We hosted our School of Humanities ‘In Conversation With…’ last week, with a panel from the school answering your questions and speaking with students.

The panel consisted of:

• Dr Kollette Super - Associate Dean - Student Experience
• Dr Gavan Lennon – Associate Head of Student Experience
• Dr Frank Magee – Head of School

The event was chaired by Lucy Goodacre and Emily Long from CUSU, who were joined by Jessica Isaacs, the Faculty Officer for FAH. We picked out three of the key questions from the event below…

I started in January but am not too familiar with the school buildings yet, what rooms and facilities does the school have and can I access these?

We have a range of specialist areas that we're really proud of. The George Eliot building is where a huge chunk of the teaching will happen and not all of it by any means. The sixth floor of George Eliot has a learning area and languages centre with various relevant books where students can go to work and can book out individual rooms. We're also really excited about the new build that is currently underway for the faculty which is being designed with Humanities students in mind and being designed with some really fascinating cutting edge, pedagogical teaching and learning facilities with various hack spaces. There are also various very adaptable, very current spaces that will allow students to do the kind of things that we're really keen on in the school. One thing that I think sets this School of Humanities apart from a lot of others is that we've really embraced a variety of different assessment methods.
Depending on the course students are on, they may be creating videos, podcasts, all sorts of cool stuff, and facilities are being designed with all that in mind, so that there will be specialist spaces for that to be done in.
There are spaces that students can use now to access both kit (through the media loan shop) and studio spaces, particularly within the Ellen Terry Building and also the wider services that are on offer to students.

Are there any school trips this semester?

Obviously we've all been under the COVID restrictions for the last year or two. I'm pretty confident I'm speaking for everyone in this in this meeting and those are listening to this that we're all hoping to see the end of COVID restrictions, but even in this semester as restrictions ease our students in our English suite, for example, have been to the Harry Potter studios in London quite recently.
They will also be going to Cardiff in March. I think it is the History, International Relations, Politics and Sociology students that have an opportunity to go to Sicily again. That is in March. And so, what we'll be planning to do is to reintroduce those international field trips and UK trips that have been part and parcel of the delivery in the School of Humanities for many years.
It's very much on our agenda and we've already started going back to where we were before in terms of those trips because we know how much the students value them and how much they get out of the experience of those trips.

What extra-curricular activities are there in the school?

There are some really exciting extracurricular activities and opportunities that we have. One thing that comes immediately to mind is the annual Covwords magazine, which is a student-led publication that comes out of our English and Creative Writing course. I think it encourages submissions in poetry, fiction, etc. from students throughout the university. And as I said, that's very much student run.

You might have read about the Gallery of Living History, which is this wonderful project being led by the actor Andy Serkis that seeks to memorialize and celebrate people and organizations that tend not to get remembered in big public ways. We are working very closely with the Gallery of Living History, and with Andy Serkis on that. We're hoping that Andy will come to speak specifically to Humanities students, hopefully next month to try and get some material organized for the first big project that the gallery is doing, which is a plinth that will be in the centre of Coventry celebrating underappreciated Unsung Heroes of the local area.

An element of the Commonwealth Games will be coming to Leamington in the summer, the most glamorous and exciting part of the Commonwealth Games. The Lawn Bowls will be coming to Leamington, so we're working with Leamington Council and Leamington History Group to put on some material around that as well. I'll be working with students over the coming months to develop podcasts, radio programs and various audio materials relating to Coventry in the world relating to international issues, the idea of the Commonwealth and colonialism having conversations about that, and the very local area.

It's very much almost co-curricular; it's the things that students do Humanities degrees for, because they're passionate about the local world, global social justice, all of these important issues. But it's about making that accessible and present in the real world, in the local community. And that's something that we do a lot of. It's also something kind of taking over a little bit, but that hopefully shows just how many opportunities there are. It's something that we try to showcase in the annual degree show, so final year students will soon be getting communications from their course directors from their course teams, asking them to bring forward their most exciting, interesting coursework over their three years to be made visible in a really big way and very global way so that we can showcase the wonderful work our students can do and students construct. We want to show the wonderful work that they have done to friends, family, potential employers, interested well-wishers across the board, and that's a place where we can show traditional writing essays, dissertations, but also videos, podcasts, presentations, posters, all these various different ways that students have learned to express the deep research that they're doing. We get to make that available in an online way. So those are some of the extra-curricular and Co-curricular things that we're working on in the school.

If you have not yet seen your school’s event, don’t fear! There are a number of ‘In Conversation With…’ events over the next few weeks; with a full schedule available here. A full transcript and video will be made available shortly.