The Institute of Advanced Studies is inviting applications for the Warwick Global Research Fellowships. If you might be interested in these posts, please read the Departmental Guidelines for further information on how the Department of History will conduct the nomination process.

According to the Health Survey for England, it is generally ethnic minorities in the UK who experience a lower standard of health than the overall population. Evidence suggests that the poorer economic position of BME groups is the main factor driving ethnic health inequalities and yet, despite WHO and NHS initiatives, successive governments have not managed to tackle this issue.

Following on from a series of IDEA-network events held last year, Roberta Bivins and the Industry and Parliamentary Trust co-ordinated a policy event dinner on the 21st March 2012 in order to review the evidence on ethnic minority health and reflect on what can be done by business and government to address the challenges. The report from this dinner has recently been published (many thanks to Martin Moore, PhD student at the Department of History/Centre for the History of Medicine, for his collaboration) and is now available in print and online from the IPT.

The Department of History and the Department of Classics and Ancient History, together with the Centre for the History of Medicine and the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, are delighted to present 'The New Vesalius', a guest seminar from Honorary Professor Vivian Nutton. The seminar will take place on Wednesday 14th March 2012 at 5pm in MS05 (Maths & Stats Zeeman Building).

Even before its appearance in print in 1543, the De humani corporis fabrica of Andreas Vesalius was regarded as marking a new stage in the understanding of the human body. Its emphasis on human dissection challenged prevailing orthodoxies, while the beauty of its illustrations has ensured its place as the most famous of all anatomy books. A second, enlarged edition followed in 1555, but little further is known about Vesalius, by now an imperial physician, until his death in 1564. The very recent discovery of his hundreds of notes for a never-published third edition, including changes to the plates as well as the text, throws new and unexpected light on his interests and activities after 1555.

Dr Tim Lockley, Associate Professor, History, and Reader in Comparative American Studies, took part in last week's symposium on 'Slavery & Freedom in Savannah' in Georgia, US. The event included giving talks on black Savannah history to 300 local people and school children.

Dr Jennifer Smyth, Associate Professor in History, has been selected as one of the Getty Scholars during academic year 2011-2012. Between January and June 2012, Dr Smyth will be based at the Getty Research Institute, working on her project The Historical Image in the Contested Frame: Fred Zinnemann's Cinematic Archive.

Applications are invited for a three-year, full-time PhD studentship, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, to be held in the History Department at the University of Warwick. The studentship forms an integral part of a wider collaborative research project on ‘The East India Company at Home, c. 1757-1857’ which aims to explore the ways in which Asian commodities influenced social and cultural life and identities in British country houses in the heyday of the East India Company. The selected PhD student will be supervised by Professor Margot Finn and will also benefit from the expertise of the project’s senior Research Fellow, Dr Helen Clifford. Applicants should be committed to pursuing historical research to the doctoral level, focusing on a specific topic within the project’s wider framework and working with the project team. The studentship will entail a three-year residence in the UK and associated funded research trips to archives and libraries.

The Idea of a University was created by a collaborative research team of students and staff from the departments of sociology and history at the University of Warwick with funding from the Reinvention Centre and the HEA History Subject Centre. This mixed-media installation used original archival and interview data in order to map the spatial and historical generation and regeneration of the University of Warwick from the 1960s to the present day.