Monday 14th October
The Great British Class Debate
15:00-17:00, Hild Bede College
As we come to the end of 2019 and enter into a new decade the debate of social class still continues to revolve. The Sociology department hosts ‘The Big Class Debate’ with Professor Mike savage – London School of Economics and Lisa Mckenzie (Durham) both were part of the team that brought the much contested Great British Class Survey. Also on the panel is Sol Gamsu (Durham) who is part of the Abolish Eton campaign David Douglass (NUM) Trade Unionist and political organiser
Contact lisa.l.mckenzie@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.
St John’s College Annual Borderlands Lecture
19:30-20:45, ER201
Our annual Borderlands Lecture will this year be given by Martin Bashir who is currently BBC News Religious Correspondent,. Title: ‘The Burden of Identity Formation: Is there an alternative?’
The message is clear, whether it comes from pop culture, media or politicians: ‘Follow your dream’, ‘Be who you are’, ‘Construct the true you’.
The Disney movie Frozen encapsulates the message; ‘It’s time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through. No right, no wrong, no rules for me. I’m free!’ But how does this work in practice? Are the outcomes always positive and beneficial? And does religious faith have anything to say on the issue of identity formation? Places are limited, please register your attendance by e-mailing prin.exec@durham.ac.uk
Contact prin.exec@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.
Tuesday 15th October
Durham Early Modern Group – Seminar Series; From Grotius To Richard Simon: The European Sources Of The English Enlightenment Debates On Christian Religion, 1650s – 1730s
17:00-18:00, Department of History, Dr Marco Barducci
The English Enlightenment is a case in point of the complexity of the relationships between Enlightenment and religion. England’s role was seminal in the elaboration and dissemination of a ‘Christian Enlightenment’, that is of the idea, developed by Cambridge Platonists, Locke, and moderate Anglicans such as William Warburton (1698 –1779), that the Christian religion was an eminently reasonable religion and that reason and revelation could be reconciled by identifying the moral fundamentals of the Christian faith. After the Restoration of monarchy in 1660, what was at stake in the English Enlightenment religious and philosophical debate was not a single doctrine, rather it was the authority of Scripture itself and the sacerdotal understanding of the church to sustain attacks from both Catholics like Richard Simon (1638-1712) and Deists like John Toland (1670-1722). Existing scholarly literature has generally presupposed an insular dimension of the English debates on religion. By focusing on the English reception of early modern Dutch and French philosophical, religious, and hermeneutical texts from the 1650s to the 1730s, I argue that Dutch and French thinkers made an essential contribution both to the diffusion in England of an historical-philological approach to Scripture and to an understanding of the utility of the clergy to secure social cohesion and civilization, which are deemed key to an understanding of English Enlightenment. I also argue that the engagement with Dutch and French ideas spanned the spectrum of orthodox and heterodox positions, thus making an essential contribution to the changes in the ways in which aspects relating to biblical interpretation and church authority were approached and debated in England at the threshold between the Reformation and the Enlightenment
Contact admin.imems@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.
Written in Water: A Celebration of the 1819 Odes of John Keats
17:00-18:00, St Chad’s College Chapel
Organised in association with Durham University English Literature Society (D.U.E.L.S.). Free admission, all welcome!
Words and Music by Andrew Mitchell and Robert King.
Contact s.r.regan@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.
IAS Fellow’s Public Lecture – Music in the Mind and the Brain
17:30-18:30, Penthouse Suite, Collingwood College, Professor Andrea Halpern (Bucknell University)
Abstract
Music is nearly universal among human cultures and although not everyone is a trained musician, most people, from children to adults, are able to understand and appreciate music. Professor Andrea Halpern summarises a variety of research projects in which she tries to capture the capabilities and limitations of the mind and brain when understanding, and remembering music, including music that you only imagine. She will also talk about the most universal musical skill, singing, and how studying bad singing can be scientifically illuminating and include some consideration of music processing in healthy aging and dementia.
This lecture is free and open to all.
Details about Professor Andrea Halpern
Contact enquiries.ias@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.
Wednesday 16th October
Research Seminar: Space for change: using the physical environment to support pedagogical innovation
13:00-14:00, Education Department room 134
A seminar from Dr Pamela Woolner, Senior Lecturer in Education at Newcastle University. Everyone is welcome to attend and booking is not required.
The physical setting is an inherent part of the total educational environment, facilitating some activities and hindering others, while also conveying values and beliefs. Therefore, it seems reasonable that changing school space could assist with wider educational change. However, history and recent experience demonstrate the error of assuming that one inevitably follows the other.
This talk will first consider two periods when policy and decision makers in the UK encouraged change to school space and practices – with uneven results. I will then discuss the success of two schools in undertaking innovations that included space, arguing that change to the physical setting, understood as part of the whole learning environment, can be particularly powerful. Finally, I will reflect on the implications of an analysis that supports the idea of school space as a key local driver of educational change, while simultaneously suggesting the difficulties in attempting to use physical alterations to spearhead policy-led transformation.
Contact ed.research@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.
Brexit and Immigration Status of EU colleagues
14:00-17:00, Derman Christopherson Room, Calman Learning Centre
As part of our continuing commitment to our non-UK colleagues we are delighted to be working in partnership with Womble Bond Dickinson who will deliver a session on the effects of Brexit on EU nationals’ immigration status at this current time
This will be primarily focused on information for our EU colleagues on the immigration aspects of Brexit and the EU Settlement Scheme. There will be a presentation lasting approximately 1 hour followed by a Q&A session. If you are not able to attend all, or part of the event, you are welcome to submit your questions in advance to hr.ukvi@durham.ac.uk by Friday 11 October and a response will follow the event. Places will be on a first come, first served basis.
Contact hr.ukvi@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.
Book Launch: La première circulation de la Servitude française en France et au-delà
17:00, A56, Dr Marc Schachter and Professor John O’Brien, with Dr Tom Hamilton (Durham)
Translating Religion: Devotion and Piety From Europe to the Anglophone World in the Nineteenth Century
17:30-19:15, Ushaw College
Ushaw Lecture by Dr Anne O’Connor. This lecture is open to all and is free of charge. More details, including details of help with transport between Durham City and Ushaw, available at https://centreforcatholicstudies.eventbrite.com
Contact ccs.admin@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.
History of the Book Lecture: “The Roundel: Window onto the Domain of a Concept”
17:30-18:30, Gala Theatre, Professor Martha Rust (New York University)
Martha Rust works in the literary-historical period of the Middle Ages, focusing on late-medieval manuscript culture: that network of beliefs and practices– devotional, pedagogical, economic, technological, agricultural, among others–that constituted the milieu of medieval book production and use. The broader interests she brings to her study of this field include the phenomenology of reading, picture theory, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science and the history of writing. Her first book, Imaginary Worlds in Medieval Books: Exploring the Manuscript Matrix, demonstrates the interpretive power of conceptualizing the medieval manuscript as a virtual realm, one that is called forth by a reader’s engagement with a book’s play of picture and text. In her current book project, Item: Lists and the Poetics of Reckoning in Late Medieval England, Rust seeks to develop a theory of a written list as a device that functions within three signifying domains: the domains of words, of pictures, and of things.
Rust’s teaching is inspired by her fascination not only with medieval manuscript culture but also with its contemporary “new media” and “post-modern” analogues. Thus in addition to conventional essay writing, her classes often entail the use of collaborative writing environments such as wikis and blogs as well as experimentation with a variety of “marginal” genres that characterize medieval pages and web “pages” alike as collage, including the note, anecdote, proverb, commentary, and fragmentary or even found text.
To Book: Click Here
Contact admin.imems@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.
Thursday 17th October
Workshop: “Window onto the Domain of a Concept”
09:30-11:00, Palace Green Library
Following on from “The Roundel: Window onto the Domain of a Concept”Lecture,16th October 2019, Professor Martha Rust (New York University) will be hosting a Manuscript Workshop in Cursitors.
Booking is essential and places are limited.
To book a slot please email admin.imems@durham.ac.uk
Saturday 19th October
IMEMS/Blackfriars: Eat Medieval: Heritage and Hospitality, Medieval and Modern
11:00, Blackfriars Banquet Hall, Newcastle
The European Middle Ages produced one of the world’s great cuisines. In this talk Andy Hook, proprietor of Blackfriars Restaurant, and Giles Gasper, Professor of Medieval History at Durham University, discuss their work over the last ten years to bring this gastronomic tradition into the modern restaurant. How research into medieval food and food culture are supported at Blackfriars, the importance to interpreting medieval recipes of the chefs and stand at the restaurant, and how to feed curiosity and change public perception about medieval food are amongst the topics to be raised. The theme of hospitality runs through the heritage initiatives at Blackfriars and was central to medieval culture. In that spirit we will also introduce the Dominican Friars who founded Blackfriars, the purpose of their order, and their attitudes towards charity and hospitality. From the early thirteenth to the early twenty-first century, we will show the incredible inspiration from the past for the present, and the ways in which past experience can be harnessed and brought to life.
To Book Click Here
Postgraduate Research in Modern Languages and Cultures 