lectures:

A collaboration between Birkbeck Research Centres: the Centre for History and Theory of Photography; the Centre for Architecture, Space & Society and the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. This workshop is primarily aimed at post-graduate students, it may be of interest to others. Four programmed talks will be mixed with shorter student presentations from research in progress. You can download a PDF programme for the day HERE Registration is not required for this event; seats will be allocated on a first come, first served basis Contact name: Steve Edwards

Picasso, Koolhaas, Žižek, McQueen, Guardiola, Sottsass, Jobs, Almodóvar, Obrist. Game over. Radical freedom can only be achieved in a post-authorial world where ownership is no longer priority number one. Following talks by curator Rory Hyde, photographer Max Creasy and art historian Dawn Ades, Experimental Unit 1 will be rounding off this term with a lunchtime lecture by Spanish designer Jorge Penadés. All welcome. Jorge Penadés is a Madrid-based Spanish designer. He cultivates a dissident approach to the contemporary notion of design which often manifests in new materials, objects, exhibitions, one-off commissions or architectural experiences.

This event is free and open to all. Register to attend via Eventbrite here The play The Front Page (1929) had been filmed before Howard Hawks got hold of it. Hildy Johnson, a newspaper’s star reporter, wants to quit so he can get married. His editor, Walter Burns, is determined to keep him. The story that tempts Hildy from the marital straight and narrow concerns the hanging of Earl Williams for shooting a cop, and his possible reprieve. It was Hawks’s inspiration to make Hildy a woman (Rosalind Russell), and to have her quit not just the newspaper, but also her marriage to Burns (Cary Grant) for respectable domesticity with a more dependable husband. What ensues is the story of a double divorce: from an impossible husband and an impossible profession. Words, scripted and improvised, tumble over one another. The war of the sexes has seldom been waged by quicker-witted or faster-talking protagonists. Can Hildy bring herself to abandon it for a sedate life in Albany? Presenter: James Brown (Birkbeck College) This event is supported by BIMI, BiGS, Birkbeck Law School, BISR, Guilt Group Contact name: Birkbeck Institute for Social Research Further details: More information about this event …

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This session is aimed at people who would like to learn about our biographical, family history and London digital resources.

A mechanism to reset mother centrioles prior to mitosis Speaker: Gislene Pereira, Head of the German Cancer Research Group   Dissecting cell polarity with chemical genetics Speaker: Jens Januschke, Deputy Head of the Division of Cell & Developmental Biology, University of Dundee

Comfort and well-being are recurring topics in building research, standards and practices. However, within today's pressing energy efficiency agendas, the achievement of occupant comfort and well-being poses significant design and operational challenges, exacerbated by difficulty in defining  robust metrics and models for their measurement and prediction. In fact, there may be large discrepancies between requirements for building energy efficiency, the conditions demanded for comfortable task performance, and what occupants may need over time. Moving away from efficiency targets that are based on neutral acceptability of static indoor environments, the lecture will explore the need for integration of new and diverse knowledge to sustain building performance while offering enriched opportunities for occupant comfort and well-being. Sergio Altomonte is Professor of Architectural Physics at the University of Louvain, Belgium, where he directs the research group Architecture et Climat. He has held academic appointments in Italy (Rome), Australia (Melbourne) and UK (Nottingham), and visiting positions in Denmark (KADK, Copenhagen) and US (Berkeley). He has been External Examiner of the AA Sustainable Environmental Design programme (2015-18). Image: Author Unknown, sourced from the following link.

Prof. Esra Ozyurek, London School of Economics “Between Racist Past and Racialized Present in Germany: Islam Critics, Holocaust Memory, and Immigrant Integration”

The Methods Lab is a unique seminar under the auspices of the Transnational Law Institute (TLI) at King’s College London. The Lab explores the process of imagining, developing and carrying out a research project. Presenters give an inside view into the laboratory of their own intellectual work, their methodology and resources, of the challenges in carrying out empirical research and paying adequate tribute to interdisciplinary boundaries and crossings. The Methods Lab sessions are open to everyone. Abstract: This paper explores the question of indigeneity, indigenous identity, in the context of the Bedouin in the Naqab/Negev Desert in Israel. I consider whether indigeneity, as formulated in the sphere of international law, has been re-made in the vernacular of the Bedouin. I trace the international definition of indigeneity with an ethnographic sensibility to its lived realities and local textures, focusing on what the Bedouin majority have to say about it. The socio-legal inquiry reveals the Bedouin’s interpretation of and the meanings they have given to the international definition as it relates to them, specifically their identity. It builds on Sally Merry’s heuristic framework concerning how international identities and subjectivities travel and translate. In particular this study demonstrates how rights-based identities and subjectivities do not simply ‘fit’ a pre-existing reality but must be ‘translated’, ‘tried on’, and ‘dropped off’ in ways that demand new kinds of law-making, knowledge production, and local performances.   Biography: Emma Nyhan is a research fellow on the ARC-funded project ‘The Potential and Limits of International Adjudication: The International Court of Justice and Australia’ led by Professor Hilary Charlesworth and Associate Professor Margaret Young. Emma assists with research on legal issues in topic areas such as the role of international adjudication, the background to Australian litigation before the ICJ, and the impact of the cases in which Australia has been involved. She also assists with the administration of the project. Emma recently received a PhD from the European University Institute, Italy. Her doctoral dissertation, ‘Indigeneity, Law and Terrain: The Bedouin Citizens of Israel’, explored the ways in which the international concept of indigenous peoples came to be applied to the Bedouin in Israel. Her research pursues a socio-legal agenda and employs legal, historical and anthropological methodologies. Her doctoral studies were supported by awards from the Socio-Legal Studies Association and the Council for British Research in the Levant. This event is open to the public and everybody is welcome to attend, though everyone must register.Seats are allocated on a strictly first come, first served basis.If you find you can no longer attend please cancel your ticket registration, so that someone else can have your place.

The lecture is free to attend and open to all, but registration is required in advance. Register to attend on Eventbrite Abstract Chemistry is often referred to as the central science, given its role in bridging the fundamental physical sciences with the applied and life sciences. That is not to say, however, that chemistry is just a middleman. By understanding molecular structure, properties and interactions, chemists have unique insight into the complex systems which underpin diverse areas - from biology to materials science – and can use this understanding to drive important advances. Furthermore, by employing the powerful ability to construct molecules, through state-of-the-art synthetic chemistry, chemists can define new approaches and invent new products from drugs and diagnostics, to dyes and devices. Matthew Fuchter is a Professor of Chemistry at Imperial College London who has long been interested in harnessing the power of synthetic chemistry to impact molecular science in multiple scientific domains. During his inaugural lecture he will discuss his perspective of chemistry as a central science. Journeying through a career that has taken him from the discovery of experimental medicines, to the development of energy efficient electronic displays, he will give case studies from his work that showcase how scientific curiosity and chemical understanding can lead to useful ‘real world’ applications. And how, in turn, such applications promote the need for further understanding and innovation on the molecular scale. Biography Matthew Fuchter obtained his first-class MSci degree (2002) in Chemistry from the University of Bristol, followed by a PhD (2006) from Imperial College London under the supervision of Professor Anthony G. M. Barrett, FRS FMedSci. Following a brief spell as a postdoctoral research associate at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia, where he worked with Professor Andrew B Holmes, AC, FRS, FAA, FInstP, he returned to London to take up an independent fellowship at the School of Pharmacy, University of London (2007). In 2008, he was appointed to a Lectureship position in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London, where he was promoted to Senior Lecturer (2012), Reader (2015) and full Professor in 2018. Professor Fuchter has received many awards in recognition of his research work including the Royal Society of Chemistry's Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize (2014), an Imperial College President’s Medal for Excellence in Innovation and Entrepreneurship (2017), and the Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award for Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry (2018). He is an advocate for the importance of organic chemistry, currently being an Elected Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Organic Division Council and the UK representative to the European Chemical Society’s Division of Organic Chemistry.