My First Public Lecture - "Next Generation: Arts" Public Lecture series

Hello, Dear Readers! Welcome back to An Eddying Flight, my beloved blog that I don't manage to update nearly as often as I should (I'm sorry!). I hope you're all still out there.

Today I bring great tidings of glad news: I'm going to be delivering my first ever public lecture next month, and you are ALL INVITED. Yes, all of you!

The Open University's Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences is celebrating the work of its wonderful and diverse body of PhD students by running a momentous programme of public lectures this year. All of the current second year doctoral candidates in the faculty were invited to take part in specialised training and then write a lecture, aimed at the general public, for the series. The best thing about this is that it is FREE for anyone to tune into via MS Teams. You don't have to be a student or employee of the Open University, or a student at all - all you need is an internet connection and an inquiring mind.

They've called this programme of events (rather grandly, ahem) Next Generation. Below is the very swish and beautiful programme brochure, which gives lots of details about the lecture series and all the doctoral candidates taking part (this is a downloadable PDF).

FASS PhD Lectures programme-1

.pdf

Download PDF • 7.45MB

The first series of lectures is dedicated broadly, to the arts, and will include lectures on the topics of English Literature, Creative Writing, History and Classics, every wednesday from April the 26th to May the 24th.

The official Next Generation: Arts page gives you details and the sign-up links to all the lectures that will be available to attend live, online, every Wednesday, throughout the end of April and the whole of May. Many of the people delivering these lactures are my friends and colleagues, and all of them sound fascinating, so I will be tuning in every one!

My lecture will be at 7pm on Wednesday the 3rd of May. It's titled:

From Here to Eternity: Non-linearity in Creative Writing, Physics, and the Romantic Sublime

What's it all about? Here's the abstract:

Zoe’s talk will focus on depictions of non-linear time within contemporary ‘time slip’ novels, and question how these may be linked – especially through the work of Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite writers and artists – to a growing understanding of the fluid, non-linear properties of time as posited in modern theoretical physics.

By utilising practice-based creative research, as well as sharing some of her own creative work-in-progress, she will detail the pursuit of fresh ways to authentically represent our human experiences of time.

So basically, exactly what it says in the title - a bit of creative writing, a bit of art history, and a bit of theoretical physics, all wrapped up in my earnest attempts to show you how these things are truly and magnificently connected by our human need to understand the workings of time. No really, they are. Let me prove it to you!

After each 30 minute talk there will be 30 minutes for Q&A, so if you have comments or questions about anything you've heard (or anything at all, really) you will have the opportunity to either speak up (after turning on your mic) or ask in the chat, and we will hopefully be able to have a really exciting discussion based on your reactions to our work.

Here's the MS Teams Sign-up Link for my talk again, just to make things as easy as possible.

If you're interested in any of the topics on offer, or in attending the Open University, I urge you to attend. These lectures will be fun, accessible, and like nothing you've ever heard before - because the research we're doing is brand, spanking new and completely original. That's the point of doing a PhD!

And if there are any talks that you're dying to see but just can't make it to, live, on the day, they will be recorded and available on the Next Generation: Arts page later on (though you'll miss out on being able to ask questions and take part in the discussion).

I'm really excited about this opportunity to share my research with the world, and see so many of my talented Arts and Social Sciences colleagues do the same. Sign up now, Dear Readers, and be a part of it!