Tag: university of lincoln

Student bursaries for decolonising work

Oonagh Monaghan / / decolonisation, Reimagining Lincolnshire, Uncategorized
Whose voice are you hearing round black image with white words and ear shaped question mark
Image Created by Ccrow @worldofccrow

As part of the University of Lincoln commitment to engage and involve students in work to decolonise the university, students are invited to apply for bursaries to conduct projects supervised by members of University staff for up to 1 month during the period 12 June – 14 July. Up to 15 bursaries are available: to support student maintenance (£200 per month / pro rata for shorter periods) and project expenses

The Decolonising@Lincoln (D@L) project draws attention to how the colonial past negatively influences our present, operating unjustly to exclude certain peoples, knowledges and ways of working. It seeks to recover silenced voices and excluded forms of knowledge and practice, and to reintroduce them into our teaching, learning, research, and administrative practices. Bursaries can be used to support any activities that align with this agenda, and which will produce outputs that can raise awareness, and inspire decolonised ways of thinking and working within and potentially beyond the university. 

Students may wish to focus on identifying and/or critically challenging coloniality in their subject areas or experiences of teaching and learning practices; or to identify ways of diversifying, decolonising or internationalising the university curriculum, for example by including the voices and works of formerly colonised people, and/or ideas and practices that are not from the Euro-Western tradition. Exploratory research projects in preparation of dissertation research projects are welcome, as are experimental research approaches and conceptual studies and thought pieces. Projects may be conducted by individual students or in collaboration with others. 

We are particularly keen to encourage projects that: 

  • Support the Reimagining Lincolnshire project by uncovering hidden and neglected stories from Lincolnshire, about individuals whose contributions to the county, country and internationally have largely been forgotten 
  • Challenge the Euro-American domination of knowledge production by revealing hidden/ marginalised knowledge that is missing from subject disciplines and practices
  • Involve students working in groups to gather data from staff and students about their knowledge and understanding of coloniality and decoloniality. 
  • Develop understandings of whatstudents are asking and looking for in a decolonised curriculum
  • Reveal where coloniality is present in University spaces and offer ways of challenging this 
  • Helping to Decolonise the Library by identifying gaps and imbalances in existing holdings, and/or developing a decolonising library guide for your subject area (see here for an example) 
  • Consider how to decolonise university systems and processes e.g. training and recruitment 

Suitable outputs include written reports, creative outputs, online resources, public exhibitions, blogs, zines, library reading list / event / installation, social media content/TikTok videos.

Each project must adhere to university ethical procedures, and should be supervised by a member of staff, who will advise on ethics and provide up to 3 hours of support over the duration of the project. 

Students who are looking for supervisors or a student collaborator from another discipline or school should, in the first instance, contact the member of staff who acts as Decolonising champion for their school.

Contacts for Reimagining Lincolnshire are Victoria Araj VAraj@lincoln.ac.uk and Heather Hughes HHughes@lincoln.ac.uk

Contacts for Decolonising the Library are Oonagh MonaghanOMonaghan@lincoln.ac.uk and Hope Williard HWilliard@lincoln.ac.uk

Proposals should be submitted on the application form provided to decolonising@lincoln.ac.uk . The deadline for submission of applications is 26 May.

The applicationform is here:
student summer D@L project proposal form 2023 final.docx

You will be informed by 2 June whether your project has been selected for support. The selection process will focus on: viability of the project, clarity of the output, affinity to the theme. 

How to Never Pay for Access to Journal Articles

Hope Williard / / Library, Research

As we get closer to the start of the new year, the Academic Subject Librarians are starting to hear from students who are looking for help accessing content for their research. This post offers some tips for what do when you’re struggling to find that key article that everyone is citing…

First, as a member of the University, you never need to pay for access to academic journal articles. If you start your research on Google Scholar, find an article that looks great, but hit a paywall, try searching for the title of the article on the library website—we offer access to many, many thousands of journal articles. What we don’t have ourselves, we can often borrow for you!

Second, try installing a browser extension called Lean Library—it links up with our website and steers you towards links to access content that we pay for, but that would otherwise appear to be behind a paywall if you aren’t regularly logged into or using our site. If you are being really thorough, you might then want to…

Third, double check our library’s journal holdings. Despite the vastness of the internet, not all academic research is easily available online. For instance, you might want a digital copy of an article that was published in 1992, but the publisher has only digitised articles from 1995 to the present. A search of our journals via Electronic Journals or Browzine is an easy way to quickly check for access issues of this sort. Don’t worry if our library doesn’t offer access to an article, because we might be able to obtain it from another library for you–this is called interlibrary loans.

Finally, if a search of the internet, our websites, and our journals turns up nothing, you can request an interlibrary loan by filling out our request form. Select the type of material you want to find, ‘journal article,’ from the drop-down menu. Interlibrary loans are free for you and delivered straight to your inbox—article loans tend to arrive within 3-5 working days. The article is then yours to download, keep, and use in your research.

And there you are–in three or four steps, you have gone from not being able to access materials you need for your research, to having what you need at your fingertips.

If you are struggling to access academic content or have any questions about how to find research materials, remember that your academic subject librarian is always here to help. We can speak with you about your research by appointment (a perfect option if you have several articles you’re trying to track down or if you’d like a refresher on what databases or journals might be useful for your topic). You can also email us questions about finding material.

Best of luck with your research!

A Celebration of Women in Medicine

Hope Williard / / Women's History Month

March is women’s history month and the library blog is celebrating by featuring posts about the lives and stories of women. This first post is by George Grant, library assistant at the Ross Library. Thank you for writing for us, George! We would love to hear your comments and questions about the posts: please tweet us @GCWLibrary, email us at library@lincoln.ac.uk, or tell us your thoughts in the comments section at the end of the post.

The role played by women in the history of medicine is a storied and contentious one. It is defined by the struggle against the formalised and male led medical field which often side-lined and overlooked the important role of women. From the Renaissance writers who tactfully avoided the works of classical female medical practitioners, to the role of the church in labelling medicine/wise women as witches, women have, at least in Western Europe, been forcefully kept out of the more formalised aspects of medicine. This began to change in the mid-nineteenth century, with the rise and growth of movements advocating for the improvement in women’s legal and education rights. These movements led many women to question their position in society and to push into fields that had previously been closed to them.[1] The following three short biographies show how, in this period, women were able to make significant headway into the professional medical field by gaining medical qualifications against significant opposition. They worked to inspire each other and train the next generation of female doctors. As it stands today, over half of GPs in the UK are women. This staggering change in less than 200 years was built on the foundations laid by these women and others like them[2] Continue reading “A Celebration of Women in Medicine”

LGBT+ History Month Reading list

Oonagh Monaghan / / #LGBTHM22, arts, bisexual, gay, lesbian, LGBT+ History Month, LGBTQ+, Library, queer, transgender

For 2022, the Library has a great new reading list which includes many new titles that have just arrived in the Library.  In addition to new titles, there are also examples of other books and resources which link to the theme ‘Politics in Art: ‘The Arc Is Long’

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Continue reading “LGBT+ History Month Reading list”

How young adult literature is clapping back to misogyny

Hope Williard / / Library, Women's History Month

March is women’s history month and the library blog is celebrating by featuring posts from authors around the university about the lives and writings of women. The third post in our series is by Emily Hanson, administrator for the School of History and Heritage. Thank you for writing for us, Emily! We would love to hear your comments and questions about the posts: please tweet us @GCWLibrary, email us at library@lincoln.ac.uk, or tell us your thoughts in the comments section at the end of the post.

How young adult literature is clapping back to misogyny (and how this supports those most in need of advocacy)

I recently found myself writing a defense of young adult literature on my blog. I have always argued for the importance of high quality, relevant teen literature (or YA–Young Adult), not just for teens but for all of ages. At first glance, literature written from a teenage perspective offers the potential for representation that young people may not find elsewhere in traditionally published writing, alongside facilitating empathy for the modern teen experience. Beyond this, however, I argue that YA is a fantastic vehicle for exploring some of life’s most challenging experiences through the lens of those in a life phase where these experiences are new and deeply felt. In the context of women’s history, YA writing provides an excellent opportunity to empathetically ‘clap back’ to misogynistic issues faced by the young women of 2020.

Continue reading “How young adult literature is clapping back to misogyny”

In Defence of the Trashy: The Significance of Popular Romance Novels for Women’s History

Hope Williard / / Library, Research, Women's History Month

March is women’s history month and the library blog is celebrating by featuring posts from authors around the university about the lives and writings of women. Our second post in our series is by Rebecca Norman, a third year student on the BA History course. She explains the topic of her dissertation and how it helps us understand the lives of lower and middle class British women. Thank you for writing for us, Rebecca! This post has been guest edited by School of History and Heritage administrator, Emily Hanson. We would love to hear your comments and questions about the posts: please tweet us @GCWLibrary, email us at library@lincoln.ac.uk, or tell us your thoughts in the comments section at the end of the post. 

When my grandpa found out I was writing my undergraduate dissertation on Denise Robins’ popular romance fiction, he commented that:

‘You don’t need to be paying to read that rubbish at University, your grandma has plenty on her kindle!’

Somehow, in his initial pride that his granddaughter was studying a ‘proper’ subject like History at university, he had not envisioned me carrying out a research project on what is widely regarded as ‘trashy’ fiction; but I’m about to finish off 10,000 words on the gender identities constructed and communicated in popular romance novels of the 1930s.

Continue reading “In Defence of the Trashy: The Significance of Popular Romance Novels for Women’s History”

1900: The Woman’s Exhibition

Hope Williard / / Women's History Month

March is women’s history month and the library blog is celebrating by featuring guest posts from authors around the university about the lives and writings of women. Our first post in our series is by Emma Fox, a third year student on the BA History course. She explains the topic of her dissertation and offers advice to students beginning to think about theirs. Thank you for writing for us, Emma! We would love to hear your comments and questions about the posts: please tweet us @GCWLibrary, email us at library@lincoln.ac.uk, or tell us your thoughts in the comments section at the end of the post. 

For my dissertation, I have been writing about the Woman’s Exhibition held in 1900 at Earl’s Court. This was one of many commercial exhibitions held by London Exhibitions Ltd under Imre Kiralfy who was known in both Britain and the USA for his spectacles and shows. My dissertation explores the exhibition’s representations of women and if and how these appealed to the public.

Continue reading “1900: The Woman’s Exhibition”

Libraries on the Move: Innovating Services for Research, Learning, and Publishing

Hope Williard / / Erasmus, Research

This year has been the first year the University of Lincoln Library has participated in Erasmus+ International Staff Training Week programmes for librarians. It’s been absolutely wonderful to read and hear about the fantastic experiences my colleagues Oonagh and Ella had on their staff exchange trips! This is the third and final post in our series about GCW librarians’ experiences of Erasmus programmes around Europe.

Introduction

My Erasmus programme, ‘Libraries on the Move: Innovating Services for Research, Learning, and Publishing’, took place at the Freie Universität Berlin, a large and prestigious research university, with 11 departments, around 38,000 students and 336 professors. The Freie Universität (Free University) was founded in 1948 by students and staff who felt they could not learn and teach as they wished in the Soviet sector of the city. The programme consisted of a general day of introduction, three days of sessions and activities specific to the four international programmes running concurrently (libraries, career services, personnel development, and internationalisation), and a final morning of wrap-up and goodbye. It was an extraordinary week and I am delighted to share it with you.

Welcome: 17 June 2019

Tucked away in one of the university buildings on Otto-von-Stimson Straβe is the Ristorante Galileo, where all participants in the international programme were treated to a welcome and an excellent lunch. Dr Herbet Grieshop, head of the Office of International Affairs, introduced us to the international scope of the Freie Universität. I was impressed by the way the university prioritises the internationalisation of non-academic staff, providing them with a package of training and external activities including intercultural training, language instruction, and staff exchanges which leads to a certificate and formal recognition by the university. Continue reading “Libraries on the Move: Innovating Services for Research, Learning, and Publishing”

Online Resources for Women’s History

Hope Williard / / Research, Women's History Month

March is Women’s History Month and the library will be celebrating with a series of posts on resources for the study women’s history. We would love to hear your comments and questions about the posts: please tweet us @GCWLibrary, email us at library@lincoln.ac.uk, or tell us your thoughts in the comments section at the end of the post.

Why use online resources to study women’s history?

In my previous post, I introduced two of the library’s databases for studying women’s history. These databases are available by subscription–the University Library pays for them, and all staff and students at the university are able to access them. In this post, however, I will introduce some databases that are freely accessible to all. There is no one reason for using an online database as opposed to one built by subscription. Historians who study women’s lives have (and still do) push back against the stereotype that there’s no evidence for women of the past, which has led to a concern with gathering and sharing sources to enable research. Sometimes research touches on the concerns of past or contemporary communities and so researchers want it to be freely available to all who are interested, or sometimes research involves participants and investigators outside of the university and so for practical reasons an online resource is best. Online resources can be built with or by primary and secondary school students and teachers in mind. And sometimes an open access online database is simply the best resource available for a particular subject you are interested in!

Continue reading “Online Resources for Women’s History”

Library Databases for Women’s History

Hope Williard / / Women's History Month

March is Women’s History Month and the library will be celebrating with a series of posts on using our resources to study women’s history. We would love to hear your comments and questions about the posts: please tweet us @GCWLibrary, email us at library@lincoln.ac.uk, or tell us your thoughts in the comments section at the end of the post.

Introduction

In the first post in this series, I introduced various kinds of e-book databases and how to search them. Books provide both primary and secondary sources for women’s history (think of the autobiography of writer, such as Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road or a study of Hurston’s life and writing, Wrapped in Rainbows by Valerie Boyd) but for additional primary research, you may want to consider looking at a database relevant to the time period, geographic region, or themes of women’s history which you are interested in studying. This post will spotlight two of the library’s databases which focus specifically on women’s history: British and Irish Women’s Letters and Diaries; and Women War and Society 1914-1918. Continue reading “Library Databases for Women’s History”