Philosophy Research Seminar Series – Life Matters: Thought, Nature and Technology

  • When: 27th March 2025
  • Where: Online
  • Registration: Please contact Patrick O’Connor if you would like an invite to the meeting.

You are invited to Staffordshire Philosophy’s research seminar series. This time we will be speaking with Prof. Katherine Withy who teaches Philosophy at Georgetown University.

Paper: The World of the Kitchen

Abstract: When Heidegger introduces the notions of world and being-in-the-world in Being and Time, he speaks of the carpenter’s workshop.1 The carpenter’s workshop is both part of a world—namely, the world of a tradesperson in early 20th Century Germany—and a model for what it is to be in a world at all. As a model, the carpenter’s workshop has profoundly influenced how Heidegger’s concepts of world and being-in-the-world were developed and how they have been given uptake. You can hardly take two steps into Heidegger scholarship without running into a carpenter and their hammer. Using this example as a model for being-in-the-world makes certain features of us and the worlds we inhabit salient while obscuring others. Some of what this model obscures is crucial to the phenomenon of being-in-the-world, and it is made perspicuous by a different model. I want to suggest that a better model for being-in-the-world is being in the world of the kitchen.

Please contact Patrick O’Connor if you would like an invite to the meeting or if you are having trouble accessing the paper

Launch of a new Creative Industries Lecture Series

  • When: 5th March 2025
  • Where: G027 Cadman Building / Cadman Yard, University of Staffordshire
  • Registration: Sign up for free through Eventbrite linke below

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/staffs-creative-industries-lecture-series-tickets-1222599059699

Led by C3 Member Dr. Mark McKenna, the inaugural lecture in the newly established Creative Industries Lecture Series will be at 3pm on March 5th in G027 Cadman Building / Cadman Yard. Britain’s creative industries are world leading and they are the engine of our economic growth. In stark financial terms, in 2021 they generated £108bn in economic value and employed 2.3 million people. They are valuable and vital, but the importance of the creative industries goes well beyond the economy. Art, design, and entertainment enrich our lives and contribute to cultural identity and societal well-being. The works that these industries produce are the lens through which we understand the world.

This series of lectures will feature emerging and established speakers sharing their insights and experiences of the creative industries and, whether you’re a student, professional, or simply ‘creative industries curious’, the series is perfect for anyone looking to be inspired and to learn something new.

Mark has a forthcoming book with Routledge – Levelling Up the Screen Industries: Film and Television Production as Regenerative Strategy in Places Left Behind (2025), which grew out of a piece of work for Stoke-on-Trent City Council on the viability of a Film Office in the region and offers an assessment of the contribution that similar regions can make to the screen economy. The book considers the impact that various industrial and governmental devolution strategies have had or are having and explores the potentially transformative effect that this could have on the UKs screen economy.

 

 

Critical Ecologies Reading Room Event

5th November 2024. 3pm.
Online


SEASONAL CYCLICAL GATHERINGS, HOLDING SPACE FOR NATURE RECOVERY AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE.

The Critical Ecologies Lab would like to invite you to the first of our events for 2024-2025.
We will be meeting to discuss the introduction to Rebecca Solnit’s Hope In The Dark. Untold Mysteries. Wild Possibilities. We will also be outlining our plans for the rest of the year, and inviting your involvement.

New Book and Book Launch Event: The role of landscape and place in creative writing

Writing Landscape and Setting in the Anthropocene: Britain and Beyond

Editors: Philippa Holloway and Craig Jordan-Baker. Including contributions from Mark Brown, Martin Brown, Lisa Mansell, Mel Ebdon, Philippa Holloway, and many others.

  • Explores the role of landscape and place in creative writing, in a world deeply affected by human interventions
  • Includes case studies from Britain and beyond, as well as theoretical chapters examining creative practice and process
  • Responds to current debates about the writer’s practice and social conversations about our relationship to nature

The new book has been published by an international group of academics, including C3 members that focus on Stoke-on-Trent as a place. The book launch took place on 10/07/2024, and the recording will be linked soon.

This edited collection offers an in-depth exploration of the role of landscape and place as literary ‘settings’. It examines the multifaceted relationships between authors, narrators, and characters to their locales, as well as broader considerations of the significance of the representation of landscape in a world deeply affected by human interventions. Consisting of case studies of projects that engage with these questions, as well as research examining the theoretical underpinnings of both creative practices/processes and post-textual analysis of published works, this volume is both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary in scope. In the context of the climate crisis and a pandemic which has caused us to re-evaluate the significance of landscape and the environment, it responds to the need to engage current trends within the academy and in broader social debate about our relationship to the natural world.


The books available from from Springer at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-49955-5 and from our Staffordshire University Library Catalogue from this LINK.

Online Book Launch Event and Readings from 10/07/2024.

Rebellious Research is Back!

Led by one of our C3 Centre members, Agata Lulkowska, a new third season in the Rebellious Research Seminar Series (previously known as art/practice based-research seminar series) is now published and available to download and share.

It runs on a last Wednesday of each month starting in October, via MS Teams, at 3:30-5pm UK time.

More details and the programme can be found in the links below or the downloadable PDF.

https://www.agatalulkowska.com/seminar-series
https://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/c3centre/files/2023/09/Rebellious-Research-2023-2024-Seminar-Series-003.pdf

The C3 Centre at our Research Conference’23

C3 Centre members will be presenting on various sessions at the upcoming Research, Innovation and Enterprise Conference on 24th and 24th of May 2023, this week.

It is still time to sign up for free at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/staffordshire-university-research-innovation-and-enterprise-conference-23-tickets-522644542897

Key events include a session on getting to know the C3 Centre, with a panel including:

  • Carola Boehm, Panel Chair, Co-Director
  • Music and Sound (Marc Estibeiro) (www)
  • Philosophy, Film and The Environmental Humanities (www)(Patrick O’Connor)
  • Ceramic Cultures, Practices and Debates (Neil Brownsword) (www)
  • Practice as Research (Agata Lulkowska)
  • Art and Design Research Group (Ian Brown)

And in a keynote slot, we also have members exploring the tensions between research, teaching, internationalization and regional impact.

Co-chairs:

  • Carola Boehm, C3 Co-Director & Professor of Creative Communities and Creative Industries
  • Jackie Reynolds, C3 Co-Director & Research Impact Manager

And Panel Members:

  • Michael Knowles, PhD Researcher & Film Producer
  • Giulia Lapucci, PhD Researcher & Cultural Researcher, University of Macerata
  • Jodie Gibson, Visiting Fellow & Arts & Culture Professional
  • Nick Gratton, Lead for Civic Engagement and Evaluation & Associate Professor of Community and Civic Engagement
  • Anna Francis, Associate Professor of Fine Art and Social Practice

We also have individual presentations from members, including

  • Dan Lewis: Designing Emotions: Strategies for Furniture Designers
  • Jackie Reynolds: Building Research Impact
  • Rebecca Nunes: Eco-alliances: imaging the other-than-human to create advocacy for the environment
  • Giulia Lapucci: Collaboration at the Centre: building a Constellation to share and disseminate knowledge
  • David White: The design, development and pilot study of a marine ecological simulation for education or environmental changes on marine life

Registration is free at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/staffordshire-university-research-innovation-and-enterprise-conference-23-tickets-522644542897

 

DTA Research Seminar Series 2022-23 – Research Frameworks

The School of Digital, Technologies and Arts is again holding a series of seminars, chaired and curated by C3 member Becky Nunes, following a life-cycle of reserch: It will cover presentations by researchers about how projects start, how to work across teams, how to co-create research with external communities and in the second half of the season will moev to how research gets funded and reviwed.

Seminars are designed to be in person, but recordings will be available afterwards. Dates for the seminars are:

  • WED NOV 9TH 3.30-5.00P.M : CA204 – BEGINNINGS – How do projects start? What are the catalysts for interesting research projects? (Michael Day, Alke Groeppel-Wegener)
  • WED DEC 7TH 3.30-5.00P.M: CA204 : COLLABORATIONS – Working across teams, co-creating and other fruitful research partnerships (Neil Brownsword, Maria Martinez-Sanchez)
  • WED JAN 11TH 3.30-5.00P.M : CA204: : COLLABORATIONS – Working across teams, co-creating and other fruitful research partnerships (Islam Abohela)

Catch-Up: #RebelliousResearch #1: Agnieszka Piotrowska

The recording from the first session of ‘Rebellious Research’ (Arts/practice-based research seminar series) is now available to watch online: ‘Tentacular thinking’ in Creative Practice Research as a Radical Intellectual Gesture by Agnieszka Piotrowska.

You can find the recordings from the last year’s edition of the series here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlngmRq1T-8&list=PLMUvev1_9LqMfwY4BBRR71vwa5YQaKxWw

‘Tentacular thinking’ in Creative Practice Research as a Radical Intellectual Gesture by

Agnieszka Piotrowska (Reader in Film, SODA, MMU & Professor, Film and Cultural Studies, The University of Gdańsk). Wednesday 26th October 2022, 15:30-17:00 (GMT)

 In this talk, Agnieszka Piotrowska considere the notion of what ‘knowledge’ might be for a creative research practitioner and how ‘high theory’ might be of assistance in inspiring ideas and creative strategies. She will share her most recent experience of working across disciplines with the new experimental film Wash (2022). It is a hybrid documentary with element of animation and drama dealing with serious issues of development in Zimbabwe, a country in which she has done much work over the years. The piece of work has been funded by Strategic England Research 2021 and the University of Edinburgh.

Art/Practice-Based Research Seminar Series

Following the and popular first round of the Art/Practice-based research seminar series (and a Special Issue on Recontextualising Practice-based Research which followed), the seminar series, hosted by C3 Centre Agata Lulkowska, returns with a new title and some truly exquisite guests. As always, free and open to all (all sessions run online via MS Teams), this initiative aims at widening support and understanding around practice research in a friendly and inclusive manner, with some top experts sharing their experience and advice.

  • For more info and to be added to the mailing list please contact Agata Lulkowska (Agata.Lulkowska@staffs.ac.uk)
  • The programme is available from here
  • The Youtube Channel of our past recorded seminars is here (below a taster from the first seminar)

Upcoming Industrial Crafts Research Symposium

Staffordshire University’s Professor Neil Brownsword is presenting at the upcoming virtual event:

The Industrial Crafts Research Network’s two-day inaugural symposium,

Exhibiting Skill: Understanding, Documenting, and Communicating Skilled Practices of Historical Industrial Environments.

Registration for this symposium can be found here.

Poster and  Programme downloadable here.