This month TWIST features updates from our recent workshops and fellows, opportunities, and information on Institute of Advanced studies funding programmes.

News and Opportunities

View from a Vanguard IAS Vanguard fellow Dr Sydney Calkin talks about our recent workshop Spatiality and Abortion: “The referendum to repeal the 8th is the first step in a long journey to making abortion access a reality for Irish women. Campaigner Ailbhe Smyth reminded us that the campaign is just “one point in a continuum”. Our workshop sought to address legal reform of Irish abortion law and the gap between law and real-life access.” Read more...

Programming Hierarchical Self-assembly with DNA-Coated Colloidal Particles

This jointly supervised 3-year collaborative PhD project between Dr Dwaipayan Chakrabarti, School of Chemistry, and Professor Vinothan N. Manoharan, (Wagner Family Professor of Chemical Engineering and Professor of Physics at Harvard University), was planned during Professor Manoharan’s visit to Birmingham last summer as an IAS Distinguished Visiting Fellow and will be supported by our Research Investment Scheme.

Challenges to Wellbeing: The Experience of Loneliness and the Threat of Epistemic Injustice in the Clinical Encounter

Lisa Bortolotti looks back on our workshop Challenges to Wellbeing: The Experience of Loneliness and the Threat of Epistemic Injustice in the Clinical Encounter. The workshop originated from a multi-disciplinary conversation about wellbeing and happiness... between academics from across the University, practitioners, and campaigners. According to the data, there are about 1.2 million people (roughly 10% of the population) who are chronically lonely living in the UK. Project PERFECT also has an ongoing blog, and videos from the workshop are available online.

Institut D’Études Avancées de Paris – Call for the “Brain, Culture and Society” program 2019–2020

The Paris Institute for Advanced Study welcomes applications from international scholars and scientists in the fields of the humanities, social sciences, cognitive sciences, and neurosciences for a research stay of five or ten months during the academic year 2019–2020 within the framework of its “Brain, Culture and Society program”. Fellows will be given the opportunity to work freely on the project of their choice, at the interface between the sciences of the brain, the humanities, and the social sciences. Full details can be found at their website.

Upcoming Workshops and Events

12 –14 March Qualitative Comparative Analysis and Process Tracing Workshop leader: Dr. Markus Siewert, IAS Vanguard Fellow This workshop is open to Early Career members of staff. Participants will gain profound knowledge of QCA and Process Tracing as innovative tools for their own research, will offer space to discuss key analytic pitfalls when applying QCA and Process Tracing, and will help researchers to develop innovative research designs.

19–27 March 3rd UBIAS Intercontinental Academia, Laws: Rigidity and Dynamics Location: Nanyang Technological University, Singapore This workshop will bring together a network of future research leaders to collaborate on paradigm-shifting cross-disciplinary research, mentored by eminent researchers from across the globe.

27 April Body 2.0. Embodied processes and technologies in the flows of urban capitalism Workshop Leaders: Dr Jessica Pykett, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences and Dr. Mark Paterson, IAS Vanguard Fellow. This workshop will explore theoretical and methodological questions of embodied and emotional experience, self-monitoring technologies and biopolitics, with particular reference to urban capitalism.

2 May  IAS Lunchtime Seminar: Empowerment Inc.: Can corporations really ‘empower’ women, and do we even want them to? (All welcome) Workshop Leaders: Dr Lauren McCarthy IAS Vanguard Fellow Corporations love telling us to ‘ban bossy’, ‘lean in’ and ‘shine’, and women’s empowerment programmes have become the poster-child of corporate social responsibility (CSR), especially in developing countries. This seminar will explore explores the paradoxes of CSR when we examine it through the lens of gender. What is lost, and what is gained, by the establishment of Empowerment Inc.? All welcome.

17– 18 May Understanding and Fighting Gender Inequality Workshop Leader: Prof Nicholas Cheeseman and Dr Jill Steans. This workshop will see the launch of a new research theme for the Institute for Global Innovation on Gender Inequality with the formation of a global network centred at the University of Birmingham and the planning of research streams in this critical area.

21 June Adversities, Trauma and Resilience in Periods of Transition Workshop Leader: Dr Janine Natalya Clark. ‘Periods of transition’ has been broadly defined to cover: societies who are in transition from conflict to peace; communities who are in transition after natural disasters; and individuals who are in transition after having experienced trauma. This workshop aims to foster an inter-disciplinary discussion on the concept of resilience and its meaning in these different contexts.

Institute of Advanced Studies Funding Programmes IAS has a range of funding programmes designed to support and develop colleagues’ cross-disciplinary research ideas, longer term projects and collaborations with world-leading academics. If you are interested in making proposals, or have any questions, please visit our website for more information about all our programmes and support. IAS Workshops Distinguished Visiting Fellows Programme IAS Vanguard Fellowship programme Research Investment Scheme

Get in touch Telephone: 0121 414 5908 Email: ias@contacts.bham.ac.uk Web: www.birmingham.ac.uk/ias University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT

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