This series of workshops has two aims. The first is to investigate the opportunities as well as the problems with using non-traditional forms of evidence. For many of us working across the arts, humanities and social science what counts as evidence might include a persistent feeling, an account of a nightmare, a snow-globe, a tweet, a nightclub flyer, or a discarded object. How can we do justice to these objects in our research and thinking? What must we learn or unlearn in this process? The second and connected aspect of these events is centred around writing. We want to encourage more attention to the craft of writing and to the constitutive power of description. We start from the position that everything is evidence, but that it isn’t always clear what it is evidence of. To make something evidential means activating it – through some form of mediation (for us it is writing, but it could be performance, or filmmaking, or drawing etc.). This means that writing (or any other forms of rendering) is not the epiphenomenon of a method but lies at its centre.
The three workshops are for arts and humanities doctoral researchers who can commit to attending all three sessions in-person. (Due to the emphasis on the materiality of archival materials we can’t offer this training online, though legacy materials will be available after the programme of workshops have been completed.) The training is also intended to build cohort cohesion and have a collective output of an online gallery archive produced by the group at the end of the workshops.
Workshop 1: 22 November 2022, 11.00-16.00. Mass-Observation Archive, Room 2/3, The Keep, Woollards Way, Brighton, BN1 9BP, https://www.thekeep.info/
Workshop 2: 6 December 2022, 11.00-16.00. Prescriptions: Artists’ Books Collection, Templeman Library, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NU University of Kent. https://www.kent.ac.uk/library-it/opening-hours-and-support
Workshop 3: 10 January 2023, 11.00-16.00. Meeting Room Arts A108, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QN https://www.sussex.ac.uk/
Lunch will be provided
Maximum number of attendees: 20
Workshop facilitators are:
Dr Stella Bolaki, Reader in American Literature and Medical Humanities, University of Kent, School of English: s.bolaki@kent.ac.uk
Dr Hannah Field, Senior Lecturer in Victorian Literature, University of Sussex, School of Media, Arts and Humanities: h.field@sussex.ac.uk.
Prof. Ben Highmore, Professor of Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, School of Media, Arts and Humanities: b.highmore@sussex.ac.uk
Prof. Carolyn Pedwell, Professor of Cultural Studies and Media, University of Kent, Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research: c.e.pedwell@kent.ac.uk.