Arts Faculty News

Dr James Hodkinson from the School of Modern Languages and Cultures has been collaborating with Birmingham-based Soul City Arts on their latest project, Waswasa: a multi-disciplinary art show staged in an immersive setting at Birmingham Hippodrome, using real-life community narratives to explore the act of Islamic prayer and what that means in a modern, secular society.

Lead artist Mohammed Ali and his team aim to demystify this familiar yet misunderstood tradition through an extraordinary multi-media show that will challenge perceptions. The show relates deeply to people of no faith too, as we all struggle with achieving that higher state of focus with things like social media, technology and other distractions dominating our lives.

Thursday 25 Aug – Saturday 3 Sep 2022 at Birmingham Hippodrome

Part of the Birmingham 2022 Festival

Buy Tickets for Waswasa: www.bit.ly/waswasa

• Read more about Waswasa: www.soulcityarts.com/waswasa
• View the Waswasa Press Release: https://www.soulcityarts.com/waswasa-press-release

How do you find that elusive flow state? How can we focus in a world of distractions?

Join the conversation: #WaswasaShow #B2022Festival @SoulCityArts @AliAerosol @BrumHippodrome

Do you want to join us as we launch our new course developments in Innovation by Design? Are you able to inspire and support our students to become confident, capable, and impactful designerly change agents; working with diverse communities locally and internationally, to tackle significant design challenges with empathy, understanding and creativity? Do you have a vision for the application of new technologies? Can you support students to master new technologies and help others to utilise those technologies effectively?

As part of a University of Warwick Strategic Investment Funded initiative, the School for Cross-Faculty Studies is seeking applications for an Assistant Professor (Teaching-focussed) to support the development, launch and delivery of its new Innovation by Design course. The new interdisciplinary course will sit in the School for Cross-Faculty Studies, which is home to a range of the University’s inter- and transdisciplinary degrees. Currently, these comprise the undergraduate Liberal Arts and Global Sustainable Development (GSD) programmes and our recently launched postgraduate taught and research courses in GSD. All of our offerings are designed to be interactive learning experiences; placing our students as collaborators and co-creators in the classroom. Students take modules from other departments across the University. This enables them to benefit from different learning styles and perspectives and enriches their understanding of and responses to a range of contemporary global issues, allowing them to challenge and question solutions.

Accordingly, we are looking for an ambitious, forward-thinking academic who believes in the value of design thinking, problem-based, experiential and community-centred learning to develop, refine and generate the knowledge and skills required by our students to become ‘designerly change agents’.

As an Assistant Professor (Teaching-focused), you will use your knowledge of design thinking, research and practices, alongside your expertise in digital technologies and techniques, to create and deliver modules and courses that engage, enthuse and inspire students from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. You will possess knowledge of a range of teaching, learning and assessment strategies which you will employ in the development of high-quality teaching material.

You will join a successful and collegial team of academics in the School delivering cutting-edge research, innovative inter- and transdisciplinary teaching and outstanding student support.

We are looking for an enthusiastic and committed colleague, who is an excellent teacher and communicator, with a sound subject knowledge and who is passionate about making every aspect of our students’ experience of learning relevant and valuable.

Promoting a protest at Warwick propelled Dr Andrew Whitehead (MA Social History, 1989; PhD History, 2013) towards a career in journalism. Having joined as a trainee at the BBC for just three months, Andrew went on to spend 35 years with BBC News. In his last role as Editor of BBC World Service News, Andrew was responsible for programming on the BBC's most widely listened to radio network, with a global weekly reach of about 100 million listeners.

Andrew returned to campus earlier this year, where he spoke at a Careers event for History students, and was interviewed by final year History student Enoch Mukungu (pictured left).

Determined to make a difference to the lives of children, Farah Williamson Still (BA French and History, 2006) co-founded Project Shelter Wakadogo while studying at Warwick. The nursery and primary school, located in a remote village in northern Uganda, now serves 450 children.

Farah has more than 15 years’ experience working across the international development, philanthropy and fundraising sectors. She is currently Director of Gulf & Strategic Partnerships at Plan International Canada, one of the world’s oldest and largest development and humanitarian organisations that advances children’s rights and equality for girls.

Congratulations to Warwick's Learning Design Consultancy Unit on being one of the winners of Advance HE's 2022 Collaborative Awards for Teaching Excellence (CATE). The LDCU team is led by Jess Humphreys and includes contributions from the Faculty of Arts' Director of Student Experience, Dr Rob O'Toole. Since moving to a Faculty role in April 2021, Rob has been working on digital pedagogic interventions with staff and students and more recently on designing a new UG course on Innovation by Design, which it is planned to launch for 23 entry in the School for Cross-Faculty Studies.

The 1970s brought violence and fear to Chile.

On 11^th September 1973, General Pinochet’s coup marked the end of Salvador Allende’s presidency and the beginning of a brutal period in Latin American history. From Allende’s death until 1990, Chile was ruled by a military junta that carried out a program of persecuting alleged dissidents, in which over 3,000 civilians disappeared or were killed. During this period, almost 3,000 Chileans escaped political persecution, coming to the UK as refugees.

Professor Alison Ribeiro de MenezesLink opens in a new window from the School of Modern Languages and CulturesLink opens in a new window is studying the UK-based refugee effort and the experiences of those involved in order to address the fact that the stories of these particular refugees lack a more formal legacy (being largely absent from the collection of Chile’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights, for instance). In exploring the neglected experiences of this group, Professor Ribeiro de Menezes has devised strategies to share their story more widely as well as to approach the traumatic impact of this violent period in Chile’s history.

Warwick Celebrates: 5 - 15 July 2022. Congratulations to all our wonderful Arts students from classes 2020-2021-2022 who are attending the graduation ceremonies this summer. Wonderful to see you all back on campus.

The Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (WATE) celebrate and recognise the most successful educators in our our community.

Have a taste of what it is like to be a Faculty of Arts student through the video of the recent FAB Festival and opening of Warwick's new Arts Building.

Congratulations to Damien Homer (Faculty of Arts Widening Participation Coordinator) and Claire Eddon (Faculty of Social Sciences Widening Participation Coordinator) for their work to create the Easter residential school.