Now in only its second year, the Warwick Climate Negotiating Forum 2021, launched in 2019 by GSD students, has been awarded £10,000 in grant funding by the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning at the University of Warwick.

The School for Cross-faculty Studies is delighted to announce that it has been successful in its application for the Athena SWAN Bronze Award. We are now engaged in implementing our five-year Athena SWAN Action Plan.

Applications are invited for a three-and-half-year (42 months) funded PhD studentship at the University of Warwick starting in autumn 2021. The successful candidate will be based at the University’s Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies (YPCCS) and the research can be into any aspect of the history, literature, culture or societies of the Caribbean.

Before submitting an application, candidates should identify and make contact with a potential supervisor from among the Centre's academic staff. Academic members of staff at the Centre include Professor Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla, Head of the School for Cross-faculty Studies; and Dr Leon Sealey Huggins, Assistant Professor in GSD. You can also identify a potential co-supervisor from our list of PhD supervisors at the School for Cross-faculty Studies. Without a suitable supervisor, the candidate will not be eligible.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading authority on climate, published its latest report on Monday 9 August 2021.

The IPCC report represents a red alert and an immediate call to action. Among the key points to be drawn out of the report are the concerns that extreme weather events are on the rise; carbon dioxide levels are at their highest in 2 million years; and changes to ice, ocean and sea levels could be ‘irreversible for centuries’.

• Hear from Professor João Porto de Albuquerque, Director of the Institute for Global Sustainable Development, on the "two crucial and immediate take home messages from the report"
• Hear from Dr Marta Guerriero, Deputy Head of the School for Cross-faculty Studies (GSD), on the “unequivocal” evidence presented by the report and the "urgent" need for collective action

We are delighted to announce that several academic members of staff from the School for Cross-faculty Studies have received promotions:

• Dr Nicholas Bernards has been promoted to Associate Professor
• Dr Bryan Brazeau has been promoted to Associate Professor
• Dr Kirsten Harris has been promoted to Associate Professor
• Dr Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla has been promoted to Professor
• Dr Gioia Panzarella has been promoted to Senior Teaching Fellow
• Dr Gavin Schwartz-Leeper has been promoted to Associate Professor

All of the above promotions came into effect on 1 August 2021, apart from Dr Nicholas Bernards’ promotion which has been in effect since 1 July 2021.

We congratulate Nick, Bryan, Kirsten, Stéphanie, Gioia, and Gavin on their success! These promotions reflect their commitment to their work and we are proud to have these colleagues as valued members of the School for Cross-faculty Studies.

^{Image credit: Future Leaders 2020-21}

We are delighted to share the news that final-year Liberal Arts student, Matilda Oduntan, and Sociology and GSD graduate, Seiwaa Osei Afriyie, have been named among the UK’s most outstanding African and African Caribbean future leaders.

The latest issue of Reinvention: an International Journal of Undergraduate Research presents a diverse range of content and themes that all comment on ideas of interconnectedness, interdisciplinarity, and sustainability. Moreover, it includes several contributions from students and staff in the GSD Department!

Current and former students from the School for Cross-faculty Studies presented their research on 12-13 April at the British Conference of Undergraduate Research (BCUR) 2021.

Established in 2011, BCUR is the largest conference in the UK dedicated exclusively to undergraduate research, promoting and sharing research in all disciplines. The conference usually takes place each year at a different University. This year, the University of Leeds delivered the conference virtually.

The 5th Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching Conference, hosted by the University of Warwick, took place virtually on 15 April 2021 and brought together a diverse range of speakers and audiences including those involved in Liberal Arts, joint honours degrees, and single interdisciplinary modules.

Staff and students from the School for Cross-faculty Studies presented during the conference, sharing their experiences with collaboration, co-construction of knowledge, and practice underpinning interdisciplinary teaching and learning.

Dr Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla, Head of the School for Cross-faculty Studies, was recently interviewed for an article published in the Belgian newspaper, De Standaard, to discuss the Cuban COVID-19 vaccine, Soberana-2.