Arts Faculty News

The Faculty of Arts promotes digital learning and teaching innovation through the Digital Arts Lab (DAL). The Digital Arts Lab Showcase is an annual event where students are invited to submit their best piece of academic work or personal artefacts created through or about digital tools. This can be an academic assessment which utlises a digital tool (for example a video, podcast or website), a personal endeavour that uses or showcases a digital tool, or a short piece of writing that comments on the digital world (both fiction and non-fiction welcome). Each submission has to be accompanied by a reflective piece, which captures the learners' journey in producing the digital piece. Individual and group submissions are accepted and this year for the first time the DAL Showcase had separate undergraduate and postgraduate categories.

As in previous years, the panel judging the Showcase had the enjoyable task of listening and watching all the entries. Topics covered ranged from a podcast looking at how the legacy of slavery leading to institutionalised racism impacted 1950s rock and roll and still influences the modern music industry to a digital game focusing on women's experiences in early modern Britain.

As a five-time Paralympic medallist, Kare Adenegan’s (BA History, 2022) sporting endeavours have played a big part in her university experience. No stranger to making history, Kare graduated with a first-class honours degree a week after claiming silver in the T33/34 100m at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. Here Kare reflects on her studies and how we can all learn a lot from history.

Theatre Director Ali Pidsley (BA English and Theatre Studies, 2014; MA English Literature, 2016) shares how Warwick inspired him to set up a different kind of theatre company.

Kate Wilson (BA French with Italian, 2002) is not your typical languages alumna. After four years at Warwick, she launched herself into the world of emergency care and hasn’t looked back. Now, she’s using her powers for good to help with the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

Professor Mark Knights is a Director of Postgraduate Research Studies in our History Department. Here, he asks if we can draw comparisons between Britain’s new monarch, King Charles III, and Charles II, who reigned more than 300 years before him.

Exploring Research Beyond Academia: Making New Connections

This is the second year of the Interdisciplinary Arts Research Project (IARP) which gives students from different departments at the Faculty of Arts a unique opportunity to work together.

Students participating in IARP have a chance to develop transferable skills such as teamwork, resilience, digital literacy, interdisciplinarity, public engagement, research ethics and most importantly applying research into practical outcomes which are central to IARP.

Student feedback shows that the students have benefited from IARP in varied ways. It has supported applications for future study, projects, and jobs, enabled them to develop new skills or build on existing extra-curricular achievements and pushed them to take on responsibilities outside their normal comfort zone.

Exhibition comprising self-portraits, photographs and personal narratives created and curated by people who have experienced - or are experiencing - homelessness in Coventry. Held in the foyer of the FAB, 3 - 27 October 2022.

Congratulations to Professor Rachel Moseley who takes up the role of Vice-Provost and Chair of the Faculty of Arts from 1 September 2022.

Professor Rachel Moseley is a film and television historian, and has published widely on questions of representation, identity and popular aesthetics. Her most recent books have looked at stop-frame animation in British children’s television of the 1960s and 1970s in Hand-Made Television, Palgrave, 2016, and at the politics of landscape and place on screen in Picturing Cornwall, University of Exeter Press, 2018. Public engagement and research impact have been significant aspects of her work in recent years, in the Midlands and in Cornwall. Rachel is in her fifth year as Head of Film and Television Studies at Warwick, where she completed her PhD in 2000, after graduating from University of East Anglia with an MA (with Distinction) in Film Studies, and before that from Warwick with a BA Joint Honours (First Class) in Film and Literature. She has been an active supporter for widening participation in arts education at Warwick and beyond, and is a Parent Governor at a state secondary school in Birmingham. She sits on Senate, Council, ARC and a number of other University Committees.

The Faculty of Arts has a fixed term vacancy for a maternity cover 0.4 Director of Student Experience and Progression.

Researchers from the Department of History will be delivering a series of talks at Warwick Words History Festival. Now in its twentieth year, Warwick Words is a popular annual event, bringing internationally acclaimed historians to share stories from the past to venues around Warwick.

Since 2012, the University of Warwick has collaborated with the festival on a series titled Tea Time talks, where academics from the Department of History discuss their research. This year, topics are:

History and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine – Professor Christoph Mick and Dr Claire Shaw, Saturday 8 October

Picking up the Pieces: Gender and Romantic Failure in late 20th Century Britain – Dr Zoe Strimpel, Saturday 22 October

The Politics of Touch in the late 18th Century – Professor Mark Philp, Saturday 26 November

The programme also includes a play written by PhD student David Fletcher and performed by Loft Theatre company. Taking the Waters tells the story of a cholera epidemic that took place in Leamington Spa in 1849, and the medical and political conflicts that surrounded it.

Other speakers at the festival include Tracy Borman, Max Hastings, Dan Jones, Adam Rutherford, Charles Spencer and Alison Weir. Tickets are available from Warwick Words’ website: https://warwickwords.co.uk/