To be confirmed.

Past Events

• Women, Art and Violence (March 2019): This is a panel of acclaimed artists and scholars who come together to talk about how women artists respond to violence through their art. The guest speakers, women artists, resident in the UK, and natives of Iraq, Syria and Turkey, drew on their own creative work to demonstrate how they confronted and responded to discrimination and violence using art as a means of empowerment and activism. The focus on women artists for this event is an acknowledgment of the crucial role of women in shaping public debates about violence and war. Read more about this event at Women, Art and Violence
• Creative Practice Research Conference in Age of the Neo-liberalism (May 2018): convened by Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska and hosting keynote speakers who are theorists and practitioners www.beds.ac.uk/creativepracticeconference
• Tackling Hate Speech in the Media (April 2018): The event examined how language, especially on social media, is being used to vilify individuals and divide communities. Read more about this event Tackling hate speech in the media
• Cinderella Conference (June 2017): convened by Dr Nicola Darwood. The conference was inspired by the University of Bedfordshire’s acquisition in 2012 of a collection of items all about Cinderella. The collection is housed at the University’s library at the Bedford campus and shares its archivally chilly lodging with the much larger Hockliffe Collection of rare primers, readers and children’s books which was donated by a specialist bookseller from the town. Alongside the books, are cuttings, tins, jigsaws, souvenir programmes, figurines, and porcelain collectables – each not necessarily unique in themselves, but it is the collection itself that is intriguing. Cinderella Conference
• Dance, Diaspora and the Role of the Archives (September 2016): organised by Dr Jane Carr. The symposium led to Dr Jane Carr and Deborah Baddoo MBE to develop and present a series of dialogic reflections upon the archival process culminating in a journal article for Dance Research.
• Arab Jewry (March 2015): The event screened “Shadow in Baghdad” film and portions of the events were included in a BBC Arabic TV broadcast in 2015.
• Young Arab Voices (October 2013): the event was a collaboration between the University of Bedfordshire, the BBC, the Anna Lindh Foundation and the British Council who funded the travel expenses of a group of young Arab debaters as part of Young Arab Voices programme to participate in a televised debate about the Arab Spring, this was filmed by the BBC Arabic at our Luton campus. See the BBC broadcast Young Arab Voices