University Pasts and Futures

What does the idea of ‘the University’ mean to you?

Following on from May's Media, Arts and Humanities (MAH) scholarship symposium, Victoria Walden and Sarah Watson present the first event in the MAH Education Series: University Pasts and Futures.

Bringing together scholarship of teaching and learning, and academic research, this symposium delves into the University of Sussex’s pasts, reflects on potential futures, and explores actions we can take forward in our teaching, student support, and strategic work to encourage human flourishing, sustainability, and support digital literacies and capacities.

What can we learn from the archives, people and architecture of Sussex? How has the concept of the ‘University’ changed over the last 60 years, and how might it be imagined in the future? How can we shape its futures in ways informed by the spirit of Sussex? We welcome all staff and students to join the discussions and activities of the day, which we hope serve as an intellectual and communal start to the autumn term.

Programme:

9.00-9.30am

• Coffee on arrival and archive showcase from the Keep.

9.30-11.00am

• Alice Corble - Postcolonial Library Legacies and Transnational Maps of Learning: This talk, and associated digital archival showcase, situates Sussex’s founding ‘new maps of learning’ vision in a postcolonial global context. It does this through exposing the lens and medium of the “central organ” of the university, The Library: a transdisciplinary nexus of learning and living archive of institutional memory. By sharing glimpses into hidden histories of racialised bodies of knowledge and marginalised figures in the university's development, I will raise questions about epistemic justice and demonstrate the need for a reparative and decolonial approach to developing inclusive scholarship, teaching and learning in the arts and humanities.
• Kate O'Riordan - LGBTQ+ Student Societies at Sussex: from Gay Soc to LGBTQ+: This talk is about a history of student societies on campus, and how the experience of student societies relates to education, and how they help shape national and international politics. It looks at how the groups were positioned as political through their location and in relation to activism beyond LGBTQ+ issues and the University.
• Gavin Mensah-Coker - The Black at Sussex Programme: Black@Sussex is a five-year funded programme which aims to improve the Black Student experience and increase the recruitment of Black students to the University. We do this through celebrating the achievements of our Black alumni and their contribution to British society, stories which have sometimes been forgotten. While doing this, we question both the dynamics which led to this collective amnesia, and ask how far this is mirrored by Sussex's recent sleepwalking when it comes to the isolation, lack of belonging and discrimination felt by current students. In this talk, I will outline what the project has achieved so far, what could come next, and how students can, and have, become involved in new avenues of enquiry. Crucially, I point out that while glaring injustices such as the B.A.M.E. awarding gap have rightly spurred University action, we should be as vigilant regarding those more gnarly crevices of intersection into which our students of colour can fall, as my own research on neurodiverse students of colour will investigate.

11.00-11.30am

• Break [Asa Briggs escape room and archive showcase running]

11.30am-1.30pm

• Alistair Grant - A Guided Tour of the Campus Architecture and Art Collection: My guided tour is 2-3 hours long. It visits the original (now Grade 1 and 2* listed) campus buildings and interiors. It presents a series of site-specific case studies (and a few fun facts, apocryphal stories, and anecdotes) about the University’s history. It explores how Basil Spence’s architecture; Sylvia Crowe’s landscape architecture; the historic, pastoral setting of Stanmer Park, South Downs, and Sussex Weald; the campus art and silver collections; the music and club scene in Falmer House and East Slope; Gardner Arts Centre; the counterculture and protest movements - CND, Anti-Vietnam, Anti-Apartheid, Women's Liberation Movement, LGBTQ+, and EDI campaigns - and the staff and students during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, all combined to shape and shape and inform the interdisciplinary schools and curriculum, sociocultural milieux, and enduring radical legacies at Sussex.

1.30-2.30pm

• Lunch [Asa Briggs escape room and archive showcase running]

2.30-3.15pm

• David Berry - A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex: From Balliol-by-the-Sea to Plate Glass University: This talk develops a genealogy that maps the changes in the sets of concepts and affects that were bound together at a particular historical juncture to declare a concept of a new university, in this case called “The Sussex Opportunity”. The aim is to examine one aspect of a wider project on the idea of an idea of a university, that is, to think about why individuals were drawn to reflect on the questions raised by an institution of higher learning, and in particular on what the ends of such an institution could and should be. Here I will be looking at a new idea of a university developed from the University of Sussex’s early pre-foundational discussions to its instantiation as a Plate Glass University.

3.15-3.45pm

• Break [Asa Briggs escape room and archive showcase running]

3.45-4.45pm

• Joseph Walton - Sustainability Teaching Toolkit Workshop: This interactive workshop will introduce the MAH Sustainability Educator Toolkit, and give colleagues an opportunity to share what we are doing around sustainability and climate within our teaching. How can we make sure these themes are truly embedded in ways that enliven and enrich our various disciplines and subjects, rather than feeling like an afterthought, an extra hoop, or something bolted on the side? How should we be thinking about the risks of repetition, and ensuring a broad and diverse coverage of sustainability topics? Can we forge stronger links with climate action and activism on campus and in the wider world? What are our experiences of student's expectations and responses, and how have these been shifting?
• Dan Axson - Towards a Digital Pedagogies Teaching Toolkit Workshop: Our world is more connected than ever, we're creating more data than ever and digital divides widen by the minute. Being able to navigate the complex and volatile landscape of the digital has never been a more valuable skill set. What is this skill set and how do you create a digitally literate staff and student body? We won't answer these questions, but they set the scene. In anticipation of the Digital Pedagogies Toolkit, this workshop will explore our preconceptions, concerns, expectations and aspirations on the topic of digital pedagogies, skills and capabilities. Expect to leave with more questions than you came with.

4.45-6.00pm

• Drinks and social [Asa Briggs escape room and archive showcase running]

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Asa Briggs Lecture Theatres (Arts A and B), University of Sussex, Falmer, United Kingdom