Arts Faculty News

Philanthropist and co-founder of the Lonely Planet, Tony Wheeler, has funded and launched a new series of PhD scholarships in the history of travel writing at the University of Warwick.

On Tuesday 21 May, we brought together staff and student members of our community for the Inclusive Education in the Arts Conference 2024! Our 20 presenters – both those in the room, and asynchronous video presenters – showcased those areas where the Faculty is leading in inclusive education, highlighting more examples of positive inclusive practice in the Arts and asking where we can go next.

The University of Warwick is collaborating with the Coventry Biennial art festival 2023 to celebrate local artists.

The Biennial is an exciting time for contemporary art that heralds the cultural significance of the city and is set to launch this autumn in venues across Coventry and Warwickshire. The festival includes exhibitions, public talks, workshops, and activities that have been visited by a million people since the Biennial began in 2017.

Among the artist and researcher collaborators is Graeme Macdonald, professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick who’s teamed up with local artist Paul Lemmon for Coventry Biennial 2023 as part of a new artistic commission.

Ancient Numismatics, the study of ancient coinage, is a research strength of Warwick’s Department of Classics and Ancient History. The Department is an international hub in numismatics with three staff members, experts in the field, embedding their research in the wider context of Ancient History, Classical Archaeology and Ancient Economy.

The Warwick Numismatic Day has been an annual event since 2010, assembling specialists, including young researchers and students, as well as members of a wider audience, such as collectors, to share and discuss papers around topics on ancient Numismatics https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/classics/research/interests/numismatics/numismaticday/. After a two-year break due to the pandemic, this year’s workshop saw the return of the 11^th Numismatic Day, dedicated to imitations of ancient coins and their functions https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/classics/research/money-and-medals/events/

This was the perfect opportunity to mark the move of the prestigious Money and Medals Network (MMN) from the British Museum to the Department in August 2022, an institution offering training and advice to c. 240 museums and other institutions in the UK holding coins in their collections. This time the two events were scheduled together with the Numismatics Day on the 16^th June and the first MMN Training Day on the 15^th June.

The NHS celebrates its’s 75th anniversary this year. From birth to death, and everything in between, the NHS is there throughout most of our lives. But what do you think was one of the biggest causes of death in the UK before the NHS came into being? Diseases? Childbirth? Leukaemia? BBC CWR Reporter Tom Cooke has been out to meet Professor Roberta Bivins from the Centre for the History of Medicine in Warwick's Department of History, who has been looking at the impact that the NHS has had on UK society and reveals what the biggest killer of people was before we had the NHS.

This summer saw the resumption of the annual PhD Writing & Publishing Workshop at the Monash Prato Centre in Italy. Led by staff from the University of Monash, it took place over three days, 20-22 June, at their palazzo in the Tuscan city. Prior to the global pandemic, Warwick had participated in this event and this year three postgraduate research students from the Faculty of Arts and Professor David Lambert CADRE Director joined staff and students from Australia, Malaysia, India, Italy and elsewhere in the UK. The event included staff-led workshops on the fundamentals of academic writing and publication – from choosing journals and structuring articles to responding to feedback and building an academic track record. The heart of the event was the sessions devoted to the practice of writing itself. Supported by allocated academic staff who were on-hand to help with planning, the presentation of arguments and the choice of language, these provided great opportunities for focused work in a supportive environment.

Recently, we shared more about our new home in Venice, just one of the ways Warwick is reconfirming a deep commitment to the arts.

In this article for the Times Higher Education (THE), Stuart Croft, our Vice-Chancellor, talks about the importance of backing both STEM and the arts, and why Warwick is investing more than ever in arts and humanities.

You can view the article on the THE website (first published 26 June 2023) or read it below.

The British Academy/Wolfson Fellowships Awards will be providing funding to Dr James Poskett, Associate Professor in the History of Science and Technology at the University of Warwick.

Through his research, Dr Poskett will be working on a project titled ‘The Scientific Revolution as Global History, 1200-1800’. He hopes this will provide a major reassessment of the concept of the ‘scientific revolution’. In doing so, the project will build on Dr Poskett’s recent book ‘Horizons: A Global History of Science’.

The University of Warwick is proud of its long-standing connections with Venice. Our History and History of Art departments have collectively taught students in Venice for well over 50 years. From 2007, the University had a base in the Cannaregio district of the city. Other departments, including Italian Studies, WBS, Global Sustainable Development, Economics, WMG, and the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, also used this space to deliver short courses and host academic conferences.

Circumstances necessitated the search for a new premises. After an interim period during which we were hosted by Ca’ Foscari, a new location was identified: the Palazzo Giustinian Lolin.

The opening event for the new venue was held on the 22nd May followed by a series of bi-lateral meetings between academics from Warwick and their counterparts from Ca' Foscari University on the 23rd May.

In conversation with The Independent Professor Rebecca Earle, ­from the University of Warwick said. "This is a genuine innovation. Historically, members of the public were not urged to celebrate coronations by inventing new dishes, or by recreating the menus of the official banquets. Home cooks hoping to replicate the côtelettes de bécassines à la Souvaroff served at Edward VII’s 1902 coronation would have confronted a complex recipe involving fillets of snipe, pâté, brandy and truffles,” she says.

“The method was later described in royal chef Gabriel Tschumi’s cookbook [Royal Chef: Recollections of life in royal households from Queen Victoria to Queen Mary], but it was unlikely to inspire any but the most intrepid.

“Today’s efforts to encourage us all to join in by baking a coronation quiche reflect the enormous popularity of cooking as a leisure activity, as well as the monarchy’s attempts to repackage themselves for the 21st century.”