Members' activities
PhD candidate James Dunlop recently worked with the Brookes Research Degrees Team and fellow Mario Simo on a collaborative video, highlighting a Research Degree placement opportunity at Sensible Biotech, a laboratory specialising in developing new mRNA molecules for medicines.
The short documentary video features a tour of Sensible Biotechn who are using techniques similar to Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, the work aims to make vaccines and therapeutics more cost-effective and scalable.
Lindsay Steenberg (Senior Lecturer in Film Studies) has begun a partnership with an international group of consultants, including performance art professionals and history museum curators, to design a publicly facing interactive series of events in Amsterdam in June 2024. The series will be interdisciplinary and focused around the history of martial arts in Europe. The Martial Arts Studies podcast series has also published a recording of Lindsay Steenberg’s keynote presentation, delivered in July 2023 and entitled “The Screen Legacies of Jeet Kune Do”.
Jane Potter (Reader in Arts) appeared on BBC Radio Berkshire on Remembrance Sunday and spoke about Wilfred Owen's legacy and impact as a war poet (interview begins at 13:28 minutes).
Catherine Ross and James Elliott invite you to the exhibition "Liminal Light Temporal Space", taking place between 26 March and 13 April 2024 at the at The North Wall Arts Centre Oxford. This unique event presents an innovative, interactive investigation into the landscapes around them through a contemporary lens using sound and vision.
As part of the Cinematic Precarity Research Network, Francesco Sticchi is co-hosting a three-day online conference on "The Many Faces and Spaces of Precarity in the Moving Image" featuring keynote speakers Prof Guy Standing and Prof Saskia Sassen between 14 and 16 December 2023.
On 1st December 2023, Paolo Russo teamed up with Brookes Creative for a fabulous masterclass on “Showrunning in the US and the UK” by Hollywood giant Jeff Melvoin. Jeff is a renowned and celebrated producer and showrunner of era-defining TV series such as Killing Eve, Alias, Northern Exposure, Hill Street Blues and many more.
Join artist, poet and researcher Sylvia Morgado to investigate how art can be used as a transformative experience to create more inclusive institutions. Sylvia Morgado is currently studying a PhD at Oxford Brookes University, in collaboration with Modern Art Oxford. The findings of this thesis will be widely shared, promoting exchange with museums and galleries in the UK.
On 11th October 2023, a scene from Dr Antonia Mackay's Motherhood play was shown at Oxford’s Old Fire Station’s Scratch Night to a warm reception. Scratch Night features work-in-progress from theatre makers, as well as discussions and networking opportunities.
This event kick starts the play's first public showing, acting as the premiere to the drama's Think Human event in April 2024 and the play's final showing at the North Wall Theatre from 30-31 May 2024.
The original drama will be exploring the impact of the pandemic on first-time mothers and their experiences of maternal healthcare.
The two-night stage play will be based on Dr Mackay’s research into the effects of digital healthcare during this time, and in consultation with Human Story Theatre, will communicate several women’s lived experiences during Covid to an audience including the public, midwifery students, Brookes Drama students, the Green Templeton community and interested academics.
The play was developed in collaboration with Associate Producer Amelia Thornber (The Old Vic Theatre), Amy Enticknap (co-founder of Human Story Theatre), Jennifer Kirman (PLSE Oxford School of Nursing and Midwifery) and Dr Eleanor Lowe (PL English Literature, Drama and Creative Writing). It aims to communicate the experiences of new mothers during the pandemic to a wide audience, and reveal the realities of motherhood in lockdown.
Dr Mackay is a member of the Oxford Brookes Creative Industries Network and Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts at Oxford Brookes.
The play is funded by the Sheila Kitzinger Programme.
In October 2023, Dr Clair Chinnery exhibited a new body of work as part of the exhibition “Shaped by Water: Clair Chinnery & Julia Thaxton” at the Ronapainting Gallery, Oxford.
It consisted of nine sculptures carved in Portland Stone between 2020 and 2023 alongside paintings by Julia Thaxton.
Both artists explore the relationship and interplay between water and stone: Chinnery's limestone sculptures are shaped using techniques that evoke the methods of ancient stone-masons and the churning action of the sea over centuries/millennia.
Portland stone was formed 150 million years ago in a shallow, tropical marine environment through a process involving the remains of prehistoric life-forms, sunlight and the action of water.
Thaxton's paintings incorporate calcium carbonate dust created by the sculpting process and explore the sensation of immersion in water, something integral to the formation of the stone.
Since 2019 Clair has visited Portland to work in stone. Her relationship with the island goes back to 1990 when she first visited the island, on a university field trip and refused to try stone carving—thinking it too ‘traditional’. 29 years later Chinnery returned, determined to engage more deeply with the landscape, heritage and ecology of Portland including its contemporary industrial role in the global mineral extraction industries.
Mentoring has become a crucial element of employment practice in the creative industries, nurturing new talent and ensuring that freelancers and businesses survive and thrive. This is especially the case since 2021, as creative enterprise begins to recover from the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. However mentoring provision can be patchy across the country, with pockets of excellence existing alongside regions where much more could be done.
This innovative research project brings together academic researchers from business studies and the humanities to work directly with national policymakers including Creative UK. Existing mentoring activity across the UK will be recorded, classified and mapped out to provide a clear visual representation of what is already being done across the country, as well as highlighting areas for further development.
For further information please email: creativeindsmentoringmap@brookes.ac.uk
Our network is dedicated to enhancing the lives of children and young people. Comprising around 100 experts from diverse fields, we aim to address challenges faced by the youth due to societal changes.
“Cine/Mobility” was created by Dalila Missero, post-doctoral researcher in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University, and funded through Oxford Brookes Collaborative Research and Travel Award grant scheme. The project is organised and developed in collaboration with Analía Fraser. Recordings now available.
The online film festival Cine/Mobility: Latin-American Cinema Across Borders was convened from 5 October to 5 November 2021. This academic and curatorial project explored multiple paths of mobility and border crossing between Latin-America and the Atlantic, focusing on stories and experiences of migration, community-making, solidarity and resistance. The festival consisted of two strands: a program of virtual screenings, Q&As and a series of round tables with filmmakers, curators and programmers.
The Screenwriting Research Network convened the SRN2021 Research Seminar Series Online from 31 August to 17 September 2021.
This online event replaced the traditional annual conference of the SRN (originally scheduled to take place in Oxford) and is chaired by Dr Paolo Russo (Network Lead of the Creative Industries Research and Innovation Network).