Hello! John here from the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities. Thought I’d steal the blog from Marianne for a minute to talk about our latest big event and to give an insight into what we’re up to behind the scenes.

Monday sees the launch of our newest training course and everyone is involved to help make sure things happen without a hitch. Material Culture: The Stuff of Research has been developed in collaboration with the AHRC, The Hunterian and the Leverhulme Trust and aims to equip those on the course with robust theoretical and practical approaches to material culture. We have been delighted to have Dr Elodie Roy working with us developing the course and it looks like it’s going to be a fantastic experience for those involved.

The first two days of the course will be held at the newly redeveloped Kelvin Hall building at the University of Glasgow. Kelvin Hall is a historic building in Glasgow which recently underwent two years of development to transform the facility into a multi-use venue for sports, culture and teaching. It is the home to collections from the National Library of Scotland, Glasgow Museums, The Hunterian and world class teaching and research facilities. Those involved on the course will not only make use of the teaching and research facilities but will also make use of some of the collections hosted there. This valuable hands on experience is core to a course in material culture and only possible at venues such as Kelvin Hall.

Shiny new building!

As well as the hands on experience we have an array of leading speakers in the field. Professor Nicholas Thomas, Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, is a leading name in the field and will be giving a lecture on ‘The collection as research resource and creative technology’. Professor Dan Hicks from the University of Oxford is lecturing ‘On the Treatment of Dead Enemies’ discussing the significance of objects in ethnographic museums. We also have speakers from the National Trust Scotland, University of Aberdeen, the Glasgow School of Art and many more.

It’s a two day, two session programme with the second sessions at the fantastic National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh next year. This will be followed up with a Summer symposium presided over by Professor Ivan Gaskell of the Bard Graduate Centre in New York. At the moment though all focus is on the big launch on Monday, welcoming all the students and everyone is excited at seeing all of the planning suddenly in action.

Sadly, registrations to the course are closed. But the masterclass lectures from Professor Thomas and Professor Hicks are open to the public and free, all you have to do is register by clicking at the links. We’ll also be covering the event on our social media channels so keep an eye on there if you’d like an insight into activities on the day.

If you liked what you heard, then stay tuned to SGSAH. We offer a variety of training opportunities like this as well as internships, artist in residences and an awful lot more. You can find us at our website, Twitter and Facebook. And of course at our lovely SGSAH blog.

And now I will return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast. Thanks!