#birkbeckvoices

As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Debating the Cold War, Piers Ludlow (LSE), Elidor Mehilli (Hunter College, NY) and Angela Neilson-Nagy (Blackheath High School/Birkbeck) discuss the legacies of the Cold War and if it ever really ended. The panel, chaired by Jessica Reinisch (Birkbeck) also address how we understand and communicate the history of the Cold War to younger generations. The panel included discussion on the extent to which new historiographical approaches have informed, or, more frequently, failed to inform, current teaching materials and curricula in UK secondary schools. The challenge, panellists agreed, was to integrate the complex, heterogeneous and multi-centred historiography of the Cold War, into a narrative which remained comprehensible and engaging for students and the general public. For more information – http://bit.ly/2nkGWiQ

As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Debating the Cold War, Alma Steingart (Harvard), Jonathan Oldfield (Birmingham), Jon Agar (UCL), Iris Borowy (Shanghai), Sarah Marks (Cambridge), Lukasz Stanek (Manchester) and Waqar Zaidi (Lums) discuss what was Cold War science? The panel, chaired by Dora Vargha (Birkbeck) asks: can we talk about ‘Cold War science’? Histories of Cold War science and medicine have focused on Big Science, nuclear and atomic science, and space exploration. But science in the two blocks has featured in the historiography in very different terms: on one side stand accounts of Western science funding, the relationships of science and the military, and health effects of nuclear programmes and accidents; on the other, studies of a terrain where science was led astray and corrupted by politics, and marked by crippling shortages of materials and expertise. A “declensionist narrative” of decline, desiccation and degradation (borrowing a term from the en

The first person in his family to attend university, Warren has overcome significant hardship to achieve his academic goals. Having found himself estranged from his parents, homeless and addicted to amphetamines, it was a chance introduction to two books on philosophy “which taught me what my less-than-ideal background did not: how to live well, the nature of responsibility, what it means to live a good life, how to treat others. It is a debt I will never be able to repay in full". Further information: Department of Philosophy - http://bit.ly/2ou2tTV Courses in philosophy - http://bit.ly/2ocGXns Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is. Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - https://soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voi

Catherine Heard, Director of the World Prison Research Programme at the Institute for Criminal Policy Research at Birkbeck, discusses how imprisonment is used in 10 different countries around the world, and the harms of excessive use of imprisonment. Further information: ICPR - http://bit.ly/2opUlDT Catherine Heard - http://bit.ly/2nndhUL School of Law at Birkbeck - http://bit.ly/2nEFl88 Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Birkbeck, University of London, brings you interviews with our academics, students, alumni and wider community. We cover the latest research and inspiring events taking place at the College and find out more about the people who make Birkbeck the place that it is. Listen to the #BirkbeckVoices SoundCloud playlist - https://soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices

As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on ‘Debating the Cold War’, Sandrine Kott (Geneva), Dean Vuletic (EUI), Kristy Ironside (Manchester), Bela Tomka (Szeged) and Peter Romijn (Amsterdam) address the question: was there a welfare state in the East as well as the West? The panel, chaired by Johanna Conterio (Birkbeck), explores the thesis, proposed by Jan Gross, Timothy Garton Ash and others, that Communism was based predominantly on repression, the abuse of political power, and a lack of popular legitimacy and ‘freedom’. The discussants examine potential points of comparisons between Western and Eastern states and their responsibilities for their citizens, including interpretations of social security, education, welfare, health care, social mobility, and taxation, and ask about effects and consequences of similarities and differences. As part of this comparative perspective, the panel looks at how Communism was experienced and lived in Eastern Europe, and explore qu

As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on ‘Debating the Cold War’, Polly Jones (Oxford), Anita Prazmowska (LSE), Diana Georgescu (SSEES), Dina Fainberg (Amsterdam) and Anatoly Pinsky (St Petersburg/Helsinki) discuss did ideology matter during the Cold War? The panel, chaired by Ana Antic (Birkbeck) explores the common juxtaposition between the supposed waning significance of ‘ideology’ in the West with the overly rigid ideological regimentation of the East; the notion that while ideology permeated every aspect of private and public lives in the East, the Western private self was shielded from ideological influences, or that there was no dominant political ideology in the West. The panel also examines other, partially contradictory, themes from established Cold War narratives including, the rejection of Marxism in Eastern Europe especially among intellectuals after the major disappointments of 1956 or 1968 and the idea that Marxism was never genuinely adopted except by

As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Debating the Cold War, Julia Lovell (Birkbeck), Anne Deighton (Oxford), Jussi Hanhimaki (Geneva) and Oscar Sanchez-Sibony (Macau) discuss how global was the Cold War? The panel, chaired by Jessica Reinisch (Birkbeck) address the growing research on the Cold War as a global phenomenon. The majority of narratives and frameworks are still focused on the relationship of the United States and the Soviet Union. This panel discussion therefore aims to take stock of the contributions of global history to Cold War historiography. It asks: what conventional Cold War concepts does a global approach reinforce, which ones does it contest? What are the conceptual and methodological challenges of constructing a global history of the Cold War? How does shifting perspectives away from the US-Soviet binary change our understanding of the Cold War, its stakes and the relationship of the two superpowers and to what extent can we leave the binary

Professor Helen Graham of Royal Holloway, University of London delivers this keynote lecture on the Spanish Civil War and Transnational Mobilisation. This lecture uses the lives of five individuals to explore the significance of the Spanish Republican cause to the continental wars of social change which took place between 1936 and 1948. Professor Graham also examines what the Spanish Republican defeat of 1939 meant for all five over the long term, as they suffered physical displacement and psychological and existential estrangement. With this in mind, the talk concludes by exploring open questions about what might constitute an honest reckoning today with the history and memory of Spain, and of Europe’s dark mid-twentieth century. The lecture is introduced by Paul Preston (LSE). The lecture was part of a two-day conference on the international history of the Spanish Civil War organised by the Reluctant Internationalists research project, in collaboration with the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish

Speaker Charlotte Ribeyrol (Sorbonne University; Trinity College, Oxford) Abstract: This paper focuses on the chromatic anachronism of William Burges’s Great Bookcase (1859-62, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) which was first exhibited in the Medieval Court of the 1862 International Exhibition. Modelled on a surviving piece of polychrome French Gothic furniture, and painted by no fewer than 14 promising artists (including Edward Burne-Jones and Simeon Solomon), it represents the Pagan and Christian origins of art and yet some of the colours used were modern pigments devised by an expanding chemical industry. A fellow exhibitor of painted furniture at the Medieval Court, William Morris shared a similar passion for medieval France, which his early poetry construed as a golden age, contrasting with the bleakness of the industrial present. However some of his poems also introduce effects of chromatic disjunction and anachronism, notably in ‘Golden Wings’, which H.H. Statham analysed in 1897 as ‘characteristic of a deco

Matthew Winterbottom - curator of late nineteenth-century British sculpture and decorative arts at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford - responds to Charlotte Ribeyrol's paper on ‘”Red brick lip”: Morris, Burges and the poetry of architecture’

Professor Steve Edwards (Birkbeck)presents his work on daguerrotypes for The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies. Steve Edwards is Professor of History and Theory of Photography in the Department of Art History at Birkbeck. His publications include: The Making of English Photography, Allegories (2006) and Martha Rosler, The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems (2012). His work has been translated into 11 languages and he is an editor of Oxford Art Journal and the Historical Materialism book series.

Dr Eddie Bruce-Jones from Birbkeck’s School of Law has a new book, Race in the Shadow of Law: State Violence in Contemporary Europe. The book is available now and published by Routledge. The book looks at structural and institutional racism in Germany, and how the work of Black-led anti-racism activists has tried to combat this. The main case in the book is that of Oury Jalloh, a Sierra Leonean man who, in 2005, burned to death in a police cell in the city of Dessau while in the German asylum system with temporary leave-to-remain. The circumstances of Jalloh’s death remain unclear more than a decade later, despite a campaign to establish them, with which Dr Bruce-Jones was involved as a legal observer. Through the case of Jalloh and others who have died at the hands of the police in Germany, Dr Bruce-Jones draws connections between contemporary legal knowledge practices and colonial systems of thought, arguing that many people of colour experience the law as a part of a racial problem, rather than a soluti

[Research] Professor Jan Rueger from Birkbeck’s Department of History, Classics and Archaeology has published a new book: Heligoland: Britain, Germany and the Struggle for the North Sea. Heligoland is a small island in the North Sea, but its diminutive size belies its importance in the history of Anglo-German relations. A British colony for much of the nineteenth century, the island became a metaphor for Anglo-German rivalry after Germany acquired it in 1890. Turned into a naval fortress under the Kaiser and again under Hitler, it was fought over in both world wars. Heavy bombardment by the Allies reduced it to ruins until the Royal Navy re-took it in May 1945. It was finally returned to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1952, and became a popular holiday destination. Tracing this long history of contact and conflict from multiple perspectives, in Heligoland Professor Rueger brings to life this fascinating and revealing microcosm of the Anglo-German relationship in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Dan Reagan studied for a MA Manpower studies at Birkbeck in 1969. Now aged 84, he reflects on his educational journey and his time at Birkbeck, and offers advice to today's students. Today we offer a range of business psychology courses at Birkbeck - bbk.ac.uk/orgpsych

This talk explores some of the many links between sculpture, writing and dance in fin-de-siècle Paris through a study of Arthur Symons’s involvement with the works of Auguste Rodin and avant-garde dance as represented by Loïe Fuller and Isadora Duncan. As spatial arts, engaging in and exploring three-dimensional space, sculpture and dance impinge on the physical space of the spectator. Although one art is solid and static, the other evanescent and ephemeral, the approximations between the two arts were many at the turn of the century. The Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 became the epicentre for the display of the moving body, whether as modern machine with sophisticated stage effects or as erotic bodies captured in drawing, photography, and sculpture.

Alexandra Gerstein (Courtauld Institute of Art) is curator of ‘Rodin and Dance: The Essence of Movement’ at the Courtauld Gallery. More information about the exhibition is available on the Courtauld Gallery website.

This latest episode of Birkbeck Voices gives some fascinating listening for the cold winter evenings • The Calendar: Following two high-profile screenings of the latest film from Birkbeck’s Derek Jarman lab [jarmanlab.org] Professor Colin MacCabe, Chair of the research and film-making lab, talks to us about The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger [from 46 seconds] • Birkbeck People: Dr Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Reader in Law, talks to us about the Colombian peace process, and his involvement in talks between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) during the 1990s [from 9 mins 30 secs] • Research Focus: Professor Jacqueline Barnes, who was recently made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, talks about her research into the environmental factors that affect early childhood development, and the challenges of ensuring that successive government policies take scientific evidence of their efficacy into account [from 21 mins 40 secs]

This month the College swings back into action, with classes starting across campus: - We hear from Spike, who's about to embark on a Law degree at Birkbeck (bbk.ac.uk/law) - International student Madeline is returning for the second year of her creative writing and English degree (bbk.ac.uk/english/study-here/creative-writing-courses) - Student Union's (SU) LGBTQ+ officer, Tommy discusses how the SU can support new students (www.birkbeckunion.org)

This latest episode of Birkbeck Voices, coming to you from a sunny Gordon Square, has plenty to hold your interest: - Research Focus: Dr Caroline Kamau (bit.ly/2cpZhmV) speaks about her study on the working conditions of junior doctors, and their connection to patient mortality. - The Calendar: Mike Berlin (bit.ly/2cI8Ssv) about his forthcoming history study day on the Great Fire of London - Birkbeck People: MA Language Teaching student, Viktorija Reimontaite speaks about her day job as manager of the Bloomsbury Farmers’ Market - lfm.org.uk/markets/bloomsbury

Long after the event, the Great Fire of 1666 continues to resonate with Londoners. The City’s ever changing skyline with its glittering towers still pivots around the dome of Wren’s St. Paul’s. London’s streets and houses continue to show the influence of post fire plans and building codes. Ahead of a study day organised by Birkbeck and the Museum of London on 24 September, Mike Berlin of Birkbeck's Department of History, Classics and Archaeology talks about the impact of the fire on the lives of ordinary Londoners, the elusive history of the famous plans for re-building London after the fire and the role of anti-Catholic and other conspiracy theories in the post-fire period.