News

US elections create a stir on campus

The media spotlight may have been firmly on Barack Obama as he was named America’s 44th president, but the University also found itself in the media glare!

Local and national media including BBC and Anglia Television, the Evening Gazette, together with BBC Radio Essex and SGR and national politics website www.politics.co.uk clamoured to interview Dr Tom Scotto, a US elections expert in the Department of Government, and also to get the views of American students on campus.

Hundreds of students were filmed as they packed into Top Bar on the night of the election for a party organised by the American Studies group and the Politics Society.

Dr Scotto said: 'It was an exceptional night and there is no doubt Obama has a lot of support here.'

 

Martin’s mountain marathon

Mountain adventurer Dr Martin Sellens from the University was among the thousands of competitors hit by gales, torrential rain and flooding in the Lake District during the world-renowned Original Mountain Marathon.

Martin, who is Director of the Centre for Sports and Exercise Science, was competing in the late October long distance navigation event for the 22nd time, and stressed that the aim is to tackle some of the most challenging conditions and terrain possible.

The Original Mountain Marathon is the largest event of its kind and attracted 2,500 competitors including Martin’s son Chris, 24, who was competing in the elite class.

Martin, who competed in the A class, said: 'The vast majority of the 2,500 competitors made it to the finish of the first day without assistance and no-one was seriously hurt. Many of us only found out that the event had been called off when we got to the overnight campsite which, by then, was completely flooded.

'The organisers knew the conditions were going to be foul and the course had been shortened so we didn't have to visit some of the more exposed control points. The conditions were pretty dreadful but we were prepared for it. The competitors have to carry sufficient kit to survive independently for 36 hours, you have to compete in pairs, and you do have to be sensible about your abilities.'

Martin is concerned that media reporting of hundreds of stranded competitors having to be rescued by the emergency services might lead to future adventure races being cancelled unnecessarily. Because teams have to be totally self-reliant, and without mobile phones, he said, they cannot be accounted for quickly but this did not necessarily mean they were either 'missing' or 'stranded'.

[top of page]

On your bikes

University staff pedalled their way to third in the Colchester Workplace Cycling Challenge.

The competition, run by a national cycling organisation, took place over a period of three weeks in October. 400 people from 34 local organisations took part, some of whom had not cycled in more than a year. 407 people logged a total of 2,277 trips, equating to more than 18,560 miles.

Despite cycling more miles (6,244), than any other organisation in the competition, the University only took third place in the 350+ staff category, because the results were based on the percentage of staff participating. 5.6 per cent of University staff took part compared with 17.6 per cent of staff at Colchester Sixth Form College and 7.7 per cent at Essex County Council.

At the University, sports centre staff came out top in percentage terms of staff taking part with 40.9 per cent cycling 633 miles. They were closely followed by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), with 34.5 per cent cycling an impressive 1,199 miles. This was the largest number of miles cycled by any department.

Mega cycling brownie points went to Tom Cudmore from Biological Sciences who cycled the most miles of any individual at 589. He was followed by Mandy Gray (193 miles) and Lucinda Platt from ISER with 191.

Tate PhDs gain practical experience

An ongoing partnership between the Department of Art History and Theory and Tate is helping research students gain increasing practical exhibition experience.

Essex now offers PhD opportunities in collaboration with Tate. Katie Croll-Knight, in her third year of study, is already reaping the benefits while a second student has signed up this year.

The collaborative PhDs are in part a consequence of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s recognition that more a hands on element could be brought to art historical research. Professor Dawn Ades explained: ‘There has been a perception that there is an increasing divide between academic and museum-based art historians. These jointly supervised PhDs are invaluable, not just for the training they are giving a new generation of art historians, but also for the enhanced communication between university and museum professionals.’

During her first 18 months of the PhD, Katie Croll-Knight was given the opportunity to work as a research assistant on the Tate Modern exhibition Duchamp Man Ray Picabia which included working closely with senior curator Dr Jennifer Mundy. She is now researching, with the help of Tate resources, Man Ray focussing on his early photographic career in the late 1910s and 1920s, for her thesis.

Katie explained why the PhD had appealed to her: ‘It’s nice to see concrete outcomes from your research other than the thesis and it is less isolating than a conventional PhD which doesn’t offer the opportunity to work in a team.’

This year a second student, Susannah Gilbert, has started on the scheme. She is being supervised by a Tate Modern curator and is working with the Tate research department based at Tate Britain where she is researching the Latin American collections

 

[top of page]

Also in the printed December edition of Wyvern:

• Top rankings for humanities
• Essex futures