Arts and Humanities PhD lecture series comes to a close

More than 300 attendees from all over the world met the next generation of Arts and Humanities researchers, during a five-week festival of free online lectures delivered by PhD students from the school.

Nine speakers, all of whom are studying either full or part-time for PhDs in English and Creative Writing, History, and Classics, gave lectures on their thesis subject and took part in a Q&A with the audience.

Topics covered ranged from the practice of novel writing, to Elizabethan funerals, to interpreting ancient artefacts.

Dr Luc-André Brunet, Programme Organiser and Postgraduate Convenor for History, commented on the series’ success:

“As well as this being valuable lecturing experience, it was also an opportunity to bring ground-breaking research from PhD students to a wider audience in an accessible and open way, in line with our core values of inclusivity, and lifelong learning for all. They all delivered their talks brilliantly, and the lively Q&A sessions in all nine lectures suggests the audience gained a lot from it too. It was thrilling to see audience members ranging from current or prospective OU students, to fellow academics in other universities, introduce themselves in the chat from all over the world.”

All the lectures were recorded, and videos of the whole Next Generation programme will be available later in the year on the FASS website and YouTube channel.

The Arts series is being followed shortly by a series from the schools of Psychology and Social Sciences, in Next Generation: Social Sciences, from 14 June, with a new programme of talks that cover the issues that really matter to society today, from policing, to privacy, to AI.

Find out more about Next Generation: Social Sciences