Backdoor Broadcasting Company

Event Date: 30 June 2011
Room B20
Birkbeck Main Building
Birkbeck College, Malet Street
London, WC1E 7HX

Childhood and Violence: international and comparative perspectives
- Seminar 5: Children affected by war,
with a focus on “child soldiers”

This seminar focuses on the impact of war on children and childhood, looking specifically at child soldiers. Although young soldiers are not a new phenomenon, the extreme brutality and brutalising of child soldiers in recent conflicts has made the abolition of the use of children as soldiers a core demand of many international non-governmental organisations and child rights practitioners.

Programme

Dr Susan Shepler (assistant professor, international peace and conflict resolution division, School of International Service, American University, Washington DC, and expert consultant) – Trends in scholarship on child soldiering over the past decade (AUDIO HERE)

Claudia Seymour (School of Oriental and African Studies) -
Ambiguous agencies: coping and survival in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
(AUDIO HERE)

Srirak Plipat (head of regional programmes, Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, London) -Current challenges of child soldiering and strategies to deal with them
(AUDIO HERE)

Helen Buxton (Peace Direct,London) - Bringing the child soldiers home: True life stories from Peace Direct’s disarmament programme in the Democratic Republic of Congo
(AUDIO HERE)

David Rosen (Fairleigh Dickenson University, US, author of Armies of the young: Child soldiers in war and terrorism, Rutgers University Press, 2005) – Child soldiers and the age of enlistment (AUDIO HERE)

Siobhan McAlister (Transition and Social Justice Initiative, Queen’s University, Belfast) – Childhood in Transition: Experiencing conflict and marginalisation in Northern Ireland
(AUDIO HERE)

Liz Yarrow (Children and armed conflict unit, Essex University) -
Administrative detention of children involved in armed conflict (AUDIO HERE)

Event Date: 28 June 2011
Room B34 Birkbeck Main Building
Birkbeck, University of London
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HX

Law on Trial 2011: Monday 27 June – Saturday 2 July

SOCIAL JUSTICE AND EXCLUSION

Difficult times call for new thinking. This year’s Law on Trial addresses law and legal institutions from the perspective of social justice. Sessions will consider economic democracy, labour rights and market regulation. We will also be addressing the politics of legal education, law and drugs policy, the future of legal aid and inclusion and exclusion in the legal profession.

Law on Trial provides a platform on which academics, trade unionists, practitioners and activists can present alternative and progressive thinking about law and its relationship to society and economy.

Drugs, social control and social exclusion

- Should syringe exchange programmes be lawful?

- Is the decriminalisation of possession of controlled substances for personal use consistent with international law?

- What are the political issues involved in effecting drug policy reform? -How are drugs offences policed and prosecuted?

- What human rights issues arise in the context of drug use and availability in prison and places of detention?

- What are the particular challenges involved in drug use by children and young people?

These are the kind of questions that will be addressed in this session, which will explore the inter-relationship between drug-control laws, human rights and social exclusion. The session will comprise an overview of the key issues, an expert panel discussion and audience Q&A. It will be of interest to anyone concerned about the way in which the state regulates drugs and drug use, and the impact of this on the full enjoyment of human rights.

PROGRAMME:

Introduction by Dr Matthew Weait (Reader in Socio-Legal Studies and Assistant Dean, School of Law, Birkbeck)

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Presentations:

Rick Lines (Harm Reduction International) – Deliver us from Evil
(AUDIO HERE)

Niamh Eastwood (Release) – How are Drugs policed and prosecuted in the UK?
(AUDIO HERE)

Sophie Strachan (Positively UK) – Drugs and HIV (AUDIO HERE)

Dr Michael Shiner (LSE) – Politics and drug policy reform (AUDIO HERE)

Panel discussion moderated by:

Baroness Vivien Stern CBE  (International Centre for Prison Studies)

opening intervention by:

Damon Barrett (Harm Reduction International)

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Please note that only the first two sections of the event were recorded

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Event Date: 27 June 2011
Royal Holloway in Central London
Bedford Square
2 Gower Street
London WC1E 6DP

The Italian Academies 1525–1700 Project presents:

Science, Learning and Censorship

Programme:

Plenary: Professor Paula Findlen (Stanford) (AUDIO HERE)

Session 1 – Academies and academicians in Venice and the Veneto

Justine Walden (Yale) – The early period of the Accademia Olimpica di Vicenza;
(AUDIO HERE)

Eveline Chayes (Cyprus/Toulouse Le Mirail)– Academic interlopers and their Texts: from Eterei to Incogniti;
(AUDIO HERE)

Maurizio Sangalli (Siena) – Grazio Maria and Sallustio Grazi between the Venetian Academy and the Ambrosiana. The circulation of men, books and ideas in late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Italy.
(AUDIO HERE)

Session 2 – Scientific Academies:

Michaele Favaro (Scuola normale, Pisa) – L’Accademia udinese degli Ermafroditi fra curiosità scientifiche e censura religiosa;
(AUDIO HERE)

Jakob Bek-Thomsen (Aarhus University) – Tracing the Functions of Nicolaus Steno’s Networks
(PAPER HERE)

G. Cultrera (Pavia)– “Provando e riprovando”: il motto distintivo degli accademici del Cimento.
(AUDIO HERE)

Session 3 – Science and mysticism:

Andrea Lattes (Bar Ilan)– Jewish Academies and the spreading of mystic manuals in seventeenth-century Italy;
(AUDIO HERE)

Delphine Montoliu (Toulouse/Scuola normale, Pisa) – Uomini di scienza e accademie scientifiche di Sicilia nel Seicento.
(AUDIO HERE)

Round Table and concluding remarks.

Chair: Professor Brian Richardson (Leeds)

Event Date: 27 June 2011
Beverage Hall Senate House
University of London
WC1E 7HU

The Birkbeck School of Law presents:

Inaugural Lecture

Professor Patricia Tuitt - Used up and misused: the Nation State, the European Union and the Insistent Presence of the Colonial

The question of how economic and social rights are distributed across groups and between people is foreclosed in the earliest stages of the emergence of a political community. This lecture introduces a week-long series of events on the theme of social exclusion by exploring the development of the European Union.

I shall draw together two moments that, at first sight, appear separated from each other, not least by our ideas of history. One is the contemporary ‘post-modern’ moment of the European Union in which various economically grounded rights to freedom of movement have encouraged citizens to look across the increasingly porous borders of Europe with greedy eyes. The other is the ‘Age of Discovery’ or ‘Age of Exploration’ that is conventionally dated from the early 15th century, although accounts of its end-date – suggestively – differ.

The link between these moments is not merely to be found in the energy of the peoples of Europe – their desire to discover the riches that the ‘new’ Europe can yield. Rather, examining the process of emergence of the European Union, I argue that ‘discovery’ remains the principal mode through which European sovereignty is grounded. All the certainties of the so-called Age of Discovery have been brought forward to the present fashioning of the European Union, not least the belief that a political community that has reached the limits of its economic and social efficacy – that has, as it were, exhausted its evolutionary potential – is a figuratively empty space, waiting to be filled. Thus, the old modern Europe had to be conceived of as thoroughly bankrupt before its migrating citizens could appropriate it to the resolutely post-national and post-modern aims of European integration. An abundance of opportunities has no doubt resulted from the integration of Europe but the most substantial rights and rewards are reserved for those relative few capable of engaging in an age-old process of sovereign formation.

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Event date:12 -13 May 2011
Royal Society
Carlton House Terrace
London SW1

Science Voices: Scientists speak about science and themselves

a joint conference of
Centre for Arts and Humanities Research at the Natural History Museum
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Kingston University
Centre for History of Science at the Royal Society
(part-funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council)

The aim of this conference is to explore the creation and use of a number of projects which bring science and scientists to historians and the public through scientists’ own vibrant personal voices and testimony.

PROGRAMME

DAY ONE: 12 May 2011

Introductions and Welcome by Felicity Henderson (RS), Dr Peter Collins (RS), Julie Harvey (NHM) and Martha Fleming (Kingston).

An historian’s perspective: doing and using interviews
Professor Soraya de Chadarevian (Department of History and Center for Society and Genetics, University of California at Los Angeles)
(AUDIO HERE)

SCIENCE INSTITUTIONS AND INDIVIDUAL SCIENTISTS
Writing the recent history of the Royal Society
Dr Peter Collins (Director, Royal Society Centre for History of Science)
(AUDIO HERE)

Whose story is it anyway? The challenges of doing institutional oral history
Dr Sue Hawkins (Centre for the Historical Record, Department of Politics and History, Kingston University)
(AUDIO HERE)

Audience questions.

Keynote Address (open to the public)

Subjects, objects and expectations in Museum Lives: an oral history of the Natural History Museum
Professor Brian Cathcart (School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Kingston University and Principal Investigator, Museum Lives: an oral history of the Natural History Museum, AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellowship)
(AUDIO HERE)

DAY TWO: 13 May 2011

Let’s talk about science
Elizabeth Haines (PhD Candidate, Royal Holloway University of London: Collaborative Doctoral Award with the Science Museum)
(AUDIO HERE)

A SENSE OF ONESELF IN SCIENCE

Oral history and the scientific self
Dr Paul Merchant (Oral History Interviewer, ‘A Changing Planet’, An Oral History of British Science, National Life Stories, The British Library)
(AUDIO HERE)

Society life: from presidents to ‘Personal Information Files’
Keith Moore (Librarian, Royal Society) 
(AUDIO HERE)

UNHEARD VOICES IN SCIENCE

Scientists with a safebox: perspectives on the oral history of science and secrecy
Dr Simone Turchetti (Research Fellow, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester)
(AUDIO HERE)

Hidden voices: an oral history of medical laboratory technicians
Professor Tilli Tansey (School of History, Queen Mary University of London)
(AUDIO HERE)

SPEAKING FOR THOSE WHO WILL SPEAK NO MORE

Much concerned with death
Professor Tom Meade FRS (Editor in Chief, Royal Society Biographical Memoirs and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)
(AUDIO HERE) NOT AVAILABLE AT PRESENT

The challenges of writing Royal Society Biographical Memoirs
Professor Malcolm Longair CBE FRS FRSE (Emeritus Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy, Director of Development of the Cavendish Laboratory and Professorial Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge)
(AUDIO HERE)

Audience questions.

On being interviewed for Museum Lives: An Oral History of the Natural History Museum
Professor Paul Henderson CBE FGS (Hon Prof of Mineralogy, University College London; Trustee, Horniman Museum; ex-Director of Science, Natural History Museum)
(AUDIO HERE)

Plenary and Closing Remarks
Dr Peter Collins (Royal Society); Julie Harvey (Natural History Museum); Martha Fleming (Kingston University).

Event Date: 25 June 2011
Clore Management Centre
Birkbeck College Torrington Sq  
London WC1E 7HX.

The BBC World Service and British Soft Power in perspective

Session One

Introduction by Dr David Styan (Department of Politics, Birkbeck College).

The Political Economy of Soft Power

How does the BBC World Service balance the challenges of funding cuts with rapid changes in both international broadcasting and new social media? How does the British government value and perceive the World Service within its projection of Britain’s ‘Soft Power’?

Peter Horrocks (Director, BBC World Service), in discussion with;

Jean Seaton (Official historian of the BBC, Professor of Media History at Westminster University)

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Session Two

Digital Diplomacy and the Arab Spring

Satellite broadcasters and internet media are playing key roles in changes in the Middle East. Is the BBC World Service successfully negotiating the move from radio to TV and interactive internet media? As audiences and agenda shift, can the BBC compete with Al Jazeera and others?

Roger Hardy, (former Middle East and Islamic affairs analyst, BBC World Service; author of The Muslim Revolt: A Journey through Political Islam (Hurst, 2010); and currently a visiting fellow at LSE, working on US ‘soft power’ and the Muslim world since 9/11.)

Marie Gillespie (Professor of Sociology, the Open University, author of numerous reports on both Arab media and ‘digital diplomacy’)

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Both sessions will be followed by an audience debate.

INNOVATORS ON INNOVATION

In this series of conversations writer and journalist Robert Rowland Smith talks to leading figures from a diverse range of fields: from music to business, from photography to social enterprise.

Podcast 1: Judith Hemming, foremost practitioner of ‘Constellations’
(AUDIO HERE)

Podcast 2: Matt Kingdon, chairman and chief enthusiast of ‘What If’
(AUDIO HERE)

Podcast 3: Matthew Herbert, musician and producer
(AUDIO HERE)

Podcast 4: Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts
(AUDIO HERE)

Podcast 5: Noma Bar, illustrator and designer
(AUDIO HERE)

Podcast 6: Ori Gersht, photographer and film-maker
(AUDIO HERE)

Podcast 7: Sophie Howarth, the founding director of the ‘School of Life’
(AUDIO HERE)

This series of podcasts was produced by Patrick Oldham, with original music by Matthew Herbert. If you would like to hear more podcasts like this, or to view other LGS events, please go to www.thelondongraduateschool.co.uk

Event Date: 23 June 2011
Room 110, 43 Gordon Square
Birkbeck University of London
London WC1

Research in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community presents:

Daniel Monk – Reading the Queer Will

Thomas Braithwaite of Ambleside (d.1607) making his Will (oil on board),
© Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria, UK / The Bridgeman Art Library.

Drawing on literary, media sources and case-law in the UK and the USA, this paper argues that the principle of testamentary freedom provides an overlooked space for the lawful and public expression of alternative kinships and ‘deviant’ and ‘unnatural’ desires. At the same time the principle exposes sexual minorities to particular risks and represents a highly contingent space for political expression.

The paper argues that ‘queerying inheritance’ can contribute and complicate debates within socio-legal scholarship about intestacy reform and sociological scholarship on intimate and sexual citizenship and identity politics.

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talk:

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questions:

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accompanying images:

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Event Date: 22 June 2011
Room B04 Birkbeck Main Building
Birkbeck, University of London
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HX

The Rise of the Indignant: Spain, Greece, Europe

When Stephane Hessel wrote in Time for Outrage! that indignation with injustice should turn to ‘a peaceful insurrection’ perhaps he did not expect that the movement of ‘indignados’ in Spain and ‘aganaktismenoi’ (outraged) in Greece would take his advice to heart so soon and so spectacularly.

Introduction by Costas Douzinas.

Order of speakers:

Costas Lapavitsas (SOAS)

Carlos Frade (Salford University)

Illan Rua Wall (Oxford Brookes)

Stathis Kouvelakis (King’s College London)

Alex Colas (Birkbeck)

Costas Douzinas (Birkbeck)

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Audience Comments:

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Speakers’ final comments:

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Event Date: 21 June 2011
Clore Management Building
Birkbeck, University of London
Malet Street,
London WC1E 7HX

Department of Iberian and Latin American Studies presents

Inaugural Lecture:

Professor Jens Andermann (Department of Iberian and Latin American Studies) -
The journey and the garden: landscape and modernity in Latin America