I was back in Shanghai again at the close of 2016 to follow up my earlier guest lecture at the Shanghai Institute of Design with a week long workshop. They have a Master’s level programme on Digital Publishing in the Department of Digital Publishing and Exhibition Design but with little Faculty expertise on the web or Internet. After discussion with the Institute’s President and the Programme Convenor we decided on the title, ‘Getting over the Great Wall’, where I would cover the history and development of the Internet, cultural influences on design, publishing online, accessibility and usability design, and information design (it is the Institute of Design). This would be finished off with student presentations of their projects: to design a digital product (for the web or mobile device) that in some way brought together aspects of cultural difference. The cultural differences could be within China itself as none of the students had traveled outside China. The first task was to ban Flash and Dreamweaver and explain why this was the case!

This workshop, of course, also afforded the opportunity to showcase UCL.

Introducing UCL at the start of the workshop with greetings on the chalk board.

Interestingly, I’m the only one not wearing a coat here and that only happened on the first day. Not only is there no internet connection or wifi in the teaching rooms (something we take for granted) but there is no heating either – only fans (look carefully at the photos below) to keep cool in the summer; apparently south of the Yellow River building regulations permit buildings with no heating.

Students in the teaching room – note the coats, hats and scarves.

A workstation and projector is set up in each room but my outstanding TA had to improvise as the remote control was missing (sounds familiar!). Much of my teaching material had been kindly translated by current UCLDH students but I still needed an interpreter/translator. Everything was presented in English and Chinese as they are all learning English too.

Analogue remote control in the hands of my outstanding TA & translator (Qiongpei Kong – UCL IoA alumna)

They felt sorry for me when the temperature dropped further and moved my class to the executive lecture room which has heating. The heater, however, only pointed at the lecture station and it was not possible to move it to warm the students who still needed their coats and scarves. Interestingly, no one sat in the front row (clearly a Chinese tradition too).

The executive lecture room – with heating but only for the lecturer.

As well as lectures, we had a series of group tutorials where we discussed the student projects while wearing many layers of clothing. As a Design Institute, they have very talented artists among the students. The images shown here were ideas for new style masks for the Peking Opera to encourage a younger audience. Interesting and considering how central it is to Chinese culture, only two projects featured food; others were concerned with opera, architecture, local dialects and one with traditional Chinese designs being used on sneakers.

Student tutorials – here featuring a new design for Opera masks.

On the final day of the workshop, the students presented their work. Without exception, it was all visually stunning (it is the foremost Institute of Design with high academic standards) and very impressive as they only had a short time to decide on and design their projects. Overall, what they managed with only a couple of days for preparation was really outstanding.

Giving feedback at the presentations

By the end of the week, the students were relaxed and comfortable, no longer shy. Those that spoke some English took pride in talking to me and forgave my extremely limited Mandarin.

I wrapped things up with a roundup and general remarks on their work as well as some thoughts on the value of education, cultural exchange and what we can learn from each other.

Wrapping up the presentations with my translator close at hand.

We had to schedule another half-hour at the end of the workshop for the mandatory photo session which starts with several group ones and finishes with individual and group ‘selfies’! These get shared across the Chinese social media platforms, particularly WeChat which is ubiquitous there.

Group photo as the finale of the workshop

I need to add a few words about what I gained from this experience. Once again I enjoyed the warmth and hospitality of the Institute and particularly of the President, Professor Wu, who had invited me and who insisted on cooking (superbly and with great pride) almost every evening of my stay. But it goes further, I needed to research the history and legislation of the Internet in China, how it operates under the government’s control, legislation about Copyright and Intellectual Property and how these fit it in with the wider world. This was all new to me and will be fed into my own teaching about cultural and global differences. Above all, I learned more from the students about their culture, about their hopes and aspirations, about our similarities as well as our differences. The students were attentive and enthusiastic and I very much look forward to future visits.

The Digital Classicist London seminar series

Institute of Classical Studies

Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Fridays at 16:30 in room 234

• Jun 3: Gregory Crane (Leipzig & Tufts), ‘Philological Education and Citizenship in the 21st Century’
• Jun 10: Matteo Romanello (Lausanne & DAI), ‘Of People, Places and References: Extracting information from Classics publications’
• Jun 17: Eleanor Robson (University College London), ‘From the ground to the cloud: digital edition of freshly excavated cuneiform tablets on Oracc’
• Jun 24: Stuart Dunn (King’s College London), ‘Reading text with GIS: Different digital lenses for Ancient World Geography’
• Jul 1: Valeria Vitale (King’s College London), ‘The use and abuse of 3D visualisation in the study of the Ancient World’
• Jul 8: Chiara Palladino (Leipzig & Bari), ‘Annotating geospatial patterns in ancient texts: problems and strategies’
• Jul 15: Daniel Pett (British Museum) & George Oates (Museum in a Box), ‘3D in Museums, Museums in 3D’
• Jul 22: Stelios Chronopoulos (Freiburg), ‘New Life into Old Courses? Using Digital Tools in Reading and Prose Composition Classes’
• Jul 29: Silke Vanbeselaere (KU Leuven), ‘Exploring ancient sources with data visualisation’

Each seminar will offer an overview of the subject suitable for postgraduate students or interested colleagues in Archaeology, Classics, Digital Humanities and related fields, along with suggested reading, practical exercise and discussion topics. No advance preparation is required, but you will get the most out of these seminars if you check out the short bibliographies suggested on the programme website.

ALL WELCOME

As part of my recent visit to Shanghai, I was honoured to be the guest of the President of the China Academy of Art, Shanghai Institute of Design. The China Academy of Art (CAA) is the premier Art Academy in China and the Shanghai campus is the foremost Design Institute. Aparently the CAA is also the first art university and first graduate school in China.

Shanghai Institute of Design, China Academy of Art

During my stay I met with academics, discussed cultural differences in teaching and learning, assisted in an English language teaching session and met students showcasing their impressive work on UI design and App design in the Department of Digital Publishing and Exhibition Design.

Students at the Institute of Design

I was also able to highlight some UCLDH research and students’ work in my guest lecture: ‘Designing a Digital Publishing Product’.

Guest lecture at the Institute of Design

What was most impressive was the lecture poster; I was expecting A4 but, after all, this is indeed China’s premier design institute. The image was a quick draw caricture of me and the President by one of his students.

Poster: Shanghai Institute of Design

The Shanghai Zhangjiang Campus is a small one and the main parts of the university are situated at two locations in nearby Hangzhou, both with very distinctive and award winning architecture. The original campus at Nanshan overlooks the famous West Lake and the Xiangshan Central Campus (the largest site) on the outskirts of Hangzhou has become a tourist attraction in its own right and features the Crafts (Folk Art) Museum (which was unfortunately closed on the day I visited but that provides a good excuse for a follow up visit and next time to stay on that campus).

China Academy of Art, Hangzou

2015 International Graduate Scholarship Fair

In October I was delighted to represent UCL at the 2015 International Graduate Scholarship Fair, organised by the China Scholarship Council, in Beijing. This is a major recruitment event where most major academic institutions worldwide have a presence. It is attended each year by a member of the UCL International Office and often accompanied by an academic representative. The Graduate Fair starts in Beijing and moved (this year) to Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai; I only attended the Fair in Beijing which is the largest but a colleague from UCL International Office, Hannah Legg, travelled to them all.

The Beijing event started with a planning meeting (which I didn’t have to attend luckily as I had only just arrived because of flight delays) followed by an evening networking session with speeches from the organisers (bravely delivered in English) and refreshments in the Chinese style (masses of wonderful food accompanied by small glasses of wine). The Fair itself, at the University of Science and Technology, ran from 09:00 until 17:00 (with short breaks for coffee and lunch) with a continuous line of perspective students at both desks for the whole day. I spoke to some interesting potential applicants and kept their details but mostly we both had very similar questions about the entry requirements for graduate study (Masters and PhD) at UCL and how to impress the admissions tutors. We were ably assisted by our enthusiastic local student, Ada, who has excellent English and hopes to join us at UCL in a couple of years.

UCL: London’s Global University

UCL staff and helper at the Graduate Fair

After attending this event last year, I took some time out to be a tourist and benefited greatly from the hospitality of many former students, arranging dinners and taking me round the sites. I discovered how much they regretted not being able to come back to UCL for graduations. So this year, and at the suggestion of Chenxi Wang (ECP 2013), who became the local organiser, we took our own graduation to Beijing. Chenxi organised a venue (she works at MS Beijing), catering, decorations, photographer and invitations; I simply turned up and brought the appropriate robes hired from the UCL suppliers. This turned out to be a really amazing event and truly the highlight of my year. After a short talk from me, each alumni put on the robes in turn, posed with me for photos with a dummy scroll as I pinned a Bentham badge on them; they each followed this with some words about their experiences at UCL (mostly in Chinese but with smiles on their faces so I’m guessing it was something nice). We had photos outside as it was one of the two blue sky days Beijing enjoyed this year (if you’ve ever been there, you’ll know what I mean) followed by professional style graduation photos. This really was a memorable day and one that I certainly will treasure.

DIS alumni and family members at our Beijing graduation

As well as promotional material, Chenxi put together a short video mashing up some stock UCL video clips and new material to feature most of the attendees (it’s on YouKu as YouTube is blocked in China so please excuse the adverts). Just to note that a few more alumni came along a little later and two more the following day as despite being a Sunday afternoon they could not get the time off work (no EU employment law although I’m pleased to say that they are all in full-time employment).

International Book Fair (FIL) Guadalajara banner

2015 was the year of Mexico in the UK and the UK in Mexico. As part of this the British Council organised a series of events including several at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) (26/11/2015 – 09/12/2015) which is the largest literary festival and most important publishing gathering in Latin America. I was invited to take part in the Academic Programme and speak at the XIX International Meeting of Educational Research organised by the Department of Educational Studies of the University of Guadalajara. I was introduced to warm Mexican hospitality and well looked after by the representatives of the British Council and also by the convenor of the Academic Programme and Head of the Department of Educational Studies, Dr. Antonio Ponce Rojo who runs a Master’s programme there.

British Council poster: Museums without walls

My planned talk, ‘Reflections on knowledge production within the framework of UK academic institutions’, was part of the panel ‘The Challenges of Knowledge Production in Modern Societies’ and I volunteered for a second on the following day to fill in for another speaker from the UK who had been unable to attend through illness and hastily put together ‘Digital Humanities Pedagogy: digital culture and education’ for the panel on technology in education. The second session also saw the launch of a British Council bilingual publication ‘Education Systems in Mexico and UK’ and I was very pleased to meet and to get signed copies from the two authors Lena Milosevic (British Council) and Sonia Reynaga Obregon (Universidad de Guadalajara). There will be a publication forthcoming with the talks presented at the various panels in the Academic Programme.

Among the publications I was highlighting, it was after all a book fair, was the new publication by DIS colleagues Rebecca Lyons and Samantha Rayner, ‘The Academic Book of the Future’, which featured as the finale of my first talk on knowledge production. This allowed some product placement (see photo) and for me to offer the two copies generously donated by the editors to the University library (thus ensuring them an international and trans-continental ‘impact factor’) along with some other volumes also generously donated by Ashgate publishers.

Academic panel at FIL (note the books on display)

The FIL itself was definitely impressive and certainly lived up to its reputation as the biggest book fair in the world after the one held at Frankfurt: so many books and so many publishers.

Last night, there was an excursion to the BASE King’s Cross, which is a brand new innovation hub (a.k.a. a place) for people with bright ideas to come and work. There is a similar venue in Shoreditch, called IDEALondon.  From what I understood, they are part of UCL Advances, which is the entrepreneurial arm of UCL, supporting students successfully launch their business. They offer funding, free training and some interesting events – check them out!

BASE King’s Cross communal area.   Photo: Sarah Davenport

We also heard some interesting people talking about their business…

Playbrush is a device that you can attach to any toothbrush and it will turn your brushing routine into a fun game, where you help a tooth fairy defeat some horrible bacteria. It’s to be used by children, but yeah, some grown people might enjoy it too (no self-pointing fingers). The device is a bit pricey, but because it’s detachable and reusable, you’ll only need one per household. In case you’re interested in buying, you can use the code base15, which will give you 15% discount until the end of November. The iOS version of the game launches next week and the Android version two weeks after, and they are shipping for Christmas.

Next, there was Interesting Content.  With clients like Disney, Tesco and 7thingsmedia, they are a digital video production agency, admittedly telling stories informed by data (our BFF in DH), creating online content.  They are located at BASE King’s Cross and are also hiring! Although I don’t remember the mention of an email address, there is a contact form in the website.

Before these two guys, there was a girl who spoke about how pitching her business idea to UCL Advances was the best decision she’s took. Maybe she said it was the best experience she’s had. Either way, she said it was really good, and spoke highly favourably about it. Like most of us, UCLDH students, she has a humanities background, but that didn’t stop her from pitching her tech business idea – and it should not stop anyone. If you are a UCL student and have an idea that you think it’s brilliant, get in touch with them. They might be able to advise you and point you into the right direction. You might even get some funding!

One extra thought!

I noticed that even though the speakers were into humanities and worked with digital, they had no clue what Digital Humanities is. Well, I guess most of us don’t really know, but we should at least aim to make it more fashionable (like using italics). We have a mixture of undergrad (and cultural) backgrounds and different academic and professional aims – and that’s a huge advantage! We know different things, look at problems from different points of views and will have different solutions. That probably means we will have different definitions of what DH is because DH will be applied differently by each one of us. But there’s one common thread, somewhere, beyond JavaScript and XML.

I’d love to know your thoughts about this, so if you’d like to get together to talk about this over a coffee, get in touch!

The programme for the Digital Classicist London & Institute of Classical Studies Summer 2015 seminar series is now published.

Meetings are on Fridays at 16:30 in room G21A (except where otherwise specified), Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU.

Full listings together with abstracts are available on the Digital Classicist seminar page.

All are welcome and no registration is needed.

The UCL Centre for Digital Humanities was founded in 2010, and to celebrate the achievements of the centre over the last five years we are launching a named lecture series, The Susan Hockey Lecture in Digital Humanities. We are especially pleased to announce that Professor Susan Hockey will be giving the inaugural lecture.

Digital Humanities: Perspectives on Past, Present and Future

Wednesday 27 May, 6pm

Sir Ambrose Fleming Lecture Theare, Roberts Building, UCL

In our first installment of the series, Professor Susan Hockey discusses the trajectory of digital humanities from its many years on the fringes to its current position at the centre of the humanities scholarly arena, and its future challenges. Today, conferences, courses and publications in digital humanities abound, and jobs are advertised almost every week. The advent of the World Wide Web shifted emphasis from analytical software to communication and publication tools bringing humanities resources to a much wider audience in classrooms and in the home. The groundwork for many of these new ways of working is in place now. Some time in the future, humanities information sources will be mainly digital. What are the implications of a much broader user community for these resources, and for libraries and archives, the traditional custodians of humanities information sources? How can research in digital humanities contribute to future developments? And what should our students learn in order to build successfully on what has already been achieved?

All welcome, the lecture will be followed by a drinks reception in the Roberts Foyer.  Please note that registration is required.

We have some great talks coming up this term as part of our seminar series.  Please do join us, all welcome!

Registration is required.

Wednesday 28th January 2015
5.30pm, G31 Foster Court

Professor Jane Winters, Institute of Historical Research: Big data for humanities research: from digging into the parliamentary record to exploring the UK Web Archive

Wednesday 11th March 2015
5.30pm, G31 Foster Court

Lindsay MacDonald, 3DIMPact Research Group, Faculty of Engineering, UCL: Image Sets under Directional Lighting: A Richer Representation of Cultural Heritage Objects

Wednesday 25th March 2015
5.30pm, G31 Foster Court

Dr Tony Freeth, Honorary Senior Research Associate UCL, Antikythera Mechanism Research Project: The Antikythera Mechanism: A Personal Journey of Discovery

We are very lucky to have an Institute of Making at UCL. I often walk past its impressive glass front, peer at the collection of things on shelves that can be seen inside, and wonder what on earth they are and what goes on in there. So I was delighted when a group of us from UCLDH were invited to visit and talk about things we have in common with the IoM, and what we might do together. We met the director, Mark Miodownik and Zoe Laughlin, the creative director, who told us about what the institute does. Oddly enough, it’s all about making things, but the kind of things people can make seem to be almost limitless. It’s not just about techie things such as 3D printing: members can indulge in anything that interests them, from farriery to knitting. It turns out that the enticing-looking things on shelves form the materials library: a collection of ‘some of the most extraordinary materials on earth’ as the IoM webpage puts it.

We talked about what kind of things we UCLDH people like to make. Simon was interested in the large, impressive-looking machines, but he was once an engineer. Julianne discussed digital narratives and how people understand spaces and materials both in physical and digital worlds. Claire Ross thought about how the use of the materials library might relate to her PhD work on museum spaces and digital interpretation. Steve talked about some of the cool things that CASA do in terms of making as well as digital, and we mused on future potential for various kinds of collaboration.

In general it was a fascinating visit. We didn’t actually make anything while we were there apart from an important intellectual connection, but I certainly came away with a much clearer sense of what goes on inside that intriguing space.