘predictably irrational’, in Ariely’s phrase – has been rejected by many, even those who seek to defend our status as good reasoners often suggest a more complex and potentially messy set of processes, mechanisms and features than those standardly appealed to in classic folk psychological approaches.
All welcome!
If you have any questions, please email Emma Borg e.g.n.borg@reading.ac.uk
Microsoft Teams meeting – join here
research.reading.ac.uk/cognition-research/

Reading Assembly: Care
2021-05-27 08:00 - 2021-05-28 20:00 | Online event
What does caring mean to you? How has your understanding of ‘care’ changed in the last year?
Reading Assembly: Care is bringing together artists, social researchers and members of the local community to share their own memories and stories of care.
Join us for a lively programme of online workshops and discussions on 27 and 28 May 2021.

Online – Register here
Full programme online – highlights include:
THURSDAY 27 MAY

Defying the distance: Sustainable letters for loved ones: A workshop-based session of crafting seed paper to create plantable messages. 12:00-13:00
Cooking and Care: A workshop exploring the relationship between cooking, comfort and care. 13:00-15:00
A Walk With Nature: A workshop to creatively enhance your lockdown daily walks by producing artwork inspired by nature. 16:00-17:00

FRIDAY 28 MAY

Architecture Cares: A workshop to rework the ‘map of care’ created by students from the School of Architecture, remapping the city of Reading together. 12:00-13:00
Sounding Out: Listening Session: An audio play ‘Walking the Wing’ about incarceration during the COVID-19 pandemic, created with men serving prison sentences and prison staff. The play will be followed by a discussion with the makers. 17:00-18:00
What is the sound of care and solidarity? Open listening session with Reading Refugee Support Group and Ultra-red sound artist activist collective. 18:00-20:00

Understanding ourselves and others: reasoning and rationality (RCCR Summer Seminar Series)
2021-06-08 17:00 - 18:30 | Microsoft Teams
Understanding ourselves and others: reasoning and rationality (summing up), Emma Borg
Reflections on this year’s Summer Seminar Series from Emma Borg, Director of the Reading Centre for Cognition Research and Professor of Philosophy at University of Reading.
This seminar is part of The Reading Centre for Cognition Research’s 2021 Summer Seminar Series: Understanding ourselves and others: reasoning and rationality
The aim of this seminar series is to explore these newer approaches to reasoning and rationality, looking at cutting edge work in the area and asking what these moves might tell us about how we go about understanding the actions of others and ourselves.
A standard picture of humans as generally ordered and orderly thinkers has come under significant pressure in recent years, in particular from the work of Kahneman and others who have stressed our susceptibility to a range of cognitive traps (such as framing or bias). Although the claim commonly associated with this school of thought – that we are ‘predictably irrational’, in Ariely’s phrase – has been rejected by many, even those who seek to defend our status as good reasoners often suggest a more complex and potentially messy set of processes, mechanisms and features than those standardly appealed to in classic folk psychological approaches.
All welcome!
If you have any questions, please email Emma Borg e.g.n.borg@reading.ac.uk
Microsoft Teams meeting – join here
research.reading.ac.uk/cognition-research/

London and the Peasants' Revolt: the People of 1381
2021-06-15 18:00
15 June 2021 marks the 640th anniversary of the meeting of Richard II at Smithfield with Wat Tyler and his fellow rebels – a key event in the Peasants’ Revolt. An exciting new research project, ‘The People of 1381’ at the Universities of Reading (Adrian Bell and Herbert Eiden), Oxford (Helen Lacy and Helen Killick), Glasgow (Andrew Prescott) and Southampton (Anne Curry, and Ian Waldock and Jason Sadler of Geodata), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is underway. It has a ‘history from below’ approach, using legal and manorial records to explore those involved in the revolt. Currently we are tweeting the events of the revolt in this anniversary year (@peopleof1381 #reliving1381)
We are delighted to invite you all to our webinar organised through the Worshipful Company of Fletchers which is celebrating its own 650th anniversary in 2021 and of which Anne Curry is currently Master. We are also delighted that the Aldermanic Sheriff of the City of London, Michael Mainelli, will be introducing our talk.
Please join us on 15 June 2021 at 6 pm for London and the Peasants’ Revolt: the People of 1381. ‘Doors’ open at 5.40 pm UK time
For more information and details of how to join, please visit http://www.1381.online/media/?story_id=48
