Professor Dewaele talks about how multilingualism can benefit children and societies and debunks some of the common myths about multilingual child-rearing. Professor Dewaele's new book, Raising Multilingual Children, is available now and is published by Multilingual Matters. Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication - www.bbk.ac.uk/linguistics Courses in linguistics - http://bit.ly/2pfqwLq Courses in foreign languages - http://bit.ly/2putF61 Birkbeck Voices, the podcast series from Bir...
May 09, 2017•15 min
Ian Haywood - Professor of English at Roehampton University - responds to Josephine McDonagh's lecture on ‘The Political Picaresque: Sunshine and Shadow, and Radical Responses to Migrancy and Settlement around 1850’
May 08, 2017•29 min
Dr Jason Edwards, Lecturer in Politics at Birkbeck, discusses the role of populism across a range of recent political events - from Brexit, to the election of Donald Trump, to the rise of the far-right Front National in France - as well as commenting on how populism is playing out in the UK general election campaigns. He also discusses populism in the context of wider ideas about sovereignty and control. For more information about Politics at Birkbeck, go to: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/politics Birkbe...
May 08, 2017•11 min
Josephine McDonagh: ‘The Political Picaresque: Sunshine and Shadow, and Radical Responses to Migrancy and Settlement around 1850’
Apr 26, 2017•1 hr 6 min
Jocelyne Saab is a journalist, photographer, artist, scriptwriter, producer and film director. She has spent more than four decades documenting conflict and deprivation, especially the civil war in her native Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s. Her Beirut Trilogy was a highlight of the Essay Film Festival’s 2017 programme. Essay Film Festival - http://www.essayfilmfestival.com/ Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/culture/ Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image - htt...
Apr 12, 2017•30 min
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Writing ‘Outsiders’ into the History of International Public Health, a roundtable discussion addressed what difference adding outsiders makes to the way historians write the history of public health and the history of internationalism more broadly. The discussion also questioned the adequacy of existing standard narratives of international public health and the ways in which historians can instead tell these narrat...
Apr 10, 2017•1 hr 1 min
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Writing ‘Outsiders’ into the History of International Public Health, Jessica Pearson (Macalester), Dora Vargha (Exeter) and Ana Antic (Exeter) addressed inclusion and exclusion in international health networks. The panel, chaired by David Brydan (Birkbeck), discussed life beyond the WHO, both for colonial powers and for many socialist states. In addition, debate turned to the importance of distinguishing between gl...
Apr 10, 2017•1 hr 36 min
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Writing ‘Outsiders’ into the History of International Public Health, David Brydan (Birkbeck), Paul Weindling (Oxford Brookes) and Maria Zarifi (Hellenic Open University) examined the history of public health in the so-called ‘outsider’ states of Franco’s Spain, Nazi Germany, and Greece. The panel, chaired by Johanna Conterio (Birkbeck), also incorporated debate on the centrality of public health to state building a...
Apr 10, 2017•1 hr 24 min
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Writing ‘Outsiders’ into the History of International Public Health, Susan Gross Solomon (Toronto), Johanna Conterio (Birkbeck) and Sarah Marks (Birkbeck) examined public health in Soviet Russia during the inter-war years. The panel, chaired by Ana Antic (Exeter), fostered discussion on the extent of the performative aspect of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ as labels in relation to international gatherings and congress...
Apr 10, 2017•1 hr 30 min
As part of a workshop hosted by the Reluctant Internationalists research group on Writing ‘Outsiders’ into the History of International Public Health, Jessica Reinisch (Birkbeck), Lion Murard (French National Centre for Scientific Research), Yitang Lin and Thomas David (University of Lausanne) and Davide Rodogno (University of Geneva) discussed the political dimensions of international health. The panel, chaired by Dora Vargha (Exeter), addressed the theme of giving and taking in international p...
Apr 10, 2017•1 hr 47 min
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 historiog...
Mar 28, 2017•1 hr 6 min
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...
Mar 28, 2017•1 hr 16 min
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 infor...
Mar 28, 2017•9 min
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 acade...
Mar 27, 2017•20 min
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...
Mar 24, 2017•1 hr 33 min
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...
Mar 24, 2017•1 hr 21 min
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 pane...
Mar 23, 2017•1 hr 37 min
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 psych...
Mar 23, 2017•53 min
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 ori...
Mar 13, 2017•52 min
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’
Mar 13, 2017•17 min
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 Ma...
Feb 24, 2017•57 min
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 sy...
Feb 23, 2017•13 min
[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 t...
Feb 17, 2017•10 min
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
Jan 03, 2017•7 min
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 ar...
Dec 14, 2016•54 min
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.
Dec 14, 2016•28 min
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 invo...
Nov 30, 2016•29 min
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)
Oct 07, 2016•8 min
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 ...
Sep 15, 2016•25 min
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 o...
Sep 09, 2016•13 min
