Category: School of Arts

By Dr Saima Nasar and Professor Madhu Krishnan, Co-Directors of the Centre for Black Humanities

The Centre for Black Humanities is an international hub for Black Humanities research in the heart of Bristol. The Centre aims to foster the broad range of research currently being done at the University of Bristol around the artistic and intellectual work of people of African descent. Some of our current interdisciplinary projects include Dr Josie Gill’s research on ‘Black Health and the Humanities’, Dr Elizabeth Robles’ work on Black British Art, and Dr Justin William’s project on UK Hip-Hop. Other research projects include those relating to ethics and social justice, literary activism, and slavery and its legacies.

The Centre is committed to reaching audiences outside the traditional university through a diverse programme of film screenings, reading groups, performances, and research collaborations with local communities. Such activities enable our research to generate impact in other areas including the cultural industries and higher education policy.

Our main priorities as a Centre are: collaboration, interdisciplinarity, engagement, exchange, and internationalism. The Centre works with academics, artists and practitioners – nationally and internationally –  to produce world-leading research in Black Humanities. We work across disciplines in the Arts and Humanities but also beyond, with researchers in the Sciences and Social Sciences. Centre members also facilitate a wide range of public engagement activities based on our research in local, national and international settings, working with museums, charities and other organisations to deliver high-quality, non-academic outputs.

Additionally, we have active research partnerships with local writers, artists and grassroots organisations in Bristol. These help create high-profile opportunities for mutual exchange and collaboration on issues of local and national importance. We also have academic and creative partners in Uganda, Ghana, Senegal, Angola, Portugal, Brazil, and the US, amongst others. A list of our international board members can be found on our website.

The Centre has had a series of visiting scholars join us. In 2021, we were delighted to host Professor Nicola Aljoe. Professor Aljoe’s research is on Black Atlantic and Caribbean literature with a specialisation on the slave narrative and early novels. She described her time in Bristol:

‘Despite the ongoing COVID pandemic, my sojourn at the Centre for Black Humanities in Bristol during the fall term of 2021 was an incredibly productive and intellectually engaging experience. I conducted research in the Bristol archives on two related projects. The first was the creation of a digital map of the various locations associated with Black people in 18^th – century London through the lens of Ignatius Sancho. The second project was my book manuscript on representations of women of colour from the Caribbean in fictional European texts between 1790 and 1830. Such data productively challenges notions of absence of Black people in the archives of Britain at this time, and provides more details about the complexities of their lives.’

The Centre offers exciting opportunities for our early career and postgraduate community, through cutting-edge research and dialogue with arts and community activists. This year, Adriel Miles, Alice Kinghorn and Francis Asante are coordinating a programme of events. Francis explained:

‘The Centre plans to organise a number of postgraduate research (PGR) seminars and reading groups. Two seminars are planned for the first teaching block on topics related to the exploration of racial communities in online spaces, and the relationship between race, music, and cultural politics. These events are designed to encourage a sense of community in the Centre, and to provide a space for learning and socialising. Preparations for the seminars are still ongoing, and further information about them will be shared soon.’

• To find out more, visit the Centre for Black Humanities website.
• Everyone is welcome to attend our seminar series. You can find more information about events and activities here: https://bristolblackhumanities.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/events/
• To join the Centre for Black Humanities as a member, please email us at cbh-publicity@bristol.ac.uk.

Dr Saima Nasar and Professor Madhu Krishnan

(Centre Co-Directors)

By Hilary Carey, Faculty Research Director

We are delighted to launch five Faculty Research Centres (FRC) for a new cycle of five years of funding at the University of Bristol. They are:

• Black Humanities
• Creative Technologies
• Environmental Humanities
• Health, Humanities and Science
• Medieval Studies

We like to think of the FRCs as the crown jewels in the Faculty’s glittering treasure chest of activist, interdisciplinary research. The five Centres showcase arts and humanities research at the cutting edge of new knowledge, asking key questions about themes and issues critical to the city of Bristol, the people of the West of England, and the world.

Each Centre has developed a diverse programme of activity including public lectures and debates, workshops and seminars, conferences and collaborations that engage colleagues and the public beyond the University.

Here is a sneak preview of some of the many Centre activities and opportunities that we can look forward to this academic year:

1. The Centre for Black Humanities has a postgraduate research (PGR) group planning a series of seminars, reading groups and away days.
2. The Centre for Creative Technologies will co-design sandbox events (isolated testing environments) with civic partners – the Pervasive Media Studio and Knowle West Media Centre – to explore social applications of arts and technologies.
3. As part of the Centre for Creative Technologies, Bristol Common Press will host a global summer school on Technologies of the Book, which will run for three weeks in summer 2023.
4. The Centre for Environmental Humanities has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the environmental humanities ‘Greenhouse’ at the University of Stavanger, demonstrating the positive potential for partnership working.
5. The Centre for Environmental Humanities plans to host a ‘Future of the Environmental Humanities’ workshop that will bring together researchers to think about the question of what comes next for the field of environmental humanities.
6. The Centre for Medieval Studies (CMS) has a regular seminar series including one session on ‘What every medievalist should know…’.
7. The Medieval Studies Global Professor, Kathleen Kennedy, has developed links with the Bristol Central Library, and is planning an ambitious exhibition of medieval manuscripts in Bristol libraries and archives.
8. The Centre for Health, Humanities and Science plans a symposium on ‘Hoarding’, convened by Andrew Blades.
9. The Centre for Health, Humanities and Science is planning its first collaborative book, Key Concepts in Medical Humanities (Bloomsbury Academic), to be published in 2023.
10. Each Centre will have its own site on the Bristol Blogs platform through which they can showcase their research and activities.

There is a lot more to look forward to, so find out more about our five fantastic Faculty Research Centres.

The University of Bristol is home to a vibrant and thriving community of more than 3,000 postgraduate researchers from all over the world, with around 400 in the Faculty of Arts. Whether working towards a PhD or studying for a master’s degree – taught or by research – students in the Faculty of Arts can benefit from world-class academic and professional training and cross-disciplinary collaborations. 

Let’s take a look at just a few of the many opportunities available to our postgraduate students within the Faculty. 

Research and collaboration opportunities 

The Faculty of Arts hosts several Faculty Research Centres which act as hubs for innovative, cross-disciplinary research. Our postgraduate research students are encouraged to join a Centre, enabling them to build strong networks and engage in collaborative research with colleagues from across the University and beyond. With each Research Centre working in partnership with international institutions, Bristol’s Faculty of Arts has a truly global reach and presents unique networking opportunities.  

One recent example stems from the Centre for Medieval Studies. Academics from the Centre were awarded a €2.4 million EU Horizon grant to train a new generation of medievalists from across Europe in the history of the early book. Most of the funding will go towards financing postgraduate research studentships, including two at Bristol. Co-Directors of the Centre Professor Ad Putter and Professor Marianne Ailes said: “Importantly, we will train a cohort of young researchers who will, from the beginning of their research careers, see international collaboration as integral to how they work.” 

Research placements 

Industrial placements will form the cornerstone of the research studentships mentioned above, enabling the Faculty’s strong research partnerships with a variety of organisations and institutions to enhance the student learning experience. Professor Putter and Professor Ailes said: “The placements give students the transferable skills to succeed outside academia and, for those who remain in university research, will provide skills in public engagement and impact which will stand them in good stead.” 

A further example can be seen on one of our popular MA courses. Past and current placement partners on our MA Medieval Studies course include the Churches Conservation Trust, Oxford’s Bodleian Library, Bristol Archives, and Bristol University’s own Arts and Social Sciences Library Special Collections. The latest addition to the impressive list of over a dozen placement partners is Magdalen College Library and Archives, Oxford.  

These research placements have proven invaluable to both students and partners from the cultural heritage sector, as Director of the MA Medieval Studies programme and its Placement unit, Dr Ben Pohl, explains: “Our students regularly highlight the transformative effect that these placements have had on their future career plans, and just how well prepared they felt for a career in the cultural heritage sector as a result of this bespoke experience. Our partners, in turn, have been full of praise about the students they have hosted and the innovative ways in which their work has helped them connect with audiences both within academia and amongst the general public.”  

Indeed, several of our students have found employment in the cultural heritage sector upon graduation, some even at the very institutions at which they undertook their placements during their degree. 

Postgraduate Research Summer Internships 

Postgraduate Research (PGR) students within the Faculty of Arts are eligible to undertake a PGR Summer Internship, a scheme designed to enable supervisors and postgraduate research students to work together on a project to achieve common goals. The six-week internships provide an opportunity for focused research on collaborative projects, which this year ranged from authoring a historical research article on Anglican slave missions to developing a website for a British Academy Knowledge Frontiers Project that explores energy access and resilience among forest peoples of Brazilian Amazonia. PGR interns receive mentoring and guidance throughout their internship. This year’s cohort attended a welcome session led by the Faculty’s Research Impact and Knowledge Exchange Manager, Dr Hannah Pearce, which encouraged interns to use the experience to develop their skills, consider their strengths and identify opportunities for reflection.  

Alice Kinghorn, a third-year PhD History student, undertook a PGR internship in summer 2021, and found it to be a rewarding experience: “My internship involved recording interviews with staff and students about current research in the Faculty for our YouTube playlist. I thoroughly enjoyed it, as not only did it allow me to practice valuable communication skills, I also learnt how to edit videos and use graphic-creation software. I undertook a second internship in summer 2022, where I had the opportunity to apply these skills to create a ‘Day in the Life of a PhD Student’ video. The internship scheme has been a fantastic addition to my studies.” 

Keep checking back for more Arts-related content, including our upcoming blog series all about the PGR Summer Internships.  

Find out more about postgraduate study within the Faculty of Arts 

Learn about PhD Scholarships in the Faculty of Arts  

Discover research in the Faculty of Arts 

This article was originally posted to LinkedIn on 6 September 2022.

The Bristol Digital Game Lab is a new research group at the University of Bristol launching in September 2022, coordinated by Dr Xiaochun Zhang and Dr Richard Cole. The Lab, which is based in the Faculty of Arts, will bring together researchers and practitioners from a radically diverse range of perspectives. This includes translation and accessibility, history, comparative literature, law, computer science, AI, game design, and beyond.

The aim of the Lab is to chart new possibilities for collaboration, both across disciplines and between Higher Education and the gaming industry, with digital games as a shared object of interest. By exploring crosscutting themes in a collaborative environment, we hope to contribute to ongoing debates about the nature and impact of games, while also co-creating new ways to develop, play, and test ideas using games. To this end, the Lab will offer researchers and practitioners the opportunity to experience a variety of games on the latest hardware, as well as the chance to get involved in generating their own.

Our areas of interest are as follows:

Networking

The Lab will establish a cross-disciplinary network of researchers and industry professionals working on games as well as extended reality more broadly, from early career scholars to creative directors. The network, like the industry itself, will be regional, national, and international. The Lab will support colleagues through brokerage events and themed meetings.

Partnerships

The Lab will connect researchers to a thriving regional, national, and international industry with the aim to facilitate knowledge exchange and explore collaborative outcomes. The Lab will host industry showcases, invite guest speakers, and foster sustainable partnerships with the creative industries.

Research

The Lab will support research in gaming and extended reality through a series of research-sharing events and discussions focused on crosscutting themes. Such themes will include, but are not limited to, game localisation and accessibility, history and cultural heritage in games, VR and immersive technologies, audience experiences and analytics, the Metaverse and gaming ethics, (serious) games and education, games and society, intellectual property, modding, and game design. Building on the University’s investment in state-of-the-art gaming facilities, the Lab will also encourage play-as-research and interactive brainstorming to identify future outputs and areas of interest.

For a taster of our current research, you can hear from Xiaochun, Richard, and Dr Yin Harn Lee in the Bristol Digital Game Lab Seminar that we delivered for Bristol Data Week in June 2022.

Innovation

The Lab will act as an incubator for innovative projects by opening up the University of Bristol’s gaming facilities and expertise, as well as by connecting interested parties. We will deliver skills development workshops, playtest ideas, and co-create new experiences.

How can you get involved?

• Please email us if you would like to join the Game Lab and hear about our research/events. We will be offering both remote and in-person activities.
• Let us know what you are working on and what you would like the Game Lab to do. We particularly welcome enquires from those working in the games industry or at the intersection of gaming and other sectors.

Coordinators

Dr Xiaochun Zhang (xiaochun.zhang@bristol.ac.uk) is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies. Her research interests lie primarily in audiovisual translation with a specific interest in video game localisation and accessibility. Currently, she is working on the AD4Games project which applies audio description in video games to enhance accessibility for players with vision loss.

Dr Richard Cole (richard.cole@bristol.ac.uk) is an interdisciplinary scholar working on digital/virtual representations of antiquity. He is currently part of the multi-disciplinary team on the Virtual Reality Oracle project at the University of Bristol, where he holds the role of Research Associate in Ancient Greek History and Virtual Reality. Richard has published on the role of video games and historical fiction more broadly in shaping public perceptions of history.

After four very happy and successful years as Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Professor Karla Pollmann will be leaving the University at the end of the summer to take up the post of President and Vice Chancellor at Tübingen University in her home town in Germany. We caught up with Karla to reflect upon her time in Bristol and wish her well in the new role.

In your first interview for the Faculty newsletter, you described Bristol as ‘vibrant, dynamic and forward-looking’. What would you now add to that list?

The descriptors I used then still all hold true! In a presentation at the most recent University Management Team (UMT) Residential meeting in September 2021, I further described Bristol and its fantastic University as:

• Open, friendly, individualistic
• Entrepreneurial, innovative, original
• Politically astute, educated workforce
• Adventurous, quirky.

Bristolians among the UMT and the Vice-Chancellor wholeheartedly agreed! ‘Quirky’ can be illustrated by a photograph I took last year which is telling testimony of the ability at Bristol to think in opposites:

What makes the University of Bristol – and the Faculty of Arts specifically – stand out for you?

First, as a comprehensive university Bristol boasts a great breadth of disciplines. This needs to be seen as an opportunity. The same holds true for the Faculty of Arts. This does not mean just continuing doing things the same way as before, but it opens up incredible new opportunities to work together across disciplines both in teaching and in research, something Bristol is already very good at and is excellently placed to do even more of. This is what the future needs, and so this will be a great service to society.

Second, the University is placed in one of the most beautiful cities on the planet, with a fantastic cultural programme, a vibrant creative sector and growing tech industry, and beautiful natural surroundings. The strong pulling-power of the city is of great benefit to the University, and vice versa.

Third and most importantly, its great people!

In 2019, you mentioned that your office was your favourite place on campus – has that changed?!

Well, I said this a bit tongue in cheek, as at that time – not long after my arrival – my office simply had been my main place of operation. Covid has changed this dramatically, so nearly half of my time as Dean was spent predominantly working from home, which came with its own benefits and challenges. But yes, I still think I have a great office (although at the moment it is in need of repair!). I also have fond memories of Café Nero where I regularly met up with colleagues for more informal chats, the restaurant at the Lido with its unique setting, and Bristol Zoo where we had an unforgettable Faculty Board Away Day and where our creative juices kept flowing, aided by a stimulating acoustic backdrop of roaring lions!

What are some of the achievements you are most proud of during your time as Dean?

That I instituted a Faculty IT Committee, which is seen by the University as state-of-the-art thanks to its fantastic members under the chair Gloria Visintini. Thank you!

That under my leadership we now have more female professors (nearly 50%) in Arts than ever before in the history of the University.

That we had a highly successful review of our marvellous Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which goes from strength to strength with winning awards and whose original and attention-grabbing designs range from Peequal to a cleaning case for reusable menstrual cups.

That we will get the Centre for Study Abroad, for which I have fought since my arrival and which will be a real game changer for the University and the Faculty.

That I managed to bring colleagues – both academic and professional services – together under our shared agenda to ensure that the Faculty of Arts is not seen as an optional extra, but is valued as an integral part of the University and its forward-looking strategy!

If someone asked you “Why do the Arts matter?”, what would your response be?

My general answer would be: because the future is walking towards the Arts. None of the great challenges that affect humankind as a whole can be solved without the Arts and Humanities.

On the one hand they can enrich a multidisciplinary agenda, for example in working with Engineering in relation to immersive technology and the creative sector. It needs to be emphasised over and over again that technological ‘progress’ as such is not an end in itself but needs to be assessed as to its social, cultural and legal consequences. Technology as such does not create content but is a vehicle for it. This is where the Arts and Humanities come to the fore.

On the other hand, therefore, the Arts and Humanities have a value in themselves which must not be overlooked or be obscured by dazzling technological changes. For instance, how we use language tells us a lot of how we think about nature, gender, or race. Ingrained habits of expression need to be critically reflected as an ongoing concern, also in exchange with other cultures and languages, in order to interrogate iteratively how we view the world and how we behave in it. This has massive consequences for society as a whole, and this is the distinctive and irreplaceable domain of the Arts and Humanities.

What are your wishes for the future of the Faculty of Arts?

The University of Bristol will from September onwards have a new VC, Professor Evelyn Welch, who is a distinguished Arts scholar in her own right and thus very familiar with the unique contribution of the Arts and Humanities. This means that on the one hand one cannot pull the wool over her eyes, but on the other she will see the great potential and specific contribution of our Faculty. I wish for the Faculty that it carries on with its agenda of growth through transformation; continues to have buoyant student recruitment – in particular international – in combination with exciting new programmes; continues to establish strong and successful cross-institutional research partnerships; and continues to make its presence and important contribution felt not only across the University but also to the benefit of the city, region, and wider society.

Are there any final thoughts you’d like to share with your Faculty colleagues?

I already know now that I will hold my four years at Bristol in my memory as some of the happiest years of my life. People are exceptionally friendly, thoughtful, intelligent and endearing in a way that was just perfect for me. I know this is not to be taken for granted. I also had the best job in the world, as being Dean opens up incredible creative opportunities. But I would not have got anywhere without the fantastic people, both academic staff and professional services, who supported me.

One of the distinctive features encapsulating all this is the graduation ceremonies which have been taken up again after a two-year break. In Germany, this tradition has been discontinued altogether since the 1960s – Tübingen has now asked whether I could reintroduce them! In these ceremonies the University celebrates an important rite of passage for its most precious asset, namely its students. Without our students, all the research we do and the values we hold would dry up as it will be the students who carry them out into the world. All this endeavour has got something fractured, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. Therefore, Matthew Brown and myself spent some delightful time before one graduation ceremony in July 2022 taking each other’s picture ‘through a glass darkly’.

I wish you all the very best for the future, and look forward to saying goodbye to as many of you as possible over the coming weeks!

The results are in for REF 2021: the results for the Faculty are very good indeed, and part of a fantastic university result.

What is the REF?

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the national assessment of research, conducted by expert panels every six years, across some 34 subject-based units of assessment (UOAs). It provides rankings and ratings for research, impact and environment which are used by the four UK higher education funding bodies to decide on the distribution of around £2 billion of research funding. The last one took place in 2014.

REF is a kind of report card on research and impact for all participating British higher education institutions.

So how did we do?

Overall, we did very well. According to the rankings provided by the Times Higher, three UOAs have been ranked in the top ten in the country, namely Anthropology (6^th), Classics (8^th), and Modern Languages (4^th).

In individual highlights, Anthropology, and Religion and Theology were given the highest possible award for outputs (for example, books, chapters, creative works, and articles). Music, Drama, Film and TV, and History were ranked in the top quartile for impact. Modern Languages had the highest possible award for environment.

An overall 48% of research submitted to REF 2021 by the Faculty was rated as world-leading (4*) in terms of originality, significance and rigour. 88.5% was rated as world-leading or internationally excellent (4* and 3*).

These figures represent an enormous amount of intellectual work and effort, not just by the academics but by the professional services staff who supported them and the process. It demonstrates that the research undertaken in the Faculty of Arts is world leading, has significant impacts on society, and contributes to knowledge across all our disciplines.

What difference will it make?

A strong REF 2021 result means the Faculty is in a good position to invest in more world-leading research in the arts and humanities, research which makes a real and positive difference to people’s lives. You can sample some of our outstanding impact in the refreshed Impact and Engagement page.

Congratulations to all.

Hilary Carey and Helen Fulton

Faculty Research Directors (Arts)

Autumn is just around the corner, and as we creep closer to a change of season we are looking forward to the start of a new academic year. We’d like to take this opportunity to extend a special welcome to our new students joining the Faculty of Arts family this term. Read on to hear from some members of the Faculty.

Professor Karla Pollmann, Dean of the Faculty of Arts

As Dean of the Faculty of Arts, I am delighted to welcome you to the University of Bristol as you embark on this exciting new adventure. The Arts and Humanities are of great value to society, and are not only relevant, but vital in an ever-changing, unpredictable world. We look forward to seeing the creativity and innovation you – the next generation of linguists, historians, anthropologists, philosophers, musicians – bring to your respective fields, and to helping you to develop some serious skills as future leaders with a special emphasis on civic engagement and social responsibility.

A key strength of the Faculty of Arts lies not only in the incredible depth and breadth of academic knowledge housed within, but also in its diversity, inclusivity, and sense of community. We pride ourselves on fostering a welcoming space, and our sincere wish is that your journey with us will be a cherished and transformative one. The opportunities available to you within the Faculty of Arts are many and varied – we ask you to be curious, to be imaginative, to be bold. Challenge yourselves, apply yourselves, and enjoy yourselves! Welcome!

 

Dr Shelley Hales, Faculty Admissions and Recruitment Officer

Hi and welcome to Bristol! My name’s Shelley, and as the Faculty’s Admissions and Recruitment Officer I have been busy over the summer overlooking all the A-Level results coming in. It’s always an exciting time of year to find out who our new students will be. I also teach in the School of Humanities, and like the rest of academic staff across the faculty I am busy getting ready for the term ahead, preparing classes, working in new research and latest knowledge (for me, as a Classicist, that means adding the very latest finds from Pompeii to my Pompeii class) and posting material on our unit Blackboard pages so that you have all the information you need to get started in Week 1. We’re all looking forward to meeting you and working with you as unit tutors and personal tutors. Every student has a personal tutor who is there to help you with university life. When you arrive, you’ll be hearing from us as we reach out to welcome you and get you oriented. Please do ask us any questions you have – that’s what we’re here for! In the meantime, very best wishes for your first days of being a Bristol student – see you in class!

 

Michelle Coupland, Faculty Manager

Welcome to the Faculty of Arts at the University of Bristol. You’ve made a great decision to come and join our vibrant, supportive and dynamic community. Within the Faculty of Arts, we are proud to be bold, engaging and inspiring and I know that you will enjoy being a key part of our community. One of the things that I most love about this faculty is its friendliness – staff and students alike are smiling, encouraging and keen to support each other.

As an Arts graduate myself, I value the skills and techniques that my studies gave me and use them throughout my daily life (both in a professional work capacity and outside of work socially, too).  I look beyond the information in front of me to see the wider and bigger picture, constantly ask questions to learn more, and knit different pieces of information together to come up with the best solution for all. Not only this, but I value the fact that I have interests (reading, literature and music) that I continue to pursue outside of work and which help to provide perspective (something that I have really come to appreciate in more recent times).

Welcome to the Faculty, and I look forward to seeing you around and saying hello to you.