Dwoskino
2022-01-15 17:00 (Europe/London) | 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 | Reading
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 | Reading
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 | Reading
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 | Reading
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 | Reading

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 | Reading
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

CFAC Keynote - Meet Me at the Movies: Cinema and Cinephilia in the Age of Unlimited Choice
2022-03-15 17:00 | Minghella Building, Bulmershe Theatre, Whiteknights, RG6 6UR
Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures Keynote
Tuesday 15th March 2022, 5pm
Bulmershe Theatre, Minghella Studios, Whiteknights Campus
In this personal essay on a life of movie-going and a love of cinema, BFI Festival Director Tricia Tuttle will reflect on the role movies have played in her own development, and her discoveries of hidden desires and shared languages. Drawing, magpie-like on a range of texts – from statistical studies to Performance, and from Susan Sontag to Pink Flamingos – she’ll ask what it means to be a cinephile in the age of unlimited choice.
Tricia Tuttle
Tricia Tuttle has been Director of BFI Festivals since 2019, overseeing the teams that run BFI London Film Festival and BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival. She was appointed the position following her role as Artistic Director of the 62nd Edition of the BFI London Film Festival in 2018 and after five successful years as Deputy Head of Festivals at BFI.
This event is free, but space is limited. To book, please email cfac@reading.ac.uk.

Royal Meteorological Society Masterclass: Extracting Causal Information from Climate Data
2022-03-16 15:00 - 16:30 | Online event
Speaker: Dr Marlene Kretschmer, University of Reading
There are large uncertainties when it comes to predicting extreme regional weather and climate events. A limited causal understanding of the physical drivers of extremes – such as connections to the North Atlantic Oscillation or Madden-Julian Oscillation – compounds the issue when interpreting climate model forecasts. Yet, to justify taking critical actions in the light of uncertainty, explanations are crucial because they provide decision-makers with a level of plausibility.
Therefore, weather and climate forecasting progress strongly depend on an improved causal understanding of the climate system by analysing the large data sets from observations and climate models. A physical knowledge of the underlying mechanisms and different statistical techniques is needed.
In this talk, Dr Kretschmer will show how recent causality research advancements can help reconcile the two. A causal approach requires explicitly including expert knowledge in the statistical analysis, allowing for quantitative conclusions. This session will illustrate some of the key concepts of this theory with concrete examples of well-known atmospheric teleconnections and will discuss the particular challenges and advantages these imply for climate science.
About RMetS and University of Reading Meteorological Masterclasses
Continuing our online Meteorological Masterclasses in partnership with the University of Reading, we are pleased to announce a new Masterclass series in “Advances in weather and climate forecasting”.
During this series, three leading experts from the University of Reading will discuss the latest scientific advances for understanding and predicting weather, climate and its impacts. Topics to be covered include data assimilation and machine learning; identification of causal pathways in atmospheric teleconnections; and modelling advances in resolution and parameterization for weather forecasting.
These masterclasses are intended to provide support for professionals working in Meteorology and Climate Science, and its operational applications who wish to remain up to date on recent scientific developments in the field.
Masterclasses will run weekly on Wednesday’s 16th, 23rd and 30th March 2022 from 3 pm to 4.30 pm (UTC), consisting of a presentation followed by the opportunity for questions and discussion with the speaker. Whilst the webinars are part of a series, attendance at all three events is not compulsory.

The Great Debate 2022: The Future for Residential Heating
2022-03-16 19:00 - 21:00 | Reading
The UK government has published its Heat and Buildings Strategy, a plan to replace fossil-fuelled
heating like gas boilers with low-carbon technologies such as heat pumps. This is a comprehensive and groundbreaking strategy that flags a range of complex issues involved in solving a problem like decarbonising heat.
Natural gas boilers are seen as one of the biggest barriers to the net zero target — they produce 58.5 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, compared to 27 million cars emitting 56 million tons annually, the National Housing Federation says.
With a ban on new build natural gas fired domestic boilers not far off, there is considerable uncertainty about what will happen and what the best options are for individual circumstances.
The aim of this year’s Great Debate event is to update the audience on these issues and to provide a forum for those attending to ask questions of the experts.
The topics to be covered will include:
1. Why do we need to change the residential heating
2. Electrical based alternatives
3. Hydrogen Systems Implications
4. Ensuring new build delivers carbon reductions
Time: 19:00 – 21:00, online
Admission free. Booking essential via The Great Debate booking page.

“Now I Hear What You Say” – How Short EAP Courses Can Foster Successful Academic Interactional Strategies
2022-03-17 15:30 | Reading
Join the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) for a free online talk by Clare Wright (University of Leeds), Anna Tsakalaki (University of Reading) and Mei Lin (University of Newcastle) on English for Academic Purposes on March 17th at 3.30pm (UK time).
In globalised higher education, strategies to build academic interactional competence can be key to international students’ success, e.g. in seminars and oral assessments. Linguistically, academic interaction requires meaning-focused, other-oriented oral skills, which can be challenging for international second-language (L2) students to acquire, even with specific training.
In this talk we are going to argue that even short-term English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses can have valuable potential in boosting oral language strategies and skills, particularly in listening, which are needed for successful academic interactional competence.
In this study, we report on data from 230 postgraduate students of mixed L1s. We compared use of L2 (English) listening and speaking strategies at the start and end of a 5-week EAP programme at a UK university.
We found a moderate significant improvement over time in meaning-focused listening strategies, and some evidence in increased use of a wider range of speaking strategies. Further factor analysis revealed a subtle but clear shift towards more other-oriented stance in both listening and speaking strategy use, although with much individual variation, and no significant correlation with proficiency.
This study is one of the first to use speaker stance analysis in studying L2 academic communication. It provides some initial evidence to suggest that, if taken further, strategy teaching may enhance international students’ interactional competence when listening and speaking in a HE learning environment.
To register to attend this online talk please click here.

Royal Meteorological Society Masterclass: How do we use the "Weather" in "Numerical Weather Prediction"?
2022-03-23 15:00 - 16:30 | Online event
Speaker: Professor Peter Clark, University of Reading
We have been forecasting using computer models for well over 50 years. However, while we soon became used to the idea that so-called ‘NWP’ (Numerical Weather Prediction) models predict the synoptic-scale meteorology, such as the position and strength of low- or high-pressure regions, they still lacked the resolution or sufficiently sophisticated representation of physical processes to forecast the ‘weather’ such as rain, cloud, fog without additional help from some post-processing or interpretation by meteorologists.
Vast increases in computer power have led, in part at least, to increases in model resolution and sophistication, pioneered in regional models to the extent that they now represent much of the ‘weather’ directly. Model horizontal grid lengths of 1-2 km are now standard, and some centres are investigating resolutions 10 times higher, such that some of the motions we would label as ‘turbulence’ are explicitly simulated. This has contributed to considerable improvements in forecasting, but, paradoxically, smaller scales are less predictable than larger scales, so we are faced with a real dilemma over what we can believe in models and how we extract the best information.
This talk and discussion will highlight these issues and discuss some of the work that is happening to help us make the best use of these advances.
About RMetS and University of Reading Meteorological Masterclasses
Continuing our online Meteorological Masterclasses in partnership with the University of Reading, we are pleased to announce a new Masterclass series in “Advances in weather and climate forecasting”.
During this series, three leading experts from the University of Reading will discuss the latest scientific advances for understanding and predicting weather, climate and its impacts. Topics to be covered include data assimilation and machine learning; identification of causal pathways in atmospheric teleconnections; and modelling advances in resolution and parameterization for weather forecasting.
These masterclasses are intended to provide support for professionals working in Meteorology and Climate Science, and its operational applications who wish to remain up to date on recent scientific developments in the field.
Masterclasses will run weekly on Wednesday’s 16th, 23rd and 30th March 2022 from 3 pm to 4.30 pm (UTC), consisting of a presentation followed by the opportunity for questions and discussion with the speaker. Whilst the webinars are part of a series, attendance at all three events is not compulsory.

Inside and Outside Modernism: An Anatomy of 1922 and its Cultures
2022-03-28 | Reading
“James Joyce is quite wrong headed. Anyhow, with his wilfulness, he has made novel reading into a fair imitation of penal servitude…” (ARNOLD BENNETT on ULYSSES)
Keynote Speakers: Professor Patrick Collier (Ball State University), Dr Beci Carver (University of Exeter)
CALL FOR PAPERS
This one-day conference intends to examine 1922 looking at the cultures and writers associated with this significant year, in all their forms and geographical spread. It will consider the year holistically, considering cultural and personal interactions and how they relate to the intellectual work of modernism. The conference is designed to bring the year into clearer focus with interdisciplinary contributions from politics, history, science, economics, music, literature, book history and visual culture and areas that have fallen outside the purview of traditional modernism. Some questions the conference would like to approach include: how has modernism impacted on the study of artistic cultures? How far did recent history shape social attitudes? How did the political and economic uncertainties in 1922 permeate different cultures? Was 1922 important for anything more than modernism itself?
Key areas that we suggest will be covered include:

The music of 1922
Publishing and editing
Popular fiction
The texts of modernism
The political and economic context
The Great War and 1922
Theatre and culture
The trouble with modernism
Visual cultures
Modernism in retrospect
Outside the modernist canon
Scientific exploration

University of Reading Special Collections holds a number of important documents relating to publishing and literature in 1922 and there will be an exhibition showcasing some of the more prominent holdings which we hope will inform our discussions on the day.
Proposals for papers should be e-mailed to domonique.davies@pgr.reading.ac.uk and copy in b.bruce@pgr.reading.ac.uk no later than Wednesday December 1st 2021. All proposals should be about 250 words in length and papers should be a maximum of 20 minutes in duration. We hope to contact you about your proposal by 22nd December 2021. Please include an e-mail address and a two-to-three line biography with your proposal.
We are currently looking to deliver this conference in-person at the University of Reading, subject to guidelines. However, papers may be delivered online. Speakers and attendees will be notified closer to the date of confirmed arrangements.
Organised by Ben Bruce and Domonique Davies (Department of English Literature). Supported by the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing and the Samuel Beckett Research Centre at University of Reading.

Royal Meteorological Society Masterclass: Data Assimilation and Crowdsourced Observations in Numerical Weather
2022-03-30 15:00 - 16:30 | Online event
Speaker: Professor Sarah Dance, University of Reading
Weather forecasts are obtained by combining weather observations with computational predictions using a data assimilation process. Forecast accuracy relies on accurate estimates of the uncertainty in these weather observations. Professor Dance will introduce data assimilation, the observations used in numerical weather prediction and how observation uncertainty is dealt with in the data assimilation process.
New, inexpensive crowdsourced observations are being investigated for numerical weather prediction to fill gaps in existing scientific observing networks. However, the uncertainty comparisons between crowdsourced observations and numerical model predictions are not well understood. For example, the measurements will be affected by their local environment (e.g. a temperature measurement in a sheltered street will give a different reading to one made on the top of a skyscraper). Therefore, data assimilation algorithms must take account of the discrepancy in space and time scales represented by the model and those observed in the actual process.
Examples will be given from recent research, including temperature and wind observations from air traffic control reports and temperature observations from private cars. This talk will also discuss how modern deep learning techniques could be used alongside these datasets to improve numerical weather predictions in the future.
About RMetS and University of Reading Meteorological Masterclasses
Continuing our online Meteorological Masterclasses in partnership with the University of Reading, we are pleased to announce a new Masterclass series in “Advances in weather and climate forecasting”.
During this series, three leading experts from the University of Reading will discuss the latest scientific advances for understanding and predicting weather, climate and its impacts. Topics to be covered include data assimilation and machine learning; identification of causal pathways in atmospheric teleconnections; and modelling advances in resolution and parameterization for weather forecasting.
These masterclasses are intended to provide support for professionals working in Meteorology and Climate Science, and its operational applications who wish to remain up to date on recent scientific developments in the field.
Masterclasses will run weekly on Wednesday’s 16th, 23rd and 30th March 2022 from 3 pm to 4.30 pm (UTC), consisting of a presentation followed by the opportunity for questions and discussion with the speaker. Whilst the webinars are part of a series, attendance at all three events is not compulsory.

Bridging Worlds: Sustainable Agriculture Conference
2022-03-31 - 2022-04-01 | Agriculture Building
The Bridging Worlds: Sustainable Agriculture Conference will facilitate interdisciplinary discussion designed to address a variety of key issues surrounding: agriculture, agri-science, agri-innovation, climate change, climate justice, sustainability, trade and development, sustainable irrigation, and water resource management, with a focus on representing voices from the Global South.

The objective is to enlighten, educate, and reform our understanding of sustainability in relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Climate Change.
Keynote speakers will include The honorable Dr Tahani Sileet, Head of External Partnerships, (Deputy) MP at the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, and Ms Laura Kelly, Director of Shaping Sustainable Markets, from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
Dr Sileet will describe irrigation and water resource management of the 11 Nil-Basin countries, and shed light on their joint efforts to meet the SDGs. While Ms Kelly will talk about the support and development work that she has undertaken on inclusive and green economies, that leave no one behind – touching on: sustainable habits, workstreams on improving access to energy, resilient marine ecosystems, valuing natural capital, improving food security, and artisanal and small-scale mining.

For more information or to register your place, please visit the Bridging Worlds: Sustainable Agriculture Conference booking page.

GEAR Quarterly Lecture - Growth Volatility and Trade: Diversification vs Specialisation
2022-03-31 14:00 - 15:30 | Hybid event
The Group for Economic Analysis at Reading (GEAR) are pleased to announce the Inaugural GEAR Quarterly Lecture on “Growth Volatility and Trade: Diversification vs Specialisation”, to be given by Professor Miguel-Leon Ledesma, University of Kent and CEPR, on Thursday, 31 March 2022, 14:00-15:30 GMT, in a hybrid (in-person and online) format.
We shall hold these lectures every quarter. Attendance is free and you are all very welcome. To register your interest, email michelle.nand@reading.ac.uk or a.mihailov@reading.ac.uk.
For more details, please see the poster.

Them/Us: Who decolonises Speech and Language Therapy Higher Education
2022-04-04 18:30 | Online event
Co-hosted by the Speech and Language Therapy Society and the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) this is the first talk of the staff-student partnership at University of Reading, founded by Dr Vishnu Nair. We will be exploring Critical Conversations in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion from diverse perspectives around the world.
We are first joined by Dr Mershen Pillay, a member of the faculty at Massey University, New Zealand whose work has been critical in our understanding of what decolonising speech and language therapy means.
Monday 4th April, 6.30pm GMT (virtual).
To register please visit: https://forms.gle/ZeZnGtMQ53Lbv9sX7
