CMPS is delighted to invite you to our annual lecture from Dr. Colin Sterling (University of Amsterdam) on Weds 19th June at 5pm in the FAB cinema, followed by a wine reception.

Entitled Ecologisation is not a metaphor: Culture in the Web of Life, the lecture draws from Dr. Sterling's research, critically examining heritage and museums through the lens of art and ecology. Abstract and bio below. Please register here https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/scapvc/ccmps/research/beinghuman2024/annuallectureregistration

The lecture forms part of our PGR conference Being Human in the Media and Creative Industries, that will run throughout the day on 19th June. Details and registration page here.

We hope to see you there!

ECOLOGISATION IS NOT A METAPHOR: CULTURE IN THE WEB OF LIFE

Ecological thinking has long been entangled with different ideas about how to organise political, economic and social life. In the face of climate change and the environmental crisis, the urgency of thinking and acting ecologically has only intensified. Cultural actors and institutions have mobilised to address these concerns with new environmental programming, innovative sustainability strategies, and declarations of a climate and ecological emergency. This talk will argue that such shifts don’t just point towards alternative ways of living on and with the planet, they also instigate a fundamental reorientation of culture in the web of life. Drawing on the work of Jason Moore, this conceptualisation recognises that – like all forms of human organisation – cultural policies and practices are always co-constituted through nature. By focusing on the evolving place of museums in this web, the talk will explore how museums have contributed to the planetary crisis through specific symbolic and material practices, but also how emerging approaches in the field might, in some small way, help to ecologise society more broadly.

Colin Sterling is Assistant Professor / Senior Lecturer in Heritage, Museums and the Environment at the University of Amsterdam, where he teaches across heritage and memory, museum studies and artistic research. Colin's research critically examines heritage and museums through the lens of art and ecology. He is the author of Heritage, Photography, and the Affective Past (Routledge, 2020) and co-editor of Deterritorializing the Future: Heritage in, of and after the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2020). He is co-editor of the journal Museums & Social Issues. 

Congratulations to SCAPVC staff for their research excellence highlighted at the Warwick Research Celebration:

Prof Nadine Holdsworth and Dr Bobby Smith presented on their Impact work, and both were nominated for Impact Awards, and Prof Nadine Holdsworth was Highly Commended for her work.

Prof Yvette Hutchison and Dr Bobby Smith were also shortlisted for postgraduate supervision from over 80- nominations.

David Wright was also nominated for fostering an inclusive research culture award.

Congratulations to all the nominees!

It is with a very heavy heart that we write to let you know that Professor Jim Davis passed away on Saturday 4th November following a stroke. Everyone who had the pleasure of encountering Jim will appreciate that this is a huge loss for his family, friends, colleagues, collaborators and the wider research community. He was a fantastic scholar and unwavering champion for the discipline and theatre historiography. He was such an important part of the Theatre and Performance family at the University of Warwick and will be missed for his leadership, mentorship, friendship and unfailing sense of fun and mischief. Jim Davis joined Warwick in 2004 as Head of Department (2004-2009) after eighteen years teaching Theatre Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where he was latterly Head of the School of Theatre, Film and Dance. In Australia he was also President of the Australasian Drama Studies Association and member of the Board of Studies of the National Institute of Dramatic Art. Prior to leaving for Australia he spent ten years teaching in London at what is now Roehampton University. He co-organised many conferences including for the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR) in New South Wales and at Warwick. He convened Historiography Working Groups for both IFTR and for TaPRA. He served as an editor for the journal Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film. He published widely and with considerable critical acclaim in the area of nineteenth-century British theatre. His most recent bookComic Acting and Portraiture in Late-Georgian and Regency England (2015) won the TaPRA David Bradby Prize for Research in International Theatre and Performance in 2017 and was shortlisted for the 2015 TLA George Freedley Memorial Award. His other publications include Theatre & Entertainment (2016), Dickensian Dramas: Plays from Charles Dickens Volume II (2017) and European Theatre Performance Practice Vol 3 1750-1900 (editor, 2014). He was also joint author of a study of London theatre audiences in the nineteenth century Reflecting the Audience: London 1840-1880 (2001), which was awarded the 2001 Theatre Book Prize. He contributed numerous chapters including essays on nineteenth-century acting to the Cambridge History of British Theatre and on audiences to the Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre. He also published many articles in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Theatre Notebook, Essays in Theatre, Themes in Drama, New Theatre Quarterly, Nineteenth Century Theatre, Theatre Research International and The Dickensian. He was also responsible for many of the theatrical entries in The Oxford Readers' Companion to Dickens and contributed to the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Theatre and Performance, The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Stage Actors and Acting and the New Dictionary of National Biography. For several years he wrote an annual review of publications on nineteenth-century English Drama and Theatre for The Year's Work in English Studies. There will be an event to celebrate Jim’s life in the New Year – we will post details when we know more