Faculty Bulletin, Easter 2009

From the Dean

Click on the link below for the Dean's report.

RESEARCH OFFICE NEWS

'Green Paper - Research Centres in the Faculty of Humanities -Guidelines for Governance and Finance'

Consultation on the above paper has now closed. Thanks to all those who responded. Although the 'green paper' is primarily focused on the role of research centres the feedback it has generated impacts on all levels of research support and perceived 'barriers to research' across the Faculty. A short period of time will now be required to assess all responses and while revisions to the original proposals will be considered it is important to use all responses as an opportunity to help make wider improvements to our research support environment from both an academic and administrative view point.

A further statement concerning 'next steps' will be made after the Easter break.

ESRC Centre for Socio-Cultural Change

CRESC is to receive £4.5 million from ESRC over five years, 2009-14. CRESC is the only major British social science investment to explore issues of culture and social change. It has developed close links with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the BBC, the Office of National Statistics, and with private sector partners such as KPMG.

CRESC has carried out internationally acclaimed academic work including 'Culture, Class, Distinction' published by Routledge earlier this year. Carried out by Tony Bennett, Mike Savage, Elizabeth Silva, Alan Warde, Modesto Gayo-Cal and David Wright, the study is the most systematic account of people's cultural tastes and practices in the areas of music, television and film viewing, reading, the visual arts, sport, and eating out ever conducted in the UK.

CRESC's work on financialization and financial innovation, led by Karel Williams with Ismail Erturk, Julie Froud, Adam Leaver and Johnna Montgomerie has been prescient in the current financial crisis. CRESC has also revived the study of elites by focusing on new groups of the working rich in and around the financial markets.

As an example of CRESC's burgeoning user profile, Penny Harvey has developed a research partnership with the international design and consultancy engineers ARUP, to explore their use of 3D digital modelling in relation to the reconfiguration of urban public space.
Prof Karel Williams, of Manchester Business School, taking over as Convening Director said:

"Having established ourselves in our first five years, we now have a series of great new themes interrogating the nature of social and cultural participation, the cultural dimensions of the current crisis of capitalism, and the role of expertise in shaping social change. We are pursuing these with international partners from across the globe and with leading public and private sector user groups. It is going to be an exciting time."

Other Funding Competitions

The new AHRC BGP (Block Grant Partnership) competition is well underway, with the Faculty PGR office providing support for schools in processing applications.

The Sustainable Consumption Institute is going forward as a formal expression of interest to Erasmus Mundus II. The second phase of the submission process involves submitting a detailed application by 30 April.

Schools have been invited to put forward candidates for support from the PGR Endowment Fund, which provides home fees and maintenance to high calibre students undertaking research in one of the priority research themes. This year the themes are, 'Cultural Identity and Change' and 'Sustainable Societies.' The deadline for Faculty to receive applications is Friday 29 May.

NEWS FROM INSTITUTE FOR SCIENCE, ETHICS AND INNOVATION (ISEI)

Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation (iSEI) has been awarded a prestigious Wellcome Trust Biomedical Ethics Strategic Award, which provides funding of more than £800,000 over 5 years. This Strategic Award, one of four made by Wellcome and the only one based in the north, commences March 2009.

The award funds a multidisciplinary programme - the Wellcome Strategic Programme in The Human Body, Its Scope, Limits and Future - that follows five strands of innovative research in: human biomaterials, genethics, enhancement, reproduction and methods in bioethics. The programme enables an exciting new collaboration with Sarah Cunningham-Burley, Professor of Medical and Family Sociology at the University of Edinburgh.

John Harris, Director of iSEI and lead on the Wellcome Strategic Programme, said: "Building on established research groups with diverse expertise, we will create an innovative nexus between bioethics, medical jurisprudence and sociology. The programme will offer many opportunities for collaboration and new research initiatives."

iSEI held a second 'Who Owns Science?' meeting on 15 January to follow on from the institute's public launch in July 2008, and is now close to finalising a Manchester Manifesto on the topic of equitable innovation.

To find out more about the research, activities and people of iSEI, as well as fully-funded postgraduate studentships associated with the Wellcome Strategic Programme, visit our new website at: www.isei.manchester.ac.uk

EVENTS NEWS FROM THE CENTRE FOR NEW WRITING

A.L. Kennedy's Day in Manchester

Costa Book Award winner A.L. Kennedy provided a highly entertaining finale to our spring season of Literature Live events on 16 March, when she visited the Centre for New Writing for an MA workshop and reading.

The multi-talented writer also managed to squeeze in an interview with local TV station Channel M, before reading extracts from her new short story collection and her prize-winning novel Day, and chatting with Centre lecturer and Kennedy expert Kaye Mitchell.

A.L. began by reading a complete short story from the forthcoming What Becomes, entitled 'The Story of My Life'. For its main character, the cycle of life is characterised by a series of invasive dental treatments; including childhood extractions, a failed anaesthetic for the removal of a wisdom tooth at 25, a confused, chemically-sedated date at 35 and, at 45, an anaesthetic so strong that a local homeless person gives her a donation, a sweet and a kiss!

Kaye Mitchell then led a lively question and answer session, which touched on such topics as the differences between writing historical and contemporary fiction, and the perceived obligation to be an authority on a subject before writing about it. A.L. revealed that she has little time for the literary world and its demands, simply writing about the ideas which come to her.

In fact, she positively advocates the practice of "going to places you don't know," and sees writing as a unique way of getting to be someone and do things one would otherwise be unable to. In this and many other ways she sees language as an extremely powerful force, with its ability to change people's views, feelings, and in the case of Shakespearian actors even physical shape.

To take pleasure in their work, for her, writers must refute commercial pressures and regain a child's energy and perspective perhaps a tip for novelist Colm Toibin who described how little he enjoys putting pen to paper in the current issue of our journal The Manchester Review
www.themanchesterreview.co.uk

Such energy was certainly in evidence as A.L. rounded up the event with two powerful readings from Day, in which protagonist Alfred first meets members of his air crew and, later, laments their deaths. Despite her busy afternoon she was then happy to sign books for a large crowd of admirers in the foyer many of whom will be at the front of the queue when What Becomes is published in August.

SKILLS TRAINING TEAM NEWS

For current events for Humanities Research Staff go to http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/humnet/acaserv/rsforum/rsworkshops/calendar/

For PGR events go to http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/humnet/acaserv/pgresearch/training/calendar/

MEDIA NEWS

The first major output of the collaboration between Harvard and Manchester was launched in March, with subsequent coverage in the Guardian and the Today programme on BBC Radio Four. The Second Edition of the Manchester Review was widely covered in national newspapers and some historical research which showed the Great Depression spurred a period of unparalleled creativity was also well covered including an article in the Economist.

John Harris's comments on memory erasing drugs were widely reported in national and international newspapers as well as Channel Four News. Similarly, an Associated Press interview with Will Jennings on the London Olympics was published in dozens of American newspapers. There was more coverage of Richard Heeks work on Gold Farming and a visit to former student Sammy Gitau in Kenya by Mike Addelman was covered in BBC Television and Radio Broadcasts as well as a feature in the Manchester Evening News.

ICT News

Ordering a desktop PC

The University has a new framework agreement for the supply of desktop PCs which started this month. The preferred PC suppliers are now Dell and Viglen. If you need to get a new University desktop PC you should make use of the Humanities online form (except for staff in MBS who have separate arrangements). The form is available on the BuyIT site

http://www.itservices.manchester.ac.uk/buyit/pc/

The form contains advice on the Dell options available (including the new pricing) and has a "please call me option" if you want to talk to IT support about making your choice. Information on the Viglen options will appear in due course. N.B. If you purchase a PC from another supplier support will be limited to installing network and security software and no further ongoing support will be available - other than reinstalling Windows if you have the original discs.

This information has been added to our purchasing IT equipment Hot Topic at

http://ict.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/ithelp/hottopics/PurchasingITEquipment.html

together with a link to a similar form with advice on choosing a printer. The Hot Topics site also contains advice on selecting handheld devices or mobile phones to use with University services.

Predicted Service Availability

The service availability link on the ITSD web site gives information on current issues with services and future planned outages. This is mainly designed to give information to IT support staff and so can contain information of a technical nature and on issues that will have little impact on most users. For planned outages that will affect Humanities users look at the Humanities Predicted Service availability site. Both these sites are available from the Humanities ICT Office home page
http://ict.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/index.html
in the right hand side column.

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Events are listed at:

http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/humnet/aboutus/events

Notification of events

Information on forthcoming events should be submitted online:

http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/humnet/aboutus/events/submit/

Notification of bulletin items

Items for future issues of the bulletin can be submitted online via the following link:

http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/humnet/aboutus/announcements/submit

or by sending an e-mail to Laura.Dobson@manchester.ac.uk

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