What's on at Queen's

Feeling stressed?  Stiff?  Disconnected from your body? Or just on the look out for a new way to move?

Starting Wednesday 27th March 2019, a new Graduate-led initiative begins to help you switch off from the pressures of work and study and get back in touch with your body.  Nia is a holistic movement practice which incorporates the dance arts, martial arts and healing arts, helping you to achieve and maintain a healthy body and mind.

Classes take place over the next 6 weeks on Wednesdays at 4.45 - 5.45pm in Studio 3 @ Queens PEC.  Free for all members of the Graduate School Community.

All levels of fitness and ability welcome.  No need to sign up: just drop in.  See the attached advert for more details.

For the past 25 years the Washington Ireland Program (WIP) has invested in talented students from across Northern Ireland and Ireland providing them with an opportunity to gain professional experience in the US, to meet with global leaders, and to form networks with their peers. This year they will be be expanding their work through a series of four regional forums.

For 25 years, WIP have invested in groups of emerging leaders and influencers, students from all communities on the island, who we feel have the potential to make a contribution to shaping Ireland’s future.

To mark our 25th Anniversary, we are bringing the conversations we usually host in Washington D.C. back home.

Over four weekend events, we will explore four themes with questions posed by global leaders about the future of Northern Ireland and Ireland:

1) What should it mean to be from the island of Ireland?
2) What should the relationship look like between the UK and Ireland?
3) What should the island of Ireland be known for?
4) How should the island of Ireland respond to the external changes we can predict?

At each event we will have prominent external speakers, to help introduce the discussion.  Then WIP Alums and supporters will facilitate the conversations amongst our Forum Fellows to produce a report with proposed responses.

To complement the forums, we are also commissioning an independent poll of those in their 20s in Northern Ireland and Ireland, to explore their hopes for the future.

We will present proposals from the forums and the opinion poll at a major conference in Washington D.C., and circulate ideas to policy makers at home with seminars in Dublin and Belfast in October.

We are looking for students to become involved in the auditing process of Green Impact teams at the University. As a volunteer auditor, you will have the opportunity to develop your professional skills in communication, project and time management, motivation, and enthusiasm. Volunteer hours for Green Impact Audits can be used towards your Degree Plus application.

Environmental Auditing Workshops will take place on Tuesday 26 March, and Wednesday 27 March from 10am to 4pm in The Main Site Tower, 0G/009 (training rooms behind Junction). Audit training will take place in the morning, from 10am to 2pm. Between 2 – 4pm you will gain experience by auditing departments across the University. Lunch will be provided.

If you are interested in becoming a student auditor, please click here for further details on how to apply.

Postgraduate students interested in mindful meditation programmes in education are invited to attend a Postgraduate-Led Initiative event on Wednesday 27 March at 16.00 on the 9th floor, Law School Conference Room. The event will be an informal discussion in which students will hear from educators from Belfast and New York who have helped start and sustain meditation programmes in higher education over the last several years.

Limited space is available; please e-mail Catharine McGlade at cmcglade06@qub.ac.uk to rsvp or to share your questions about this event.

Impact:Global is taking on a 3 peak challenge in 1 day in order to raise funds for the upcoming project in Bonteheuwel, Cape Town, South Africa. The challenge takes place on the 30th of March and will involve climbing Slieve Donard, Slieve Commedagh and Slieve Binnian all in 1 day - a total ascent of over 7,500 feet!

“CAPE TOWN’S CHILDREN - A GENERATION AT GANG GUNPOINT”. This is one of the many news articles coming from the townships of Cape Town. The people there have been forgotten about, and the level of poverty has paved way for corruption, vicious gangs and no hope of a better life for the people who live there or for their children.

The project we are raising these funds for will be focusing on kick-starting sustainable iniatives that will combat poverty, gang violence and adversity faced by the people living there. These iniatives will provide jobs and give the residents hope of a better future for them and their children.

Impact:Global background information:

Impact:Global is a partnership between Queen’s University Belfast and R-City, whose focus is on improving the lives of young people from cross-communities as well as those globally. This project takes a group of young people from academically underachieving areas of Belfast as well as a group of post-graduate students and mixes them with people from the township in order to tackle problems head on. Solutions are handed back to the community to be implemented, with the support of Impact:Global.

Your donation will have a direct effect on the people of Bonteheuwel, and provide hope of considerably improving their lives. The indirect effect of your donation will be the impact on the lives of the young people from Belfast, who will be encouraged to better themselves, therefore bettering their communities, and greatly contributing to society as a whole i.e. EVERYONE WINS.

Designed to support researchers from all disciplines who aspire to be research leaders in their fields, this course will provide the tools to help establish a reputation for quality and embedded public engagement in the context of a research portfolio.

Supported by all the major UK funders of research and facilitated by leading UK and European engagement specialists, the course will empower researchers through a mix of inspirational case studies, practical sessions and bespoke support to develop a personalised and proactive public engagement plan.

Scientific sessions include:

• Public engagement with research in context, across the UK and European settings
• Leadership in public engagement
• Quality in public engagement
• Audiences and their expectations
• The power of partnership
• Evaluation
• Funding and the role of PE in grant making
• Working with education audiences
• Exploiting links with the priorities of the city or region
• Collaboration with the third sector – including cultural bodies and museums
• Ambassador for the embedding of PE within a research group, project or field
• Interventions for the advocacy of wider institutional culture change towards PE

PG Symposium
Call for Papers:

The Institute of Irish Studies presents a one-day postgraduate symposium on the theme of ‘Irish Identities at Home and Abroad’ in the Irish Studies Seminar Room, 27 University Square on Tuesday 28 May 2019.

This postgraduate-led symposium aims to draw together research expertise across the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (and beyond) and promote the interdisciplinary nature of Irish Studies in Queen’s. Proposals on any topic relevant to ‘Irish Identities at Home and Abroad’ are welcome, and we particularly invite contributions that address the followings themes:

• Irish representation on the page, stage or screen
• Transnational transmissions of Irish identity
• Ireland and global recognition
• Translation
• Diaspora, migration and identity

Proposals are invited for:

1. Individual twenty-minute papers
2. Preformed panels of three papers
3. Roundtable sessions

Abstracts of 250 words should be submitted to Ciara Conway (cconway22@qub.ac.uk) by Friday 26 April 2019.


Irish Studies Seminar

The Institute of Irish Studies welcomes staff and students to its interdisciplinary Irish Studies Seminar Series. The next seminar is on Monday 25 March at 4.30pm in the Irish Studies Seminar Room (27 University Square, First Floor, 01.003) Everyone is welcome!

Dr Dawn Miranda Sherratt-Bado:
‘Sailortown, Slums, and “the Great Ship Herself”: Sinéad Morrissey’s poetic engagement with photographs of disappearing Belfast’

Irish Studies Postgrad Reading Group

The reading group will meet in the Irish Studies Seminar Room, 27 University Square 01.003 at 4pm on 3 April.

This years convenors are: Ciara Conway (cconway22@qub.ac.uk) & Richard Gallagher (rgallagher31@qub.ac.uk)

The reading up for this discussion will be 'Murder: The Killing of Michael Nann and Andrew Murray' the forth chapter of Edward Burke's An Army of Tribes'.

All QUB postgrads (PGR & MA) with an interest are invited to attend.

There will be an opportunity to suggest readings for future meetings.

Refreshments provided!


See the Spring 2019 Seminar Series here https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/IrishStudiesGateway/NewsandEvents/

If you interested please do not hesitate to contact wwu05@qub.ac.uk for more info.

Bio of group organizer
Ting is currently a PhD student and also an experienced dance performer, workshop facilitator and has taught ethnomusicology dance ensemble for the past three years at Queens and performed at Belfast culture night, BBC creative festival etc as well as local festivals over the past five years.