Connecting Research

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 (Europe/London) | Berkshire
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 | Berkshire
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 | Berkshire
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.

Spaces of care and biosecurity for ‘good farmers’ and sick cows in the north of England
2021-12-09 13:00 - 14:00 | Online event
Human Geography Research Cluster Seminar Series 2021/22
Spaces of care and biosecurity for ‘good farmers’ and sick cows in the north of England: multi-species encounters with Bovine Viral Diarrhoea and lameness
Presentation by Lewis Holloway, Professor of Human Geography, University of Hull

Children’s Christmas Lecture: Elephants on the Move
2021-12-17 16:30 - 17:30 | Palmer Building, G10
Children’s Christmas Lecture: Elephants on the Move
Elephants are always on the move! Looking for food or water, going to meet friends or moving away from danger.
Join Dr Vicky Boult, an expert in all things elephant, on a journey alongside a family of elephants over the course of a year in their lives. We’ll meet the members of the herd, explore why and where they move and how this is changing. Expect drama, difficult decisions and lots of laughs along the way!
All welcome, places are free. Booking is essential

Open Hardware Hackathon
2022-01-07 | Berkshire
Join the Open Hardware Hackathon and make a digital microscope! Teams will build a sophisticated microscope using Open Source designs and low-cost parts (all equipment provided). There will be prizes. This is an opportunity to learn about open hardware and get involved with the emerging UoR maker community.
The Hackathon is organised face-to-face (if at all possible), and further information about venues and time will be communicated closer to the time as they depend on the number of participants registered. Book your place here.
All are welcome to join the UoR Open Lab Team. Contact Al Edwards for enquiries.

Dwoskino
2022-01-15 17:00 | Institute of Contemporary Arts
World premiere of three newly commissioned artists’ films inspired by the life and work of boundary-pushing experimental filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin (1939-2012). Rather than films about Dwoskin these new works take creative inspiration from his work and the themes he explored throughout his life of masculinity, sexuality, disability, illness, pain/pleasure, voyeurism, movement and desire.
The films are commissioned by LUX and the University of Reading as part of the Legacies of Stephen Dwoskin, a three year research project supported by the AHRC.
This event also launches DWOSKINO. The Gaze of Stephen Dwoskin, a new book visually documenting the filmmaker’s life and work edited by Rachel Garfield and Henry K Miller.
The Dwoskin Archive is housed at the University of Reading and contains a wealth of material relating to Dwoskin’s life, work and the period he lived in. The Legacies of Stephen Dwoskin is a three year AHRC-research project looking at Dwoskin’s social, political, technological and cultural influences, considering his work in relation to new scholarship in gender, disability studies and phenomenology, and digital forensics and data exploration.
Part of the London Short Film Festival. Book tickets at https://www.ica.art/films/dwoskino

Up Yours! Post Punk & Feminism Revisited
2022-01-15 19:00 | Institute of Contemporary Arts
Experimental Film and Punk: Feminist Audio Visual Culture of the 1970s and 1980s, a new book by artist Professor Rachel Garfield, aims to analyze and situate the aesthetic and intellectual ambition of a range of women filmmakers operating during the 1970s and 1980s through the lens and legacy of punk. In Garfield’s writing she traces the emergence of a female subjectivity as a vital and valid form of practice and explores specific filmmaking approaches such as DIY, disintegration and hysteria.
This live music and film event includes screenings of works featured in the book by Vivienne Dick, Abigail Child, Betzy Bromberg, Tessa Hughes Freeland, Ruth Novaczek and Sandra Lahire and Anne Robinson with live performances from bands Shade Ray and Es and a DJ set from Gabi.
Curated by Rachel Garfield.
Part of the London Short Film Festival. Book tickets at https://www.ica.art/films/up-yours-post-punk-feminism-revisited

Experimental publishing and new archival initiatives
2022-01-27 17:00 - 19:00 | Berkshire
This online event organised by the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) is free and open to all.
Please register your interest to receive the Zoom link here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/experimental-publishing-and-new-archival-initiatives-tickets-228856103767
This panel is the second in a series of events, which draw on historical as well as contemporary references to examine experimental publishing through a range of perspectives, spanning the fields of art, communication design, digital media and software development. This event looks specifically at the ways in which archival initiatives in experimental, grassroots publishing have extended relationships between social and media environments over the past decade. Looking at three specific practitioner-led case studies, the presentations and the subsequent Q&A will consider the breakdown of strict boundaries between activities of publishing and archiving, enabled through the development of new forms of networked, social interactions, and the hybridization of digital and analog contexts. In particular, these case studies will point to convergences between technical and social phenomena which have challenged the status-quo and offered new imaginaries through the availability of cheap and accessible technologies (both hardware and software) to design, produce, distribute and simultaneously archive publications; significant developments in the open source software movement; and the cross-reference to specific ideas from feminist and queer cultural theory, as well as cyberfeminism. This event will contribute to the overall aims of the Experimental Publishing series by highlighting again the importance of new, cross-disciplinary vocabularies to enter traditional discourses in order to adequately further scholarship around experimental and grassroots practices in the publishing field.
Convened by Ruth Blacksell and Lozana Rossenova with contributions from Simon Browne, Ami Clarke and Mindy Seu. The case study presentations include The Bootleg Library, the Digital Archive of Artists’ Publishing, and The Cyberfeminism Index.
Dr Ruth Blacksell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. She leads the Book Design Pathway for the Department’s MA in Communication Design. Her PhD (2013) at the University of Sheffield’s School of Architecture was supported by a concordat scholarship with the British Library and she recently established a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership between the University of Reading and Tate Library. Much of her research to date has been concerned with typographic engagements and acts of publishing in post-1960s art and the emergence of a contemporary inter-disciplinary territory which, following this historical and theoretical lineage, utilises and exploits the vocabularies and contexts of both art and editorial design.
Simon Browne is an artist, researcher and self-proclaimed “contingent librarian”, convenient shorthand for an ever-expanding list of actions he performs in his practice. Simon is the initiator of the “bootleg library”, a digital/physical/social collection of texts and the readers collected around them. His work engages with the social dimension of publishing, free software and infrastructure that supports interpersonal knowledge-sharing networks. He lives and works in Rotterdam, where he is active as a member of Varia, a collective-space for everyday technology.
Ami Clarke is an artist working within the emergent behaviours that come off the complex protocols of platform capitalism in everyday assemblages, with a focus on the inter-dependencies between code and language in hyper-networked culture. She is interested in acknowledging, and thinking through, the complexities of the subject emerging in synthesis with their environment, from a critical intersectional position. She is also founder of Banner Repeater; a reading room with a public Archive of Artists’ Publishing and project space on a working train station platform at Hackney Downs station, London. She is also the initiator and artistic director of the Digital Archive of Artists’ Publishing, an online platform that seeks to connect publications and artists across collections.
Lozana Rossenova is a digital designer and researcher. She holds an MA from the Department for Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, where she was a Sessional Lecturer in hybrid and digital publication between 2016–2021. In 2021, she completed a PhD at the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image (London South Bank University) in collaboration with Rhizome, a leading international born-digital art organisation. Her research focuses on open-source and community-driven approaches to digital infrastructures, which organise, store and make knowledge, and different ways of knowing, accessible.
Mindy Seu is a designer and researcher currently writing the manuscript for the Cyberfeminism Index, to be released by Inventory Press in Fall 2022. She holds an M.Des from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and a B.A. in Design Media Arts from University of California, Los Angeles. Seu is currently an Assistant Professor at Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts and Critic at Yale School of Art.
For details of further CBCP events, please see the events schedule.

Speech and Language Therapy Done Right is Social Justice Work
2022-02-01 18:00 | Berkshire
Join the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) for a free online talk by Warda Farah on speech and language therapy and social justice, taking place Tuesday February 1st, at 6.00pm (UK time).
Speech and Language Therapy Done Right is Social Justice Work
Our profession cannot move to the future without confronting and acknowledging its racist and colonial knowledge base. We know that children from Black backgrounds are overrepresented as having Speech & Language Impairments, due to biased assessment protocols. We know that our current models, practice base & service delivery is not good enough to bring about equitable change for these children/families. This will be a personal talk sharing my journey in trying to address the above issues and how I believe that we can all use our SLT skills to create meaningful change and social impact.
Warda Farah (BSc, PGCert, HCPC, MRCSLT) is a Speech and Language Therapist and Founder of Language Waves. Language Waves specialises in using an array of methods to provide culturally diverse therapeutic input for schools and local communities. The service was specifically set up to address the barriers that “minority” families face when accessing speech and language therapy services.
To register to attend this online talk please click here.

IFNH 4th Annual Forum - Sustainable and Nutritious Food: Are these values irreconcilable?
2022-02-02 14:00 - 17:00 | Microsoft Teams
The Institute for Food, Nutrition and Health (IFNH) is delighted to invite you to the 4th Annual Forum on Wednesday 2 February 2022 at 14.00 – 17.00 (GMT) which will be held online via Microsoft Teams.
The theme of this year’s Forum is about the potential conflict between the environmental cost of food and its importance as a source of important nutrients, including the importance of good public communications and the consumer attitudes on this topic.
We will have a range of speakers including two externals from the Cranfield University and University of Aberdeen.
Please download a copy of the event programme.
The event is free to attend.
For further information, please contact Elena Carp, Executive Administration Manager, Institute for Food, Nutrition and Health (IFNH) at E.Carp@reading.ac.uk

Read the World: Picture Books and Translation
2022-02-03 17:00 - 18:00 | Berkshire
This event organised by the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) is free and open to all. This research seminar will be online.
Please register your interest to receive the Zoom link here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/x/read-the-world-picture-books-and-translation-tickets-251121821127
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing in partnership with Outside in World, the organisation dedicated to promoting and exploring world literature and children’s books in translation, are delighted to announce the latest event in their seminar series on translation for children:
Read the World: Picture Books and Translation
A Reading Library Exhibition at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art (Amherst, MA)
The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book’s current library exhibition “Read the World: Picture Books and Translation” highlights the role of translators, showcases multilingual books, and introduces readers to recent English translations and their publishers.
Join Professor Regina Galasso (UMass Amherst), Caroline Seitz (Amherst College), Education Director Courtney Waring (The Carle) and Literacy Educator David Feinstein (The Carle) as they share themes and highlights from the exhibition, and discuss their process curating and creating interpretive materials for young readers.
Participants:
David Feinstein (The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art)
Regina Galasso (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Caroline Seitz (Amherst College)
Courtney Waring (The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art)
For details of further CBCP events, please see the events schedule.

Dwoskino: Outside In + intro by author Allan Sutherland
2022-02-07 18:00 | BFI Southbank
Part of Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin, a series of film screenings and talks at the BFI Southbank from 1-24 February
Outside In + intro by author Allan Sutherland
Monday 07 February 2022 18:00 NFT3
Dwoskin’s autofictional comedy about life among the non-disabled moves from documentary to the surreal.

Director – Stephen Dwoskin
With Olimpia Carlisi, Beatrice Cordua, Stephen Dwoskin, Merdelle Jordine
West Germany 1981. 110min
Digital premiere

A comedy about life among the non-disabled, with Outside In (1981) Dwoskin turned the camera’s gaze upon himself, to show the full variety of reactions that his disabled body provoked, from horror to pity to awkwardness. “I tend to forget that my disability is seen as abnormal by the greater part of society”, he once said.
Shot on location in Dwoskin’s adoptive home in London, and drawing on experience, Dwoskin called Outside In ‘a combination of memories from the visual diary of a disabled person’. Raymond Durgnat wrote of its ‘abrupt switches between documentary interest and fiction, jokiness and lyricism, slapstick and sadness’.
“To some people”, Dwoskin recalled, “it was disturbing because it broke into some of the taboos regarding people with disabilities especially in areas such as sexuality.” The result is Dwoskin’s most entertaining and accessible film.
“Dwoskin is inexplicable. Beyond analysis, description, exegesis. With an impertinent, unprecedented, truly radical ease, he goes beyond the structured, intelligent, intelligible words that could be uttered on his films. So much oratorical precaution to arrive at this: all I want to announce – yes, as good news, a last-minute surprise – is that the death of cinema is temporarily postponed, and that there is still a filmmaker.” – Louis Skorecki, “Dwoskin: le dernier cinéaste”, Cahiers du cinéma, July–August 1982
Winner of the 1982 Prix L’Age d’Or.
Outside In will be introduced by Allan Sutherland, author of the landmark book Disabled We Stand, published in the year the film was made.
Biography
Allan Sutherland is a writer, performer, disability arts activist and leading historian of disability arts. In 1981, with Stephen Dwoskin, he programmed for the National Film Theatre ‘Carry On Cripple’, a season of feature films about disability, the UK’s first such. He created the Chronology of Disability Arts and, with Tony Heaton, developed the thinking behind what would become the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive.
Buy tickets from BFI Southbank

Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin season
A unique and challenging filmmaker whose themes include disability, sexuality, diaspora, and memory.
Stephen Dwoskin arrived in London from New York in 1964, aged 25, with a trunk of 16mm films shot in the milieu of Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas. He became known for a series of films in which the camera’s unblinking gaze is returned by his female subjects. Laura Mulvey wrote that he ‘opened a completely new perspective for me on cinematic voyeurism’. In the mid-70s, Dwoskin turned his gaze on his own body, disabled in childhood by polio, before making a number of personal documentaries about disability and diaspora. In the 2000s, with his mobility severely impaired, he embraced the possibilities of digital technology to return to the underground and the erotic obsessions that powered his extraordinary 50-year career.
Rachel Garfield and Henry K Miller, co-programmers
For details of the entire programme, please visit the Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin page.

ECR Networking Event
2022-02-09 13:00 - 17:00 | gather.town
Are you interested in collaborative research? Looking to engage in ECR-led research? Have you got ideas that could benefit from others skills and expertise? Then this event is for you!
CINNergies, part of the the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN), is running an online ECR networking event on 9 February from 13:00-17:00.
CINNergies has donated £2,500 to support ECR-led collaborative pilot projects.
Applications for this research funding must be interdisciplinary. This event is designed to help you build collaborations and make connections so that you can apply for this CINNergies research funding.
The CINNergies ECR networking event is an online event including round-robin structured networking, elevator pitches for those looking for collaborators on a specific idea, and an open networking session. You’re also welcome to join us at the SCR for a drink after.
So, if you would like to meet other ECRs and exchange ideas…
Click here to register for the networking event
For more information, contact CINNergies@reading.ac.uk or see the event poster.

HortQFLNet Conference (Part 1)
2022-02-10 09:00 - 13:00 | Berkshire
To align with their 2022 Funding Call, HortQFLNet are holding a conference event to explain more about the funding call, provide an opportunity for networking with other members from academia and industry and to find out about progress and results of the funded projects from our 2020 awardees.
The conference will be held on 10 Feb (09:00-13:00) and 14 Feb 2022 (14:00-17:00). Your registration on Eventbrite will register you for both days. You will be sent separate Zoom invitations for the two sessions following registration.
Registration is free for all Network members – click here to register.
For more information or to become a member, please visit https://foodlossnetwork.com/

Dwoskino: Study Day + Acting Out - Stephen Dwoskin film screening
2022-02-12 12:00 - 17:00 | BFI Southbank
Part of Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin, a series of film screenings and talks at the BFI Southbank from 1-24 February
Study Day + Acting Out: Stephen Dwoskin film screening
Saturday 12 February 2022 12:00 NFT3
An introduction to Dwoskin through talks, a keynote presentation by Adrian Martin plus a screening of Acting Out: Stephen Dwoskin, a film by artist Philomène Hoël.
Dwoskin’s career, not only as a filmmaker but as a painter, designer, writer, and campaigner, cut across many central questions of the era: disability, sexuality, diaspora, and technology – especially technologies of memory. On his death in 2012 he left behind an extraordinarily rich archive, which for more than three years has been the focus of a multi-institutional research team based at the University of Reading.
This Study Day will include presentations from in and outside the project, culminating in a keynote talk from critic Adrian Martin.
The Study Day will be followed by the first live screening of Acting Out: Stephen Dwoskin, a film by artist Philomène Hoël starring researchers Henry K. Miller and Darragh O’Donoghue.
Study Day 12pm to 4pm
These talks will introduce Dwoskin from a variety of perspectives, addressing such key themes in his work as disability, diaspora, and memory, and drawing on new research in the Dwoskin archive. The day will include a keynote talk from critic and audiovisual essayist Adrian Martin, on Dwoskin’s project of ‘a complex, hybrid cinema, in which disorientation is a major source of pleasure’.
Rachel Garfield and Will Fowler introduction
Panel 1– Elisa Adami: Between the Archive and Repertoire: Embodied Memory in Stephen Dwoskin’s Ballet Black (1986)– Darragh O’Donoghue: Inside out and outside in: some thoughts on Dwoskin, Paula Rego, disability, and feminism– Tom Cuthbertson: Before the Beginning/Avant le début: autobiography, imitation, control
Panel 2– Jenny Chamarette and Henry K. Miller: Intoxicated By My Archive
Keynote talk – Adrian Martin: Getting Lost in Dwoskin (chaired by Alison Butler)

Disorientation, on every level, is a powerful and disconcerting force in the work of Stephen Dwoskin. Focussing on the feature-length films he made in the 1970s, this talk will explore the productive tension (as identified by Raymond Durgnat in the ’80s) between Dwoskin’s rigorous ‘plastic aesthetics’ (of space, colour, composition, etc.) and his remarkable experimentation with narrative forms. Today, artists who work in a similar way are frequently told that their films would best ‘fit into an art gallery context’. Yet Dwoskin, in his time, held on to the project of a complex, hybrid cinema, in which disorientation is a major source of pleasure.
Film Screening 4pm to 5pm
Acting Out: Stephen Dwoskin (dir. Philomène Hoël, 2020)
The day will end with the first in-person screening of artist Philomène Hoël’s film Acting Out: Stephen Dwoskin, in which ‘Hoël plays a high-wire game with her fellow researchers, exploring the nature of their mutual obsession; filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin, whose life and fictive world bleeds into their encounter through a series of interventions in disconcerting and hilarious ways’ (Ben Cook).
Buy tickets from BFI Southbank.

Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin season
A unique and challenging filmmaker whose themes include disability, sexuality, diaspora, and memory.
Stephen Dwoskin arrived in London from New York in 1964, aged 25, with a trunk of 16mm films shot in the milieu of Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas. He became known for a series of films in which the camera’s unblinking gaze is returned by his female subjects. Laura Mulvey wrote that he ‘opened a completely new perspective for me on cinematic voyeurism’. In the mid-70s, Dwoskin turned his gaze on his own body, disabled in childhood by polio, before making a number of personal documentaries about disability and diaspora. In the 2000s, with his mobility severely impaired, he embraced the possibilities of digital technology to return to the underground and the erotic obsessions that powered his extraordinary 50-year career.
Rachel Garfield and Henry K Miller, co-programmers
For details of the entire programme, please visit the Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin page.

HortQFLNet Conference (Part 2)
2022-02-14 14:00 - 17:00 | Berkshire

Dwoskino: Ballet Black + discussion with two of the film’s stars, Jacqueline Boatswain and Colin Charles
2022-02-15 18:00 | BFI Southbank
Part of Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin, a series of film screenings and talks at the BFI Southbank from 1-24 February
Ballet Black
+ discussion with two of the film’s stars, Jacqueline Boatswain and Colin Charles
Tuesday 15 February 2022 18:10 NFT3
A very personal documentary about pioneering Black British dance troupe Ballets Nègres.

Director – Stephen Dwoskin
With Jacqueline Boatswain, Colin Charles, Astley Harvey, Joy Richardson
UK 1986. 83min. 16mm

Dwoskin’s lifelong love of dance culminated in this very personal documentary about the Ballets Nègres, the pioneering Black British dance troupe, founded in London in 1946. Using a wealth of rare archival material and interviews, Ballet Black tells a story about pre-Windrush Black British culture that is still little-known today.
The story is brought alive by Dwoskin’s cast of younger dancers, seen rehearsing and performing the original troupe’s dances in a variety of inventive styles, and at a reunion party with the older generation. On its first release in 1987 it was shown in a double-bill with Black Audio Film Collective’s Handsworth Songs.
“The film climaxes with a spectacular and vibrant performance of ‘They Came’ by young black dancers. The fact that a ballet 40 years old appears exciting and contemporary is surely a tribute to the company’s place in the development of ballet and British culture.”– Chinyelu Onwurah, Guardian, 1986
Ballet Black will be followed by a discussion of the making of the film and its legacy by two of its stars, Jaqueline Boatswain (Shameless, Cuckoo) and Colin Charles (Cats – original production, English National Opera).
Biographies
Jacqueline Boatswain is an actor, dancer, and singer whose West End roles include Kiss Me Kate, Chicago, and Jesus Christ Superstar. She has numerous television credits, including long-running characters in Grange Hill, Hollyoaks and Doctors. Her recent roles include Shameless, Vera, Bancroft, Miracle Workers, Shakespeare & Hathaway, David Hare’s Collateral, and alongside Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne in Carnival Row.
Colin Charles trained at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance. His West End credits include We Will Rock You, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Miss Saigon, Cats, and Five Guys Named Moe; and he has appeared in in English National Opera productions of Orpheus in the Underworld, Faust, and Aida. He is current performing in Dirty Dancing at the Dominion Theatre.

Buy tickets from BFI Southbank

Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin season
A unique and challenging filmmaker whose themes include disability, sexuality, diaspora, and memory.
Stephen Dwoskin arrived in London from New York in 1964, aged 25, with a trunk of 16mm films shot in the milieu of Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas. He became known for a series of films in which the camera’s unblinking gaze is returned by his female subjects. Laura Mulvey wrote that he ‘opened a completely new perspective for me on cinematic voyeurism’. In the mid-70s, Dwoskin turned his gaze on his own body, disabled in childhood by polio, before making a number of personal documentaries about disability and diaspora. In the 2000s, with his mobility severely impaired, he embraced the possibilities of digital technology to return to the underground and the erotic obsessions that powered his extraordinary 50-year career.
Rachel Garfield and Henry K Miller, co-programmers
For details of the entire programme, please visit the Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin page.

Become an Open Research Champion - information session
2022-02-17 13:00 - 14:00 | Berkshire
There will an information session at 13.00-14.00 on Thursday 17th February for anyone interested in becoming an Open Research Champion.
The University is seeking researchers, members of staff connected with research, and research students (second year onwards) in any discipline who are willing to spend a few hours a month helping to build a culture of Open Research at the University.
As a Champion, you will become part of a collaborative community working to promote open and reproducible research practices.
The main qualifications to be a Champion are enthusiasm for Open Research, and a willingness to learn and share. You don’t need to be an expert – we will provide training – but knowledge and skills in specific open practices are welcome.
The call is open for applications until 11th March.
The information session will provide an overview of the Champions programme by Robert Darby, Research Data Manager. Current Champions Auvikki de Boon (PhD student, Agriculture, Policy and Development) and Marzia Briel (Associate Lecturer/PhD student, Law) will discuss their experiences of the programme.
For call details and to book your place at the information session, visit this page.

Multilingualism and Social Justice
2022-02-21 18:00 - 19:30 | Online event
Join the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) on International Mother Language Day (21st February) for their online public lecture “Multilingualism and Social Justice”.
Leading academics from across disciplines from CeLM at the University of Reading will come together to present and discuss their international research with multilingual children and adults; research that challenges social inequality. How do minoritized young people experience education, migration and health provision and how does their multilingualism sit within wider issues of race, disability and access to services?
A round table discussion format will provide an opportunity for the audience to engage with experts in the field.

Dr Naomi Flynn will talk about her research in US schools examining a language-rich pedagogy shown to improve educational outcomes of minoritized groups of learners.
Dr Vishnu Nair will talk about racial disproportionality of minoritized children in speech and language services through the intersecting lens of race and disability.
Dr Tony Capstick will talk about Multilingual pedagogies and social justice in language education in the Global South.
Dr Federico Faloppa will talk about Multilingualism (and mother tongues) through multilingual unaccompanied minors’ perspectives. A round table discussion will provide an opportunity for the audience to engage in discussion with experts in the field.

Admission free. Booking essential.
Please visit the event page to book your place.

Dwoskino: The Gaze of Stephen Dwoskin
2022-02-23 18:30 | BFI Southbank
Part of Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin, a series of film screenings and talks at the BFI Southbank from 1-24 February
The Gaze of Stephen Dwoskin
Wednesday 23 February 2022 18:45 BFI Reuben Library
In this library talk we’re joined by the editors of new book DWOSKINO: The Gaze of Stephen Dwoskin.

Total running time 60min

The newly published DWOSKINO: The Gaze of Stephen Dwoskin is a collection of images, texts, and documents, providing a vivid portrait of Dwoskin’s life and times. In this library talk, editors Rachel Garfield and Henry K Miller will discuss the book’s circuitous journey to the page under the shadow of Covid, when access to archives and libraries was dramatically curtailed.
Tickets £6.50
Buy tickets from BFI Southbank

Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin season
A unique and challenging filmmaker whose themes include disability, sexuality, diaspora, and memory.
Stephen Dwoskin arrived in London from New York in 1964, aged 25, with a trunk of 16mm films shot in the milieu of Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas. He became known for a series of films in which the camera’s unblinking gaze is returned by his female subjects. Laura Mulvey wrote that he ‘opened a completely new perspective for me on cinematic voyeurism’. In the mid-70s, Dwoskin turned his gaze on his own body, disabled in childhood by polio, before making a number of personal documentaries about disability and diaspora. In the 2000s, with his mobility severely impaired, he embraced the possibilities of digital technology to return to the underground and the erotic obsessions that powered his extraordinary 50-year career.
Rachel Garfield and Henry K Miller, co-programmers
For details of the entire programme, please visit the Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin page.

Researching the history of printing in Iran: particularities and challenges
2022-02-24 17:00 - 18:00 | Hybid event
Dr Borna Izadpanah, Department of Typography, University of Reading
This event organised by the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) is free and open to all. This research seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place on the University of Reading campus, Typography Department, Room A6, and online.
Please register your interest to receive the Zoom link here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/researching-the-history-of-printing-in-iran-particularities-and-challenges-tickets-242664866147
This seminar introduces some of the particularities and challenges that Borna’s recently completed PhD research faced in developing the chapter that deals with the introduction of Arabic-script printing to nineteenth-century Iran. One of the significant aspects of Arabic-script metal types produced in Iran is their extremely minimal use. This is also true of the number of surviving copies of the early Persian publications in Iran which were printed with those types. For example, the first Qurʾān printed with both typography (1827) and lithography (1834) are limited to two identified copies. Additionally, the condition of extant copies of books printed in Iran during this period are often extremely poor and, in many cases, incomplete.
This presentation demonstrates Borna’s experience of investigating the early Persian publications in Iran, which shows that many of these publications have yet to be identified. As will be shown, the discovery of previously unknown publications in libraries or private collections – which is not an infrequent occurrence – often overturns the received history of printing in Iran.
Borna Izadpanah is a typeface designer and researcher based in London. He holds a PhD in Typography & Graphic Communication from the University of Reading, where he also graduated with an MA in Typeface Design. His doctoral research explored the history of the early typographic representation of the Persian language. Borna has received numerous prestigious awards for his research and typeface design including the Grand Prize and the First Prize in Arabic Text Typeface in Granshan Type Design Competition, TDC Certificate of Typographic Excellence, and the Symposia Iranica Prize for the best paper in Art History.
This research seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place online and on the University of Reading campus, Room A6, Typography Department http://www.reading.ac.uk/web/files/maps/whiteknights-campus-map.pdf (Building number 21 on this map).
For details of further CBCP events, please see the events schedule.

Dwoskino: The Sun and the Moon + intro by writer Paul Clinton
2022-02-24 18:00 | BFI Southbank
Part of Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin, a series of film screenings and talks at the BFI Southbank from 1-24 February
The Sun and the Moon + intro by writer Paul Clinton
Thursday 24 February 2022 18:20 NFT3
Stephen Dwoskin’s late masterpiece is distantly inspired by the Beauty and the Beast tale.

Director – Stephen Dwoskin
With Beatrice Cordua, Stephen Dwoskin, Helga Wretman
UK 2008. 59min. Digital

Dwoskin began as an underground filmmaker, and ended his career as one. Distantly inspired by Beauty and the Beast, The Sun and the Moon features Dwoskin as the Beast, all but confined to his bed and hooked up to a breathing machine, opposite performance artist and stunt performer Helga Wretman, and dancer Beatrice ‘Trixie’ Cordua (Dwoskin’s muse of many years). The high point of Dwoskin’s late period, the film was described by scholar Raymond Bellour as an ‘absolute masterpiece’.
+ Me Myself and I

UK 1968. Stephen Dwoskin. 18min Digital 4K

Buy tickets from BFI Southbank

Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin season
A unique and challenging filmmaker whose themes include disability, sexuality, diaspora, and memory.
Stephen Dwoskin arrived in London from New York in 1964, aged 25, with a trunk of 16mm films shot in the milieu of Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas. He became known for a series of films in which the camera’s unblinking gaze is returned by his female subjects. Laura Mulvey wrote that he ‘opened a completely new perspective for me on cinematic voyeurism’. In the mid-70s, Dwoskin turned his gaze on his own body, disabled in childhood by polio, before making a number of personal documentaries about disability and diaspora. In the 2000s, with his mobility severely impaired, he embraced the possibilities of digital technology to return to the underground and the erotic obsessions that powered his extraordinary 50-year career.
Rachel Garfield and Henry K Miller, co-programmers
For details of the entire programme, please visit the Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin page.

Together we can – an International Women’s Day symposium
2022-03-08 11:00 - 14:00 | 3sixty
Celebrating our amazing community of students and staff who are striving to make the world a fairer place for all women.

Speakers and events include:

Professor Parveen Yaqoob,
Professor Rosa Freedman
Professor Robert Van De Noort
Women’s Choir
Cheerleading society performance
Student presentations and art works
Music
Refreshments and time to chat

Book your place on the Together we can event registration page.

Open Research Forum
2022-03-09 13:00 - 14:30 | Online event
The next Open Research Forum will take place on Wednesday 9th March at 13.00-14.30.
If you want to get a flavour of the Open Research Champions community and listen to some great talks on Open Research topics, come along to the next meeting of the Open Research Forum. We have a great line-up of talks:

Ersilia, a hub of Open Source AI/ML models for infectious and neglected diseases (Gemma Turon, Software Sustainability Institute Fellow/co-founder and CEO, Ersilia Open Source Initiative)
One Image: Exploring Open Source Digital Imaging for Research (Eva Kevei, Associate Professor, Biomedical Sciences)
Annotating for Transparent Inquiry in qualitative research: making archival documents accessible (Joseph O’Mahoney, Lecturer, Politics, Economics and International Relations)

You are welcome to dip in and out if a particular talk is of interest.
Visit the event page for full details or book your place now at the Open Research Forum.

Five go to France …and are translated back again
2022-03-10 17:00 | Online event
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) presents an online panel event with the editor and translator to mark the publication of Hachette’s new Famous Five graphic novel series.
Speakers:

Alexandra Antscherl (Editorial Director, Enid Blyton Entertainment and Fiction Brands at Hachette Children’s Group)
Emma D. Page (Translator, PhD student at the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing, University of Reading)

Chair: Sophie Heywood (Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing, University of Reading)
The panel will explore the new Famous Five series retold as graphic novels for the first time ever. The series translates back into English the French adaptation of Blyton’s novels by Béja and Nataël, a talented father-and-son team of graphic novel experts. Together the speakers will discuss the French and English books, the translation process, and publishing Blyton in the 21st century. This will be followed by a Q&A.
This event is free and open to all. Please register your interest to receive the Zoom link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/276589967037
