As we are preparing for SASiety’s first symposium for International Women’s Day, we couldn’t help but think of Betty Friedman’s quote from The Feminine Mystique on inequality, ever so relevant to the academic field. Friedman wrote “To limit one’s field of inquiry to the function of an institution in a given social system, with no alternatives considered, provides an infinite number of rationalizations for all the inequalities and inequities of that system.” This is exactly why we think it is essential one attends a variety of events to expand one’s horizon, to think and engage with different perspectives.
There are, of course, more events taking place within SAS, so we highly advise you to visit SAS’ Events Page to get more of an idea of the extensive events that are available. Remember there are also Research Training events taking place. Read more about it here. If you’d like to review one of the events, you can! Click here for more information.
Telling the Story of Sport: Narrating Sport in a Global Context (6) – IMLR
Monday 8th February 2021, 18.00 – 20.00, Book Here
I bet you wouldn’t think that we would start the week with a discussion on sport, but we are full of surprises. IMLR’s event really caught us by surprise, especially when we read the diversity of subjects explored. This will be the sixth workshop, focusing on “Space and Place in Sporting Narratives.” Conversations include “Sport Narratives and Provincial Space in Contemporary Russian Prose,” “writing and visualising the Munster rugby narrative in Irish media, player autobiographies and retrospective commemorations,” “Colombian cycling narratives: historical conures, national identities, and global projections,” and “power and influence in Russian sports cinema.”
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’: Writing the biography of African missionary, Apolo Kivebulaya – IHRTuesday 9th February 2021, 17.30 – 19.00, Book Here
Join Dr Emma Wild-Wood (Senior Lecturer, African Christianity and African Indigenous Religions and Co-director Centre for the Study of World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh) on this fascinating discussion on biography and the potential biases that naturally occur when one embarks on writing a biographical work — “Biography had been skewed by historians concerned about the uncritical elements of admiration,” Dr. Wild-Wood notes. “Mission history contains its share of praise for famous men”. In Dr Wild-Wood’s words, the presentation “will discuss the methodological approach that acknowledged the role of admiration in the sources pertaining to Kivebulaya and the ways in which the nature and pervasiveness of flows of ideas and technologies are tested by taking an individual as the unit of analysis.”
Literary London Reading Group – IES
Tuesday 9th February 2021, 17.30 – 19.00, Book Here
Exploring London’s literary history has always elated us to the extent that we’ve hosted London in Literature, a segment where we discussed our favourite books about London. With that in mind, we of course had to include this wonderful talk titled “Writing London: Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia” by Dr Ruvani Ranasinha (Reader in Postcolonial Literature at King’s College University). Dr Ranaisinha will be discussing “Kureishi’s representation of London as a city of self-reinvention and self-discovery; where divisions of race and class are reflected in the geography of the city and its suburbs. Kureishi’s cartography of hybridised, post-colonial London is central to his politics and purpose: his exposure of its underbelly, dereliction and violence as well as his celebration of its freedoms.”
History and Memory of Italy’s Colonial Past – IHR
Wednesday 10th February 2021, 17.30 – 19.00, Book Here
In a similar vein as Dr Ranasinha’s conversation, we thought it was important to include a discussion on the “History and Memory of Italy’s Colonial Past” — chiefly because when we think of colonialism, Italy is not the first word that comes to mind. Ilyas Azouzi (PhD Candidate, UCL) will speak on “Taking Control. Imperialist propaganda and architectural publications in the course of the svolta totalitaria.” Flaminia Bartolini (Cambridge) will discuss “Colonial heritage in Rome: remembering and forgetting Italy colonial Past.” The meeting will be chaired by Prof. Axel Körner (Professor of Modern History, University College London).
Legal responses to cross-border ‘environmental’ mobility – Refugee Law Initiative
Wednesday 10th February 2021, 13.30 – 15.00, Book Here
Join Jane McAdam (Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law), Richard Bedford (Waikato University, migration and law in the Pacific context), David Cantor (national and free movement), and Lucy Daxbacher (Intergovernmental Authority on Development Secretariat) on an urgent conversation on the legal responses to cross-border ‘environmental’ mobility. The panel asks “how can law respond to ‘environmental’ cross-border (im)mobility at global, regional and national levels, including refugee and human rights law and migration law?” — we think this is an urgent and topical discussion as “Environmental processes shape human mobility, including processes of displacement, migration and planned relocation, within countries and even across borders. They can also entrench immobility for specific groups. Natural hazards that shape mobility in such contexts encompass the slow-onset impacts of climate change and environmental degradation, as well as sudden-onset disasters linked to storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and even biological hazards like the COVID-19 pandemic.”