reflection about research colloquium

The Science of Science Communication III: Inspiring Novel Collaborations and Building Capacity: Proceedings of a Colloquium (2018)

Chapter: 11 reflections on the colloquium, 11 reflections on the colloquium.

At the end of each day of the colloquium, two of the colloquium’s organizers—Dietram Scheufele of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Baruch Fischhoff of Carnegie Mellon University—reflected on the themes that emerged from the day’s presentations and discussions. A major theme, said Scheufele, is the need for broader and more inclusive discussions about science and science communication. The application and communication of scientific results are informed by considerations that are not necessarily scientific in nature, including ethical, moral, and societal considerations. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and other organizations have done good work in convening such discussions and in studying how they should be conducted. But more research needs to be done on public discussions like consensus conferences or town halls, Scheufele said. These events tend to be attended by people who are very opposed or very supportive of a technology, whereas other communities that should be heard are often not represented.

Scheufele also pointed out that the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia on the Science of Science Communication have been intended to galvanize a new field and a new way of thinking. The new era of science that is emerging “requires us to think differently about communication,” he said. Technologies are emerging at a rapid pace and are making fast transitions from research to application. More information is available to people more quickly than ever before. People have more ability to have exchanges with others through social media. At the same time, this increased access to information has created problems, such as getting just one side of the story,

or, as Scheufele noted, “we can’t even make it through this conference without a whole bunch of spam coming in on the colloquium hashtag” (#SacklerSciComm).

STORIES, REWARDS, AND RELATIONSHIPS

Fischhoff cited three themes emerging from the colloquium: one behavioral, one organizational, and one societal.

The behavioral theme is that when phenomena are complex, stories can pull diverse facts together into something that people can understand. Stories are useful if they evoke mental models, folk theories, and worldviews in ways that make sense to people, giving them “a warranted feeling of self-efficacy,” said Fischhoff. “They can [then] generate appropriate conclusions from their own first principles.” Science communicators can increase their effectiveness through the use of stories, but we also need “a sustained dialogue with the people we’re trying to talk to, so that these are stories and issues relevant to their concerns.”

The organizational theme is that academic institutions need to change their reward systems to support people who want to take a scientific approach to science communication. People need to be able to access and decode the scientific literature on science communication. They need help in evaluating their own work to determine when their intuitions about science communication might be wrong, and “we need venues for the kinds of sustained interpersonal ties, shared experiences, trust, and empathy that enable us to speak with legitimacy to our audiences.”

Finally, on the societal level, it is important to provide information and establish relationships before issues polarize and spin out of control. That way, science gets a fair hearing and there is less need to blame the audience, political hysteria, or the innumeracy of the public. Scientists need help in understanding the complicated social processes through which such interactions take place, said Fischhoff.

We need to understand when it is more important for people to express group solidarity than to endorse a fact that is absolutely at the center of our scientific life. We need to know the situations in which the facts are collateral damage to other processes. And we need to understand those situations where we’re part of the problem by mixing in our preferred solutions to the problems that we’re describing.

THE POWER OF STORIES

Finally, Emmy Award–winning journalist Frank Sesno, who moderated the first day of the colloquium, elaborated on Fischhoff’s point about the power of stories.

I apologize for being so simplistic about it, but it works. A great story is compelling characters overcoming obstacles to achieve a worthy outcome. That’s what science is. It’s compelling characters—people in the labs, people in the field, people all over—overcoming obstacles—of the unknown, of every economic and financial sort—to achieve a worthy outcome—to gain knowledge and to move humanity forward. If we can’t tell stories from science, we can’t tell stories from anyplace. So there’s enormous potential, up against all these challenges that we’ve talked about here today.

This page intentionally left blank.

Successful scientists must be effective communicators within their professions. Without those skills, they could not write papers and funding proposals, give talks and field questions, or teach classes and mentor students. However, communicating with audiences outside their profession - people who may not share scientists' interests, technical background, cultural assumptions, and modes of expression - presents different challenges and requires additional skills. Communication about science in political or social settings differs from discourse within a scientific discipline. Not only are scientists just one of many stakeholders vying for access to the public agenda, but the political debates surrounding science and its applications may sometimes confront scientists with unfamiliar and uncomfortable discussions involving religious values, partisan interests, and even the trustworthiness of science.

The Science of Science Communication III: Inspiring Novel Collaborations and Building Capacity summarizes the presentations and discussions from a Sackler Colloquium convened in November 2017. This event used Communicating Science Effectively as a framework for examining how one might apply its lessons to research and practice. It considered opportunities for creating and applying the science along with the barriers to doing so, such as the incentive systems in academic institutions and the perils of communicating science in polarized environments. Special attention was given to the organization and infrastructure necessary for building capacity in science communication.

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Reflections on the colloquium on open knowledge in the heritage sector

By Angeliki Tzouganatou

This past summer semester from April to July 2019, the Institute of European Ethnology/Cultural Anthropology at the University of Hamburg, a POEM beneficiary, held a colloquium on ´Open Knowledge in the heritage sector: Reflecting dissemination, interpretation and accessibility of knowledge ́. It had the format of public lecture series, addressing both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as the Institute’s staff and the interested public and it took place once a week for two hours.

It aimed to critically reflect on crucial issues that have emerged in recent times through digital platform ecologies, concerning the openness of cultural heritage knowledge, as well as initiate a constructive discussion on this prominent topic. It shed light on meaningful public engagement practices, creative participatory practices with audience, as well as the emergence of new economic and social models, in an effort to cope with the growing inequalities that digital technologies have brought in relation to the wealth distribution (Pollock, 2018).

It was coordinated by myself, Angeliki Tzouganatou, as part of my POEM PhD research project, looking into the conditions of openness of cultural knowledge, and the emergence of new open business and social models.

The colloquium in a nutshell

In order to cover the whole spectrum of these above-mentioned issues, the colloquium was divided in four thematic topics; Introduction, Opening up the term open, Opening up for creative reuse and Future opportunities: new business and social models.

In the Introductory session, comprised of two sessions lectured by myself, the focus of the discussions was around the issues of open knowledge in the pre-digital era, as well as copyrights. Is open knowledge solely a digital-age-achievement, or did it exist in the pre-digital era as well? Museums and libraries have always been agents for transmitting open knowledge ideas.

Following, the thematic topic “Opening up the term open” kicked off with a thought provoking discussion between Dr Antje Schmidt, Head of the Digital Cataloguing Department of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, and Philipp Geisler, product developer at aidminutes, and also a member & former LabLead of Code for Hamburg. The discussion emphasized in the transition from accessibility to access and from open data to open knowledge in the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector, while highlighting the need for public domain. Moving to an accessible model requires first and foremost the inclusiveness supported by equity. Yet how can knowledge be fair? Dr Ingrid Dillo, Deputy Director at DANS (Data Archiving and Networked Services), and one of the authors of the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable & Re-usable) guiding principles (Wilkinson et al, 2016), discussed and reflected on them: “FAIR data: from FAIRytale to FAIR enough”, a codex of data use (Fig. 1). She provided practical guidelines regarding the implementation of the principles and ways of assessing and evaluating the FAIRness of existing data, where you can access here.

The next topic, “Opening up for creative reuse”, was inaugurated by Douglas McCarthy, Collections Manager at Europeana Foundation, with his talk ́Open: Enabling Creative Reuse in GLAM´. Drawing for three examples of creative reuse at Europeana, Visions of War, A Season of Women in Culture and Technology & GIF it up, Douglas stressed how openness & re-use enables public ́s participation to cultural heritage projects (Fig. 2). He also foregrounded ethical matters in GLAM. Intellectual Property (IP) rights shouldn´t be another way of taking control; How do Western concepts of IP match with indigenous peoples‘ rights on their works?

Figure 2: Douglas McCarthy speaks about the “Visions of War”, a Europeana project (the photo was taken by the author). 

Antje Theise, Rare Book Librarian at the Hamburg State and University Library (Stabi), supported the topic with her talk “Open Cultural Data initiatives for creative reuse at the Stabi.” Inferring from the Stabi´s initiatives & collaborations, such as Coding da Vinci hackathons, KollekTOURmat & Chronoscope Hamburg, aiding to cultivate the notion of creative reuse, she argued that there is a need for a shift to take place in openGLAM sector. This is the transition from ́If it isn’t online- it doesn’t exist ́ to ́If it isn’t open for free use and reuse it doesn’t really exist ́ (Fig. 3), highlighting the importance of re-use as an instrument of meaningful engagement and innovation, while enabling participation.

On the other hand, Sandra Trostel, independent filmmaker, creative storyteller and researcher challenge us to think out of the box, by embracing Hacking as a mindset to open up (Fig. 4). Are you looking at the problem in a particular way that limits your views? Hack your minds to find solutions and work more on open knowledge to achieve a change of mindset. Sandra discussed her documentary & transmedia project “ALL CREATURES WELCOME” as a case study, which is freely available under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-SA), concluded that there is a need to work on solidarity and collectiveness.

Figure 4: Sandra Trostel discusses Hacking as a mindset to open up (Photo: Angeliki Tzouganatou).

Moreover, understanding the need for new models to be emerged, in relation to cultural heritage platform economy, the colloquium concluded with the block of sessions “Future opportunities: new business and social models.” During the first session, I discussed MyData Global Network as a case study, where I am affiliated with the Network due to my secondment’s involvement in Open Knowledge Finland. MyData is a model for fair and human-centered personal data management and processing. The discussions focused on the role of cultural heritage data as an empowerment tool, and as well as issues around ownership, in the light of adopting a sustainable human-centred approach to cultural heritage management. Furthermore, Lambert Heller, Head of Open Science Lab at TIB-Leibniz Information Center for Science & Technology, reflected on issues around ownership in platform economy at his talk “Who owns research after all? Legacy publishers transforming from subscription monopolies to research intelligence platforms, and how VIVO and P2P governance models might still disrupt them.” (Fig. 5).

Figure 5: Lambert Heller reflects on Open infrastructures (Photo: Angeliki Tzouganatou).

Future potentials

The colloquium aided to better articulate the gaps of my research addressed in a trans-disciplinary approach, towards a more comprehensive understanding of its current status quo, while leading to the next steps of the research and its needs. It also helped me to create a network of people and formulate future synergies. In addition, it gave me the great opportunity to teach, and reinforcing new research ideas, by working with the students on these issues and being involved in discussions with the invited speakers as well.

As, in the digital world, technological advances changing the public realm, and we should develop such mechanisms and infrastructures in order to be relevant (Simon, 2016), engage the public and support the formulation of a common, collective memory. GLAM institutions should embrace openness and consider Public Domain as the default, while going through copyright clearances process, and encourage licenses instead. Hence, with licensing policy, GLAMs will be able to enable public ́s creative participation and meaningful engagement in knowledge production.

Although research infrastructures are challenged on so many levels, including in a cultural, economic and social level, there isn’t merely a technological solution, but rather to work collectively for building open, reconcilable and user-centred social infrastructures.

The PhD research will be enriched over the course of the next two years within the POEM Network, with continuous training and conducting a secondment in Open Knowledge Finland as well.

Pollock, R. (2018) The Open Revolution. Rewriting the rules of the information age. ARTEATHTECH

Simon, N. (2016). The art of relevance. Santa Cruz: Museum 2.0.

Wilkinson, M. D. et al. (2016). The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific data, 3. [Online]. Available at https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201618 [Accessed 1 May 2018].

If you want to make sure you are up to date with POEM, please sign up to our newsletter. We will keep you informed on a regular basis via email of news from the European Training Network POEM, its partners, and projects.

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45 Years at CTY: Celebration and Reflection—Research Colloquium

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Learn more about the field of gifted education and connect with others in the gifted education community through sessions and small-group discussions highlighting the past, present, and future of the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY).

During this three-day CTY research colloquium, CTY staff will also highlight their recent research on educating advanced learners, artificial intelligence in the classroom, cognitive skills, and more.

Participants must register for each individual event they would like to attend. Find the schedule online .

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What's the role of colloquiums in academia?

During my bachelors and masters degree I have attended some brief talks called colloquiums in which a researcher was invited by a professor at the university and s/he gave a one-hour talk about a scientific topic most of which about his/her own research interests.

These talks are a little different from normal conference presentations and seminars because the speaker is invited to give a talk and he is not presenting a specific paper; but in a conference, except from keynote speakers; people normally submit their papers to be peer-reviewed.

I don't know what's the role of colloquiums in academia and what the speaker is seeking by giving such talks? Also, who can give such talks (a researcher, somebody from industry, an outstanding professor, etc.)?

• research-process

• I would not consider a 1 hour seminar to be "such a small talks" –  ddiez Commented Sep 10, 2014 at 14:19
• @ddiez I was under the impression that the OP meant "small" in terms of audience (which may or may not be true for colloquiums) –  xLeitix Commented Sep 10, 2014 at 14:41
• @xLeitix It was in my mind that in a colloquium, the speaker does not necessarily go into the depth of the topic he is talking about, and at least his talk is more brief [or smaller] than a conference/workshop presenter. –  enthu Commented Sep 10, 2014 at 14:45
• 3 @EnthusiasticStudent ok, understood. However, at least in my field, most colloquiums are much longer talks that conference presentations (1-2 hours vs. 20-30 minutes) –  xLeitix Commented Sep 10, 2014 at 14:49
• 1 Agree, colloquiums tend to be longer and more similar to keynotes than to conference presentations. At least that is my biased feeling. –  ddiez Commented Sep 10, 2014 at 14:50

3 Answers 3

what the speaker is seeking by giving such small talks?

One word: exposition .

As a rule, the more senior a researcher gets, the less of her/his attention is devoted to writing single research papers. It becomes more central to be known for a specific niche, a specific topic where (s)he is the world's foremost expert. One does not become such a figurehead for a specific niche by writing good papers in the area alone (although, clearly, this is still required). One also needs to be an ambassador for the niche. This includes giving keynotes at conferences, as well as giving seminars and colloquia.

Also, who can give such talks

Everybody who gets invited by somebody. However, typically, one does not give keynote-level talks before senior postdoc or assistant professor level, simply because most PhD students do not have all too much of a vision going beyond their thesis yet. And, frankly, the keynotes of most postdocs also suck. Like most skills in academia, giving good exposition talks is also a skill that comes with training.

(there are exceptions, of course - I can think of at least one outstanding PhD student in software engineering who was regularly invited to give keynote talks at conferences midway through her dissertation)

• 1 A keynote talk at a conference is pretty different from a colloquium, though. –  Nate Eldredge Commented Sep 10, 2014 at 14:33
• 1 @NateEldredge Hmm. Not in my field, usually. –  xLeitix Commented Sep 10, 2014 at 14:40

In addition to other answers, a colloquium series is often used as a way to indirectly fund research collaboration.

In many cases, the colloquium speaker is a collaborator of one of the institution's own faculty (call her X), or at least X is specifically interested in the speaker's work. X may suggest that the speaker be invited. The speaker will usually be on campus for a day or two (or more), during which he and X can have longer technical discussions. The colloquium talk is for the benefit of the rest of the department: they can learn about the speaker's work at a higher, less technical level. (Colloquiua are usually meant to be pitched to an audience of faculty and grad students with a general background in the field, not necessarily the speaker's specific subfield; of course, that isn't always the way the talk turns out!) The department pays for the speaker's travel expenses, and everybody is happy. Next week, someone else's collaborator is invited.

• Why do you call it a colloquium series . In most of the colloquiums I have attended, separate sessions had separate topics and the talks were not necessarily connected to each other. –  enthu Commented Sep 10, 2014 at 14:40
• 4 @EnthusiasticStudent: It's a "series" in the sense that there is a talk each week at a regularly scheduled time. But there is no relationship between the talks or speakers. –  Nate Eldredge Commented Sep 10, 2014 at 15:10
• If a department has not regular talks and it has one talk per month; is it still called a colloquium series or just colloquium? Or these talks are not colloquiums? –  enthu Commented Sep 13, 2014 at 7:36

In addition to @xLeitix answer , another reason comes from the inviting part point of view. For example, in my institute from now and then researchers (at the levels mentioned by @xLeitix ) are invited to give talks. The goal is that researchers in the institute get to know about other researchers vision, topics and approaches. The aim is mainly to broaden our knowledge in order to stimulate new ideas and collaborations between researches from different topics or even fields. This is why typically these presentations are not just about a specific paper (likely niche topic), and look more like keynote presentations in conferences.

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Cty to host research colloquium to celebrate 45th anniversary.

CTY is celebrating its 45th anniversary by hosting a three-day research colloquium on Oct. 22-24, 2024. Titled "45 Years at CTY: Celebration and Reflection,” the virtual event invites participants to connect with others in the gifted education community through sessions and small-group discussions and reflections on the past, present, and future of CTY.

During this three-day event, we’ll highlight our recent research on identifying and educating advanced learners, AI in the classroom, cognitive skills, and more. Participants must register for each event they would like to attend. All events are free and open to the public.

Events include: 

Day 1: CTY’s Past—Oct. 22, 2024 

• CTY’s History in the Field of Advanced Learning
• The Evolution of Testing: Ensuring Validity and Equity When Identifying Advanced Learners  
• CTY Alumni Reflections and Future Visions

Day 2: CTY’s Present—Oct. 23, 2024 

• CTY’s Vision for Educating Advanced Learners in the 21st Century
• Cognitive Skills: A Potential Key to Understanding Success in the Online Classroom
• AI in Action: A Demonstration of CTY’s Educational Innovation

Day 3: CTY’s Future—Oct. 24, 2024

• Research on Advanced Learners: Where Do We Go From Here?

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Media Contacts:

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National Academy of Sciences. The Science of Science Communication III: Inspiring Novel Collaborations and Building Capacity: Proceedings of a Colloquium. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2018 May 16.

The Science of Science Communication III: Inspiring Novel Collaborations and Building Capacity: Proceedings of a Colloquium.

• Hardcopy Version at National Academies Press

11 Reflections on the Colloquium

At the end of each day of the colloquium, two of the colloquium's organizers—Dietram Scheufele of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Baruch Fischhoff of Carnegie Mellon University—reflected on the themes that emerged from the day's presentations and discussions. A major theme, said Scheufele, is the need for broader and more inclusive discussions about science and science communication. The application and communication of scientific results are informed by considerations that are not necessarily scientific in nature, including ethical, moral, and societal considerations. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and other organizations have done good work in convening such discussions and in studying how they should be conducted. But more research needs to be done on public discussions like consensus conferences or town halls, Scheufele said. These events tend to be attended by people who are very opposed or very supportive of a technology, whereas other communities that should be heard are often not represented.

Scheufele also pointed out that the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia on the Science of Science Communication have been intended to galvanize a new field and a new way of thinking. The new era of science that is emerging “requires us to think differently about communication,” he said. Technologies are emerging at a rapid pace and are making fast transitions from research to application. More information is available to people more quickly than ever before. People have more ability to have exchanges with others through social media. At the same time, this increased access to information has created problems, such as getting just one side of the story, or, as Scheufele noted, “we can't even make it through this conference without a whole bunch of spam coming in on the colloquium hashtag” (#SacklerSciComm).

• STORIES, REWARDS, AND RELATIONSHIPS

Fischhoff cited three themes emerging from the colloquium: one behavioral, one organizational, and one societal.

The behavioral theme is that when phenomena are complex, stories can pull diverse facts together into something that people can understand. Stories are useful if they evoke mental models, folk theories, and worldviews in ways that make sense to people, giving them “a warranted feeling of self-efficacy,” said Fischhoff. “They can [then] generate appropriate conclusions from their own first principles.” Science communicators can increase their effectiveness through the use of stories, but we also need “a sustained dialogue with the people we're trying to talk to, so that these are stories and issues relevant to their concerns.”

The organizational theme is that academic institutions need to change their reward systems to support people who want to take a scientific approach to science communication. People need to be able to access and decode the scientific literature on science communication. They need help in evaluating their own work to determine when their intuitions about science communication might be wrong, and “we need venues for the kinds of sustained interpersonal ties, shared experiences, trust, and empathy that enable us to speak with legitimacy to our audiences.”

Finally, on the societal level, it is important to provide information and establish relationships before issues polarize and spin out of control. That way, science gets a fair hearing and there is less need to blame the audience, political hysteria, or the innumeracy of the public. Scientists need help in understanding the complicated social processes through which such interactions take place, said Fischhoff.

We need to understand when it is more important for people to express group solidarity than to endorse a fact that is absolutely at the center of our scientific life. We need to know the situations in which the facts are collateral damage to other processes. And we need to understand those situations where we're part of the problem by mixing in our preferred solutions to the problems that we're describing.

• THE POWER OF STORIES

Finally, Emmy Award–winning journalist Frank Sesno, who moderated the first day of the colloquium, elaborated on Fischhoff's point about the power of stories.

I apologize for being so simplistic about it, but it works. A great story is compelling characters overcoming obstacles to achieve a worthy outcome. That's what science is. It's compelling characters—people in the labs, people in the field, people all over—overcoming obstacles—of the unknown, of every economic and financial sort—to achieve a worthy outcome—to gain knowledge and to move humanity forward. If we can't tell stories from science, we can't tell stories from anyplace. So there's enormous potential, up against all these challenges that we've talked about here today.

• Cite this Page National Academy of Sciences. The Science of Science Communication III: Inspiring Novel Collaborations and Building Capacity: Proceedings of a Colloquium. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2018 May 16. 11, Reflections on the Colloquium.
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Reflection of a Colloquium

post by Peter Boyes (2018 cohort)

As part of the programme with my industry partner Ordnance Survey (OS), each year I attend what they call a Research Workshop. It’s a multi-day trip down to their headquarters in Southampton, where they host all their sponsored PhD and Post-Doc students for a colloquium from their partner universities and programmes, both in the UK and a couple from abroad. The days consist of presentation sessions broken into themes of research, these presentations are given by each of the sponsored researchers to an audience of the other colloquium attendees and OS staff who drop in to relevant and interesting themes or talks over the days. In the breaks between presentation sessions there are poster sessions, each student presenting a poster of their work and able to talk with staff or other attendees there. These posters are also displayed over the course of the event to enable staff to drop by and take a look while they may be unable to attend a full presentation session, note questions and get in touch by email or later on in a break when the researcher is free. In addition there’s often a keynote speaker that kicks off the morning session talking around the general theme for each day.

As an annual event I have been able to attend at different stages of my PhD, and see progression across the visits. My view of the purpose of the event changed over appearances, and so did my confidence in my topic and myself. The conference-style event, presenting a poster, giving a talk, handling a Q&A with OS staff and fellow postgraduate researchers gave me a chance to learn from people going through the same process and some advice from them at their different stages of the postgraduate timeline. Over multiple poster sessions I honed the elevator pitch of my research for that year, and developed an understanding of my blind spots, the recurring questions that obviously I hadn’t anticipated or covered well enough in the poster, while developing my communication skills to multidisciplinary audiences. This was an opportunity to see others’ work that was similar to my field in different ways, and to practice communicating the research I was hoping to do or had done at the time of the workshop.

There is something to be said for not having any supervisors there, a little bit of a shock for me in my first year still settling into the doctoral training program at Nottingham. The student-supervisor relationship is a valuable one when navigating a PhD, but at this event I felt truly independent. At similar style events such as our Horizon CDT retreat I feel like even if they don’t contribute in my presentation, my supervisors are there in the background in the room or on the Teams call and may step in with comments or questions to jolt me along or help, but this wasn’t like that. This was more akin to what I expect conferences to feel like as I prepare to attend one and present later this year. Their contribution is there in the work, but I must be able to present and discuss the research as an independent researcher.

The event and this write-up gave me an exercise in reflecting on what stage I am at in my research. My first time attending, I was in the first year of the course, 5 months or so into my PhD and hadn’t exactly done an explicit research activity or carried out a study to talk about, I was still finding my feet. In that year, I talked mostly about my higher education background, my interests in a wide scope, essentially proposing questions I could explore and using the session to gauge some feedback on areas others thought could be interesting. This included areas to explore or advice on going down those paths, suggested literature or studies. Helpfully at this OS workshop there was an industry perspective on the applications and not just the theory or literature side or presentations.

In the next year, I could see for myself when making my presentation that my scope was narrowing, I was settling into an academic area, research questions were emerging less fuzzy, more defined even if not settled on at that point still. With the audience I was more engaged in discussion of conducted or planned studies and details of these, and looking towards potential research output goals and again the applicability to other sectors and industry.

With one of these trips to Southampton left to attend in my final run to thesis submission I will hopefully be in early write-up stages, and will be able to demonstrate some really interesting findings from this last year and my final study, and engage with those in their first years attending the workshop about their experiences in the PhD journey to that point.

To bring this to a conclusion, I would encourage postgraduate research to look for these colloquiums/consortiums even if not offered by your industry partner as they can help you engage with your research in a different way. These are an opportunity to participate without the same pressure or work of preparing a paper and submitting to a journal or conference, those are different experiences, both highly beneficial. I would also recommend in the way writing this has been for me, to engage with reflective exercises for your journey to recognise, even if for just yourself, the work you have been doing, the changes and narrowing of scope, and your understanding of a field or concepts. I would also encourage industry partners with multiple postgraduates across the country to try and organise events like these to support their development, and help to establish academic and industry networks they may be struggling with confidence or opportunities to build beyond their own centre or institution.

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Latest news

Clgc2023: reflections on the research colloquium.

15 November 2023

Running parallel to the Commonwealth Local Government Conference 2023, the Research Colloquium took place on 13 and 14 November, hosted by the University of Rwanda. The event brought together academics from around the Commonwealth to present their research papers on issues of importance to the local government agenda. It was attended by around 50 people, including many local academics and students from Rwanda.

Resilience during COVID-19

This year’s research colloquium was more diverse than usual, covering various topics relating to financial resilience to e-governance, public participation in local economic development and cross-border trade, network governance and increased participation, and sustainable urbanisation and climate change issues. A considerable amount of focus at the colloquium was on resilience during COVID-19 and our learnings from it. Many studies showed that combatting COVID-19 was possible because of the resilience of local governments and the innovations that took place at the grassroots level. 

Cross comparative perspective

The issues discussed covered a range of countries where systems vary, and the context of the local government has changed over the past few years. Researchers presented their work on these areas as evident in Rwanda, South Africa, Jamaica and India, with a cross-comparative perspective across the Commonwealth. On financial resilience, the colloquium demonstrated that inter-organisational planning across tiers leads to greater resilience. The background paper, especially, talks about creating a revenue-generation ecosystem and advises developing the capacity to co-generate data in consultation with the citizens. It also argues for capacity-building to analyse data locally, for a better needs assessment.

Working creatively with local traditions

At the same time, it is heartening that local stakeholders around the Commonwealth are negotiating current problems of democracy by working creatively with local traditions. It is intriguing to see imihigo go hand in hand, for instance, with concepts ingrained in new public management, like active citizenship and local resilience. From sharing of best practices across districts, which was titled ‘modernisation of imihigo’ by a researcher, to ‘bring what you have and together we will make it’ as an imigiho -motto, the colloquium argued for the importance of local context for a better impact.

Regarding service delivery, the scholars discussed modern technological tools smart cities use to understand citizens’ needs and design services accordingly. People’s preferences towards digital services are evident across Rwanda and Jamaica. Regarding ICT, the difficulty in responding to the increasing diversity as one of the major justifications for understanding citizens’ needs was discussed, and once again, the local context. Here, the importance of local language, was emphasised. 

Climate change and low participation

Several innovations were discussed at the colloquium. These include addressing issues of low participation, especially women's participation, in situations of high complexity and uncertainty in service delivery. In contrast to the old market-customer or services model, a new resilience-based model was proposed as a way forward. Innovations in local governments’ mitigation measures for climate change were discussed, with examples from Rwanda’s Green Deal, South Africa’s ‘Let’s Respond’ kit for addressing renewable energy issues and Papua New Guinea’s fascinating planning for climate financing. These innovations seem inextricably interwoven with the biography of a place, with its historically embedded traditions. Post-COVID-19, we are ever more aware of the territorial nature of issues and the importance of the social place and space for increased resilience. The Research Advisory Group is engaged with a number of ongoing projects, and we hope to see more of such innovative and exciting outcomes in the future.

Outcomes Statement

CLGF Associate Board Members, Professor Eris Schoburgh from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica; Dr Philip Amis, University of Birmingham, UK; and Dr Bhaskar Chakrabarti, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, India joined CLGF’s Policy and Research Officer, Ms Idil Mohamed and staff from the University of Rwanda to deliver the event, with Dr Bhaskar providing a reflection of the two-day colloquium and the importance of linking research and policy making, at the closing session of the Commonwealth Local Government Conference.

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For more information about CLGF's research work and publications, go to the Research Centre on the website. This includes editions of the  Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance  - CLGF's peer-reviewed e-journal that brings together perspectives of researchers and local government practitioners aross the Commonwealth.

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Step-by-step instructions for writing a colloquium essay

• The subject of the literature essay and colloquium is chosen within the field of Chemistry or Life Sciences. Ideally, you should find a general topic first and then find a supervisor appropriate for that topic, who knows enough about the topic to be able to advise you on the scientific question you want to address in your colloquium.
• Avoid choosing a topic that is the precise subject of a recently published review, because it will be hard to add anything new and not just repeat that publication.
• After a LIC staff member has accepted to be your colloquium supervisor, refine your scientific question and discuss your planning with them. The colloquium supervisor cannot be the main supervisor of the student’s major research project. 
• A colloquium should provide you with an in-depth understanding in a given subject; It will NOT only broaden your general knowledge. A good colloquium topic should trigger the interest of your colloquium supervisor, jury and fellow students!  Both in your written essay and your final talk you should be able to convince your audience why it is timely and important to address this topic.
• Start from a research article that interests you. An easy way to quickly get the main point of a scientific publication can be a news article about the publication. You can search for news articles for instance on the  C&EN  website, in  C2W  or the news section in  Nature  or  Science . Alternatively, you can start from a research article that was discussed in a lecture series or search keywords on scholarly search engines.
• It is not allowed to choose a topic directly related to any of your research projects, but it may be chosen in the same field as your research project.
• It is not allowed to reuse a literature assignment that you previously submitted for another course. This practice would count as self-plagiarism. An exception can be made on individual basis, but you should discuss that with your supervisor and make sure you get explicit permission.  Read more about plagiarism .

Common search engines include  Web of Science ,  PubMed  and  Google Scholar . Web of Science requires log-in via the University. For help with finding scientific literature, tutorials are available on the libary webpages .

• Review articles are useful to get familiar with your topic and find more literature, but primary research articles should make up most of your bibliography in the finished essay.
• Get access to subscription journals from home via the  University Library Catalogue . At this point, only scan the articles for relevance, do not read them yet. It is probably useful to download PDFs of all papers.
• Continue to define your research topic; make sure it is narrow enough to discuss the topic in depth with 30-50 references, but also broad enough to find new connections and cover a relevant field. Discuss your refined topic with your supervisor if you are unsure.
• Work with bibliography software (reference management software) such as Zotero (open access), EndNote, RefMan or Mendeley from the start.Read more information about search tools and reference managers on  the website of the University Library . 

Research articles can be detailed and long. Your job is to distil out their main findings and put them in your own words. Write a few sentences per main point of the article and immediately give the reference. Do NOT copy-paste parts that are interesting with the intention to ‘rewrite’ it later.

Keep your topic in mind while reading. Read attentively and smartly, highlight sections in the text, analyse the figures and make notes as you go. You can use these questions to ask yourself while reading to help you focus . 

• Avoid plagiarism: do not copy text directly from the source.  Read more about plagiarism .
• Find new connections between articles. Are there contradictions or inconsistencies? Is there a gap in the literature that should be further explored? Can you suggest the next step required to solve the problem? Can you order the research done into groups? Does one application solve the limitations posed in another article?
• A review is not just a summary of existing research! It is imperative that you add something new or your review will lack depth and be marked down accordingly.

In an excellent colloquium, the cherry on the cake is to critically analyze the literature. For instance, highlight opposing views of hypotheses between different publications, authors, or theories.

• Do not just put one article per paragraph, because your text will not flow norfeel natural. Each paragraph should develop a main idea, and multiple articles can be used support that idea
• There are many different strategies for organising your text. Find the strategy that works for you. For instance, you can print your sections and organise them on a big table, do it from memory, build an argumentation structure on paper or on the computer, write up the table of contents, discuss it with your supervisor or a friend, just start writing (type “Well, I think that …” and just keep going), write your subtopics on post-its, …
• You will probably need to reorganise your library for this essay and most likely need to go back to literature searching.
• You may have noticed that you have gaps in your storyline or need specific references to place a discovery in context. Search for specific references that fill that gap. Remember that the citations in your other articles can be a good source for new literature, as well as the ‘cited by’ functionality in Web of Science.
• Do not be scared to leave out papers that do not seem to correlate to your story. You do not need to include everything you found or read.
• You probably defined your research question even more precisely since your last search. It can be a good idea to do a new search based on more narrow search terms to check if you missed any relevant papers.
• You can use already published figures, but everything in the figure in your essay should be relevant and be connected to what you discuss.
• When you use a figure from the literature, make sure you say in the caption where the figure comes from.
• Ideally, you should have at least 1-2 completely new, nice-looking figuressummarizing or illustrating what you discuss in the text.
• Every figure should have a caption with a title, providing details what the figure is showing. See this link for information about writing   good figure captions .
• Each figure with its caption should be self-explanatory.
• Create paragraphs from the text you wrote and ordered previously by adding transitions between sentences and paragraphs and adding topic sentences. 
• Add figures and their captions.
• More tips for a successful colloquium .
• Your introduction should answer four questions: 'what is the issue?' (or 'why should the world care about this topic?'), 'what is the background?', 'why are you reviewing this topic now?' and 'what is the scope of this review?'. 
• A conclusion is not the same thing as a summary. Look back at your introduction; did you answer the question you pose or what you claim to discuss? How does your analysis relate to the broader issue?
• The final essay should have a cover page containing at least the title, your name, your student number, your colloquium supervisor's name, jury member names, the word count (excluding the bibliography), 'colloquium essay' and '6 EC'. 

Use reference management software such as Zotero, EndNote, RefMan or Mendeley to format your bibliography correctly. Check your reference formatting one by one! Make sure the essential information is present (reference number, authors, journal names, year, volume, pages or article numbers for journal articles, editor names, publisher, city, publication year for books). Be careful with articles from journals that use article numbers, rather than page numbers as not all reference management software can deal with this automatically.

You now have a finished first draft of your colloquium essay that you can send to your supervisor for feedback.

• Also see the  example time schedule  for a colloquium essay and presentation.

Are you interested in the MSc Chemistry or MSc Life Science & Technology programme? Find out more about the programmes, career prospects & how to apply.

Research groups

Study associations, specialisations, direct links.

Department of Psychology

Research Colloquium

The Department of Psychology, along with our partner programs and centers, offers a wide range of regular research colloquia where faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and invited speakers present research and discuss important scientific and professional issues.

Colloquia are announced via email lists. Below is a list of active listservs and information on how to add yourself or be added to those email lists.

Arts and Science Department of Psychology Listserv This mailing list is used to advertise general departmental seminars to individuals outside the department. Email Bianca Castellon to be added to the listserv.

COGSCI Mailing List This mailing list is used to advertise the Friday afternoon Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Colloquium and other cognitive-related materials. Email Bianca Castellon  to be added to the list. All cognitive and cognitive neuroscience students must request to be added to this list.

Cognitive and Neural Modeling Mailing List (ccn-modeling) This mailing list is used to advertise talks and discussions about cognitive and neural modeling at Vanderbilt. To add yourself to the ccn-modeling email list:

• Connect to list.vanderbilt.edu
• Log in with your VUnet id and password
• Select “Subscriber’s Corner” from the menu near the top of the page
• Search for ccn-modeling in the “Search for List” box, making sure you select “Show All Lists”
• Click the check box, select “subscribe” from the option menu right below that, and click Submit in the lower right corner of the page
• Wait for an email from the listserv
• Click the link on the email the listserv sent you, as directed.

Vanderbilt Vision Research Center Mailing List This mailing list is used advertise talks and other opportunities sponsored by the Vanderbilt Vision Research Center. Email  Jill Brott  to be added to the list. All students doing any vision-related research should be on this list.

Cognitive Science of Learning and Development (CSLD) Research Forum This mailing list is used advertise talks and other opportunities in cognitive and developmental science, including the Friday afternoon CSLD Research Forum (formerly lunch-bunch). Email Ally Armstead  to be added to the list. All students doing cognitive and developmental research should be on this list.

Vanderbilt Brain Institute Mailing List This mailing list advertises talks and events sponsored by the Vanderbilt Brain Institute. To be added to the weekly email distribution list, please email Tervina Ibrahim . In the subject line, type “Add To VBI Mailing List”. A confirmation will be sent when your email address has been added.

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Graduate Research Colloquium

PhD Program in Art History, Theory, and Criticism

February 26, 2021 1:30 - 5:00 p.m. PST YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/SM6syyFvxF8

February 27, 2021 10:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. PST YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/HVuodpmEfrw

Many PhD students are actively engaged in presenting their research to a wider world at conferences and symposia at other universities – but not their home institutions. The Graduate Research Colloquium is meant to overcome this atomization or privatization of intellectual work, in a forum where the excitement and energy of individual projects can become known inside the local community. Advisors will briefly introduce and provide their own reflections on the project, since the Advisor is in a unique position to see where the project lies in relation to the wider field, and to describe the contribution the project will make to the discipline as a whole.

Friday, February 26, 2021

1:30 p.m. introductory remarks from professor kuiyi shen, 1:35 p.m. tiffany beres, modern antiquity: chinese bogu painting in the late qing and early republic.

My dissertation project aims to excavate and explore an art form that has nearly disappeared—a genre of Chinese painting known colloquially as bogu, frequently translated as “ancient erudition” painting. Composite in nature, these pictorial works comprise three-dimensional rubbings of artifacts together with watercolor paintings. Widespread and popular among literati tastemakers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bogu paintings disappeared after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Today, perhaps because of their unconventional hybrid appearance, they continue to be overlooked by art historians in both China and the West. Up to now, the lack of written records beyond the paintings themselves has shrouded the history and origins of bogu and made them a mystery. Emerging at a time of great social and economic flux, bogu paintings are living examples of the ways in which art can transform antiquity into a modern visual language. My research draws unprecedented attention not only to the aesthetic impact ancient art had on late Qing culture but also to the ways in which artists shaped the contemporary experience of antiquity.

Respondent: Kuiyi Shen

Tiffany Beres is Asian art curator and art historian who has worked on over thirty exhibitions around the world. Her current area of research is modern Chinese painting, with a special focus on visual culture in its global context.

Image: Rubbings from Bronzes with Painted Flowers, Lin Fuchang, circa 1860, Qing dynasty Source: MFA Collection, Gift of the Wan-go H. C. Weng Collection and the Weng family

2:05 p.m. Shoghig Halajian

Queer of color entanglements: on the spatial politics of rafa esparza’s bust. a mediation on freedom.

My presentation focuses on the practice of Los Angeles-based contemporary artist rafa esparza, whose public performances explore urban spaces of state-sanctioned violence and dispossession. The intended audience of these site-specific performances is often the people who routinely occupy the locale in which they are staged. esparza’s performance/installations employ adobe, a vernacular material and building process, and invite other queer and Latinx cultural producers to realize large-scale collective projects to foster informal networks of support outside of a strictly institutional framework.

I focus in particular on the 2015 performance, bust. a meditation on freedom, which took place across the street from the Twin Towers Correctional Facility (also referred to as Twins Tower Jail) in the Chinatown neighborhood of Los Angeles. In the course of the performance, esparza is encased in concrete and gravel up to his chest, transformed into the image of a portrait bust, and then tasked with the arduous work of breaking himself free with only a hammer and chisel. I theorize this work through a queer of color analytical lens, exploring how performance might reconceptualize political liberation beyond a rights-based agenda and propose coalitions across seemingly disparate fields of social activity.

Respondent: Alena Williams

Shoghig Halajian is a curator, co-director of the nonprofit arts space Human Resources LA, and co-editor of the online journal Georgia . Her research inquiry is informed by her curatorial work with artists—in 2015 she curated the exhibition, i have never been here before , by rafa esparza at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions).

Image: rafa esparza, bust. a mediation on freedom, 2015, performance documentation. Image courtesy of Johanna Breiding.

2:35 p.m. Viona Deconinck

Reading 21 etchings and poems.

My thesis studies artist books which are deemed unreadable by the standards of regular books and I will be presenting my second chapter, 21 Etchings and Poems by Peter Grippe, a book that also presents several barriers, both linguistic and intellectual. The publication assembles work by 42 artists working in very different styles in different periods. In an interview, one of the artists, Pierre Alechinsky, admitted he didn’t even know that the work as a whole existed: he was only aware of his collaboration with Christian Dotremont. The difficulty in reading 21 Etchings and Poems lies in determining what exactly ties it together.. It represents a kind of summa of the possibilities of playing with art, especially with the relation between word and image. In the same year the portfolio was published, James Johnson Sweeney, formerly a curator at the Museum of Modern Art and the second director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1952-60), wrote: “What gives a living artist interest is his success in keeping his language as fictile as possible — in expanding the frontier of expression by directing a certain fluid force against circumstance. And finally through conception rather than mere reflection and observation. All this goes to make up the surface aspect of poetry and painting — its vocabulary and imagery. And if these are alive they must be constantly changing and refreshed.” The portfolio seems to bear witness to what Sweeney writes here, offering a powerful juxtaposition of art works, within an abundantly rich larger structure. Very few art works from the period are as diverse as this portfolio as it features pieces made across the span of an entire decade.

Respondent: John Welchman

Viona Deconinck is a fourth year Art History PhD student, she has a background in literature and film, her thesis focusses on methods of reading artist books.

Image: Pierre Alechinsky with Christian Dotremont In-text plate (folio 4) from 21 Etchings and Poems 1952, published 1960 Medium: Etching and engraving from an illustrated book with 14 etchings (six with aquatint, four with engraving, one with drypoint), two aquatints, two engravings, two drypoints, and one photogravure Artist: Pierre Alechinsky, Author: Christian Dotremont

3:05 p.m. Yi Liu

China: the staging of a nation through the making of a book.

My dissertation probes the role of photobooks in (re)constructing the visual representation and knowledge production of China by tracing the nation’s transformation from the 1920s to 1950s. Pondering the tension, negotiation, and competition among the disparate stances in visualizing and cataloging China, this paper concentrates on an iconic photobook, simply titled “China,” published in 1959 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Initiated by the Chinese Communist Party, China was to showcase the nation’s first decade of accomplishments as well as its centuries-old heritage. The official editorial board envisioned it to be a diplomatic gift — both representation and representative of China. My study intends to contextualize the book’s compelling nationalist sentiment by historicization, intertextuality, and through the framework of materiality, pondering how the multifaceted objecthood of the book and the embodied reading of it encapsulate the symbolism of nationhood in Maoist China during the 1950s.

Yi Liu’s research focuses on the visual culture of China since the 19th century with an evolving interest in the history of photography. Her Ph.D. dissertation studies the contention and confluence of the visual and material representation of China in photobooks in the first half of the 20th century.

Image: China. Publisher unknown, 1959. 30 x 38cm, 562 pages, black-and-white and color photographs, deluxe edition, clothbound in cloth box, two editions

3:35 - 3:45 p.m. TEN MINUTE BREAK

3:45 p.m. alumni keynote speaker: mariola alvarez (phd '12; assistant professor, temple university), manabu mabe and tomie ohtake: two case studies of postwar brazilian art.

Dr. Alvarez will present her current research project on the art of the Japanese diaspora in Brazil. Comparing the work of two immigrant artists, Tomie Ohtake (b. Kyoto, 1913-d. São Paulo, 2015) and Manabu Mabe (b. Kumamoto, 1924-d. São Paulo, 1997), Alvarez explores the development of abstract art as a transnational practice, a negotiation between styles and traditions from Japan, Brazil, and France. The existing scholarship on Brazilian art has overwhelmingly favored the history of Concrete and Neoconcrete art, while Informalism and Tachisme in Brazil remains understudied. One possibility for this neglect may be the large number of Japanese immigrant artists working in this style and the inability or willful disregard of historians to consider their lived experiences and the ways in which they assimilated East Asian traditions into their work, therefore revealing how ethnicity as part of artmaking was made absent. The presentation will study the early careers of Ohtake and Mabe, comparing their styistic developments and divergences.

Saturday, February 27, 2021

10:00 a.m. introductory remarks from professor john welchman, 10:05 a.m. alexis hudgins, reality television as model: affective labor and the production process.

In 2003, the now defunct broadcast network UPN previewed its forthcoming season, which included a relatively unknown reality TV program—America’s Next Top Model. This preview took place during a hinge moment between two significant strikes by the Writers Guild of America—the first in 1988, which along with the popularity of cable TV eventually gave way to early 2000s reality programming including shows like Survivor; and the second in 2007–2008, which similarly encouraged an increase of unscripted content, leading to increased scrutiny of labor practices in the field.

My dissertation project attempts to understand the making of reality television during this time—specifically competition and documentary style series—as embodying a different form of labor relations than both the scripted content that preceded it, and the more produced reality television programs that came directly after. As researcher, I use my personal experiences from working on these types of productions alongside theories of affective labor. As an example, camera operators not only perform their technical roles, but also track inter-personal relations occurring on set in anticipation of narrative; while cast members similarly produce themselves on camera. While there have been several studies considering affective labor and neoliberalism within the production process of reality television, I build on this work by examining: first, “prosthetic friendships” that are not traditionally mutual, but instead produced; second, the collaborative nature between producer and produced, particularly in the interview; and third, how these types of relationships come to be through the quasi-psychoanalytic nature of transcription.

Alexis Hudgins’ practice co-opts methods used in the production of reality TV to generate new forms through installation, video and performance. Using her experience as a producer for reality television and artist Paul McCarthy, her work explores the similarities and ruptures between the experienced and the produced; less as a critique of media culture than an expression of it.

Image: Alexis Hudgins as stand-in for UPN president Dawn Ostroff during technical rehearsal of UPN Prime Time Upfront 2003/2004, Madison Square Garden, 2003

10:35 a.m. Christoph Rodrigo de la Torre

Prior art: the lasting effects of stroboscopic photography.

The history of photography as a technology since its breakthrough in the 1830s is often told in numbers marking the innovative milestones on the path of progress: smaller cameras, more cameras, faster development of the image, longer lasting photos, increasing apertures, and – most importantly – the dramatic increase in the speed of photography by ever shorter exposure times. The technological race to accelerate photography has reached its (interim) pinnacle in 1933, when Harold E. Edgerton first filed to patent his re-invention of the stroboscope that paved the way for high-speed photography.

Proto-cinematic devices such as Joseph Plateau’s phenakistiscope and Simon Stampfer’s stroboscope (both ca. 1832) operated on the intermittent obstruction and illumination of the view, but Edgerton’s stroboscope resembled its predecessors only in principle. Instead of a spinning wheel, as I will show using patent filings, his device featured a powerful battery, sensors, and a tube filled with rare gas. More importantly, he constructed it for the inverse purpose of making rapid motion appear as still. The resulting images of humming birds, golfers, and bullets captured in flight are emblematic for the merging of art and science; his high-speed technology is recognized for its profound impacts across multiple disciplines. But the defining – and thoroughly modern – notion of increased speed, as I will argue, falls short in capturing the full functioning of the stroboscope and its consequences for photography. Images shot at a millionth of a second, rather than reducing the photographic instant, expanded it to a film in a single frame – generated at the intersection of sensory devices, (photo)electricity, and moving bodies.

Respondent: Lisa Cartwright & Alena Williams

Christoph Rodrigo de la Torre traces the histories of generative practices and technologies by (non)artists across media, genres, periods and borders. Christoph’s work includes research on the global role of contemporary artists in law and an ongoing project on public sculpture, art history and gender in Germany.

Image: Harold E. Edgerton. High-Speed Flash-Photography. US Patent 2,408,764, filed June 14, 1940, and issued May 6, 1946

11:05 - 11:15 p.m. TEN MINUTE BREAK

11:15 a.m. yiqing li, on the path to chouxiang: the history of twentieth-century chinese abstraction.

How to position China on the map of global abstract paintings, along with the early twentieth-century European abstraction, postwar American Abstract Expressionism, Japanese Gutai art, Korean Monochrome paintings, and Latin-American abstraction? At the intersection of modernism and postmodernism, abstract art mirrored and participated in a series of dramatic social and cultural changes in twentieth-century China. Despite the socio-cultural significance, the historical narrative and cultural context of Chinese abstraction have not been established.

This dissertation explores the historical and social forces instrumental in shaping Chinese abstraction in the twentieth century. The fundamental issues to be resolved are multiple: when did abstract art first emerge in China? What were the irreducible aesthetics embedded in Chinese abstract art? Why did this para-official, unorthodoxy art grow to be a significant trend in contemporary China? How can the history of Chinese abstraction complicate our understandings of the dualist models, namely East versus West, tradition versus modernity? The dissertation’s five chapters, composed in chronological order from the early twentieth century to the contemporary age, seek to address these issues and provide a different mode of abstraction that can contribute to the diversity of global abstract art.

Yiqing Li is a Ph.D. candidate majoring in art history, theory, and criticism at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Her dissertation research focuses on twentieth-century Chinese abstract painting.

Image: Wu Dayu (1903-1988), untitled work, undated, colored pencils on paper, 13 x 8 cm. Photography by Yiqing Li

11:45 a.m. Jonah Gray

In the space provided: historicizing brian jungen’s wall drawings.

My current research centers around a series of wall works by Brian Jungen (Dane-zaa; b. 1970), one of the most prominent contemporary artists currently working in Canada. Jungen's signature works are sculptures and installations, which have been shown at Documenta, the Tate Modern and around the global biennial circuit. The wall works are a rare two-dimensional exception within his mostly sculptural oeuvre that he has consistently revisited and reimagined over the last two and half decades. The work’s motifs are based on crude sketches, which Jungen gathers by soliciting drawings from passers by on the street. By prompting them to “draw an example of Native art” or “what you know about the Native Peoples of British Columbia,” he obtains samples ranging from earnest efforts to reproduce canonical works of Indigenous art to sheer racist fantasies.

My presentation for the colloquium will locate these works in relation to a history of official state art in Canada. Contrasting Jungen’s wall works with a controversial program of murals painted in the 1930s at the British Columbia Legislature, I will draw out how the definition of official art has changed from commissions to decorate state buildings to the decentralized, entrepreneurial mode of the state-funded, but critical and reflexive model Jungen exemplifies. I propose that Jungen’s invocation of the mural form and his attention to the unconscious stereotypes of his anonymous collaborators help plot a changing relationship of the public to the familiar misrecognitions of a white-supremacist gaze that continues to be mobilized in support of the modern settler-colonial state.

Jonah Gray is an art historian, curator and PhD candidate at UC San Diego.

Image: Brian Jungen, Wall Carvings, 2006, mixed media, dimensions variable. Installation view, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, 2006