Goldsmiths - University of London

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Past events

Events 2005-2006

The Material and Visual Culture of Cities
Seminar Series 2005-2006

The Material and Visual Cultures of Cities was a Multidisciplinary Seminar Series for People whose research interests are in Material and Visual Cultures in the broadest sense (the objects and representations that are produced by and organise cultural practices) and how they shape and are shaped by urban space and society. We welcomed participation from academics, practitioners and students.

Seminars took place on alternate Mondays from 10 October 2005 in the Main Building, Room 256 from 4-6pm. See list of seminars.

Young Urban Lives: Childhood and Youth in Cities
Seminar Series 2005-2006

Young Urban Lives was a multidisciplinary seminar series for people at Goldsmiths whose research interests include childhood and youth, particularly in urban contexts. We hope that the series provided an opportunity to develop a dialogue across disciplines about approaches to researching and theorising childhood and youth.

See list of seminars.

Events 2003-2004

Organised by Ben Gidley

DAVID BROTHERTON: “EXPORTING OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS: THE U.S.DEPORTEES OF SANTO DOMINGO”
1st December 2003


The US Government deports a 'criminal alien' every seven minutes.....

Dave Brotherton grew up in London. Since 1992, he has been researching street gang subcultures in urban contexts in the US. For most of that time, he has taught Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at CUNY in New York. He co-founded the Street Organization Project in 1997, bringing together the leaders of street “gangs”with researchers, community leaders, educators, and criminal justice professionals to explore issues of common concern.

Recent and forthcoming publications include: Gangs and Society: Alternative Perspectives, edited with Louis Kontos and Luis Barrios; Latin King and Queen Nation: Street Politics and the Social Transformation of a New York Gang, edited with Luis Barrios; and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Youth, Marginalization and Empowerment in the New Milennium (all Columbia University Press).

His talk at Goldsmiths drew on his recently completed ethnographic research with deportees from the US in the Dominican Republic.

Links:   

Reclaiming the State, Reclaiming Communities: Experiencing Participation
Autumn 2003

HILARY WAINWRIGHT (Red Pepper) and GLENN JENKINS (Exodus) “RECLAIMING THE STATE, RECLAIMING COMMUNITIES: EXPERIENCING PARTICIPATION”
1st December 2003

 

Hilary Wainwright is a journalist and author and editor of Red Pepper. Her recent book, Reclaim the State, looks at examples of popular democracy from East Manchester and Luton's Marsh Farm, where local community groups are testing Tony Blair's commitment to “community-led” regeneration, to Newcastle, where homecare workers are challenging privatisation, to Porto Alegre in Brazil, where the Workers' Party has introduced participatory budgeting to empower neighbourhoods.

Glenn Jenkins was a founder member of Luton's Exodus Collective, who started out organizing free parties before becoming a 'DIY' community self-regeneration agency, providing viable and challenging 'bottom up' solutions to social exclusion including free community dance events, social housing projects and a city farm. Glenn has since then been involved in Marsh Farm New Deal for Communities and Marsh Farm Development Trust.

Links:

MARK SAUNDERS: SURVIVING PARTICIPATION

24th November 2003

Mark Saunders is a film-maker, well-known for his films about Exodus Collective, Movement of Jah People and Exodus from Babylon, and his film about asylum politics in Germany, The Truth Lies in Rostock. More recently, he has been working with residents experiencing regeneration in Aylesbury and Silwood in South London and Marsh Farm in Luton.

Links:

Film screening: HOLDING GROUND: THE REBIRTH OF DUDLEY STREET

23rd June 2003

A story of hope and struggle in inner city Boston. Urban policies gone wrong, community activism confronting the planners, dealing with racial differences, a community emerging from decades of neglect to build homes and transform lives.

Introduction and discussion led by Professor Michael Stone.

Links:

 

 

 

 

 



“BLACK MASCULINITIES, PORTRAITS AND PRAXIS”: The photographer AJAMU in conversation with ANITA NAOKO PILGRIM and DARREN SHARPE: “FORBIDDEN BLACK MASCULINITIES: STRATEGIES OF IDENTITIES”

Monday 16th June

...transgressing the boundaries of race, sexuality and representation, investigating the role of the image in sexuality, desire and fantasy from the diasporic perspective of a black queer subject...
Darren is a PhD student at Nottingham Trent University, currently undertaking a study on black masculinities from the UK and Jamaica.
Anita completed her doctorate at Goldsmiths College and is currently a Research Fellow at London Metropolitan University.
Ajamu has exhibited at various galleries and museums around the world. He recently completed a two-year research period at the Jan Van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht, and will present some recent work. (Anita and Ajamu's presentation is based on an “In Conversation” to be published in Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory.)

Link: Ajamu at Autograph.

Part of the Philosophy and Human Values/Centre for Urban and Community Research seminar series 2003: bodies of memory, ecologies of hope.



MICHAEL STONE (UMass Boston): “SHELTER POVERTY AND SOCIAL HOUSING IN THE US AND UK”
3rd June 2003

For more than 30 years, Michael Stone has been involved in research, policy analysis, program development and advocacy on housing issues and participatory planning in the US. He is the author of Shelter Poverty: New Ideas on Housing Affordability, which has been described as “the definitive book on housing and social justice in the United States.” Since September 2002, he has been based at CUCR, Goldsmiths, looking at the UK experience of social housing, with a focus on Lewisham. His project and this talk focus primarily on the following questions about the UK, with the US as a frame for comparison: What is Housing Affordability? What is the Future of Social Housing?

Links:


Philosophy and Human Values/Centre for Urban and Community Research Seminar Series: BODIES OF MEMORY, ECOLOGIES OF HOPE
Organised by Ben Gidley and Vic Seidler

9th June2003: BEYOND HUMAN RIGHTS: ON THE WORK OF GIORGIO AGAMBEN

2nd June 2003: LUCY RHOADES AND BECKIE COLEMAN (Goldsmiths Sociology:): “EXPERIENCE AS A METHODOLOGY”

24th March 2003: KATHIANNE HINGWAN (Goldsmiths Sociology): “PRACTICES OF EMBODIMENT AND IDENTITY IN TRINIDAD AND LONDON”

Monday 17th March 2003: DAMIAN WHITE (Goldsmiths Sociology)and YOSHI MOURI (Kyushu University): “ECOLOGY, CULTURE AND NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: NEW DIRECTIONS”

Monday 24th February 2003: WILLIAM LEZ HENRY (Goldsmiths Sociology): “HIDDEN VOICES, CONSCIOUS CHOICES: REGGAE/DANCEHALL AS THE HIDDEN VOICE OF BLACK BRITISH URBAN EXPRESSION”

Monday 10th February 2003: SUKI ALI AND BRIAN ALLEYNE (Goldsmiths Sociology): “MEMORY, BIOGRAPHY AND EMBODIED REALITIES”

Monday 3rd March 2003: MAX FARRAR (Leeds Metropolitan University)“THE STRUGGLE FOR PARADISE: DIRTY, PRETTY THINGS IN CHAPELTOWN, LEEDS”
Max Farrar is a CUCR Associate. His book, Constructing and Deconstructing 'Community': The Struggle for Paradise in a Multi-Ethnic Inner City, was published in 2002.

Links:

Monday 10th March 2003: MONICA MORENO AND LES BACK (Goldsmiths Sociology): “RACE, HAUNTINGS, ETHICS, VISIBILITY”

Monday 3rd February 2003: VIC SEIDLER AND KIRSTEN CAMPBELL (Goldsmiths Sociology): “MEMORY, TRAUMA, JUSTICE: EXPLORATIONS IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA”

'RACE' AND ITS FUTURES
A series of events related to the Democratic Governances: Democracy and Ethnic Minority Participation Project

Events 2002

23rd November 2002
CONFERENCE ON 'RACE', RACISM, ETHNICITY: CHANGING RESEARCH AGENDAS'
Organised with the Cosmopolis Research Cluster (Goldsmiths Sociology) and City University Sociology Department.

12th November 2002
MIRI SONG
EVALUATING THE CONCEPT OF RACIAL HIERARCHY IN THE USA AND BRITAIN

Miri Song, a CUCR Associate, is a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, who has researched Chinese and other ethnic entrepreneurs in Britain and the US, as well as broader issues of race and racism and young people. She is the author of Helping Out: Children's Labor in Ethnic Businesses and the co-editor of Rethinking 'Mixed Race' (published 2001 by Pluto).

11th November 2002
CAROLYN COOPER
SWEET AND SOUR SAUCE:
SEXUAL POLITICS IN JAMAICAN DANCEHALL CULTURE

Carolyn Cooper, a CUCR Associate, of the Department of Literature in English at the University of the West Indies, is the author of Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the 'Vulgar' Body of Jamaican Popular Culture (Duke University Press/Macmillan 1995) and has written widely on Jamaican Expressive culture, dub poetry, reggae music and gender.
Link: Lez Henry on reggae/dancehall

4th November 2002
GHASSAN HAGE
“WORRYING ABOUT THE NATION”
ON THE RISE OF PARANOID NATIONALISM

Ghassan Hage teaches anthropology at the University of Sydney. His Against Paranoid Nationalism: searching for hope in a shrinking society is about to be published by Pluto Press, Sydney. In addition to his book White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremecy in a Multicultural Society (1998), he has edited and contributed to Arab-Australians Today: Citizenship and Belonging (2002) and co-authored Home/World: Space and Marginality in Western Sydney (1997).

The event was jointly organised by the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths College, the Sociology Department at the Open University and the British Sociological Associations's Race and Ethnicity Study Group.

 

CUCR Seminar Series 2002-2003: THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND, THE STRUGGLE FOR SPACE
Organised by Ben Gidley and Saulo Cwerner

Tuesday 4th November 2002
SUE BRANFORD
CUTTING THE WIRE: THE MOVEMENT OF THE LANDLESS IN BRAZIL

Sue Branford is a writer and journalist who has been closely involved with Brazil since the early 1970s. She is the author of The Last Frontier: Fighting over Land in the Amazon and the co-author of The Debt Squads: The US, the Banks and Latin America (with the Brazilian university lecturer Bernardo Kucinski, on the Latin American debt crisis), Brazil Carnival of the Oppressed: Lula and the Brazilian Workers' Party (with Bernardo Kucinski) and Cutting the Wire: The Struggle of the Landless Movement in Brazil (with Jan Rocha, published 2002 by the Latin America Bureau).

Sue Branford and Marianne Wiesebron's talks represent CUCR's on-going engagement with struggles for land, space and democracy in Brazil, part of our interest in the politics of metropolitan residence. See our research on Mobility, Urban Landscape and Social Exclusion: Urban Air Travel in Sao Paulo, and Marj Mayo's work on global social movements.

Links:


Tuesday 15 October 2002
DR MARIANNE WIESEBRON
(University of Leiden):
DEMOCRACY AT WORK
THE PARTICIPATIVE BUDGET IN BRAZIL

Marianne Wiesebron is the co-author of Free Trade for the Americas? The US Push for the FTAA Agreement with Paulo Gilberto Fagund Vizentini (Zed Books).

Events in 2001

SENSING THE CITY
Organised by Saulo Cwerner and Garry Robson

Wednesday 12 December 2001
DR OVE SERNHEDE (CUCR Associate, University of Gothenburg)
ALIENATION IS MY NATION:
HIP HOP AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION AMONG YOUNG IMMIGRANTS IN THE NEW SWEDEN
Link: Les Back on Ove Sernhede

Wednesday 28 November 2001
JAMIE REID (Artist and designer of Sex Pistols' artwork)
TALK ON PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS OF CITY LIFE
Links: Les Back 'So fucking Croydon' Les Back 'God Save the Queen - The Pistols' Jubilee'

Wednesday 7 November 2001
DR ANNE-MARIE FORTIER (Lancaster University)
MULTICULTURALISM AND THE NEW FACE OF BRITAIN

Wednesday 31 October 2001
DR FRANCE WINDDANCE TWINE (CUCR Associate, UC Santa Barbara)
THE WHITE SIDE OF BLACKNESS: BOUNDARIES, BETRAYALS, BRITISHNESS

Plus talks by Patria Roman-Velazquez (City University) and Bill Schwartz (Goldsmiths College)

During 2001-2, CUCR developed a series of joint seminars with postgraduate students at Bergen, Norway and Gothenburg, Sweden. See report. We also developed a series of conferences with Lillehammer College, entitled Critical Imaginations, exploring the legacy of Walter Benjamin. See one of the research papers.

November 1st 2001
Wine, Song and Speech: Celebrating the first MacColl Scholarship
Performance by Eddi Reader and Boo Hewerdine at CUCR in honour of Kirsty MacColl. See the report or some of the news coverage of the scholarship.

Events 2000-2001

Philomena Essed, a CUCR Associate, visited CUCR and gave a paper on her work on racism and diversity policy in the Dutch Police Force. Philomena is the author of many books including Understanding Everyday Racism, Diversity: Gender, Color, and Culture and a co-edited book with David Goldberg entitled Race Critical Theories.

Link:

Events 1999-2000

Hindu Nationalism in India and the West: CUCR, along with Goldsmiths Sociology and Ethnic and Racial Studies, was involved in assisting Chetan Bhatt with organising an international conference on Hindu nationalism held on the 17th May 2000, with speakers from universities in India (Delhi University), the USA (New York University and Trinity College, Hartford), Italy (Primo Levi Institute, University of Bologna) and the UK (University of Warwick).

Les Back and Ken Chapman organised The History of Black Footballers Exhibition in March 2000 at Millwall's stadium, The Den. A publication, Black Lions: A History of Black Millwall Players, is available from CUCR or Millwall.

Ethics, 'Race' and Difference: Philosophy and Human Values/Critical Urban Studies Seminars Spring 2000. Sessions included: Chettan Bhatt on The Authority of Culture, John Solomos, Lisa Schuster and Carl Levy on refugees and asylum in Europe, Roger Hewitt and Les Back on researching racism.

Environmental Justice in a Divided Society: A joint conference of CUCR and the Anthropology Department in February 2000, organised by Eeva Berglund of Anthropology. The papers were published in our Critical Urban Studies series.

Black People in Football and Beyond in the 21st Century: A Martin Shaw King Trust conference in Brixton entitled in December 1999, largely organised by Colin King of CUCR.

Links:

Conference: Racism in a Digital Age Summer 1999
This focused on the use that extreme right-wing groups are making of the internet and the new media. The idea emerged from the Cultural Mechanisms of Racist Expression Project and was organised by Ben Gidley, Michael Keith and Les Back. Speakers included Ken McVay from Canada, Professor John Solomos, Steve Silver from Searchlight and members of CUCR. The event was timely in ways that we had not anticipated in that it took place just after the London nail bomb attacks on Soho, Brixton and Brick Lane. There were also complaints from major Holocaust deniers who threatened libel, which meant that we must have done something right. The event was covered by the media and articles appeared in Time Out and Touch.

Link:

Conference: Finding the Way Home Summer 1999
This focused on young people notions of racial danger and community safety. Presentations were given by colleagues also included papers from Ann Phoenix, Avtar Brah and Paul Gilroy.

Events before 1999

1994: CUCR launch lecture by Professor Roy Porter. Other speakers have included Iain Sinclair, Ed Soja and Richard Sennett.