Cultural Studies and Humanities Good News November 2021

Football, Race & Online Hate

Talking Race

Dr Daniel Kilvington’s co-created podcast with Professor Vini Lander, Talking Race, has launched its second series to celebrate Black History Month. The podcast explores race/ethnicity and racism in Britain across a range of sectors and industries. The second series features the following episodes:  

1. Black British Feminism with Professor Heidi Mirza; 
2. Race in Britain Today with Professor Les Back; 
3. Race, Education and Activism with Dr Rita Kohli; 
4. Race and Mental Health with Professor Frank Keating;
5. Race and Sports Commentary with Dr Paul Campbell, Sam Matterface and David McGoldrick;
6. Race and Sports Media with Nelson Kumah and Leon Mann. 

The first episode went live 4 October and every subsequent episode will be released the following week. Listen to the series on Spotify or Apple iTunes.

Community Sport Coaching

Dr Kilvington has also published his co-authored book chapter, ‘Coaching ethnically diverse participants: ‘Race’, racism and anti-racist practice in community sport’ in the edited collection, Community Sport Coaching. Daniel wrote this work in collaboration with Dr Jim Lusted (Open University) and Asad Qureshi (Sport England).

The aim of this chapter is to explore the ways that issues associated with ‘race’, ethnicity and racism can influence community sport, particularly in relation to coaching participants from diverse ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. It begins by considering how ideas of ‘race’, ethnicity and racism have shaped  sporting structures and cultures, including coaching contexts. Here, the authors draw on the concepts of systemic racism and whiteness to examine the racialised power dynamics that continue to exclude minoritised coaches and participants. An overview of the policy landscape related to race equality in sport coaching is then provided - focusing specifically on British sport and English football – to highlight the organisational response to the lack of minoritised coaches in sport. The chapter then shifts to a practitioner focus, first by assessing what factors might contribute to an anti-racist perspective in a coach, and then by offering some recommendations as to what anti-racist coaching practice might look like - before, during and after a coaching session. Readers are encouraged to reflect on how this specifically anti-racist approach contrasts with existing popular coaching practices, particularly when working with ethnically diverse participants.

Tackling Online Hate in Football

Daniel appeared on a Beckett Talks podcast discussing his recent AHRC Large Grant Award, ‘Tackling Online Hate in Football’. The podcast, which featured grant collaborator Dr Tom Fletcher, explored the evolution of the grant, motivations for online hate, what the project’s outcomes are, and how the research intends to achieve impact. Both Daniel and Tom were interviewed by Professor Leanne Norman, Director of the Research Centre for Social Justice in Sport and Society.

Daniel was also interviewed and featured within an extended article by the French publication, SoFoot, for an article exploring football and online racism.

Sporting Heritage Annual Conference

Lastly Dr Kilvington was an invited speaker at the Sporting Heritage annual conference, which took place Wednesday 20 October on Zoom. He was asked to present on the history of British South Asians in sport, with a focus on football. After explaining the history of this involvement, or exclusion one could suggest, Daniel then outlined barriers to progression and put forward a series of solutions in order to achieve inclusion within the so called ‘beautiful game’.

Nasser Hussain's Poetry

Dr Nasser Hussain took part in an episode of BBC Free thinking, alongside Forward prize nominee Kayo Chingonyi, Utah’s Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal, and Next Generation thinker Florenece Hazrat for a discussion of innovation and experimentation in poetry.

More recently, on September 29th, Nasser took part in the virtual launch of Susan Holbrook’s latest book with Coach House Books (Toronto), which he had the great pleasure of editing for the press.

And on Sunday the 24th of October, Nasser took part in a discussion panel sponsored by the Forward Prize and The Poetry School (London), alongside fellow Ledbury Critics Stephanie Sy-Quia and Olawaseun Olayiwola, which was well attended and warmly received – and they also predicted the winner of the Best Single Poem!

Recycling and WWII

Henry Irving’s research on the history of recycling has been featured by letsrecycle.com, the leading information provider for the recycling industry in the UK. The website interviewed Henry about the implementation challenges of a government proposal to introduce consistent recycling collections across England. It is a suggestion that echoes the ambition of the wartime Ministry of Supply, which ran into trouble when its plans were rolled out by local authorities.

The interview drew on a recently published History & Policy paper, where Henry argues that an amended timetable is needed to avoid unnecessary problems. The paper is based on a combination of archival research, contemporary policy documents and opinion polls inspired by wartime surveys. It was made possible by research support from the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities.

In this case, history provides a valuable opportunity to learn from past mistakes because the botched roll out of a consistent recycling scheme in 1940 undermined the benefits it was supposed to achieve.

Published Research

Dr Simon Morgan's essay 'Material Radicalism: Commemorative Ceramics and Political Narratives in the Age of Peterloo' has just been published in a collection of essays entitled Political Objects in the Age of Revolution.  The collection is edited by Enrico Francia and Carlotta Sorba of the University of Padua, and is published in Rome by Viella Press.  It emerged from a conference on material culture in European politics at the University of Padua in 2016, which Simon attended during a period of internally funded research buyout.

Professor Ruth Robbins has been interviewed for a Leeds library podcast speaking about the late Victorian era, the Leeds Library’s Victorian fiction collection, biography, subjectivity and her book Literary Feminisms.

Dr James McGrath was a research consultant for a feature on ITV's Good Morning Britain on Friday 22 October, celebrating the life and legacy of Lord Woodbine (Harold Phillips), Calypso singer, steelpannist and mentor to The Beatles. 

Intertwining Threads

'Intertwining Threads' is the title of Lisa Taylor's collaboration with artist Catherine Bertola and the ex-industrial carpet manufacturing village Bailliff Bridge. Open for one week (25-29 October), the exhibition attracted a mixed constituency of ex-Firths workers and both long-standing and newer residents to the village. The event attracted the attention of the local press (attach article below). The photographs depict workshops where ex-workers demonstrated the importance of the Weaver's Knot to newer residents of Bailliff Bridge.
 
This exhibition is just one element in a suite of public engagement activities aligned to this project. Lisa and research assistant Zoe Moreton have also delivered interactive sessions about the history of Firths Carpets for junior and infants at Bailliff Bridge school (Lisa is ex-alumni). Further activities, designed to bring community together are in the diary for November. They include a visit to view the Firths archive at Bankfield Museum and a trip Calderdale Industrial Museum to see looms in action!

Disability and the Pandemic

Jamie Sowden, a student on the MA Media and Culture course completed a major project exploring the dehumanisation of disabled people in the UK during the height of COVID-19 period, which was the first period of restrictions (known as lockdown) from March 2020 to July 2020. To study this period, he analysed disabled people’s social media posts on Twitter. During the major project he was able to draw upon his experiences. He has a visual impairment which includes not being able to detect how far certain things are, such as steps, and having night blindness, as well as a few other symptoms. He suffered verbal abuse during the covid-19 period of social restrictions and this provided the catalyst for his studies into how disabled people experienced the pandemic. 

Jamie writes ‘By collecting tweets, I noticed that disabled people were tweeting about how they were ignored during the pandemic by the government. For instance, apps such as NHS Track and Trace were inaccessible through not providing options for hard of hearing people to communicate with the app when they needed to inform the app of catching COVID, and through disenabling the option to use text to speech functions on the app for visually impaired people. Disabled people also had to rely on other people or online businesses, such as supermarkets or local shops to get daily necessities. This was made even more difficult with unavailable ‘slots’ when shopping online’. 

Jamie’s research findings show that there are changes that could be made to make social spaces and interactions more accessible for disabled people. For instance, customer facing staff could be trained so they know how to offer inclusive and accessible services for disabled people with different needs, aids and levels of mobility.  He has also contacted Lush to suggest training that can be introduced to better disabled people’s shopping experiences and have discussed the improvements that are needed when it comes to their website as it lacks accessibility for disabled people. This has included suggesting, no flashing images, the introduction of text to speech, providing alternative ways to view images such as descriptive text of images for visually impaired people and providing a easier layout of the website. They have accepted the advice and have promised to do more to ensure that disabled people can access the website without the need of struggling and therefore not being able to shop online.

If you would like to know more about his research please email Jamie.

Talking History

Dr Jessica van Horssen took part in a CANADALAND Commons podcast about the history of the asbestos industry in their Rethinking Canada series, focusing on the dirty history of mining in the country. The podcast episode, Life and Death in Asbestos, QC, used Jessica’s monograph as a central guide.

Additionally, at the DEAP Autumn Forum, Jessica spoke on embedding employability on the History course to form a unique USP that gives our students a distinct advantage post-graduation. Feedback from the talk was extremely positive, with the head of CLT deciding she wanted to take a History degree with us, and many others realising they had seen examples of the great work our students have done around Leeds. 

Graduate and Research Student Update

Former BA (Hons) History student, Sophia Lambert recently told us about her current work with Leeds Museums and Galleries and how her studies had a lot of influence on her approach to the project.  

PhD student, Katja Brown has recently been shortlisted by Hedgehog Poetry Press for the Nicely Folded Paper- pamphlet competition coming in at number 2 on the list. She submitted 27 poems covering the theme of recovery of trauma and dreamscapes in a range of lengths and creative structures. Having already been published by Three Drops from a Cauldron and shortlisted by Hive South Yorkshire Poetry, Katja say's writing poetry is so different to writing prose, (for which she is already published) and it is the deliberateness of the art form that draws her in. She is interested in growing her recognition with poetry presses and publishers and sees this amazing win as another steppingstone to beginning her career as a poet.