Attendees of the Provost’s Public Engagement Awards.
Credit: Kirsten Holst.

UCL’s Main Quad was the setting for the sixth annual Provost’s Awards for Public Engagement, which recognises the exceptional work that UCL staff and students are doing to engage with the public in collaboration with the UCL Public Engagement Unit.

Bringing together people from both within and outside of the UCL community, the event was a celebration of the individuals and achievements that continue to put the university at the forefront of two-way public engagement activities.

Professor Michael Arthur, UCL President & Provost, opened proceedings by briefly introducing Simon Cane, UCL’s recently appointed Director of Public and Cultural Engagement.

“Simon’s obviously a man of good taste as he’s joined the best university in the country for seriousness about public engagement,” he joked. “We hope that UCL’s excellence in public engagement will become evident over the course of the evening.”

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Attendees of the Astrea conference 2014

UCL Astrea held its inaugural conference on Tuesday 2 December – a day of celebration and support for professional services women in the higher education sector and beyond.

‘Culture Shift 50:50’ was a lively and engaging day packed with talks, activities and networking hosted at the prestigious British Library Conference Centre with more than 200 women from UCL, and other institutions, in attendance.

The Astrea network was founded only a year or so ago by Alice Chilver and Emma Todd, two colleagues in The Bartlett, UCL’s faculty of the built environment. Noticing that there was a gap in the ready availability of support and networking for UCL professional services women, Astrea has been established to:

“…empower women.  And by doing so, to get women to realise their potential. We plan to do this by building a network where women can learn from each other; where our members can find mentors and role models; where they can talk about issues of common concern and where we can discuss what needs to change to reach 50/50 leadership.” (‘Our aims’, Astrea website).

The conference follows on from a year of successful events, many of which focused on key topics that Astrea has identified – career development, resilience, networking techniques – and for which there clearly is an appetite to explore further.

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From Georges Méliès to Tarkovsky and Kubrick, the wonders of space have taken a special hold on the imaginations of some of the world’s most visionary film directors.

UCL’s very own Christopher Nolan (UCL English, 1991) is the latest to offer his response with the hugely anticipated Interstellar, which opened on Friday.

Before him, Danny Boyle gave us his own epic vision in Sunshine (2007) – which was shown at a special screening organised by the UCL Public and Cultural Engagement (PACE) team at the Stratford Picturehouse in east London on 28 October.

The film, starring Cillian Murphy, follows the crew of the Icarus II as they attempt to reignite our dying Sun with a specially designed nuclear weapon that must be delivered directly into its core, if life on Earth is to survive.

Before the screening, visitors had the chance to view the space-themed objects from UCL’s museum collections, including a meteorite, part of a crashed satellite and some historical NASA images of space. (more…)

Written by Dr Sadie Boniface (UCL Department of Epidemiology & Public Health)

Attendees at the launch of the Early Careers Network

Early career researchers should be inspired and supported, which is why the UCL Populations & Lifelong Health Domain launched its Early Careers Network (ECN) on Wednesday 3 September. The afternoon was packed with lively discussion and insightful talks from academics working in population health at various stages of their careers.

The event was led by Dr Ed Fottrell (UCL Institute for Global Health), who is Chair of the ECN’s 12-strong Committee. Ed made it very clear that while the ECN will aim to support early career researchers working in population health across UCL, the real value of the Network will depend on the researchers themselves and the links that will form in time.

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