M I N U T E S
23 October 2014
At Senate House
Present:
Apologies:
Professor Philip Murphy, Deputy Dean, School of
Advanced Study, UoL(Chair)
Chris Bertram, BIRTHA, Bristol
Dr Michael Eades, SAS, UoL
Professor Matthew Grenby, Newcastle
Ms Rachel Corke, IAS, Warwick
Peta Freestone, IASH, Edinburgh
Barbara Graziosi, Durham
Ms Rosemary Lambeth, SAS, UoL
Professor Ray Laurence, Kent IAS (KIAS)
Professor Gregory Radick, Leeds
Professor Georgio Riello, Warwick
Professor Cathy Shrank, Sheffield
Sarah Allan (notes)
Professor Roger Kain, Dean & Chief Executive, School of
Advanced Study, UoL
Rebecca Adams, LHRI, Leeds
Professor Richard Aldrich, Director IAS, Warwick
Professor Rachel Beckles Willson, Royal Holloway, HARC
Sally Bowden, CAS, Nottingham
Professor Michael Brennan, LHRI, Leeds
Professor Judith Buchanan, York
Dr Elaine Canning, RIAH, Swansea
Professor Eric Cross, Newcastle
Mirela Dumic, IAS Co-Ordinator, Surrey
Professor Simon Goldhill, CRASSH, Cambridge
Professor Gerardine Meaney, Director, UCD Humanities
Institute of Ireland
Professor Malcolm Press, IAS, Birmingham
Dr Stephen Tuck, TORCH, Oxford
1.
Introductions
Those present introduced themselves and new members were welcomed.
2.
Minutes of the meeting held on 2 April 2014
The minutes were agreed as an accurate record.
3.
Matters Arising
The CHCI annual meeting in 2016 will be held in London at the School of Advanced Study. The theme will
be area studies. A planning committee will be established shortly and CIAS members will be invited to be
involved in the annual meeting as there is consortium membership through CIAS to CHCI as well as
additional institutional membership.
4.
Being Human: a festival of the humanities
Michael Eades reported on final preparations for the Being Human Festival in November. The scale of
response to the Festival has established that there is a demand for a national humanities festival. With
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over 57 universities involved and 160 cultural partners are involved in events across the UK. The Festival
has over 1000 followers on Twitter, a weekly blog and it is intended to keep the blog posts and social
media interaction going after the Festival to provide follow-up and maintain contact with interested
parties.
The Festival will be launched on 15 November at Senate House as the HQ of the Ministry of Information
and will feature walks, talks, speakers’ corner, a research ignite event, exhibitions and a focus on Being
Human in the digital age. There will also be a projection event on the outside of Senate House.
Other highlights include a mini-festival in Aberdeen with Will Self, a Wagner event in Birmingham looking
at listeners’ responses to Wagner’s ring cycle, a weekend of Ruskin themed events in Sheffield, two
projects in Durham and four events in Edinburgh including looking at the cross over of science, medicine
and the humanities.
Evaluation by those attending events is very important and there will be both quantitative and qualitative
studies undertaken aiming to find out if the Festival makes an impact on now people see the humanities.
Questionnaires will filled in by those holding events and those attending and vox pop style interviews will
also take place during the Festival.
Members raised some concerns in discussion:
Many events being held as part of the Festival are the result of research projects who will be evaluating
their impact as part of the projects’ outputs and there may be duplication of effort.
The distribution of funding for the Festival events was appreciated but often match funding had been
required in order to put on events. The role of CIAS in hosting events was questioned as many individual
institutes already run events and festivals themselves. Rosemary Lambeth explained that when the
funding call was launched it was anticipated that individual researchers would apply for funds and in
many cases the funding had acted as seed corn to the launch of mini festivals. However, some felt that as
only one application was permitted from an institution the IAS had had to step in to play a co-ordinating
role.
There was a feeling that the Festival was London-centric. Michael Eades and Rosemary Lambeth
explained that the intention was that the London side of the Festival was to provide focus and pull all the
plans together and ensure that the Festival was badged as a humanities festival across the whole picture.
There was agreement that having a Festival did give an opportunity to pull small events together, have a
bigger impact. The SAS communications team can arrange national media coverage eg BBC Today
programme, THE.
It was felt that future calls could be channelled through IAS’s rather than being competitive.
5.
Any Other Business
Item for future meetings:
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6.
Presentations by institutes on their activities
Practicalities of running fellowship schemes, the role of internationalisation
Funding – possible collaborations on themes
Date of Next Meeting: tbc
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