Taster Events

Monday 16 June 2025, 5 - 6pm (BST)

Liberal Arts: Culture, Freedom and the Search for Liberty 

In this session, we will use the Statue of Liberty to explore history, politics, poetry and fiction, inviting students to explore how interdisciplinary working can help us develop our critical and compassionate understanding of the world around us. Learn about the value of a Humanities degree to help you connect across cultures, analyse diverse sources, and create new opportunities in the world around you.

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Wednesday 17 June 2025, 5 - 6pm (BST)

Drama and Film: The Notting Hill Carnival 

This Drama and Film taster session will take the Notting Hill Carnival as its focus. It will explore culturally rich practices of carnival, and different ways that performers and spectators participate, for example, through dance, costume, food, music and sound. We will discuss the importance of global histories of trade, migrancy and race relations in the development of the carnival in the Caribbean and London, and consider how it has been represented in news, media and film.

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Wednesday 18 June 2025, 5 - 6pm (BST)

Uncovering the hidden laws of language

How does language work? How do we even begin to answer this question? In this talk, we'll introduce linguistics, the scientific approach to language. During this interactive lecture, through a series of examples and mini-experiments, we’ll examine how linguists approach the scientific study of language to uncover the hidden knowledge about language that we all possess. We will also show how findings from linguistics research can help tackle real world problems. Whether you’re interested in modern and classical languages, maths, psychology, sociology, English language, the sciences, and beyond, this taster session offers an opportunity to discover the diverse field of linguistics, and how examining how language works helps uncover the inner workings of the human mind!

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Monday 23 June 2025, 5 - 6.15pm (BST)

Language and politics: the case of inclusive writing and Year Abroad

This session will consist of 2 parts:

a)    First, we will explore the concept of inclusive language/writing- what does it exactly mean? What gender-inclusive terms are commonly used in English? How can these be translated into non-neutral languages such as for instance French, German and Spanish? What are the grammatical and sentence structure implications? We will also discuss the challenges and limitations of its usage. 

b)    Then, we will give an overview of the Year Abroad (YA), which is an integrated, compulsory part of all Modern Languages degree programmes. We will mention the types of placements we offer, the countries you can go to in your third year as well the benefits of doing a YA in terms of language learning, intercultural experience and personal growth.

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Tuesday 24 June 2025, 5 - 6pm (BST)

What are the tools that we use to understand literature? If we think that literary texts have meaning, how do we find out what this meaning is? In this session we will explore what the term ‘theory’ might mean—is it something we ‘do’? Is it simply a mode of thinking? We will also explore why it is crucial to our lives as literary scholars, both inside and outside the classroom, because it makes us pay attention to the significance of race, class, and gender, and to ideas about ourselves and others (both conscious and unconscious) that we can find embedded in works of literature.

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Wednesday 25 June 2025, 5 - 6pm (BST)

Magic Carpet Ride: Exploring 1001 Nights

We’ve all heard of Aladdin, Jafar, and the genie in a bottle. But where do these stories really come from? How did they make their way from classical Persia to Disneyland Florida, and how have they changed along the way? What can they teach us not only about the literatures of the Middle East, but also the birth of the European novel and the idea of literature itself? In this seminar we’ll compare versions of the different stories from the 1001 Nights, discussing their incredible global travels and the ways they changed fiction forever. And at the end, we’ll even come up with a new one of our own...

This session will be hosted by Dr Hannah Scott Deuchar, Lecturer in Comparative Literature.

Tuesday 10 June 2025, 10.15 - 2.30pm (BST)

Join us at our upcoming Girls into Tech event taking place on campus.

Attendees will gain an introduction to studying and working in the world of tech, through interactive sessions with tech professionals, current Queen Mary students and teaching staff. You'll also have a chance to tour the Queen Mary campus, to experience what it could be like to study a tech degree at university.

Eligibility criteria

• Female-identifying students in Year 12 (Year 13 are welcome)
• Has an enthusiasm for studying a tech-related subject (computer science, electronic engineering, computer systems engineering etc)

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