May 2021 at the University of Winchester

2 Jun 2021

With restrictions still in place due to the Coronavirus pandemic, students hosting Climate 4 Change 2021 took their performances online, premiering brand new plays on YouTube. This month also saw the University join a UNESCO network focused on teaching philosophy in the classroom and be shortlisted for an award for social enterprises creating an impact in the pandemic. See our May highlights below.

Original student work premiere in Climate 4 Change 2021

Four original short plays, focusing on the human stories at the heart of the issue of climate change, were premiered this month via a YouTube livestream.

Written and performed by undergraduate students studying Creative Writing and Performing Arts, Climate 4 Change 2021 follows two successful shows at Winchester Theatre Royal in 2019 and 2020.

Glenn Fosbraey, Head of the Department of English, Creative Writing and American Studies, who produces Climate 4 Change, said: "As the University for sustainability and social justice, combatting climate change is at the heart of everything we do. The Arts have a strong track record in igniting conversations about important issues and we hope these four original plays will help to alert people of the crucial environmental issues facing us all."

Find out more and watch all four plays here.

University joins UNESCO global network on philosophy for children

The University of Winchester became part of a unique global UNESCO network which encourages children to think more deeply by engaging with philosophy in the classroom.

As a partner in the UNESCO Chair on the Practice of Philosophy with Children, based at the Université de Nantes in France, experts in education at the University of Winchester, including Dr Rhiannon Love and Emma Goto of the University's Institute of Education, now have an opportunity to collaborate with other leaders in this field of teaching around the world.

Find out more.

University shortlisted for Social Enterprise Mark CIC Making a Mark competition 2021

The University is one of five finalists in the Social Enterprise Mark CIC 2021 Making a Mark Competition, which celebrates the impact that social enterprises created during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Winchester's entry highlights how it has adapted to support staff, students and the local community through the pandemic. The winner will be announced in June. Find out more and see our entry.

University celebrates opening of Winchester's new sport and leisure park

Man cutting red ribbon

Photo courtesy Winchester City Council

Vice-Chancellor The Reverend Professor Elizabeth Stuart attended a private ribbon cutting ceremony at Winchester City Council's new Sport and Leisure Park to mark its opening on Saturday 29 May. The Leader and Chief Executive of the City Council, alongside operator Everyone Active, invited a handful of representatives from the organisations who have played a key part in making the centre a state-of-the art facility for local people to enjoy. The COVID-19 secure ceremony marked the completion of the centre, which was successfully built throughout the pandemic despite the enormous challenges faced by the construction industry over the last 12 months. The University is a partner in the project and contributed to its funding. 

First book published in University-National Trust research collaboration

The first book resulting from the University's research project with the National Trust-Tyntesfield (and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council) has been published.

Edited by Graciela Iglesias-Rogers, Senior Lecturer in Modern European and Global Hispanic History, The Hispanic-Anglosphere from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century - An Introduction (New York and London: Routledge, 2021) opens a window into the interactions of individuals, transnational networks and global communities that made the British Isles (England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man), a crucial hub for the global Hispanic world and a bridge between Spanish Europe, Africa, America and Asia in the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

Find out more about the Hispanic Anglosphere project here.

Blog highlights: Winchester in The Conversation

Three highlights this month from University of Winchester experts writing in The Conversation.

Why imported veg is still more sustainable than local meat

Tamas Lestar, Lecturer in Responsible Management in the Faculty of Business, Law and Digital Technologies, explains why, as a rule of thumb, we can be almost certain that meat products, local or not, are less sustainable than vegetables imported even from the furthest point of the globe.

How Covid-19 has affected overnight school trips and why this matters

Children are the future custodians of our planet and society. Ensuring that they have the chance to access nature - and enabling that through school trips - is something we must prioritise, argues Dr Karen Cripps, Lecturer in Business Management in the Faculty of Business, Law and Digital Technologies.

Wars of the Roses: How the French meddled in this very English conflict

On the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Tewkesbury, a key event in the Wars of the Roses, Dr Gordon McKelvie, Senior Lecturer in Medieval History in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, explains how the wider politics of late-Medieval Europe, particularly France, shaped this important, and often commemorated, part of English history.

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