Updates, news and events from the Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities
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CAMC Curates is the newsletter for the Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities with updates, news and events from our expert and engaged researchers.
News
Juliet Simpson has won a German Research Council (DFK) funded international research award and been selected to join the International Expert Review and Advisory Panel for the 2022 Swiss National Science Foundation Grant Programme.
Louise Moody received funding from the Abbeyfield Research Foundation to explore the use of digital self-management technology by older people with long-term health conditions. CAMC PGR Shaheen Merali is the curator of the Uganda Pavilion in the forthcoming Venice Biennial 2022 and was commissioned as part of Tate’s research project Provisional Semantics to research, develop and lead a series of three discussions based on their Panchayat Collection.
A painting by John Devane has been included in the RBSA exhibition Renewal. Hannah Honeywill has been successfully selected for a British Council-CU Venice Fellowship award. Dr Niall Curry has received funding from the Cambridge English Funded Research Programme. Stacey Moon-Tracy (CAMC PhD Candidate) and Katie da Cunha Lewin (Lecturer in English Literature) have been successfully awarded CAMC-HHT Fellow-Residencies for 2022. CAMC alumnus David Martin has started his own business, Cypher Media.
Juliet Simpson: Heidelberg University International Fellowship Award
Image: Jan Brueghel (the Elder), View of Heidelberg, c.1588-89. New York: Met. Photo: Met. OA public domain.
Juliet Simpson has won a German Research Council (DFK) funded international research award for 2022-23. Her project was selected in the top 12 successful awards from 200 international applicants and will be held at the University of Heidelberg, Germany’s leading research university (world top 100), in the transdisciplinary Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies.
Taking up her Fellowship in Spring 2023 (April-July), her project will develop new transdisciplinary networks and knowledge of ‘Apocalypse, Revelation, Eschaton – Art, Temporality and Worldmaking, 1919-1933’ aligned with her international exhibition, Gothic Modern, and for a major publication.
Shaheen Merali
Image: Acaye Kerunen, Ouganda, Omutuba (backcloth) placements, raffia, and palm-leaves, 2021.
We are delighted to announce that CAMC PGR Shaheen Merali is the curator of the Uganda Pavilion in the forthcoming Venice Biennial 2022. Curator Shaheen Merali will present the works of the Kampala based artists Acaye Kerunen and Collin Sekajugo in Uganda’s first ever appearance as a national pavilion in Venice.
Curator Shaheen Merali said: “We are looking forward to presenting the works of Ms. Kerunen and Mr. Sekajugo, whose dual approaches to art making, while diverse in their respective aesthetic approach, find a common ground in their respective imaginations on materiality and form. Radiance - They Dream in Time refers to the essential knowledge and lived experiences of Kerunen and Sekajugo in speaking to the many different territories of Uganda as well as to urban trade and living conditions in its urban centres. Both artists have been actively working with formal and informal archives of Uganda’s dynamic visual culture.”
Louise Moody Abbeyfield Research Foundation
Image: Use of digital self-management technology by older people with long-term health conditions
Louise Moody's 12 month project exploring the ‘Use of digital self-management technology by older people with long-term health conditions’ finished at the end of November 2021.
In collaboration with Sheffield NHS Trust and Devices for Dignity and with funding from the Abbeyfield Research Foundation, the team have explored the barriers to digital technology use by older people with long-term conditions: chronic kidney disease, diabetes and dementia. Three systematic reviews of qualitative research were undertaken. Building on the findings, a set of recommendations were developed through a Delphi study undertaken by Dr Esmé Wood. These seek to guide future research and highlight the needs and requirements of older adults to technology developers and prescribers.
Congratulations to Dr Esmé Wood who has since taken up a new role as Assistant Professor in Occupational Therapy within the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health, Coventry University.
John Devane RBSA
Image: John Devane, Silver Platter, oil on canvas 20cm x 30cm, 2019
Renewal is a small works fundraising exhibition at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. Work by CAMC's John Devane, Professor of Painting at the RBSA, has been included.
The small painting, Silver Platter, is one of a number of still life paintings produced during lockdown. The exhibition is open Tuesday to Saturday until the 12th of February.
More details on the RBSA website here. All proceeds from sales go towards the RBSA building development project.
Hannah Honeywill Venice Fellowships Programme
Image: Photograph of Venice
Hannah Honeywill has been successfully selected for a British Council-CU Venice Fellowship award. The Venice Fellowships Programme is a unique opportunity for creative individuals, students, researchers, artists and professionals at the early stages of their career, to spend a month in Venice during the world’s most important art and architecture biennales. Drawing on Venice is an exploration into the monumentality of Venice embodied within the structures of the city and the context of the Biennale. It is a collaborative project working with the local community and visitors. I will invite people to join me in a daily drawing practice focusing on the architecture of Venice, while we draw, I will initiate conversations inviting reflections on the effect and realities of living within the unique physical, social, political, and economic structures of Venice. The outcome of the project will be an immersive exhibition combining the drawings, sound recording, and text collected during my month in Venice.
Niall Curry, Cambridge English Funded Research Programme
Image: Cambridge coat of arms
Dr Niall Curry was awarded funding from the Cambridge English Funded Research Programme as PI of the project “‘Well ... I mean ... I don't know' Combining corpus and qualitative methods to improve the representation of spoken language in ELT materials”.
The project was awarded £11,018 to fund his staff time, interview transcriptions, and conference attendance and he will work alongside Co-Investigators Geraldine Mark, of Mary Immaculate College, Ireland, and Dr Graham Burton, of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. The project will last one year and aims to combine corpus analysis of spoken language corpora with the evaluation of course materials and exploratory workshops with teachers, materials developers, and experts in language assessment to address the complex ELT landscape by bringing together perspectives.
CAMC Hosking Houses Trust Fellow Residencies
Hosking Houses Trust
Stacey Moon-Tracey (CAMC PhD Candidate) and Katie da Cunha Lewin (Lecturer in English Literature) have been successfully awarded CAMC-Hosking Houses Trust Fellow-Residencies for 2022.
Katie takes up her Residency this September to develop her new book project on the writer’s room, exploring mythmaking and the variety of writers’ ‘spaces’.
Following on in October, Stacey explores creative and shared story telling that draws innovatively on unvoiced (and mostly untold) experiences of health-care professionals in challenging ITU settings. A follow-up showcase celebrating both of these inspiring projects is planned for autumn 2022.
Juliet Simpson Swiss National Science Foundation Grant Programme
Juliet Simpson has been selected to join the International Expert Review and Advisory Panel for the 2022 Swiss National Science Foundation Grant Programme. This prestigious invitation is to evaluate and select winning international arts and humanities proposals for the SNSF major Starter Grant scheme for Early-Career Researchers. Simpson’s tenure-ship runs from February-September 2022, during which she will be also chair two SNSF-SG international review panels.
Shaheen Merali
Image: Material from the Panchayat Collection. Photo: Matt Greenwood © Tate
CAMC PGR Shaheen Merali was commissioned as part of Tate’s research project Provisional Semantics to research, develop and lead a series of three discussions based on the Panchayat Collection, Special Collections, Tate Library. Provisional Semantics is part of Towards a National Collection (TANC), a major programme investing in the UK’s world-renowned museums, archives, libraries and galleries. The programme, led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council with funding provided through UK Research and Innovation’s Strategic Priorities Fund, ‘will take the first steps towards creating a unified virtual “national collection” by dissolving barriers between different collections’.
Shaheen Merali is co-founder of the Panchayat Arts Education Resource and one of the Keepers of the Panchayat Collection.
More about the Panchayat Collection at Tate Library can be see here.
David Martin Cypher Media
Image: Cypher Media logo
CAMC alumnus David Martin has started his own business. Cypher Media offers a transcription service for Coventry & Warwickshire education institutions and businesses.
They provide a personal, confidential and accurate transcription service for converting audio or video files into editable text as a record of meetings, Zoom/Teams calls, focus groups, academic interviews or similar. They offer text files as Word documents or .pdf files.
Contact: David Martin
Email: cypher_media@btinternet.com or telephone: 07932 664640
Events
Carolina Rito announces a new series of seminars aiming to discuss topical issues in the field of contemporary art and curating. CAMC ‘Talking Cultures’ continues with a special Round Table. Dr Emma Waight (CAMC Associate) will be running the event ‘Gender in/and design: Scoping challenges and opportunities in the Midlands’ at ICC.
Carolina Rito moderated a discussion exploring the BLK Art Group and their legacy with founding members Keith Piper and Marlene Smith, at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum on the 20th of November 2021.
PGRs are invited to the next Arts Based Research discussion group and to a series of Research Cafes.
CAMC WIP SEMINARS 2021/22
Image: Critical Practices Seminars Schedule
Critical Practices Seminars is a new series of seminars aiming at PhD practice researchers and academic staff to discuss topical issues in the field of contemporary art and curating. These seminars aim to collectively produce critical tools to challenge the neoliberal imperatives in contemporary art and curatorial practices, and to speculate about the future of research in these fields. The seminars seek to facilitate a debate on key areas of practice research with the contribution of guest speakers and participants. The series starts by looking at: key ideas around practice research, decolonial practices, de-neoliberalisation, and alternatives to evaluation metrics. The series is designed as an open forum for the collective elaboration of ideas.
Critical Practice is a research strand at CAMC that seeks to advance new understandings for practice in academia. Critical practices challenge the affirmative categories of evidence and metrics, and strive for a critical understanding of the politics of aesthetics and representation and their roles in the production of new imaginaries.
Seminars will be held in person at ICC, Covid-19 allowing. Invitations will be sent closer to the date with more updates. For more info, please contact Carolina Rito (ad3992@coventry.ac.uk).
CAMC Talking Cultures
Image: Great Exhibition, Crystal Palace 1851 – Opening Ceremony. Getty Images/Heritage OA.
CAMC ‘Talking Cultures’ continues with a special Round Table on 26th January (2-4pm, ICC), guest chaired by CAMC Visiting Scholar, Dr Maria Golovteeva. Building on the inaugural ‘cultural temporalities’ theme, the panel explores Constructing and Preserving Cultural Identities across specific cultural productions. Taking a transnational lens, we consider the role of time and place as fundamental categories in creating/preserving/examining historical-contemporary cultures. Via celebrations, rituals and locations (real or fictional), the panel asks fresh questions about why, how, in what ways these ‘rituals’ contribute to the production of cultural identities and knowledge about remembering and forgetting.
Panel contributions invited – email Maria and Juliet by 21 January.
Gender in/and design Dialogue Day
Image: Gender in/and design
Following a successful bid for the M4C Dialogue Day fund, Dr Emma Waight (CAMC Associate) will be running the event ‘Gender in/and design: Scoping challenges and opportunities in the Midlands’ on Thursday 17th March from 10am – 3pm, in collaboration with Alessandro Columbano (Birmingham City University). With a keynote from Nat Maher, founder of Kerning the Gap, the event aims to bring together like-minded researchers, lecturers and industry in order to discuss and identify issues related to gender in/and design. A registration link will be sent out next month, or you can register your interest by emailing Emma on ac9048@coventry.ac.uk.
Black Arts Movement in Coventry talk with Marlene Smith and Keith Piper
As part of the Coventry Biennial 2021, Carolina Rito moderated a public discussion exploring the BLK Art Group and their legacy with founding members Keith Piper and Marlene Smith, at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum on the 20th of November 2021.
The talk ‘Reflections on The Pan-Afrikan Connection’ was a public discussion, asking why the exhibition at The Herbert Art Gallery remains pertinent today as it did in 1983. The work produced spoke of a “Black aesthetic” as quoted by Claudette Johnson in her artist statement for the exhibition, “[The] work of the black artist involves the expression of her or his life experience”. The discussions will address the aesthetics of the art and the intersectional themes inherent in the artwork produced, of race, gender, sexualities, identities, place and belonging. Themes that remain critical in 2021, and as such, creates space for wider discussion of the legacy and impact of the BLK Art Group on artists and art today. The programme was curated by Ian Sergeant.
Watch the recording here.
Research Cafes
We are hoping to hold a series of Research Cafes, where you can informally present your research to your peers. If you would like to volunteer to kick these off, please email Imogen Racz.
We will be holding a series of reading groups. Sarah Capel has kindly offered to lead one in mid/late February. Date to be confirmed. Again, if you would like to lead one yourself, please let Imogen Racz know.
If you have other ideas please let Imogen Racz know. There is a drop-in session on January 25th at 11 on Teams if you would like to bring some ideas or issues to me then.
Arts Based Research discussion group
Image: courtesy of Jagdish Patel
The Arts Based Research discussion group is a monthly get together for postgraduate researchers from Coventry University. The conversations are the intersections of art, social practice, and research from a range of different methodologies and multi-disciplinary practices. The monthly get togethers are a safe and supportive environment for PGRs to come together to learn, challenge and support each other.
The next get together is on Thursday 27th January at 10.30am. This will be online.
If you are interested in attending, please contact:
Sarah Capel capels@uni.coventry.ac.uk
Stacey Moon-Tracy tracys@uni.coventry.ac.uk
Jagdish Patel patelj45@coventry.ac.uk
Publications
Dr Victoria Leonard's monograph, In Defiance of History: Orosius and the Unimproved Past, will be published by Routledge at the end of January.
Dr Niall Curry, CAMC ASPiRE Fellow, Dr Benet Vincent, Research Associate, and former Coventry University colleague, Dr Jim Clarke have a newly published chapter, “Ponying the Slovos: A Parallel Linguistic Analysis of Translations of A Clockwork Orange in English, French, and Spanish”.
In Defiance of History
Front Cover of In Defiance of History
Dr Victoria Leonard's monograph, In Defiance of History: Orosius and the Unimproved Past, will be published by Routledge at the end of January. The book examines Orosius’s Histories Against the Pagans within the wider literary and historiographical culture of disruption that characterised the late fourth and early fifth centuries CE. The book features a foreword written by Professor Mark Humphries (University of Swansea). You can preview the book here: https://www.routledge.com/In-Defiance-of-History-Orosius-and-the-Unimproved-Past/Leonard/p/book/9781472474681. It will be launched at an event in 2022, to which CAMC colleagues will be warmly welcome.
Ponying the Slovos
Front cover of Science Fiction in Translation
Announcing a new publication from Dr Niall Curry, CAMC ASPiRE Fellow, Dr Benet Vincent, Research Associate, and former Coventry University colleague, Dr Jim Clarke. The chapter, “Ponying the Slovos: A Parallel Linguistic Analysis of Translations of A Clockwork Orange in English, French, and Spanish” takes a corpus and contrastive analysis approach to identifying and comparing the use of the Nadsat anti-language in Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange and its French and Spanish translations.
The chapter was published in an edited collection, Science Fiction in Translation: Perspectives on Global Theory and Practice in Translation, edited by Dr Ian Campbell, and demonstrates, among other things, the value of corpus linguistics for unpacking and interrogating translation practices.
Image: Yellow House, by John Devane
