Events and Lectures
On this page:
The Women@QM Project and exhibition was officially launched on Thursday 4th October 2007 with a round-table event with alumni from the past six or seven decades. The event was chaired by Professor Lisa Jardine CBE.
To download a recording of the round table discussion, please click here (requires QuickTime plugin, available at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/)
During the 2007/08 academic year, a range of events and lectures will be organised around the central themes of the Women@QM project. These events and lectures will link in with other College and external events.
Planned events (dates to be confirmed)
June 2007
September 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
The Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity (CRED) will run a Women and Work Seminar Programme during the Women@QM project. The Programme will explore key contemporary debates and will involve many of the leading international thinkers and researchers on women and work. Full programme to follow.
The Mile End Group will be organising a series of events entitled 'Ladies in the Lords' all of which will be held in the Robing Room of the House of Lords. The first of these seminars will be given by Baroness Hayman on 4th December at 6.30pm on the broad topic of 'Ladies in the Lords'.
Monday 18th June, 5.30pm
First Annual Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity (CRED) Lecture and official launch of the Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity
Organising in Search of Diversity and Equality: Whose Ends, What Means?
Joan Acker, Professor Emerita, Department of Sociology,
University of Oregon , USA
To be followed by a panel discussion of equality and diversity experts who will consider the key contemporary challenges in equality and diversity.
Francis Bancroft Building, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of London , Mile End, London E1 4NS.
For further information please contact Simon Langford.
Wednesday 27th June, 1.30pm - 6.00pm
London Women and
Planning Forum seminar
Home improvement: women on housing estates
Lynsey Hanley, author of 'Estates: an intimate history' (Granta, 2007)
Lynsey was born on a Council estate on the periphery of Birmingham. She moved to London in 1994 to study politics and history at Queen Mary, and lives in East London. She writes for The Guardian, The Observer, the Daily Telegraph, Prospect and the New Statesman. Her first book Estates: an Intimate History (Granta, 2007) draws upon her own experiences of estate living and examines the rise and fall of social housing in Britain over the last century.
Click here to download programme and further details.
Wednesday 19th September
Inaugural Lecture
Professor Kate Malleson,
Professor of Law,
School of Law
'What is the new UK Supreme Court for?'
Arts Lecture Theatre at 5.30pm.
Thursday 4th October
Women@QM Exhibition Launch and Round Table
The Women@QM Projet will be officially launched with a round-table event with alumni from the past six or seven decades and will be chaired by Professor Lisa Jardine. The launch event will also see the official opening of the Women@QM Exhibition.
For further information please contact us.
Tuesday 16th October
William Harvey Day
School of Medicine & Dentistry
For further information please click here.
Wednesday 17th October
Annual Butterworths Lecture on Law and Society: Diversity and the Judiciary
Clinical Lecture Theatre, Francis Bancroft Building, Mile End
at 6pm
As part of the Women@QM celebrations, Mrs Justice Dobbs will be giving a Butterworths Lecture on Law and Society: Diversity and the Judiciary.
The Honourable Mrs Justice Dobbs has been a High Court judge since 2004. She was called to the Bar in 1981 and took silk in 1998. She practised in the field of criminal law, serving as chairman of the Criminal Bar Association immediately prior to her appointment to the bench. Mrs Justice Dobbs first studied Russian and Law, going on to a Masters in Law and a Doctorate in Soviet Criminology and Penology.
For further information please contact Events.
Wednesday 24th October
London Women's Planning Forum
Women and Gardens in the City
1:30pm - 5:30pm
Department of Geography
This seminar explores the significance of gardens for women and local communities. Key questions include:
- To what extent do women and men use and value gardens in different ways?
- How do gardens contribute to health, well-being and environmental sustainability?
- What are the roles of community gardens and allotments in urban development?
- Should gardens be protected in planning policy? What are the social and environmental costs of not protecting gardens?
The seminar is free but space is limited. To reserve a place please contact the London Women and Planning Forum administrator, Felicity Paynter at f.paynter@qmul.ac.uk or Department of Geography, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS. See www.lwpf.org.uk for more information about LWPF and this seminar.
Wednesday 21st November
Inaugural Lecture
Professor Mounia Lalmas,
Professor of Information Retrieval
Department of Computer Science
Reducing Information Overload: From Focussed to Aggregated Results
Wednesday 21st November
School of Languages, Linguistics and Film Annual Lecture
Dr Sue Harris, Director, Department of Film Studies
'We'll always have Paris....': American cinema's love affair with the City
of Light.
For further information please contact the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film.
Tuesday 4th December
Baroness Onora O'Neill
Informed Consent: Nuremberg to Helsinki and Beyond
Informed consent is now seen as fundamental to both clinical practice and to research on human subjects. Huge literatures advocate supposedly improved consent requirements. Consenting, it is said, should be more explicit; and consent, it is said, should be more specific. These aims are rarely feasible, since the empirical evidence shows that it is extremely hard, and sometimes strictly impossible, to meet either standard even when patients or research subjects have full cognitive competence. There is little ethical merit in advocating impractical or impossible requirements for informed consent, or in pretending that such standards can be met. How might we meet these challenges to contemporary research ethics?
For further information please contact Events.
Thursday 6th December
The Mile End Group
'Ladies in the Lords' seminar series
Baroness Hayman will give the first seminar in the Mile End Group's Ladies in the Lords seminar series.
For further information please contact the Mile End Group.
Thursday 6th December
QM Christmas Concert
7.30pm, Great Hall, Mile End
2007 is the year we celebrate 150 years after the birth of Edward Elgar, one of the most loved of English composers, 100 years after the death of Edvard Grieg, Norway’s finest composer. It is also 50 years since the death of the great Finnish nationalist Jean Sibelius and just round the corner in 2008 is 50 years after the death of another great English composer Ralph Vaughan-Williams. 2007 also marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of this College, and along with parallel events given by other societies, we will be focusing on musical connections with both former Queen Mary and Westfield Colleges. Curiously these composers have a connection here (eg Robert Tong, the pioneer of much musical creation at Queen Mary, personally knew Vaughan Williams and was a champion of the music of Elgar). But additionally as we delve into the college’s history, interesting and original works are discovered, and the concert will also premiere a new work, composed by Alan Wilson, Director of Music. Running parallel with the Women@QM exhibition, music by female writers will also be featured.
Admission is free but tickets are required for entry. For ordering tickets and further information please contact the Events Office.
16 January 2008
Distinguished Lecture Series
'Towards a Science of the Web'
Professor Wendy Hall,
University of Southampton
Room CS446 at 3.00pm
(preceded at 2.45pm by tea and followed by a reception
both in the Informatics Hub)
All welcome (including students) no pre-booking required.
Long before the Web existed hypertext visionaries foresaw a richly
inter-linked global information network. The Web provided the
infrastructure to enable those ideas to become reality but is strangely
devoid of links. The development of the Semantic Web promises to take us
much closer to achieving the original vision and is set to take off in
the next few years. However, there is a growing realization among many
researchers that if we want to model the Web and understand its future
trajectory; if we want to understand the architectural principles that
have provided for its growth; and if we want to be sure that it supports
the basic social values of trustworthiness, privacy, and respect for
social boundaries, then we must chart out a research agenda that targets
the Web as a primary focus of attention. The emergence of this exciting
new discipline, which we call Web Science, will be a focal part of this
talk.
Wendy Hall is a Professor of Computer Science at the
University of Southampton and was Head of the School of Electronics and
Computer Science (ECS) 2002-2007. She was the founding Head of the
Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia (IAM) Research Group in ECS. She has
published over 350 papers in areas such as hypermedia, multimedia,
digital libraries, and Web technologies. She is currently senior Vice
President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Vice President of the ACM
and is a Past President of the British Computer Society (2003-2004). She
is a member of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology,
a member of the Executive Committee of UKCRC, and Chair of the newly
formed BCS Women’s Forum. She is the Chair of the Advisory Board of the
new Company, Garlik Limited, and is a founding member of the Scientific
Council of the European Research Council. She was awarded a CBE in the
Queen’s Birthday honours list in 2000, and became a Fellow of the Royal
Academy of Engineering in the same year. She was recently awarded the
2006 Anita Borg Award for Technical Leadership.
For further information please contact Sue White, Research Co-ordinator, Department of Computer Science.
22 January 2008
S&E Flagship Lecture
Proteins Behaving Badly? Aggregation, disease and nanotechnology to be given by Professor Athene M. Donald, FRS
Drapers Lecture Theatre, Geography Building
Protein aggregation turns up in many guises, some beneficial but many not. The public at large are familiar with many of the diseases, such as vCJD and Alzheimers, in which protein aggregation into so-called amyloid fibrils is implicated. Thus protein aggregation has a bad name. However, structures essentially identical in outline but formed from very different proteins can also be seen as benign or even beneficial: the texture of yoghurt and cheese, for instance, is also related to the ability of milk proteins to aggregate. And, finally, it has been suggested that protein fibrils could also be used to make nanowires of interest to nanotechnologists.
This talk will look at the way in which proteins can aggregate under different circumstances, concentrating on generic behaviour rather than specific details of the different proteins. The similarities between the behaviour of different proteins can be used to provide an indicator of the underlying mechanisms which govern aggregation.
Professor Athene Donald completed her first and second degrees in the Physics Department of the University of Cambridge. Her PhD was on electron microscopy of metals, but during a 4 year period as a post-doc at Cornell University (USA) she switched to the study of polymers. Polymers, biopolymers and more recently biological systems more generally, have formed the focus of her research ever since.
After returning to the UK from the States Professor Donald held two successive fellowships at Cambridge, before being appointed a lecturer in 1985. She was promoted to Reader (1995) then Professor (1998) and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999.
She is currently Deputy Head of the Physics Department, Director of the University’s Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Initiative (WiSETI) and Director of the University’s new initiative in the Physics of Medicine.
For further information, please contact Events.
5 February 2008
Inaugural Lecture
Professor Geraldine Healy, Professor of Employment Relations, School of Business and Management
Title and full details to follow. For further information, please contact Events.
6 February 2008
Inaugural Lecture
Professor Maria Delgado, Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts, School of English and Drama
Title and full details to follow. For further information, please contact Events.
6 February 2008
Distinguished Lecture Series
'Can we benefit from Robotic Helpers?'
Human-Robot Interaction Studies with Robot Companions
Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn, University of Hertfordshire
Room CS 446 at 3.00pm
(preceded by tea at 2.45pm and followed by a reception both in the Informatics Hub )
All welcome (including students) no pre-booking required
Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is a very interdiscplinary and quickly growing research area. While a lot can be learnt from psychology, ethology, HCI, and other fields regarding suitable methodologies and evaluation techniques, how people interact with physical, embodied robots, more often than not, may give unexpected results. Human-robot interaction involves often hard technological problems in terms of developing robots that can actually exhibit a variety of behaviour and carry out tasks relevant to their application. However, another important aspect concerns the “user-perspective”, i.e. the view, attitudes and perceptions of a person who interacts with the robot. Interactive robots are different from tools such as toasters or mobile phones, and they are different from humans or other animals. In my talk I will discuss concrete examples of HRI studies in two different projects: Within the European Cogniron project (www.cogniron.org) we have been studying over the past 4 years how people interact with robot companions that may operate in their homes. Such a robot companion should a) be able to carry out useful tasks in a home scenario, and b) perform these tasks in a manner that is socially acceptable for its owner. Some results from studies in the “Robot House”, a domestic environment where people can interact with robots in a more naturalistic setting, will be presented. Aurora is the second HRI project I will introduce (www.aurora-project.com), more recently complemented by the European project IROMEC (www.iromec.org). Here, we develop robotic toy-like companions to serve as social mediators for children who otherwise cannot play. Specifically, the UH team focusses on how a robot may encourage social interaction between children with autism and other children, or carers. In both projects long-term studies play an important role, as well as the consideration of individual abilities, preferences and attitudes of people towards robots. In my talk I will highlight a few methodological challenges and open problems in this highly interdisciplinary field.
Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn received her Ph.D. degree from the Department of Biological Cybernetics at University of Bielefeld, Germany. She is Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the School of Computer Science at University of Hertfordshire where she coordinates the Adaptive Systems Research Group. She has published more than 150 research articles on social robotics, robot learning, human-robot interaction and assistive technology. Prof. Dautenhahn has edited several books and frequently organises international research workshops and conferences including hosting the AISB’05 convention and general Chair of IEEE RO-MAN 2006. Currently she is a general chair of HRI08, the 3rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. She is involved in several FP6 European projects (Cogniron, Robotcub, Iromec, eCircus) and is Editor in Chief of the journal Interaction Studies: Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems.
For further information please contact Sue White, Research Co-ordinator, Department of Computer Science.
20 February 2008
London Women and Planning Forum Seminar
'Women, Public Art and the City'
Wednesday 20th February 2008, 1:30-5:30pm
Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, E1 4NS
This seminar will address public art as both site and subject for art by women and the ways in which public art – and art about public space - can enhance women’s lives in the city. It will consider the roles of women as artists working in the public realm, women’s experiences of public art, and the involvement of women in community consultation and the commissioning of public art projects. The seminar will consider feminist art practice in and about the public realm and the ways in which women and men might produce and experience public art in different ways.
Cameron Cartiere (Birkbeck, University of London), Liza Fior (Muf), Anne Thorne (Anne Thorne Architects Partnership) and Abigail Reynolds (Ruskin School, University of Oxford) will be coming together to present on what will prove to be an enlightening and engaging afternoon.
Download the flyer.
For further information and to reserve a place please email Felicity Paynter.
21 February 2008
Inaugural Lecture
Professor Alison Blunt, Professor of Geography, Department of Geography
Title: Home, Empire and Diaspora
Full details to follow. For more information, please contact Events.
7 May 2008
Inaugural Lecture
Professor Janet Dine, Professor of Professor of International Economic Development Law, Centre for Commercial Law Studies
Title and full details to follow. For further information, please contact Events.