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Robert Grosseteste and the Art of Learning
Robert Grosseteste provides the name for our university, but what do we know about him? A BGU lecturer is part of an exciting research project.. Dr Jack Cunningham, Academic Coordinator for Theology at BGU, is an ecclesiastical historian who is conducting research into the life and works of 13th Century Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste. Jack is a member of the Ordered Universe Project based at Durham University, which is translating and editing the great bishop's works for publication with Oxford University Press. His particular interest is Grosseteste's influence on learning in the history of Western Europe. On 4 May 2017 BGU are holding a conference to launch a new project that will examine the writings of Robert Grosseteste on education. The Ordered Human Project will bring medievalists together with modern educationalists in order to unravel the teachings of Grosseteste on the subject of how and why we learn. Grosseteste offered some profoundly important insights into how we learn and he made big claims for the importance of education for human development. His ideas made a major contribution to the development of learning in Western Europe and the Ordered Human Project will assess how well they have stood the test of time. With this in mind the Ordered Human Project will aim to publish modern critical appraisals of multiple aspects of Robert Grosseteste's ideas on the way, how and why of learning. Jack recently appeared on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time programme to discuss his research on Robert Grosseteste. The programme is available to listen to here. Find out more about Theology at BGU. -
BGU lecturers to speak at Lincoln’s first TEDx event
Lecturers from Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) in Lincoln will speak at a new TEDx event this October. Lincoln is hosting its first ever TEDx event, TEDx Brayford Pool, on 28 October 2017. The theme of TEDx Brayford Pool is 'Past. Present. Future' and the event will highlight the best and most current ideas generated in Lincoln and Lincolnshire. Dr Jack Cunningham, BGU’s programme leader for Theology and Reader in Ecclesiastical History, has been selected as one of fifteen speakers and will present a keynote talk about Robert Grosseteste. Jack is a core member of the Ordered Universe Project that brings together scientists and historians to prepare the work of Robert Grosseteste for publication. “I will be talking about Robert Grosseteste, especially his work as a 13th-century scientist, and setting out to explode the myth that the Middle Ages were the ‘Dark Ages’ full of superstition and ignorance,” said Dr Cunningham. “Grosseteste had some very sophisticated ways of looking at the world: he was the first person to know what caused a rainbow and he has been called the first scientist. “Most impressive is his idea about cosmology and how the universe began, which is remarkably similar to the modern Big Bang theory. “I want to show that even though he worked 800 years ago with little access to the modern tools of science, he may well have had an enormous impact on our modern understanding of the universe we live in. “In fact, Robert Grosseteste is the perfect figure to illustrate the fact that the past, present and future are always inextricably linked.” Lyndsay Muir, senior lecturer in Drama at BGU, is also speaking at the event and will deliver a keynote titled ‘Tea with Trans - what's on (and off) the menu'. Her talk will discuss self-identified trans people creatively orchestrating conversations with the wider population. Lyndsay said, “There are all sorts of myths circulating about trans people, so what if you could just sit down and have a chat with someone and find out what they're like? “The problem is where would you start, if you didn't know someone and didn't want to be rude or offend them? The idea is to have a conversational menu that gives you somewhere to start – their name, what they enjoy talking about and what they really wouldn't want to discuss. “In my talk I’ll be explaining how this idea evolved, what it hopes to do and how it has been tried out.” Meanwhile at the event Dr Elinor Vettraino, programme leader for Business and Enterprise at BGU, will be running two 'fishbowl' sessions with groups of speakers focusing on moving forward and future thinking. TED began in 1984 as a conference for Technology, Entertainment and Design, but today covers almost any topic. Independently organised TEDx events help share ideas in communities around the world. The talks will take place before a live audience and will be available to view online after the event. TEDx Brayford Pool will take place on 28 October at the Collection and Usher Gallery. -
Celebrating the Charter of the Forest at BGU
The 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest will be commemorated in November, and Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) in Lincoln is joining in the celebrations. The 1217 Charter of the Forest re-established rights of access to the royal forest that were taken away by William the Conqueror. The charter complements Magna Carta and both documents can be viewed at Lincoln Castle, the only place in the world where two original copies of the documents can be found together. Lincoln Castle are hosting a celebration on 6 November 2017 where they will also launch a Charter for Trees, Woods and People for the 21st century. BGU will make a special contribution by having between 60 and 70 primary and secondary school students on campus. They will engage in age specific educational activities on the Charter of the Forest and the new Charter for Trees, Woods and People. BGU's special expertise in qualifying teachers and researchers at BGU on law and society will have its impact on these activities. The project is part of a major campaign, sponsored by the Woodland Trust, to work on Britain's environment for future generations. A ceremonial tree planting on the BGU campus will conclude the event. Interested in history? Find out more about studying History at BGU. -
BGU sponsors Gothic-themed Lincoln Book Festival
The Lincoln Book Festival is ‘Going Gothic’ this September and Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) is co-sponsoring a variety of events. The festival invites visitors to explore the Gothic at events celebrating the genre throughout the city. Literature, history, art and architecture are all on the line-up at the festival that ‘places history at its heart’. BGU is sponsoring a free workshop at the University of Lincoln on Gothic literature for local schools and colleges. Experts from both BGU and the University of Lincoln will jointly run the event on Wednesday 27 September. On Thursday 28 September, BGU’s Dr Claudia Capancioni chairs an evening of ‘Victorian Truths & Gothic Mysteries’ at The Collection alongside the University of Lincoln’s Dr Scott Brewer. The evening will see a talk from award-winning historian and biographer Kathryn Hughes telling ‘Tales of Flesh in the Ages of Decorum’. Author Diane Setterfield will then present her talk on ‘Fiction of a Gothic Disposition’. Dr Claudia Capancioni has also helped to organise a free event on Friday 29 September aimed at creative writers. ‘Writing Romance – Mills & Boon Style’ takes place at The Collection and the two invited speakers are both historical romance authors. The final BGU co-sponsored event of the festival is ‘An Afternoon of Architecture – Revived and Inspiring’ at BGU’s Robert Hardy Building on Saturday 30 September. The afternoon sees Geoff Brandwood guiding the audience through the revival of Gothic Architecture Victorian style and discussing the churches of Sir Gilbert Scott, including many examples in Lincolnshire. Author Pamela Holmes will also be speaking at the event. The festival also launched a Flash Fiction competition. Writers of any age and ability were encouraged to submit Gothic-themed short stories of exactly 50 words. Dr Claudia Capancioni was part of the judging panel tasked with shortlisting over 400 entries for the final judges. The winners in three categories (primary school age, secondary school age and adults) will be announced at the festival launch party on Monday 25 September. Speaking about the festival Dr Claudia Capancioni, Academic Coordinator for English at BGU, said, “this year’s festival is most exciting because of the Gothic theme and a new Flash Fiction competition. “The programme caters for the whole community with creative writing events as well as speakers who share their works. It is a great programme and I can say already that we have had a great response. “As the success of the Flash Fiction competition shows, there is interest in the events the programme presents. “We are pleased to be working with the organising committee, the community and colleagues at the University of Lincoln to make sure this year’s Lincoln Book Festival is most engaging with Gothic mystery, horror and romance.” The Lincoln Book Festival takes place from 25-30 September 2017 across a range of locations in Lincoln. Visit the Lincoln Book Festival website to book tickets now. -
BGU lecturer to speak at LUMEN Centre
Dr. Robert von Friedeburg, Reader at the School of Humanities at BGU in Lincoln, has been invited to speak to a research network in Denmark. Robert will lecture to the newly established research network of the LUMEN Centre for the Study of Lutheran Theology at the University of Aarhus, Denmark and give a master class on October 23 and October 24 2017. The invitation comes in response to Robert's recent research monograph, published last year with Cambridge University Press, 'Luther's Legacy: The Thirty Years War and the Modern Notion of the 'State' in the Empire, 1530s to 1790s'. There have already been two other invitations to discuss the book, a symposium on the book at the German Historical Institute in London, on March 21, and a symposium at the Department of History, Georgetown University, U.S.A., on April 20. The book, just as the volume edited with Cambridge and coming out this year, 'Monarchy Transformed', challenges the notion of the bureaucratic power state and emphasises instead the importance of moral values, not least embedded in the Christian faith, for the modern notion of state.' Robert has also been invited to speak in Budapest at the annual conference of the Academia Europaea on Sunday, September 3, on Europe and the Rule of Law in the context of these two publications. -
Research Boosted at BGU as Five Earn Promotions
Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) in Lincoln has appointed a professor and four readers from among its academic staff in recognition of their research work. Dr Kate Adams in the University’s Research and Innovation Centre becomes a professor, while Dr Jack Cunningham and Dr Sibylle Erle in the School of Humanities and Dr Caroline Horton and Dr Emma Pearson in the School of Social Sciences become readers. Professor Adams is an education specialist and the University’s Head of Research. Her research focuses on aspects of childhood from children’s perspectives, particularly on spirituality, and the implications of children’s understandings for the wellbeing agenda in education. Dr Cunningham is Academic Co-ordinator for Theology and has researched extensively into early modern and late medieval religious history. He is also one of the principal investigators of the Ordered Human Project based at BGU and a specialist in the life and work of Robert Grosseteste. Dr Erle is a Senior Lecturer in English and her research interests range from William Blake and Alfred, Lord Tennyson to 1790s politics and landscape gardening. She has lectured and given seminars at Tate Britain and the Wellcome Institute and most recently lectured at the Universities of Greifswald and Zürich. Dr Horton is the Academic Co-ordinator for the PhD programme. She also teaches on psychology courses and runs DrEAMSLab, the university’s Dreaming, Emotions, Associations and Memories in Sleep Laboratory. She is an active researcher in the field of sleep-dependent memory consolidation, with a particular interest in studying dreaming as a reflection of autobiographical memory consolidation processes. Dr Pearson is a Senior Lecturer in Education and Academic Co-ordinator for the Education Doctorate programme, and her research activities are centred on the study of socio-cultural contexts of learning. Her consultancy work with organisations such as UNICEF, UNESCO and the Asia Pacific Regional Network for Early Childhood (ARNEC) has supported her research and involved travel to many countries, from North Korea to Vanuatu. “These appointments recognise the exceptional leadership and excellence in research which is being demonstrated by these members of staff,” said Professor David Rae, Executive Dean for Research and Knowledge exchange at BGU. “BGU has a long-term plan to develop research excellence, and recognising the talent and achievements of our top researchers is fundamental to this. The new professorship and four readerships aim to provide the research leadership for our entry into the next Research Excellence Framework in 2021 and beyond.” -
Monarchy Transformed book publication
Dr Robert von Friedeburg, Reader in History at Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) in Lincoln, is the editor of a new book about the long-running debate on state building and social change in Modern Europe. Monarchy Transformed: Princes and their elites in Early modern Western Europe will be published in August 2017 by Cambridge University Press. The book revises substantially older notions of 'state building' in early modern Europe. It is argued that there was as yet no notion of a modern state, but that instead dynasties brought together in a haphazard way dynastic agglomerates - like a family inheriting or buying together very different businesses. As this happened, a new elite aristocracy developed from those noble families able to fulfil functions in these new agglomerates and support the dynasty, in turn profiting from new offices. This is an entirely different notion than the older one of the making of some 'bureaucratic state'. Dr Robert von Friedeburg explains, “The upshot is that the modern state developed primarily not as a reality of power relations on the ground, but from the seventeenth century onwards as a conception in people's heads. The purpose of this conception was to re-stabilize monarchy against dynastic instability. “The other upshot is that we must not overlook or ignore anymore that the huge and substantial increases in the economy of scale of politics, from generally much smaller medieval polities to the considerable larger dynastic agglomerates of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, had major repercussions on the relations of monarchs and elites all over Western Europe.” The book contains more than a dozen articles by senior specialists and is a major revision to current approaches. -
BGU lecturer exhibits WW1 diary
A history lecturer from Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) in Lincoln is involved in an exhibition of an unpublished First World War diary at the Museum of Military Medicine. The exhibition explores the unpublished diary of Alfred Cockburn, a corporal who served within the sanitation section of the Royal Army Medical Corps (R.A.M.C) during the First World War. The diary offers a rare insight into the role of hygiene and sanitation within the R.A.M.C, an often-neglected area of military history. The exhibition is the culmination of a collaborative nine-month project between BGU’s Senior Lecturer in History Dr Claire Hubbard-Hall, Dr William Hunt and the Museum of Military Medicine. The research project was funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and Gateways to the First World War public engagement centre. Research around the diary initially came about after a BGU student discovered it whilst undertaking research for an undergraduate history dissertation. The diary belonged to a friend, the diarist’s grand-daughter, who graciously shared the rare document and whose continued support made the project possible. Over the past three years, BGU History and Heritage students worked tirelessly to scan and transcribe the diary. A number of these students then joined the funded project as volunteers in September 2016, which saw them undertake research around the content of the diary. This then fed into the museum exhibition where all four volumes of the diary can be viewed by visitors. The diarist Alfred Cockburn served with the 2nd London Sanitary Company R.A.M.C in Egypt and France throughout the war. He captured his experience of war in the diaries he kept, which took the form of small field notebooks. Alongside numerous sketches, he also collected an assortment of war-related ephemera and trench art that all features within the diary. Nearly twenty years later, looking back on his wartime experience, he rewrote his diaries, which, once completed, extended to four volumes and 1,200 pages. Contained within these pages are details about various hygiene and sanitation practices and technological devices relating to: personal hygiene, disease control and prevention, protection of water supply and its purification and distribution, latrines and urinals, burial of the dead, and disposal of refuse. The project and accompanying exhibition encourages a better understanding of the importance attached to military hygiene and sanitation practices during the First World War, alongside its relevancy to armed forces’ practices in the 21st century. The exhibition commemorates the men who served in the R.A.M.C. Sanitary Companies during the First World War. Entrance to the museum is free and the exhibition runs until 15 August 2017. Find out more. -
Retired RAF Service Woman Realises Her Dream at BGU
A Lincoln woman who spent over two decades in the Royal Air Force before retiring and returning to education will graduate with a degree from Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) in Lincoln this week. After moving to the UK from the Caribbean, Amanda Betts (47) joined the RAF and served as an Aerospace Systems Operator for 22 years before deciding to go to university. With an interest in primary school teaching she attended Lincoln College to study an Access to Higher Education course in teacher training in 2013. At the same time, she began volunteering as a Teaching Assistant at Chad Varah Primary School in Lincoln, before starting a three-year BA (Hons) degree in Education Studies and History at BGU in 2014. Amanda said: “It was always my intention to do some aspect of teaching, but it was only after getting into university that I thought that being a primary school teacher would be my next role,” While at university Amanda joined the Networking Club through the BGU Employability Award which helps students prepare for the workplace after graduation. After initially wanting to become a primary school teacher, she decided that she would be better suited in a slightly different role. “It’s not always easy knowing if a career or particular job will suit you but the Networking Club allowed me to speak to a range of teaching staff and experts all in one place. I soon realised that full-time teaching was not the path for me. “Instead I wanted to work in an environment with children using a wider range of activities and services which would help the child in life, not just academically.” Once back on track Amanda applied for a voluntary post to work with vulnerable children and adults at the St Giles Sure Start Children’s Centre during her third year. She said: “I met a variety of social workers and outreach workers who were dedicated to making sure each child received the best start possible. “I knew that by volunteering I could make a difference to children’s lives too, and this is when I discovered where my skills and interests would be best suited.” The road to graduation has not been an easy ride for Amanda, who not only found out she was dyslexic during her time at university but also got married part way through her degree! “I never did many academic examinations in the RAF apart from oral exams so getting used to reading and writing essays in a short space of time was hard for me. I just thought that I was having difficulties with the workload, especially being a mature student, but I never considered myself dyslexic. As well as all this I was adjusting to married life!” After graduation, Amanda will start volunteering at the St Giles Sure Start Children’s Centre and plans on using skills from her degree to facilitate activities for the children who visit the centre. Amanda Betts will graduate at Lincoln Cathedral with a BA (Hons) degree in Education Studies and History at 10.15am on Wednesday 19th July 2017. -
Lincoln’s Battles and Dynasties Exhibition
By Dr Andrew Jackson, Historian, Bishop Grosseteste University In a room in The Collection in Lincoln is to be found a quite extraordinary set of historical documents and artefacts. It is a collection of a status and importance that very few of us will have the fortune to encounter in our lifetimes. The leading ‘curtain opener’ to the exhibition is the story of the Battle of Lincoln of 1217. Much has been said over the last few months about that bloody fight, which took place between the walls of the castle and cathedral on 20 May, 800 years ago. The tale of the conflict in that year is a complex one, but easily and compellingly followed through The Collection’s displays and artefacts. The story of Lincoln in 1217 features its heroes and heroines, including the ‘man of the hour’, William Marshall, and the ‘woman of the hour’, Nichola de la Haye, Constable of Lincoln Castle. It is an episode that has passed quietly into history, just one of those many events, if a slightly more fraught one, that are a part of the chronicle of the life of the nation. The Battle of Lincoln, for political significance, was the most important military encounter after the Battle of Hastings, two hundred years earlier. If the French and their English allies had won in 1217, then that year would undoubtedly have found equal place in our popular historical memory alongside 1066. Few contests rival its importance and impact in later times: Bosworth and Naseby perhaps; the Boyne or Culloden; and then, of course, the combat that took place in the skies above our heads through the long and critical summer of 1940. After the account of the Battle of Lincoln, the exhibition charts the stories of Royal and aristocratic dynasties, and how they intertwine along with battles and other celebrated or notorious events through our history. Some of the documents are especially poignant. There is Henry VIII’s letter to the people of Lincolnshire in 1536, describing them as ‘rude’, and the county as the ‘most brute and beestelie of the hole realme’. There are the documents that, respectively, condemned Catherine Howard and Mary Queen of Scots to the executioner’s block. There is a letter to Charles II on ‘that monster Cromwell’, who ‘everie night…drinks himself drunke to sleep and forgets his fears’. The twentieth century is arrived at finally; and, from that time, can be read one of the most shock-reverberating announcements in our past: ‘After long and anxious consideration, I have determined to renounce the throne to which I succeeded on the death of My father, and I am now communicating this, My final and irrevocable decision’. So concluded Edward VIII, in his letter of abdication of 10 December 1936. Whatever your historical interests, it is a collection that will leave you rather weak at the knees. Faced by such documents, even the most sceptical will find it hard not to feel moved, and share some sense of wonder at the marvellous, if often messy, history that is Britain’s. If what is to be encountered at The Collection is not high enough in significance, then at the Castle there are also to be viewed the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest, alongside the Domesday Book. Across city museums are at present some of the most precious and exceptional documents in our history. Each one you may have the opportunity to view just once in your life. To see them here together in small groups, and even more so as a whole gathering, is an experience that will never happen again in our lifetimes. >Bishop Grosseteste University is a sponsor of the Battles and Dynasties Exhibition. The exhibition lasts until 3 September 2017. Dr Andrew Jackson admiring a miniature portrait of Queen Elizabeth I from the Portland Collection
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