The Faculty Assembly focusing on our new proposed research themes will take place from 13:00-15:45 on Wednesday 8 November in the Oculus OC0.04 with breakout sessions taking place in the FAB.

Please register here and choose the research theme group you would like to join. We have asked you to indicate a second choice in part for our own purposes (so we can gauge levels of interest in the different themes). But we hope to assign people to their first choice whenever possible, even if this means creating more than one group for a particular theme.

A detailed programme will be posted here nearer the time

It may be useful to provide some context for the organisation of this term’s Assembly.

As you may know, we are in currently in the process of refreshing our Faculty research themes. This process is linked to the university’s current reorganisation of structures for supporting interdisciplinary research, and to the ‘grand challenges’ themes that have recently been identified by the Social Sciences and Sciences Faculties. Our themes are designed to help us integrate into these new structures and access associated funding possibilites, and also to create possibilities for cross-departmental collaboration and/or exchange. They’re NOT designed to contain or prescribe all research across the Faculty – the internal range and unpredictability of research across our Faculty is very important to us.

Discussion at HoDs forum and the Faculty Research Committee has generated the following themes, and we would like to explore their potential through the Assembly. The themes are deliberately designed so that they are not restricted to particular disciplines or historical time-periods.

• Energy, Environment and Resilience
• Radical Traditions
• Medical Humanities
• Geographies and Materialities of Cultural Exchange
• Creative and Cultural Industries
• Intelligence and Consciousness [including but not at all confined to AI-related research]

The plan is to start and finish the Assembly in ‘plenary’ mode, but split up in between into theme-based groups in different rooms.

The Assembly will be held as a face-to-face event. Please register using the link at the top of this page.