Campus News
Lakeside Arts to reopen with Mat Collishaw exhibition
October 15th, 2020
Lakeside Arts is to reopen on Saturday 17 October after closing its doors in March due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
On Saturday, the Djanogly Gallery will welcome visitors to enjoy an exhibition featuring works by Nottingham-born artist Mat Collishaw. The show is Mat’s first major solo exhibition in the city of his birth who since graduating from Goldsmith’s College in the late 1980s has established an international reputation.
Mat rose to prominence in the 1990s as one of the defining generation of Young British Artists alongside his contemporaries Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas. Often drawing on subjects from the history of art and photography, his works play with opposites, revealing the compelling power of imagery to attract and repel as well as to deceive us.
To ensure an enjoyable and safe experience for all, and in order to comply with the latest Government guidelines, Lakeside is limiting visits to one household per 30-minute timeslot. This means that audiences can pre-book safe in the knowledge that the gallery will be dedicated to them and others in their household – allowing visitors to enjoy their very own private tour of this fabulous exhibition.
The opening of the Djanogly Gallery is the first phase of a gradual reopening that will see the return of performances, workshops and other gallery and museum experiences across Lakeside’s multiple venues with a series of outdoor and online workshops for families delivered during October half-term.
Following this, the University of Nottingham Museum and the Weston Gallery will welcome back heritage loving visitors from the end of October. The Museum has twice won Museum of the Year in the Nottinghamshire Heritage Awards and features archaeological artefacts from Nottinghamshire and the wider East Midlands. The Weston Gallery reopens with a much-awaited display honouring Florence Nightingale’s 200th birthday, celebrating the founder of modern nursing. This exhibition sheds new light on the Lady with the Lamp, exploring her family roots in Derbyshire, and her work after the Crimean War to improve sanitary conditions in homes. Again, online advanced booking for designated timeslots will be required.
The Pavilion Café is already open with a take-away service, as are the externally accessed public toilets. The Djanogly Theatre, Djanogly Recital Hall, Box Office and other facilities remain closed for now.
Lakeside Arts is planning on presenting a limited number of performances, with socially-distanced audiences, from mid-November. Further details will be released in due course.
For more information, visit the Lakeside Arts website.
Tags: Lakeside Arts, Mat Collishaw, Nottingham
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Daily reports on COVID-19 active cases now live
October 15th, 2020
The University is now publishing daily reports on active cases of COVID-19. Latest figures show that we are on a downward trend, showing an 20% reduction since last Friday. Currently we have 1,215 active cases at the University.
While this may show that our efforts are working to manage the coronavirus, there is no room for complacency. We will continue to work with our partners in public health and ensure our community follows the new regional restrictions to protect themselves and the communities around them.
We have ensured that students keep to their designated households, use on-campus testing stations where possible and provided incentives to socialise at home or on campus, This activity runs alongside an asymptomatic testing regime to identify cases earlier and faster than the national scheme.
Active cases among staff remain low at 32 cases – under 3% of the total active caseload. This represents a quarter of one percent of our overall staff numbers. None are in teaching roles and many of these cases have not been on campus, with no evidence to suggest they have contracted the virus on campus. However, we will continue to ensure that all our activities to support students – including in-person teaching – is only conducted in a COVID-secure environment, following all government and public health guidelines.
We would like to thank our staff who are making tremendous efforts to teach, research and support our students on- and off-campus, as well as our 35,000 students, the overwhelming majority of whom are acting responsibly and following the rules.
Tags: Covid recovery, covid reporting, COVID-19, recovery
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Faith in a time of crisis
October 14th, 2020
On Tuesday 20 October, join a multifaith panel as they host an interfaith conversation which aims to look at the role faith can play in times of crisis.
There will be an open discussion addressing questions such as:
- How does faith help in times of uncertainty and crisis?
- How has the Covid-19 pandemic changed faith practices for better or worse?
- How does faith fit into today’s society?
The panel will cover Muslim, Orthodox Christian, Lutheran, Buddhist and Jewish perspectives and the discussion will be chaired by two members of the Islamic Society. There will be opportunities for audience members to participate in the conversation, ask questions and share their own individual experiences.
Free and open to all university students and staff.
Tuesday 20 October 2020, 2pm – 3.30pm.
Book your place here.
Tags: COVID-19, faith, faith in crisis, support
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Government announce delays to 2021 exams in England
October 14th, 2020
The UK government has announced that AS, A levels and GCSEs will be held three weeks later than usual to help address the disruption caused by the pandemic.
This means that summer exam series will now start on 7 June and end on 2 July for almost all AS/A levels and GCSEs. Results days will also change to Tuesday 24 August for A/AS levels and Friday 27 August for GCSEs.
The government also confirmed that no further subject-level changes to exams and assessments will be made for GCSEs, AS and A levels. This follows a public consultation carried out by the exams’ regulator, Ofqual, earlier this year. Ofqual has also consulted on how assessments of vocational and technical qualifications will be adapted to free up teaching time and respond to any future public health measures.
For Vocational and Technical Qualifications (VTQs), it is expected that for the majority that are taken alongside or instead of GCSEs, AS and A levels, awarding organisations will look to align timetables with 2021 exams. Students studying level 1 and 2, and level 3 VTQs instead of, or alongside, GCSEs, AS and A levels and needing their results to progress, will receive their results no later than their peers.
According to the statement from Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, more detail will be published later in the autumn, to ensure students have confidence that they will be fairly treated in terms of assessment in 2021.
The Education Secretary has also written to Ofqual to ask the regulator to work closely with him, school and further education leaders, exam boards, unions and the higher education sector to develop these arrangements. In a separate statement, Ofqual welcomed the announcement and outlined its “strong support” for the revised timetable.
Finally, the statement highlighted the government’s £1 billion “Covid catch up fund”, aimed at helping to tackle the impact of lost teaching time. The programme includes a £650 million catch up premium to help schools support all pupils and £350 million National Tutoring Programme for disadvantaged students.
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Forced marriage and modern slavery: when, and how, are they related? Online talk
October 13th, 2020
The university’s Women’s Staff Network (WSN) is pleased to host the following talk which everyone is welcome to attend.
Thursday 10 December 2020 at 12:30pm – Forced Marriage and Modern Slavery: When, and how, are they related? Dr Helen McCabe, Politics and International Relations.
In 2017, in the International Labour Organisation began including forced marriage in its definition of modern slavery, with profound results for the number of people counted as being in modern slavery, and its gender-balance.
Using this definition of modern slavery, a 2020 report by Walk Free Foundation reports that 1 in every 130 women and girls in the world are living in modern slavery, and that 84% of all forced marriage victims are female. However, this link remains un-interrogated and untheorized.
Legislation, international conventions, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights all focus on a lack of consent as the hallmark of forced marriage: but the Palermo protocol on trafficking in persons explicitly says lack of consent is irrelevant to considerations of trafficking.
Feminists have also long questioned the extent to which any woman gives “free and full consent” to marriage, given the pressures of patriarchal norms and expectations, which often result (among other things) in a lack of knowledge as to what marriage means and entails.
These are clearly important questions, and highlight a specific wrong connected to forced marriage. When we consider forced marriage as a form of modern slavery, however, our focus should therefore be on the conditions experienced by spouses in marriage, and particularly the extent to which they are treated as property, which is the hallmark of de facto slavery.
Several Special Courts have wrestled with these issues in conflict situations, but the vast majority of forced marriages occur in peacetime – and the courts have come to somewhat contradictory conclusions.
Dr McCabe’s AHRC Fellowship interrogates the connection(s) between forced marriage and modern slavery in more detail, and I am about to start a project specifically looking at the impact of COVID-19 on forced marriage in the UK, where understanding both similarities to, and differences from, modern slavery may help in identifying vulnerabilities.
In this talk, she will share some background and recent findings.
Join Microsoft Teams Meeting here.
Tags: Dr Helen McCabe, Forced Marriage, human rights, modern slavery, Politics and International Relations, Women’s Staff Network, WSN
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Global Challenges Research Fund: apply now for internal award
October 13th, 2020
The University is inviting applications for internal awards to support the UK Government’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).
The £1.5bn GCRF supports cutting-edge research that addresses the challenges faced by developing countries. It forms part of the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitment and is a key part of the UK’s overseas aid strategy.
The University distributes a block grant from Research England to support collaborative projects that brings together researchers in the UK with those in developing countries.
The deadline for full applications to the internal scheme for the 2020/21 financial year is Friday 23 October 2020.
Awards of up to £250,000 are available to proposals that are interdisciplinary, challenge-led and impact focused, which translate novel research into measurable real-world outcomes.
They will address at least one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and will fall into one of the following thematic priority areas:
- Global health and well being
- Food systems
- Inclusive and equitable education
- Resilience to environmental shocks and challenges
- Cities and sustainable infrastructure security, conflict, human rights, social justice, migration and displacement knew line clean air, water and sanitation
- Affordable, reliable, sustainable energy
You can find further details on how to apply for the fund here.
Tags: GCRF, Global Challenges Research Fund, research, Research England
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Seminar in memory of Dr Christine Humfrey
October 12th, 2020
On Wednesday 21 October an online seminar will be held celebrating the life and work of Dr Christine Humfrey.
The University of Nottingham’s pioneering approach to internationalisation is, in so many ways, built on the work of Dr Christine Humfrey (née Shinn), the founding Director of the International Office who sadly passed away on July 10th 2020.
From the early 1980s, when the UK’s fee regime for international students dramatically changed, Christine led a transformation in international higher education at the University and was at the forefront of internationalisation across the sector.
Nottingham’s International Office was one of the first of its kind within the sector and was distinctive because of its integration of recruitment and partnerships with student welfare and well-being and support for research collaboration.
The webinar will explore the evolution of UK university internationalisation strategies since the 1980s, celebrating Christine’s championing of an holistic approach, through contributions examining the success of Transnational Education, the Prime Minister’s Initiative for International Education and a focus on international student care, and universities wider role in supporting capacity development and collaboration across the Commonwealth.
It will also provide friends and former colleagues with an opportunity to remember Christine and consider, as she continued to do in retirement and as a teacher on the PG Cert for International Student Advisers, the current and future direction of UK university international strategies.
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Professor Dame Jessica Corner: I am confident our research will remain safe and continue to grow
October 9th, 2020
In line with many areas of the country, the city of Nottingham and county of Nottinghamshire look set to face local restrictions from next week to manage increasing cases of COVID-19.
While we await official confirmation on the nature and extent of the restrictions, I am confident that we will maintain and continue to increase our research activities and capacity.
This confidence is assured by the immense hard work and progress that we have all made together in ensuring our research buildings and facilities are COVID-secure and observing social distancing and safety protocols.
Of course, we are continuously reviewing our contingency measures and have re-assessed our safety measures to ensure on-campus research can continue to be carried out safely and responsibly within the current restrictions.
Discover more in the latest research update from Professor Dame Jessica Corner, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange.
Tags: coronavirus research, professor dame jessica corner, research update
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New national programme launched to help budding start-ups
October 8th, 2020
Ingenuity is a national programme looking to invest in the next generation of impact driven start-ups that will transform society and the environment.
What is the University’s involvement?
Ingenuity is a product of UoN, having first launched here in 2015. This is the first year they have opened it up nationally, and second year of hosting regional activity. They are partnering with the following universities in the region to establish Ingenuity East Midlands. Together, they are looking for great start-up ideas that could help drive the region’s recovery from coronavirus and help rebuild a better society, economy and climate post-Covid.
- Nottingham Trent University
- Derby University
- Loughborough University
- University of Lincoln
- De Montfort University
- University of Leicester
How can people from the University take part?
Ingenuity is open to students, staff, researchers and graduates from across the university. There are three pathways they can choose to take part:
Future Founders: students, alumni and researchers wanting to set up their own impact-driven start-up.
Regional Pioneers: staff who want to volunteer to be part of the programme and learn more about social innovation and help the university have greater civic impact.
Mentoring: senior staff (academic and professional services) who want to volunteer to mentor and support the development news ideas. We are looking for business experts and sector specialists for this role.
Support with recruitment
The sign-up period is now open and runs until Thursday 12 November 2020, and the opportunity is open to all members of the university.
All information about the programme can be found at the Ingenuity East Midlands Website.
Tags: economic recovery, Ingenuity, invest, investment, recovery, start ups
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New FAQs page for COVID-19 enquiries
October 8th, 2020
A new FAQs page has been launched to help colleagues dealing with enquiries from a number of different internal and external audiences.
The FAQs are designed to help staff respond to questions received from colleagues, students, parents and even the media about the services and support available as we operate during the coronavirus pandemic.
The documents will be updated regularly with the most accurate and up-to-date government and NHS guidance along with new University processes.
The FAQs are split into staff and student categories, so use the appropriate document depending on whether you are responding to a staff or student query.
The FAQs can be accessed via the Staff and student FAQs SharePoint site.
Further information will be added to these FAQs as the situation develops – please bookmark the SharePoint page and check the information before responding to queries.
If you can’t find the information you’re looking for, email is-communications@nottingham.ac.uk and we will look at adding a new FAQ.
Any media enquiries relating to COVID-19 and the University response should be referred to the Media Team.
Tags: coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic
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