New Writing Prize for poetry, fiction and life writing

As part of their 25th anniversary celebrations, Wasafiri has launched a New Writing Prize for poetry, fiction and life writing. The competition closes for entries on 30 June, and the winner will be announced on 31 October at a day-long programme of events for Wasafiri at the Southbank Centre in London. Judges for the prize include Margaret Busby, Mimi Khalvati, Susheila Nasta and Blake Morrison. The winner of each category will receive £300, and their work will be published in the first issue of Wasafiri in 2010.

Wasafiri, the literary magazine at the forefront of contemporary international writing, celebrates its 25th birthday in 2009. To mark the occasion, a variety of celebratory events is planned throughout the year.

Since the magazine was first published in 1984 it has continued to champion new writing, celebrating Britain’s diverse cultural heritage together with inspirational writing from around the world. ‘Wasafiri’, the Kiswahili word for ‘travellers’, echoes the magazine’s ethos of writing as a form of cultural travel and its aim to extend the established boundaries of literary culture.

Founded in 1984 by the writer, critic and academic, Susheila Nasta, the magazine has provided a platform for hundreds of writers. Many were struggling to be heard at the outset of their writing careers, and many have since gone on to become world-renowned, award winners.

For further information about the New Writing Prize and forthcoming events, visit the website – www.wasafiri.org

Wasafiri is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, the Open University and Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

The Books that Made Me

Boyd Tonkin chairs literary panel at The British Library, in association with Wasafiri magazine and Arts Council England.

Monday 18 May: 6.30-8.00pm

Conference Centre, British Library, 96 Euston Road, London, W1

£6 / £4 concessions

2009 marks the 25th anniversary of Wasafiri magazine, the literary magazine at the forefront of contemporary international writing. To celebrate, the magazine is hosting a literary debate at The British Library, to discuss how literature impacts on some of the leading writers of today.

The panel, chaired by The Independent’s Literary Editor Boyd Tonkin, includes distinguished authors Helen Cross, Diana Evans, Aamer Hussein, Caryl Phillips and Marina Warner. Reflecting on the books that have inspired them, the panel will discuss why some books impact so forcefully on our reading and writing lives, as well as looking at the ways in which we encounter them and in which they return to us.

Wasafiri magazine was founded in 1984 by the writer, critic and academic, Susheila Nasta. Celebrating Britain’s diverse cultural heritage together with inspirational writing from around the world, the magazine champions new writing and has provided a platform for hundreds of writers. The magazine championed early works by Vikram Seth and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and has featured interviews, reviews and new writing by Hari Kunzru, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, Anita Desai, Linda Grant, Maggie Gee, Michael Horowitz and Catherine O'Flynn. Prestigious contributors to the magazine include V S Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Ondaatje, Ben Okri and Chinua Achebe.

Tickets for ‘The Books that Made Me’ are now on sale at http://boxoffice.bl.uk, by telephone on 01937 546546 (Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm) or in person at The British Library Information Desk.

For more information on this event and for a full list of anniversary activity throughout 2009, go to www.wasafiri.org.

Wasafiri is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, the Open University and Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Profiles of chair and speakers:

• The Chair, Boyd Tonkin, studied English and French literature at Cambridge University. He taught literature in higher and adult education before becoming an award-winning magazine journalist, a feature writer and features editor of the weekly magazine for social services professionals, Community Care. Already a freelance writer and interviewer for The Observer, he became social policy editor of the New Statesman, and then Literary Editor, before moving to The Independent as Literary Editor. In addition to working as organiser and judge on the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize since 2000, he has judged the Booker Prize, the Whitbread biography award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize and (in 2007) the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in literature. He has reported on literary and artistic issues from more than 20 countries on four continents, and his cultural essays have been published widely; most recently, in the British Council anthology New Writing 15 (Granta).
• Helen Cross is the author of The Secrets She Keeps and My Summer of Love, which won a Betty Trask Prize and was made into an award-winning film. Helen's second novel, The Secrets She Keeps is now available in paperback, and her third novel, Spilt Milk, Black Coffee is published by Bloomsbury in May 2009. She lives in Birmingham.
• Diana Evans was a dancer before she became a writer and critic. Her first novel, 26a, received a Betty Trask award, a nomination for the Guardian First Book Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award. It was also the inaugural winner of the Orange Award for New Writers. She lives in London.
• Aamer Hussein is the author of the short story collections, This Other Salt, Turquoise and Insomnia. His first novel, Another Gulmohar Tree, will be published by Telegram on 7 May 2009.
• Caryl Phillips has written for television, radio, theatre and cinema and is the author of twelve works of fiction and non-fiction. Crossing the River was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize and Caryl Phillips has won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, as well as being named the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 1992 and one of the Best of Young British Writers 1993. A Distant Shore won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2004 and Dancing in the Dark was shortlisted in 2006. His next book, In the Falling Snow, will be published in June 2009.
• Marina Warner has an international reputation as a critic, historian and a novelist. Her recent non-fiction works include The Beast to the Blonde, No Go the Bogeyman and Fantastic Metamorphoses, while her fiction includes the novels The Lost Father (shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Indigo and The Leto Bundle, and most recently a short-story collection, Murderers I Have Known.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Re-imagining postcolonial futures: knowledge transactions and contests of culture in the African present.

The Centre for Humanities Research of the University of the Western Cape and The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies of the Open University are calling for papers for their conference:

Re-imagining postcolonial futures:
knowledge transactions and contests
of culture in the African present.
9-11 July 2009
at Centre for Humanities Research,
University of the Western Cape

Call for Papers:
At a time of intensified political shifts and realignments, and renewed appeals to culture and indigenous knowledge, the re-imagining of the nation and society in South Africa poses challenges to the scripts of postcolonial studies. These contests and issues in debate are being felt at every level in public culture. They are also part of an emergent sense of uncertainty in many societies around the world that at the same time hold out new possibilities for redefinition and reconstitution. What are the new scripts for daily life? How might the postcolony be rendered liveable? What are the boundaries of the new nation? What are the markers of time in the African present and how is expertise being reconstituted in the humanities? Is it possible to imagine different ethical relations between knowledge projects and lived experience? And how might knowledge unravel the histories of violence in the postcolony?

This conference seeks to create a platform for ideas, engagements and analyses that are alert to the new complexities and nuances that underlie the seemingly banal expressions of politics in public life. South African scholarship needs to be placed in a critical relation to other postcolonial projects because of the danger of South African exceptionalism.

The challenges of rethinking knowledge have given rise to a substantial rearrangement of academic inquiry. Museum studies, heritage, indigenous knowledge and archival platforms are emerging as critical sites for new engagements in the humanities. The very organisation of research is being called into question as universities worldwide strive to establish research centres alongside discipline-based knowledge processes. At the same time the scripts of expertise and service to the community are increasingly called into question.

This conference will take place at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape with support from the office of the Dean of Arts. It is made possible through a partnership with and generous funding from the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at the Open University in UK. The conference heralds a new partnership between the CHR and the Ferguson Centre in promoting cutting-edge research in the humanities. This is an initiative in research development. We wish to bring together senior and junior scholars as well as promising graduate students. Papers are invited on the following themes:

• War and the everyday
• Heritage politics, cultural production and aesthetics
• Postcolonial memorial complexes
• Pitfalls of indigenous reworkings
• New networks and mobilities in the postcolonial city
• Forced migrations and the biopolitics of statehood
• Spirituality and the religious idiom
• Nationalism and its neo-liberal moulds

Abstracts of 150 – 200 words are due on 15 May 2009 and should be sent to Ms Lameez Lalkhen at llalkhen@uwc.ac.za, the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape. Enquiries to Premesh Lalu, plalu@uwc.ac.za or Dennis Walder, d.j.walder@open.ac.uk

Edited from email from Heather Scott, Research Centre Secretary, The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA

Please visit the Ferguson Centre website at: www.open.ac.uk/arts/ferguson-centre

Report available on feasibility study for a national shared digital research data service

UK Research Data Service (UKRDS) is a joint project between RLUK (the Consortium of Research Libraries in the UK and Ireland), and RUGIT (the Russell Group IT Directors Group).

It is funded by HEFCE (the Higher Education Funding Council for England) under its Shared Services programme, with support from JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee).

The objective of the UKRDS study is to assess the feasibility and costs of developing and maintaining a national shared digital research data service for UK Higher Education sector. Such a research data service is seen by the project sponsors as forming a crucial component of the UK's e-infrastructure for research and innovation, and one which will add significantly to the UK's global competitiveness.

HEFCE has agreed that the full UKRDS Feasibility Study can be made public. It can be found on the UKRDS website. See http://www.ukrds.ac.uk where the link is in the left hand column marked "The Project's Final Report".

The UKRDS project management board has continued to meet and there are discussions under way with HEFCE and JISC as to the next steps in this project. The likelihood is that there will be some funding available for a further interim phase, to work with some case study universities and their researchers and with some of the existing providers in the research data spectrum, leading to a more detailed proposal for the Pathfinder phase towards end 2009/early 2010.

Edited from an email from Jean Sykes, Librarian and Director of IT Services, London School of Economics and Political Science (29/04/09) and the UKRDS website.

Reading Experience Database 1450-1945

Version 3 of the Reading Experience Database (RED) is planned for release in summer 2009.

RED was launched in 1996 at the UK Open University. Its mission is to accumulate as much data as possible about the reading experiences of readers of all nationalities in Britain and those of British subjects abroad from 1450 to 1945.

RED currently contains approximately 17,000 records, the majority of which have been verified, edited and released for searching. More entries are contributed and released every day and thus return visits to the database should yield new results each time.

Anyone can contribute information to the database and help to make this resource usefully and fully searchable by providing details of whatever evidence you have of a relevant Reading Experience.

RED is also looking for volunteers to work their way systematically through such materials in order to record evidence of reading.If you are interested in becoming a volunteer see: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/volunteers.html

What is a ‘reading experience’?
‘Reading’ can mean many things, from reading a book aloud or silently, to the critical ‘reading’ of a text (including dramatic and cinematic texts) in an academic sense, or (metaphorically) ‘reading’ a face, a social situation, or the symbolic value of a text. But in the interests of clarity and manageability the RED has had to exclude certain of these ‘reading experiences’ as outside their remit. For the purposes of the database, a ‘reading experience’ means a recorded engagement with a written or printed text - beyond the mere fact of possession. A database containing as much information as possible about what British people read, where and when they read it and what they thought of it will form an invaluable resource for researchers of book history, cultural studies, sociology and family history, to name but a few.

For more information see: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/

Seminar: ‘The Role of South Asian Sailors in the 1919 Port Riots’

Tuesday 5 May 17.30 - 19.00
Venue: NG15, North Block, Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E

All are welcome; booking is not required.

Jacqueline Jenkinson is Lecturer in History at Stirling University. Her two main research interests are the social history of medicine, on which she has written several books – the most recent being Scotland’s Health: 1919–1948 (Peter Lang, 2002) – and the history of minority ethnic populations in Britain. She has published several articles on the 1919 port riots; the most recent, on the riot in Glasgow, appeared in the journal Twentieth Century British History in January 2008. Her book on the riots, Black 1919: Riots, Racism and Resistance in Post-Colonial Britain, is published by Liverpool University Press in March 2009.

This seminar series has developed from the AHRC-funded project 'Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870-1950'. Complicating the common perception that a homogeneous British culture only began to diversify after the Second World War, the project examines how an early South Asian diasporic population impacted on Britain's literary, cultural and political life.

'Making Britain' is led by Professor Susheila Nasta (Open University), in collaboration with Professor Elleke Boehmer (University of Oxford) and Dr Ruvani Ranasinha (King's College London), and Research Assistants Dr Sumita Mukherjee (Oxford), Dr Rehana Ahmed (Open) and Dr Florian Stadtler (Open).

Please visit the project website for more details and information about other forthcoming workshops and events: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/south-asians-making-britain

This series of seminars coordinated by Dr Sumita Mukherjee and Dr Rehana Ahmed will be addressing various forms of resistance by South Asians in Britain during this period. It forms part of the regular series organized by the Open University Postcolonial Research Group in association with the Institute of English Studies.

Digital Economy Research in the Wild

The Digital Economy Programme invites applicants to apply for short-term funding to perform their ‘Research in the Wild’. This call is about allowing researchers in the Digital Economy to expose and test their research ideas with potential beneficiaries – for example, the individual, business and/or society – in order to get closer to achieving a viable proposition with potential for transformational impact.

Projects are limited to up to 18 months in duration and this call will be open for 12 months after which it will be subject to review.

Proposals will go through an Expression of Interest stage before full proposals are invited. Expressions of interest will be assessed internally on a quarterly basis. Deadlines for Expressions of Interest are:

• 15 May 2009
• 14 August 2009
• 13 November 2009

The Digital Economy is an RCUK Cross-Research Council Programme involving EPSRC, ESRC, AHRC and MRC, hence challenges in the Digital Economy will require multi-disciplinary input across a broad spectrum of subjects including researchers from the arts and humanities, economic and social scientists, medical sciences, in addition to engineering and physical sciences.

This call is being administered by EPSRC and all application details can be found on their website at http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/CallsForProposals/RiTW.htm Applications are made through the Je-S system.

New round of AHRC Fellowships in the Creative and Performing Arts closing September 2009

As well as the 14 May deadline for the pilot Fellowships in the Creative and Performing Arts mentioned in our earlier blog posting, there will be another round of with a closing date of 24 September 2009.

This scheme aims to support artists - by which they are referring to visual artists, performers, musicians, creative writers, poets, and other producers of original creative work - as research fellows within a research environment. Details of the scheme should be available by late June 2009. Please check the AHRC website for details.

Museums Blog - A directory of museum-related blogs

Museum Blogs is a directory of museum and museum-related blogs and aggregator. Like its companion site Museum Podcasts, the purpose of this site is to raise awareness and increase the authority of sites focusing on museum issues. At the time of writing there were 331 blogs included on the site.

The Directory
A moderated directory provides a central website for listings to museum and museum-related blogs.

The Blog
All of the posts are from the RSS feeds of the blogs included in the directory.

Policies
This site is run as a public service and encourages community participation. The site does not accept advertising.

Link:

New Knowledge Transfer Fellowship awards in the Creative Industries.

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA) are collaborating to support a number of exciting Knowledge Transfer Fellowship awards in the Creative Industries.

Ring-fenced funding is available to support cutting-edge projects which involve a KT Fellow working with the Creative Industries in the South West region.

The call, which will run alongside the May 2009 round of the standard KT Fellowship competition, will allow businesses in the Creative Industries sector in the South West to work with arts and humanities researchers based anywhere in the UK on a well-defined programme of knowledge exchange and benefit from the application of high-quality research in a practical context. It is expected to reap significant benefits for South West businesses, as well as providing an opportunity to raise the profile of the South West as a centre of excellence in areas where arts and humanities research is utilised by the Creative Industries, especially Digital and Pervasive Media.

As the call sits within the KT Fellowship scheme, all eligibility and assessment criteria and other guidance relating to the main scheme apply, however there are three additional criteria:

• Business partners must be based in the South West and operating within the Creative Industries sector.
• Proposals to the joint call may have a maximum Full Economic Cost of £125,000. Awards will be paid at 80% of the Full Economic Cost.
• Projects can last up to 12 months.

During the Fellowship the academic partner can be located at the partner organisation, or vice-versa the non-academic partner can spend time working within the host HEI or IRO. The jointly-funded call, worth £400k, is expected to fund around four to five projects.

The deadline for applications is 4pm on 14th May 2009. Applications must be submitted by the academic partner through the Research Councils’ joint electronic submission system (Je-S).

Further information on this joint initiative is available here.

The May 2009 round of the standard KT Fellowship scheme competition will not be affected by the additional pilot call.

The 6th round of the standard Knowledge Transfer Fellowship competition is still open for applications until 4pm on 14th May 2009.

The scheme is designed to support academics to undertake a programme of knowledge transfer activity in a flexible way.
KT Fellowship projects

• Should be planned around an existing piece of completed arts or humanities research
• Should last between 4 months and 3 years
• Must involve at least one non-academic project partner
• May involve the PI (KT Fellow) on either a full time or part time basis
• May involve a PI working alone or supported by an academic team
• Can work with project partners in a wide range of sectors e.g. business, heritage, film and media or public policy
• Must deliver tangible benefits to non-academic project partner/s (or the audiences served by the project partners) such as economic, cultural or social benefits

The first five rounds of the scheme have already resulted in a number of awards which are now underway: further information on these awards can be found on the AHRC website. The existing awards demonstrate the breadth of activity that can be supported through the scheme, with academics collaborating with a wide range of project partners.

Projects must utilise completed high-quality research within the arts and humanities subject domain. This does not necessarily need to have been funded by the AHRC. The Knowledge Transfer Fellowship scheme will not support individuals or teams to conduct research. For further information, guidance and contacts please visit the AHRC website.

Applications must be submitted via the Je-S system by 4pm on Thursday 14th May 2009.

Beyond the PhD - A Career Resource for Arts and Humanities PhD Researchers

Beyond the PhD is a website which provides the opportunity to listen in on the experiences of a range of different people from different backgrounds, ages and stages of life who have been through the PhD in an arts and humanities discipline and made the transition into a variety of work beyond it. The site has audio and video clips and articles relevant to development for early career researchers.

Beyond the PhD has been developed by Shauna Concannon, Julia Horn, Jessica March, Finbar Mulholland, Catherine Reynolds and Rachel Stewart at the Centre for Career Management Skills (CCMS) a HEFCE funded Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Reading. Others closely involved in the development of this site include: Glued, the CCMS postgraduate Group, Cindy Becker, Janet Metcalfe at Vitae, Jo Moyle and Sally Pawlik. The development of the web site was contributed to through surveys, focus groups and user-testing by postgraduate researchers at the University of Reading and the University of Sussex.

Link to the site: http://www.beyondthephd.co.uk/

Get the most out of the library - short training sessions for OU staff

The library is offering skills training for any OU staff. The training is taking place in Milton Keynes.

These are short generic training sessions to develop skills in using the types of online resources available via the Open University Library. They may be of use to new staff to familiarise themselves with these resources for the first time, or as a refresher for staff who have not used them for a while.

Further details of all these sessions are available at http://library.open.ac.uk/services/libcourses/ (need to logon with OU account) and can be booked via the Staff-LMS.

Finding your way around the Library website
Thursday 30th April, 3pm – 4pm
Information Literacy Suite (trainer: Geri Smith)

• Be aware of key information sources provided through the library web pages.
• Understand how to locate information for your subject on the library web pages.
• Know how to find out what library services there are for staff and students.

Finding full-text materials
Tuesday 5th May, 10am – 11.30am
Information Literacy Suite (trainer: Sam Thomas)

• Be aware of appropriate sources of full text materials.
• Be able to search for references to material by author, subject etc.
• Be able to browse the contents of the latest issues of a journal.
• Be able to manage search results.

Effective Internet Searching
Thursday 14th May, 10.30am – Noon
Information Literacy Suite (trainer: Katharine Reedy)

• Understand the basic concepts of searching the internet.
• Know how to use Boolean logic and any specialised search techniques of some of the popular search engines.
• Be aware of ways to search the internet without search engines.
• Understand the process of evaluating web sites.

Keeping Your Research Up To Date
Thursday 21st May, 2pm – 3.30pm
Information Literacy Suite (trainer: Christine Tucker)

• Be aware of the resources that you can use to find out about recently published books, journals and websites.
• Be aware of ways in which to find out about research before it is published. Be aware of a range of alerting services.

Adapted from email from Matthew Taylor, Library Assistant (Weds - Fri), Information Literacy Unit, Open University Library

Free Lectures - Integrity in Public Life

How should ethics be built into our strategies for business, for government and for life?

The downturn has an upside. The current economic turmoil is the perfect opportunity for business, governments, and individuals to rethink their ethical orientations from the bottom up. The Open University would like to invite you to one of the following free lunchtime lectures on 'Integrity in Public Life' to explore some of the most pressing ethical dilemmas.

The lectures are free and open to all, and will be hosted at St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, London from 12.50 - 2pm. Places are limited, to book your place please email Marie-Claire Le Roux

6th May - Dr John Githongo: The Paradox of Two Recessions

John Githongo, the Kenyan anti-corruption campaigner now working as Senior Advisor - Advocacy, World Vision UK, will consider some of the scandals that have come to light as the economic tide has gone out in European business. He will compare the apparent paradox whereby economic upturn and democratic recession have gone together in Africa.

20th May - Lord Butler: Integrity and Politics

Lord Butler will draw on his experience as a previous head of the Civil Service, and lead author of the Butler Report, to discuss the ethical pitfalls facing politicians and civil servants, and how to avoid them.

27th May - Professor John Cottingham: Integrity and Fragmentation

Professor Cottingham, the distinguished philosopher from the University of Reading, will argue that we are harmed by living in a compartmentalised culture. Our institutions are manned by specialists who have mastered a particular field, but are not expected to form a view of the whole. Yet the classical ideal of the unity of the virtues suggests that people cannot live well unless their activities are integrated into a meaningful structure, informed not just by narrow technical expertise but by an overall vision of the good for humankind. We need this idea today.

17th June - Baroness O'Neil: Trustworthiness, Accountability and Character

Baroness O'Neill, cross-bench peer and President of the British Academy, focuses on the place of trust in public life, and explores what we should take as evidence of trustworthiness. Character, codes of conduct and formal systems of accountability can all be helpful for judging trustworthiness, but what can we do when they don't provide enough evidence?

This lecture series has been organised by the Open University's Ethics Centre. The Open University would like to thank F&C for their support of these lectures.