Nine Dots Prize | Actions readers should take after reading the book CRASSH Cambridge 2024-06-17 | An interview with Nine Dots Prize winner Joanna Kusiak
Nine Dots Prize | Advice for people applying for the prize CRASSH Cambridge 2024-06-17 | An interview with Nine Dots Prize winner Joanna Kusiak
Nine Dots Prize | Themes of the book CRASSH Cambridge 2024-06-17 | An interview with Nine Dots Prize winner Joanna Kusiak
Nine Dots Prize | What did you learn in the process of researching and writing your book CRASSH Cambridge 2024-06-17 | An interview with Nine Dots Prize winner Joanna Kusiak
Global History Lab | Elisa Prosperetti and Alain Hirwa in conversation CRASSH Cambridge 2024-06-17 | A conversation recorded in connection with the launch of the Global History Lab at CRASSH, University of Cambridge in May 2024.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/42232Alain Hirwa is a poet, essayist, and photographer from Rwanda. In 2023, his chapbook of poetry was published by Akashic Books in New York. He currently serves as a lecturer at Texas State University.In 2018, we met in Kigali. I was teaching the Global History Lab (c.1300 to the present) course, and he was an undergraduate at Kepler University. As part of the Global History Dialogues Project, an initiative of the Global History Lab created by Marcia Schenck, Alain went on to carry out primary source research on the connection between hip hop and free speech in Rwanda. This work, which he credits with making him a researcher, was featured in the recently published anthology, The Right to Research: Historical Narratives by Refugee and Global South Scholars (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023, co-edited by Marcia Schenck and Kate Reed).Listen to our brief conversation, in which Alain introduces himself and discusses his journey and his experience with the Global History Lab: “a very mind-opening and inspiring opportunity that gave me a lot of things that I’m currently very grateful for.”Elisa Prosperetti is an Assistant Professor of International History at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Global History Lab | Jeremy Adelman and Victor Apryshchenko in conversation CRASSH Cambridge 2024-06-17 | A conversation recorded in connection with the launch of the Global History Lab at CRASSH, University of Cambridge in May 2024.Jeremy Adelman is Director of the Global History Lab at the University of Cambridge.Victor Apryshchenko is Jean Monnet Chair and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Civic Engagement(http://www.bard.edu/cce/). He is also a Teaching Fellow on the Smolny Beyond Borders programme for the Global History Lab.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/42232
CRASSH | Islands as Crossroads: Reimagining mobilities in the Mediterranean CRASSH Cambridge 2024-06-12 | A symposium convened by the CIRN Intesa Sanpaolo Fellow 2023-24, Giovanna Di Matteo on 14 March 2024Scholarly literature on islands and mobilities is not a recent phenomenon. Indeed, even though islands are often described as remote and isolated, separate from macro-histories and global geographies, scholars have demonstrated how they are fully immersed in the logics of globalisation and engaged with both human and non-human mobilities and immobilities.Today, we find ourselves in a time of crises where climate change poses a threat to both human and non-human life on islands and the mainland. Simultaneously, war and violence encroach upon the shores of the Mediterranean and further away around the world. Rather than dismantling barriers, artificial islands are constructed to segregate those deemed unworthy of residing in our democratic Europe. Global relations and connections are primarily harnessed to fuel a capitalist economy, benefiting the few at the expense of the many.In this complex context, islands, with their rich and intricate current realities and histories, emerge as products of this world. They possess the ability to reflect it, revealing hidden aspects and serving as exemplary sites for experimentation. Despite and through these challenges, islands still have much to teach, offering valuable insights to guide us towards a collective reflection on better futures for all.Speakers:Arturo Gallia (Università Roma Tre, Roma)Stefano Malatesta (Università Bicocca, Milano)Marco Nocente (Università Bicocca, Milano)Nicola Montagna (Università degli Studi di Salerno)Giovanna Di Matteo (Gran Sasso Science Institute, L’Aquila/University of Cambridge)Elena Emma Sottilotta (University of Cambridge)Lavinia Gambini (University of Cambridge)Marthe Achtnich (University of Cambridge)crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/41885In beloved memory of Prof Federica Letizia Cavallo
CRASSH | Education Exclusion Citizenship CRASSH Cambridge 2024-06-12 | PLEASE NOTE: This is an audio recording onlyPanel discussion on 19 March 2024, part of the inReach – /ɪn riːtʃ/ projectConvenor: Kelly Fagan Robinson (Department of Social Anthropology)Panel:• Sian Lazar, Social Anthropology, Cambridge on education, citizenship and activism in Latin America• Zerei Tucker, on being a leader of the inReach Youth Summit and his experiences as a current secondary school student• Ahlisha Donovan, Social Worker, Hackney Council and parent of a secondary school child• Rosie Jones-McVey, Wellcome ECR Fellow, Exeter who has worked with young people in PRUs using Equine assisted methods• Alex Parton Turner, Cambridge HSPS undergraduate, school communities and policy• Laraib Niaz, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, inclusive education and independent evaluation of the Girls Education Challenge• Linzi Roberts-Egan, Chief Executive of Waltham Forest and former Headteacher at a Pupil Referral unitAbstract:This panel will discuss the ways that education inequalities impact on young people’s bodies, minds and inclusion in the national conversation.The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) asserts that all students should have an active role in their education, taking part in decisions about them and directing changes when needed (de Leeuw et al 2020). ‘Pupil Voice’, the agenda which aims to represent young voices in decision-making about them, has been advanced to make this viable. Though the UK’s education auditing body, Ofsted, recently reconfirmed the importance of Pupil Voice representation, children from minoritised groups remain under or unrepresented. As seen in the statistics in the news and in the field over recent years, providing young people with surveys or student assemblies in order to ‘speak up’ without cultivating the skills required to do so can result in children being absent—either literally absent, as with the 1.7 million children who were ‘persistently’ absent from UK schools last year, or metaphorically absent from discourse and dialogue.As one Head of Schools recently said: “We’re living through unprecedented problems in schools but using the same tools we’ve had for decades, and they’re not fit for purpose.”It seems that the UK is developing different kinds of young people with different levels of related presence in public conversations concerning their health and educational needs. Experiences of second-class economic citizenship, non-status in cases of recent arrival to the UK or other experiences of poverty/precarity can be traced in/on children’s bodies (Wilkinson & Pickett 2019; Lazar 2013). This not only determines who young people might be in the present, but their understanding of who they have been before, and who they might be in future.This panel will unpack this complex situation from different angles. We invite educators, students, academics and interested publics to participate in this discussion, followed by the opening of the inReach exhibition and reception.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/41665
CRASSH | Gerry Simpson reads ‘Parables’ from Why Eichman couldn’t laugh CRASSH Cambridge 2024-06-12 | Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International JusticeBook launch and pop-up exhibition on 19 March 2024Editors:Christine Schwöbel-Patel (CRASSH visiting fellow, University of Warwick)Robert Knox (University of Liverpool)Speakers:Alex Batesmith (University of Leeds)Terry Duffy (Artist)Kate Evans (Artist)Jo Frank (Artist)Tor Krever (University of Cambridge)Kate Miles (University of Cambridge)Anne Neylon (University of Liverpool)Deger Ozkaramanli (Delft University of Technology)Surabhi Ranganathan (University of Cambridge)Gerry Simpson (London School of Economics)Illan Wall (University of Galway)Summary:How are stories of justice told and visualised? In what ways do stereotypes of victims entrench biases of race, class, and gender? What presumptions do we have about violence and forms of justice?In this book launch and exhibition event, these questions will be critically explored as questions relating to the political relationship between aesthetics and international justice. Through a variety of media, from poetry to comics, international justice’s dominant aesthetics will be explored, as well as resistance to them in the form of counter-aesthetics.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/41245
CRASSH | Introducing the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Early Career Researcher Assembly CRASSH Cambridge 2024-06-11 | Early Career Representatives Joshua Fitzgerald (Faculty of History) andGeorgina Wilson (Faculty of English) talk about the ECR Assembly.The Assembly provides Early Career Researchers (ECR) with a platform from which to advocate for improved research culture, professional opportunities, and working conditions, as well as an academic and social network across which to share experiences and ideas. It is particularly focused on supporting ECR across the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (AHSS), and in making legible the crunch points and highlights of the hugely varied career paths to help change them for the better.The Assembly is led by two early-career representatives who are always keen to hear from any early-career scholar, in any kind of post, from across the Schools of Art & Humanities or the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. They aim to represent and elevate ECR’s views and concerns to the highest academic levels in the Schools and beyond, building up the Assembly as a forum for change.This Assembly launch is a great opportunity to meet you, explain what the Early Career representatives and the Assembly can offer, and listen to what you’d like to see changed in your working culture.The definition of an early-career teachers, researchers and researcher-teachers includes a scholar within eight years of their PhD award (seemingly the viva), or equivalent professional training and/or within six years of their first academic appointment (meaning the first full- or part-time paid employment contract that lists research or teaching as the primary function). Bear in mind that life events, career disruptions and non-traditional pathways to ECR-dom can shape that basic framing of this definition.
CRASSH | Representations of power, ecology, and place in the Global South: a research symposium CRASSH Cambridge 2024-06-01 | 9 February 2024Speakers:• Victoria Oluwamayowa Gbadegesin (Visiting Fellow, Scholar from the Global South 2024 / Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria)• Swati Moitra (Visiting Fellow, Scholar from the Global South 2024 / Gurudas College, University of Calcutta)• Mariela Pena (Visiting Fellow, Scholars from the Global South 2024 / Argentine National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) / University of Buenos Aires)Summary:This research symposium will showcase new research on the thematic cluster “Ecologies in Place” taking place in universities from the Global South. The interdisciplinary forum will explore the links between different forms of representation (artistic, political, and journalistic) and situated environmental phenomena. It will include work in the humanities and social sciences from scholars based in India, Nigeria, and Argentina.Organised in partnership between CRASSH and the Consortium for the Global Southcrassh.cam.ac.uk/events/41501
CRASSH | Alegropolitics of connection: reaching out on the dance floor CRASSH Cambridge 2024-04-30 | A conversation between Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Magna GopalConvenor:Kelly Fagan Robinson (Department of Social Anthropology)Speakers:Ananya Jahanara Kabir FBA (Professor of English Literature at King’s College London)Magna Gopal (Empowerment coach)Abstract:Colonialism, enslavement, dispossession, and displacement: modernity’s foundational traumas also catalysed unexpected new cultural forms, including globally popular social dances that combine the European-derived partner-hold with African- derived rhythmic elements. Unequal and violent encounters generated dances based on the shared exhilaration of partnership, which now circulate transnationally through semi-formal leisure industries based on classes, parties, and festivals. Professor Ananya Jahanara Kabir’s research has mobilised this paradox to articulate a relationship between trauma, resistance, survival, and the market that she calls ‘alegropolitics’, or the politics of collective joy through connection—the title of the book she is currently completing, that draws on over ten years of multilingual, multi-sited, archival and field research on transnational spread of African-heritage partner dances such as salsa, tango, lindy hop, zouk, bachata, and kizomba.Research on dance involves embodied and participatory methods. Simply put, it means dancing socially (a lot) and thinking about how the dance floor transforms us and what it can teach us. One of Ananya’s longstanding collaborators from the dance scenes she studies and participates in is the renowned salsa personality Magna Gopal. Their relationship exemplifies the deep connections between social dancers, teachers, and instructors that these scenes enable. Over the years Ananya and Magna have used their conversations to understand the inner logic of how partner dancing involves sociability, improvisation, musicality, and skill, to transform cultural appropriation to intersubjective connection. In this seminar they will conduct a conversation in the spirit of improvised partner dancing. They will talk about the ways in which reaching out to partners on the dance floor is also about reaching out across the barriers of class, ethnicity, religion, race, and profession to present live possibilities for connecting with each other through an alegropolitical legacy the dance carries with it as its own embodied history.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/41300
CRASSH | Present day missions in the post-colonial context CRASSH Cambridge 2024-04-30 | Present-day missions in the post-colonial context: geopolitics, migrations, and interfaith dialoguesAn event by the Indigenous Studies Discussion Group7 February 2024Speakers:Vincent Ekka (Head of Tribal Department, Indian Social Institute, Delhi)‘Christianity and Indigeneity in India’Theodore Stapleton (PhD researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology, Cambridge)Moderator:Benny Shen (University of Cambridge)crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/41134
CRASSH | Directors Q&A: C’è un soffio di vita soltanto / A breath of life (2022) CRASSH Cambridge 2024-03-09 | C’è un soffio di vita soltanto / A breath of life (2022)Directed by Matteo Botrugno and Daniele ColucciniConvenorOrsolya Katalin Petőcz (Selwyn College, University of Cambridge)SpeakersMatteo Botrugno & Daniele Coluccini (Film Directors)Film synopsisLucy is a 95-year-old woman. In her apartment, photos turned yellow with the passing of time, tell the story of the adolescence of a boy who at the time was called Luciano and who was going to live through the most terrible period of his life. Lucy is the oldest transsexual woman in Italy. She is among the few survivors of Dachau’s concentration camp.Lucy’s story is the story of the 1900s. The events of her turbulent life have become a metaphor for a humanity that does not give up and that treasures the most important gift in history; memory, as a unique and irreplaceable starting point.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/39890
CRASSH | How are childrens voices heard? CRASSH Cambridge 2024-02-09 | Part of the inReach – /ɪn riːtʃ/ projectConvenor:Kelly Fagan Robinson (Department of Social Anthropology)Speaker:Carol Homden CBE (Chief Executive at Coram & Chair of the National Autistic Society)AbstractUsing a combination of historic and current examples, Carol Homden explores the ways in which children’s views and experiences are or are not heard and acted upon in policy, practice and the public discourse and whether this matters.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/41299
CRASSH | Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice CRASSH Cambridge 2024-02-08 | Book launch and pop-up exhibitionA Q&A with editors Christine Schwöbel-Patel (CRASSH visiting fellow, University of Warwick) and Robert Knox (University of Liverpool)SummaryHow are stories of justice told and visualised? In what ways do stereotypes of victims entrench biases of race, class, and gender? What presumptions do we have about violence and forms of justice?In this book launch and exhibition event, these questions will be critically explored as questions relating to the political relationship between aesthetics and international justice. Through a variety of media, from poetry to comics, international justice’s dominant aesthetics will be explored, as well as resistance to them in the form of counter-aesthetics.An event created for the Cambridge Festival 2024
CRASSH | Category trouble: an errant phenomenology of stigma and care CRASSH Cambridge 2024-02-05 | ConvenorKelly Fagan Robinson (Department of Social Anthropology)SpeakerCheryl Mattingly (Aarhus University, Departments of Anthropology and Philosophy & University of Southern California, Department of Anthropology)AbstractCould an errant version of critical phenomenology help us see spaces of potentiality even in the grimmest circumstances? Could it help ‘defrost’ our understanding of a concept like stigma? Stigma theory foregrounds the work of social identity categories in creating shaming dramas. It is a very familiar – a too familiar – concept within critical theory. How to think it anew? To disturb its certainties? ‘Defrosting’ is a metaphor borrowed from Hannah Arendt. She pondered the problem that dominant political and moral concepts freeze when they become canonical. She asked: what kind of thinking is required to address this? Within the Black radical tradition, Glissant, Moten, Sharpe and others also raise Arendt’s problem, but from a more poetic direction. I suggest an errant critical phenomenology that builds upon this work but foregrounds ethnography’s ‘perplexing particulars.’ More concretely, I ask: How do African American mothers (and grandmothers) nourish personal and familial moments of potentiality that disturb normative expectations? How do they try to combat stigma by cultivating these moments, offering elsewhere worlds that live alongside, even within, ordinary life? My focus is on small domestic landscapes that interrupt the dominant sociopolitical order and its stigmatising gaze.
CRASSH | CRASSH research networks and their afterlives CRASSH Cambridge 2024-01-10 | CRASSH research networks – what, why and how?Are you considering applying for a research network at CRASSH?Are you looking to find out how your existing network can develop in the future?Join convenors of past networks for an information session and Q&A to:- Hear of their experiences running a network- Find out what having a network can lead to- Ask questions about the application process- Get tips on how to run a network events programme- Make the most of your time with CRASSHThis event is open to all who are interested in learning more about CRASSH research networks.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/40765
CRASSH | Negotiated being CRASSH Cambridge 2024-01-05 | ConvenorKelly Fagan Robinson (Department of Social Anthropology)SpeakerGhassan Hage (University of Melbourne/Max Planck)Abstract‘Negotiation’ can mean two parties expressing opposing interests sitting on a table trying to find a resolution.But it can also mean how to live one’s life in relation to the way others around you are living their lives; in the way we speak of negotiating the crowd or negotiating a river. This talk examines the significance of this form of existing in the world as opposed to the more dominant forms in which we try to shape our environment according to our own interests.About the inReach – /ɪn riːtʃ/ seminar seriesinside the distance to which someone can stretch out their hand.within the capacity of someone to attain or achieve something(inversion of ‘outreach’) considers the expertise of those usually closed off from academic and artistic reception.The term ‘inReach’ signifies any action which reshapes elite institutions as inclusive domains through centrally placing work by people otherwise absent in traditional arts and academic spaces. This series will critically question and therefore set to prove false the too-common trope that certain people are ‘hard to reach.’ By bringing artists, academics, and key local publics together via CRASSH, inReach will amplify the underacknowledged value of lived expertise of socially marginalised people, while also fostering ongoing debates about transience, stigma and inequality in the UK.
CRASSH | Decentring disasters in disaster risk reduction: promoting life history research CRASSH Cambridge 2024-01-04 | Decentring disasters in disaster risk reduction: promoting life history research with children and older peopleConvenorKelly Fagan Robinson (Department of Social Anthropology)SpeakersChika Watanabe (Senior Lecturer of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester)Jenny Moreno (Assistant Professor, Social Work, University of Concepción)Boris Sáez (Chief of the Department of Disaster Risk Management, Municipality of Talcahuano)AbstractIn academic and policy work on disaster risk reduction (DRR), the expertise of disaster survivors in future-oriented resilience and action is often overlooked. This paper, co-authored between an anthropologist, a social work scholar, and a municipal official in Chile, promotes the use of life histories as a methodology to underpin DRR on disaster survivors’ experiences. Specifically, our life history research with children and older people showed that disaster experiences are embedded in other experiences of hardship and resilience in life. Counterintuitively, decentring the topic of disasters and foregrounding people’s broader life experiences can engage the most marginalised groups in DRR.About the inReach – /ɪn riːtʃ/ seminar seriesinside the distance to which someone can stretch out their hand.within the capacity of someone to attain or achieve something(inversion of ‘outreach’) considers the expertise of those usually closed off from academic and artistic reception.The term ‘inReach’ signifies any action which reshapes elite institutions as inclusive domains through centrally placing work by people otherwise absent in traditional arts and academic spaces. This series will critically question and therefore set to prove false the too-common trope that certain people are ‘hard to reach.’ By bringing artists, academics, and key local publics together via CRASSH, inReach will amplify the underacknowledged value of lived expertise of socially marginalised people, while also fostering ongoing debates about transience, stigma and inequality in the UK.
CRASSH | Scene & Heard in Somers Town - inReach – /ɪn riːtʃ/ Seminar Series CRASSH Cambridge 2023-11-16 | ConvenorKelly Fagan Robinson (Department of Social Anthropology)SpeakerRosalind Paul MBE (CEO & Artistic Director, Scene & Heard)AbstractScene & Heard is an award-winning and unique theatre mentoring charity, working in one of the most deprived wards in the UK. We will explore the power and long-term impact of bespoke arts mentoring and sustained support within a marginalised community.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/40707
CRASSH | Rhythmicity - Cambridge LASER talks CRASSH Cambridge 2023-08-08 | The Cambridge LASER talks (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendez-vous) questions the separation and propagation of art and science as distinct categories of knowing and being. We ask: What is creativity in science and the arts? What is experimental practice in art, science, or philosophy? Where do scientific and artistic attitudes, inquiries, methods overlap? How do they differ and complement each other? Can such understanding help shape our technological, urban, economic, and environmental futures for an ecologically and socially sustainable life and wellbeing?RhythmicityOne of the fundamental processes of all living organisms is ‘rhythmicity’. Rhythmicity as synchronisation, resonance or entrainment, regulates functions and interactions with other humans and with our environment, and is pivotal to our well-being.How do our neurial and biological oscillations engage us and facilitate our interactions with each other and our environment? What are the consequences of their misalignment and their links to mental and physical health? How are humans impacting the rhythms of nature? How is technology affecting our rhythms of connection?In this event, which forms the first in a series on this theme, we brought together panelists from music and technology, music psychology and music neuroscience to discuss such questions.Further details can be found at crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/33913
CRASSH | The known world - Cambridge LASER talks CRASSH Cambridge 2023-08-08 | The Cambridge LASER talks (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendez-vous) questions the separation and propagation of art and science as distinct categories of knowing and being. We ask, ‘What is creativity in science and the arts? What is experimental practice in art, science, or philosophy? Where do scientific and artistic attitudes, inquiries, methods overlap? How do they differ and complement each other? Can such understanding help shape our technological, urban, economic, and environmental futures for an ecologically and socially sustainable life and wellbeing.The known worldChaired by Satinder Gill, Chrysi Nanou and Prerona PrasadIn this Cambridge LASER, we brought together musicians, scientists, and data scientists to discuss the processes of creativity and discovery and analysis of environmental data. It is the first in a series that will address the concept of data: how we collect, perceive, analyse, construct, make sense of and translate data, in various thematic contexts.Further details can be found at crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/29706
CRASSH | Queer Hispanisms now keynote by Juana María Rodríguez CRASSH Cambridge 2023-08-08 | A conference held at CRASSH on 3 - 4 July 2023Convened by:Isaias Fanlo (University of Cambridge)Javier Perez Osorio (University of Cambridge)Keynote speakers: Juana María Rodríguez, Professor in Comparative Ethnic Studies (University of California Berkeley)Paul Julian Smith, Distinguished Professor in Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures (CUNY)For further details visit crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/36260
CRASSH | Queer Hispanisms now keynote by Paul Julian Smith CRASSH Cambridge 2023-08-08 | A conference held at CRASSH on 3 - 4 July 2023Convened by:Isaias Fanlo (University of Cambridge)Javier Perez Osorio (University of Cambridge)Keynote speakers: Juana María Rodríguez, Professor in Comparative Ethnic Studies (University of California Berkeley)Paul Julian Smith, Distinguished Professor in Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures (CUNY)For further details visit crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/36260
CRASSH | Jonathon Keats reflects on the Librarys Cambridge branch CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-23 | Library of the Great Silence founder and Chief Terrestrial Librarian Jonathon Keats reflects on some of the objects in the Cambridge branch.About the Library:The Library of the Great Silence is a unique research facility founded by the San Francisco conceptual artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats and dedicated to examining existential risks of the present, and to facilitating discussion about future flourishing, by investigating societal transformations from the past. Instead of shelving books, the Library collects objects, each of which is open to interpretation by everyone. Objects are chosen based on their pivotal significance. Examples include stone tools, coins, and silicon microchips. For the Cambridge Festival 2023, a Cambridge branch of the Library exhibited crowd-sourced objects at the Alison Richard Building, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge.crassh.cam.ac.uk/sites/the-library-of-the-great-silenceImage credit: Vincenzo Mancuso
CRASSH | The coffee cup CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-23 | Mark Pinkerton, Risk Systems Specialist at Risilience, discusses the transformative power of caffeine and calculates the carbon footprint from his coffee habit, with surprising results. Mark also discusses his work in catastrophe modelling and trying to predict the risks and consequences of climate change. About the Library:The Library of the Great Silence is a unique research facility founded by the San Francisco conceptual artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats and dedicated to examining existential risks of the present, and to facilitating discussion about future flourishing, by investigating societal transformations from the past. Instead of shelving books, the Library collects objects, each of which is open to interpretation by everyone. Objects are chosen based on their pivotal significance. Examples include stone tools, coins, and silicon microchips. For the Cambridge Festival 2023, a Cambridge branch of the Library exhibited crowd-sourced objects at the Alison Richard Building, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge.crassh.cam.ac.uk/sites/the-library-of-the-great-silence
CRASSH | The pregnancy test and the box camera CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-22 | Rosanna Greaves, artist and Senior Lecturer at Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University, shares two objects of personal significance - her own positive pregnancy test, and her father's box camera.rosannagreaves.comAbout the Library:The Library of the Great Silence is a unique research facility founded by the San Francisco conceptual artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats and dedicated to examining existential risks of the present, and to facilitating discussion about future flourishing, by investigating societal transformations from the past. Instead of shelving books, the Library collects objects, each of which is open to interpretation by everyone. Objects are chosen based on their pivotal significance. Examples include stone tools, coins, and silicon microchips. For the Cambridge Festival 2023, a Cambridge branch of the Library exhibited crowd-sourced objects at the Alison Richard Building, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge.crassh.cam.ac.uk/sites/the-library-of-the-great-silence
CRASSH | The Charnia fossil CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-22 | Emily Mitchell, Curator of Invertebrates at the Museum of Zoology and co-director of the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe, shares a cast of a 500 million-year-old Charnia fossil. The fossil was first found by schoolchildren in Leicestershire in the 1950s and Emily explains how it transformed our understanding of evolution.Emily also explains how the science behind her work contributes not only to current efforts to preserve our marine ecosystems but also to the search for exoplanetary life elsewhere in the universe.Links:www.deeptimeecology.orgwww.deeptimeecology.org/ediacaran-fossilssketchfab.com/3d-models/charnia-masoni-holotype-f93cb4393da3443fab6533e9ae8438c6 About the Library:The Library of the Great Silence is a unique research facility founded by the San Francisco conceptual artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats and dedicated to examining existential risks of the present, and to facilitating discussion about future flourishing, by investigating societal transformations from the past. Instead of shelving books, the Library collects objects, each of which is open to interpretation by everyone. Objects are chosen based on their pivotal significance. Examples include stone tools, coins, and silicon microchips. For the Cambridge Festival 2023, a Cambridge branch of the Library exhibited crowd-sourced objects at the Alison Richard Building, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge.crassh.cam.ac.uk/sites/the-library-of-the-great-silence
CRASSH | The Maltese artefact and other objects CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-22 | Robert Good in conversation with Simon Stoddart, Professor in Prehistory and Fellow of Magdalene College.The twin seated figures from the Brochtorff Xaghra Circle, a mortuary circle, on the island of Gozo, Malta have transformed our knowledge of the ritual of a disappeared civilisation dating to 4500 years ago. Great Silence has been given voice by Great material culture. The twin figures were found in a demarcated area of the cemetery filled with precious objects, surrounded by human remains. The left hand seated figure contains a smaller representation of itself. The right hand seated figure holds a small vessel. These appear to represent the beginning (small child) and end (funerary vessel) of life, mirroring the life course of the occupants of the cemetery.About the Library:The Library of the Great Silence is a unique research facility founded by the San Francisco conceptual artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats and dedicated to examining existential risks of the present, and to facilitating discussion about future flourishing, by investigating societal transformations from the past. Instead of shelving books, the Library collects objects, each of which is open to interpretation by everyone. Objects are chosen based on their pivotal significance. Examples include stone tools, coins, and silicon microchips. For the Cambridge Festival 2023, a Cambridge branch of the Library exhibited crowd-sourced objects at the Alison Richard Building, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge.crassh.cam.ac.uk/sites/the-library-of-the-great-silence
CRASSH | The Amazonian parrot feather headdress CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-22 | Robert Good in conversation with Anita Herle, Senior Curator at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.Dr Herle describes a 19th-century Amazonian headdress and discusses tapirage, a remarkable technique used by numerous Amazonian groups to change the colour of feathers on living parrots.The Library of the Great Silence is a unique research facility founded by the San Francisco conceptual artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats and dedicated to examining existential risks of the present, and to facilitating discussion about future flourishing, by investigating societal transformations from the past. Instead of shelving books, the Library collects objects, each of which is open to interpretation by everyone. Objects are chosen based on their pivotal significance. Examples include stone tools, coins, and silicon microchips. For the Cambridge Festival 2023, a Cambridge branch of the Library exhibited crowd-sourced objects at the Alison Richard Building, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge.crassh.cam.ac.uk/sites/the-library-of-the-great-silence
CRASSH | Welcome to The Library of the Great Silence - a podcast by Robert Good CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-22 | Join Cambridge artist and podcaster Robert Good on his search for objects of transformational change. About the Library:The Library of the Great Silence is a unique research facility founded by the San Francisco conceptual artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats and dedicated to examining existential risks of the present, and to facilitating discussion about future flourishing, by investigating societal transformations from the past. Instead of shelving books, the Library collects objects, each of which is open to interpretation by everyone. Objects are chosen based on their pivotal significance. Examples include stone tools, coins, and silicon microchips. For the Cambridge Festival 2023, a Cambridge branch of the Library exhibited crowd-sourced objects at the Alison Richard Building, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge.crassh.cam.ac.uk/sites/the-library-of-the-great-silence
CRASSH | The silent drum CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-22 | Ayesha Fuentes, Researcher in conservation at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, tells the story of a drum from Uganda and its many transformations. She talks about the difficulties of trying to look after a collection of over 300,000 objects, and why it is not always as easy as it might seem to repatriate those that need to be returned.The Baganda drum. Image credit: Eleanor Beestin-Sheriff/MAALinks:collections.maa.cam.ac.uk/objects/525670maa.cam.ac.uk/whats_on/exhibitions/spotlight-stores-movewww.crassh.cam.ac.uk/sites/the-library-of-the-great-silenceAbout the Library:The Library of the Great Silence is a unique research facility founded by the San Francisco conceptual artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats and dedicated to examining existential risks of the present, and to facilitating discussion about future flourishing, by investigating societal transformations from the past. Instead of shelving books, the Library collects objects, each of which is open to interpretation by everyone. Objects are chosen based on their pivotal significance. Examples include stone tools, coins, and silicon microchips. For the Cambridge Festival 2023, a Cambridge branch of the Library exhibited crowd-sourced objects at the Alison Richard Building, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge.www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/sites/the-library-of-the-great-silence
CRASSH | ‘In and against the state’: revolutionary feminism during deindustrialisation CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-22 | Quentin Skinner LectureGiven by Katrina Forrester, Quentin Skinner FellowThe feminist tradition is known for its critique of the state as an agent and enabler of patriarchal domination. In the decades following the Women’s Liberation Movements, feminists often fused this critique to a Marxist account of the capitalist state. Together, these theories of the state justified a revolutionary antagonism to efforts to wield the state as a tool for reform. Yet in practice, the revolutionary feminist struggles of this period often took a different approach. As this lecture will seek to show, they were struggles that operated ‘in and against the state’.This ‘in and against’ logic characterised much feminist political thought and practice in the long 1970s, as revolutionary feminists of different ideological persuasions sought to transform the social conditions of work and life—in the factory, the household, the hospital, the office, the council estate, and the ‘local state’. This lecture will focus on British Marxist and socialist feminism in this era of deindustrialisation—an era when women’s work was being transformed with the reorganisation of social reproduction and the rise of informality and the service sector, when more women than ever worked within the state, and when the state shaped and structured vast areas of social, political, and economic life in ways that mediated the production of gender and gendered forms of labour. By exploring how feminists who critiqued the patriarchal, capitalist, and imperial state nonetheless struggled both within and against that state, it will chart their development of both disruptive and constructive orientations to state power.This lecture will also suggest that we tell the history of radical political thought in this period through sites and forms of struggle—the demand, the strike, the squat, the council, and the city. Each of these struggles represents different degrees of incorporation by the state. They also offer lessons for thinking about the relation of revolution and reform today.#crassh #universityofcambridge #quentinskinner
CRASSH I The public cost of personal hardship I Keynote Address: Mia Gray CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-20 | Keynote AddressMia Gray (University of Cambridge)‘Extraordinary austerity: state and corporate violence in daily life’
CRASSH I The public cost of personal hardship I Panel 3 CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-20 | Panel 3: The weight of expectation: personal hardship in places and periods of prosperityCllr Sam Davis (Cambridge City Council)‘The hidden costs of households experiencing ‘double disadvantage’ in Cambridge’Elise Dermineur Reuterswärd (Stockholm University)‘From mutual help to the institutionalisation of social insurance: the case of the Swedish Insurance Agency (1850 – 2020)’Addison Kornel (University of Windsor)‘Housing from a social harm perspective’
CRASSH I The public cost of personal hardship I Keynote: Andy Pike CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-19 | Keynote AddressAndy Pike (Newcastle University)‘Councillors at the casino? Financialization and local statecraft in austerity and centralisation in England 2010-‘
CRASSH I The public cost of personal hardship I Panel 2 CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-19 | Panel 2: The role of policy in creating or mitigating disparity: institutionalising help and hardshipMark Fabian (Warwick), Anna Alexandrova (Cambridge), Yamini Cinamon-Nair (Greater London Authority), with Turn2us‘Coproducing wellbeing policy: a theory of thriving in financial hardship’Matthew Sparkes (University of Cambridge)‘Debt, credit payment holidays, and their relationship with mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom’Jonathan Warner (University of Cambridge)‘Policy architecture and infrastructure: trust, uncertainty, and expectations’
CRASSH I The public cost of personal hardship I Keynote: Johnna Montgomerie CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-19 | Keynote AddressJohnna Montgomerie (King’s College, London)‘Who pays for debt? Interrogating the costs of austerity to the public and private household ‘
CRASSH I The public cost of personal hardship I Panel 1 CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-19 | Panel 1: Economic restructuring and the effects of exclusionRonjon Paul Datta (University of Windsor)‘Class struggle and the conscience collective in an era of zombie capitalism’Gabriel Gurule (Trinity College, Dublin)‘Economic revanchism: Detroit and state-level austerity from 1999 to the present day’Ariane Hanemaayer (Brandon University) and Niamh Mulcahy (University of Cambridge)‘The depths of deprivation: theorising disparities in life expectancy between the North and South of England’
CRASSH I The public cost of personal hardship I Keynote: Daniel Edmiston CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-19 | Keynote AddressDaniel Edmiston (University of Leeds)‘Submerged: surfacing deep poverty during permacrisis’
CRASSH I The public cost of personal hardship I Welcome and introductory remarks CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-19 | Niamh Mulcahy (University of Cambridge), Nicky Shepard (CEO, Abbey People)‘Snapshots from the frontline of austerity in Abbey Ward, Cambridge’
CRASSH | Buen vivir: comparative cases of collective wellbeing CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-16 | SpeakersSarah Radcliffe (University of Cambridge)Treena Orchard (Western University Canada)Javier Mignone (University of Manitoba)Mauricio Torres-Solís (Universidad Autónoma de México)AbstractThe ‘Buen Vivir’ paradigm, with its variants and different edges, is a prevalent one in Latin American indigenous groups. With its wide scope from individual to collective ideas on what constitutes a healthy relationship with the environment and each other, it provides important critiques and proposals to our path of sustainable development. This panel aims to explore this concept in relation to collective wellbeing. The panellists will provide different perspectives on what constitutes wellbeing under this paradigm, how do we produce knowledge about this issue, and what does this invites us to do in our quest for alternative development.About the speakersDr Sarah Radcliffe, University of Cambridge, Professor of Latin American Geography. She holds a BSc in Geography and Anthropology from the University College London and a PhD on Migration, Rural Households and Andean Development, from the University of Liverpool. Her research engages with social and territorial inequalities in Latin America. Currently, she is working across four main areas: Geographies of indigenous citizenship; intersectional dynamics of power, development, and new forms of knowledge production; decolonial geographies; and equality in diversity: policy, practice and people in Ecuador’s Buen Vivir. This research explores the institutional, conceptual, and socio-political dynamics associated with implementing a rights-based form of citizenship and development. Ongoing research in Ecuador speaks to debates around participatory and inclusive development, while also providing lessons for the Sustainable Development Goals.Dr Treena Orchard, Western University Canadá, Associate Professor and Undergraduate Chair. She is an anthropologist, author and activist who researches sexuality, gender and the politics of health among marginalized groups and within the context of her own life. She has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and is featured in 100 media stories about her research, activism and public scholarship. Treena also been a featured guest on several podcasts, including one hosted by NYT Best-Selling author Dr. Wednesday Martin. Alongside supervising graduate students, teaching and fawning over her cats, she is writing a comedic, compelling memoir about her experiences using dating apps.Javier Mignone, University of Manitoba, Professor in the Department of Community Health Services, Max Rady College of Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, the University of Manitoba. He holds a Masters equivalent degree in Psychology, a Masters in Health Services administration, and a PhD in Community Health Sciences. Dr. Mignone teaches undergraduate and graduate courses, including program evaluation, and social development. On a regular basis he leads workshops on health information and program evaluation for small NGOs, including Indigenous organizations in Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Dominica, and Guatemala. Dr. Mignone conducts research and development projects on intercultural health and health information with indigenous partners in Guatemala, Colombia, Argentina, Dominica and Canada. Dr. Mignone is the author of approximately 70 peer-reviewed publications, aside from numerous reports to government and other organizations. He has held numerous research and development grants from different funding bodies such as, CIHR, CIDA, SSHRC, Inter-American Development Bank, and the Public Health Agency of Canada. His current research is focused on working with Indigenous partners in Latin America on Indigenous intercultural health initiatives. Dr Mauricio Torres-Solís, . Independent Researcher. He is an Agricultural Engineer from the Central University of Ecuador. He holds a Master’s and Doctorate in Sciences from the College of Postgraduates in Mexico. With over 15 years of professional experience, he has been primarily involved in social innovation processes. He has successfully coordinated, designed, implemented, and evaluated social and productive plans and projects in both public and private institutions. Currently, his focus is on generating knowledge about alternative approaches to development, from the perspective and thinking of indigenous peoples in Latin America.His current research is about ‘Life in Happiness’ of the Totonaca people in Puebla, México.#BuenVivir #Wellbeing #ISDG
CRASSH | Global perspectives on teaching AI ethics - Session one CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-08 | Session 1: Current practice: how is AI ethics currently taught?Speakers: Zoë Fritz, Yi Zeng, Dympna O’Sullivan, David Liu, Laeticia OnyejegbuA workshop organised by the Giving Voice to Digital Democracies project.
CRASSH | Corporate friendship in the English reformation CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-06 | Speaker:Constance Furey (Indiana University Bloomington)Abstract:Many scholars view the Renaissance as an age obsessed with friendship. Few would say the same about the Reformation. This putative split between Renaissance culture and Reformation spirituality has significant implications for the study of friendship, I argue, in this paper that takes the corporate concerns of devotional poet George Herbert as its guide. The poetic drama of Herbert’s ambivalent pursuit of friendship with God demonstrates the porous boundaries between secular and religious as well as virtuous and pragmatic friendships. Herbert’s comparisons of human, divine, and biblical friendship also invite us to explore what the “ambiguous, idealised, and even mystical quality of friendship” (to quote from Illuminating Friendship’s project description) contributed to the affective appeal of commerce in early modern England, particularly with respect to theological justifications for colonising ventures in the Americas.
CRASSH | Global perspectives on teaching AI ethics - Session two CRASSH Cambridge 2023-06-06 | Session 2: Imagining the future: how should AI ethics be taught?Speakers: Diana Adela Martin, Jeff Behrends, Filippo Santoni de Sio, Linda Uchenna OghenekaroA workshop organised by the Giving Voice to Digital Democracies project.
CRASSH | Repatriations of ancestral remains of indigenous people (Australia and Japan) CRASSH Cambridge 2023-05-26 | The event was co-hosted with the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES) and the Heritage and Colonialism Discussion Group (HCDG) who we are also grateful for.The event took place in SG2, Alison Richard building and on Zoom on the 24th of February, 2023.Dr Yugo Tomonaga received his Ph.D. from the Department of Area Studies, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Faculty of International Studies, Ryukoku University, Japan, having worked as a Visiting Fellow at the National Museum of Ethnology and a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He has been a Visiting Researcher at the Center for Ainu and Indigenous Studies, Hokkaido University since 2020 and at the Faculty of East Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge from September 2022 to March 2023. His areas of specialization are social and cultural anthropology, mainly Indigenous Australian Studies and Minoirity Studies in Australia and Japan.Lecture Synopsis: The current repatriation movements to return indigenous peoples’ remains around the world are inseparably linked to the worldwide decolonization effort. After briefly introducing my projects, my talk is to focus on the indigenous repatriation movements in Australia and Japan and clarifies how the human remains were collected by European or Japanese researchers through a comparative study of the cases in Australia and Japan. It will become clear that the recent movements to repatriate the remains of indigenous peoples are not a national event but a global action. It will also be shown that the repatriation movement in Japan is far behind the global trend.The event was chaird by Dr Brigitte Steiger (AMES, University of Cambridge) and moderated by Ana Lucia Pelaez Echeverria(University of Cambridge)Our group is grateful for the support of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre (CHRC).#crassh #universityofcambridge #indigenousstudies
CRASSH | Indigenous spirituality: traditional knowledge, wellbeing, and healing CRASSH Cambridge 2023-05-26 | In this panel we explored traditional practices of wellbeing and healing that complement or stand as an alternative to traditional medicine in the clinical practice of local and Indigenous communities, from America to India and the South Asian country of Bhutan. Through the exploration of illness and its treatments, we developed a nuanced understanding of different ways of experiencing human health, in particular how mental health is conceived as one with that of the body in many traditional therapeutic approaches.Speakers:Dr Joseph Calabrese. Reader of Medical Anthropology at UCL and a UK-registered clinical psychologist. His research combines anthropological study of mental illness experiences and treatment approaches with local clinical practice among Native Americans, in the South Asian country of Bhutan, and with people having severe psychiatric illnesses in Chicago and Boston. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and has held research, teaching, and clinical posts there, at Harvard Medical School, and at the University of Oxford.Dr Karuna Nagarajan. Associate Professor and Deputy Director of Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana Open and Digital Learning (ODL, S-VYASA) Deemed to be University. She is founder of the Svaraveda Foundation, dedicated to Indian Music, Indian Music therapy Courses and research, and is Professor for Hatha Yoga and Patanjali Yoga Sutra at Vivekananda Yoga University in Los Angeles (1st Yoga university outside India focused on graduate Yoga education and research). She worked as an expert committee member for curriculum development at the University Grants Commission, the National Council for Teacher Education, the Indira Gandhi National Open University, the National Institute of Open Schooling, the Health Sector Skill Council and the Quality Council of India.#Indigeneity #traditionalknowledge #wellbeing #healiing #spirituality
CRASSH | Yaari – Reflections on friendship CRASSH Cambridge 2023-04-27 | Speakers:Shilpa Phadke (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai)Nithila Kanagasabai (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai)Subha Wijesiriwardena (CREA, New York)Masshal Saif (Beaconhouse National University, Lahore and Alittlemore Studio (Personal Design Practice))Yusra Alvi (National College of Arts Lahore)Abstract:Relative to romantic love, friendship has received relatively little attention in both written and cinematic texts. In the past two years, with pandemic-enforced periods of physical distancing and isolation, our friendships have transformed in a variety of ways. In 2020, a call was sent out inviting women and genderqueer folks to reflect on friendship; we received over 250 pitches for essays, poetry, and artwork from women and genderqueer folks.This panel draws on the book that came out of that call which will shortly be out titled, Yaari: An Anthology on Friendship by Women and Queer Folx. Shilpa Phadke and Nithila Kanagasabi, editors of the book, will reflect on the decision to focus on narratives of women and queer folx as well as the process of putting together an anthology on friendship in South Asia. Subha Wijesiriwardena will speak about her contribution to the anthology, titled ‘South Asian Feminisms, or how I learned to make friends,’ which draws attention to the continuing histories of South Asian feminist friendships. Masshal Saif and Yusra Alvi will show their contribution, titled ‘ Plotted Dosti,’ a photographic essay that maps their friendship onto the city of Lahore.#crassh #universityofcambridge #friendship
CRASSH | Taking back our voices: Revitalisation and revival of indigenous languages CRASSH Cambridge 2023-04-27 | This online panel consists of three speakers, specialising in the study of worldwide Indigenous languages, ranging from Africa, the Americas, Inner and Southeast Asia, and Oceania. The panellists presented on a range of topics, including Mongolia’s recent language policy, and the methodology behind the documentation and recording of unwritten Indigenous languages in Kenya. Through this panel, we would like to pay tribute to the United Nations International Decade of Indigenous Languages starting from 2022 to 2032. Among the panelists there are:Dr Ilaria Micheli, Associate Professor in Glottology and Linguistics, Department of Legal, Language, Interpreting and Translation Studies, Università degli Studi di Trieste.Dr Brett Todd, School of Languages and Cultures, University of Sydney; Visitor Scholar at National Taiwan Normal University.Dr Terigele Teneg, Research Affiliate, Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge; The Language Centre, University of Cambridge.#Indigeneity #ISDG #crassh
