Celebrating Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London
27th April 2009 - 30th April 2009
Welcome to Arts Week 2009. This is our third such festival celebrating Humanities, Laws and Social Sciences and Law at Queen Mary. The events of 2005 and 2007 were a great success, and I am confident that the programme for 2009 will prove to be as inspiring and exciting as its predecessors.
This year the events take place over four days, and include features on the visual and performing arts, books and publishing, contemporary history and politics, and medicine and ethics. We have brought together a series of activities, including lectures, discussions, performances and workshops that highlight the strength and range of research and study across the Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary.
To participate in these events, we are very pleased to have attracted a number of noteworthy speakers and participants from other institutions and from the arts, publishing, business and the legal profession. And we are equally pleased that we have been able to involve participants from the local area. We continue to recognise the need to transfer our expertise beyond the university arena, engaging our immediate community and the London scene as well as national and international colleagues, partners and associates.
It would be remiss of me not to mention Queen Mary's success in the recent Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). We are extremely proud of the achievements, across the College and in the sector. Queen Mary has been identified as the “biggest star” among the research-intensive institutions with its rise from 48 th to 13 th out of 159 institutions (according to the THE ) in the United Kingdom. Within Humanities and Social Sciences, we have several departments who lead the field. Alongside other activities during Arts Week, our book launch event, celebrating books authored and edited by Queen Mary academics since April 2007, will serve as further testament to the excellence and productive energy at Queen Mary, as well as providing an opportunity to celebrate that achievement.
The sector has continued to go from strength to strength and can look forward to an exciting future. Construction work on the new Humanities Building, “Arts 2”, is now underway, and we are looking to build on the RAE success by expanding our successful subject areas whilst aiming to develop new ones.
I hope you are able to join colleagues from Queen Mary for one or more of the events that are being put on over the week and which showcase the energy and excellence of the research and teaching at Queen Mary and their continued relevance today.
Trevor Dadson, Vice Principal for Humanities and Social Sciences