On Hope II: Creative Critical Methods Workshop

This is an invitation to hope. To take a leap of faith. To experiment. To play. Welcome to the second annual event ‘On Hope’ sponsored by UCL’s Creative Critical programmes.

In these dark times, we are inviting you to an afternoon dedicated to hope. We will explore how creative and critical modes of inquiry can come together to offer joy and comfort and resistance in a historical moment when calamity threatens to engulf us on all sides.

The humanities are in crisis, as we live under an intellectual (or anti-intellectual) regime that privileges STEM subjects: the simple certainties of algorithmic reasoning over the slow work of critical examination. More globally, the world is in crisis: escalating war and conflict and ecological disaster are posing a real threat to the survival of life on earth. In this global context, we know that business as usual means certain death. The analogy is not perfect, but we may wonder whether – even within the narrow confines of academic inquiry – business as usual may not imply, too, a certain intellectual death?

The humanities are beautiful because they engage with what makes us human. Not in any materialist sense, not bread and butter, not curing cancer, but no less essential for all that. Through humanistic inquiry, we are tending to our collective soul, our cultural heritage and the bonds that keep us together in our diversity. We explore different manners of seeing the world. We return again and again to the past, in order to nurture the seeds of our present, to help us envisage a common future.

This event is a chance to examine the role that the creative critical writing and inquiry might play here. The creative critical is not a fixed method. It is not any particular way of doing research. It is not a set of rules. Rather, it is best understood as an encounter: an encounter with the unknown and unchartered. It is a willingness to depart from the familiar forms and formats of academic writing in order to discover something new. In finding new ways of writing, we also open up new avenues for thinking - anew, afresh, outside and athwart the conventional and stale.

This is the second annual event sponsored by the Creative Critical PhD programmes at UCL and has two parts: a creative critical methods workshop and a book launch. You are welcome to attend either one or both parts, but please make sure to register.

Creative Critical Methods Workshop

12:30-3pm, Room 106, Gordon House, 29 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PP

This is a workshop for people at the start of their academic career – postgraduate students (MA and PhD) as well as ECRs. Come along if you are curious about introducing creative critical methods in your future work. Emphasis will be given to developing a convincing research proposal that includes creative critical elements. The workshop will be led by Dr Mathelinda Nabugodi.

Light refreshments will be provided.
The workshop is open to all; you do not need to be a UCL or University of London student to join. Attendance is free, but prior registration is required.

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Host or Publisher UCL School of European Languages Culture & Society