The University of Essex Podcast

The University of Essex and Glowinkowski International are working together to develop and test a new tool which will analyse staff attitudes to see how closely their values match the overall corporate view.

Alongside his studies Rhys Stevenson manages to oversee Global Metal Apocalypse [http://globalmetalapocalypse.weebly.com/], a blog which aims to give bands from around the world an international platform for their music. His Business Management degree is helping him develop the site commercially, but has also been vital in developing his blogging skills. Now he has been nominated twice in the UK Blog Awards (#UKBA14) in the Arts and Culture category and Young Persons category following an online vote. Rhys will find out on Friday 25 April if he has won. Find out more: www.essex.ac.uk/news/event.aspx?e_id=6450

Shortly after the start of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, Professor Sir Nigel Rodley, Chair of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex visited the country. He was United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and was asked to go to Rwanda as part of a joint UN mission. Here he describes what he saw and recorded alongside his thoughts on how attitudes to intervention have changed since the Rwandan Genocide.

David Lammy MP spoke at the University of Essex on the subject of 'After the 2011 Riots: Where We’ve Got To and Where We Need to Go' offing a unique insights into political and community responses to the riots. This event was jointly sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Centre for Criminology.

To find out more about the Department of Sociology go to: http://www.essex.ac.uk/sociology/ and for the Centre for Criminology go to: http://www.essex.ac.uk/sociology/research/centres/centre_criminology/default.aspx

Claire Simmons, Marina Tondo and Rafat Sub Laban, all students on our LLM International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, explain why all law students should consider taking part in Jean-Pictet, an international mock conflict simulation organised by the International Red Cross. They talk about why they wanted to take part in the event in, what skills they learned, and why their Essex education will help them in their future careers. Find out more about their achievement: http://www.essex.ac.uk/news/event.aspx?e_id=6360

A packed room heard two contrasting but complementary papers from the University’s own Professor Emeritus of Art History, Jules Lubbock and another expert on university architecture, Dr William Whyte from Oxford. Their theme was ‘Building the New University’, with Dr Whyte, in a paper that bristled with striking quotations, providing a broad but subtle overview of British academic building in the mid-twentieth century and Prof. Lubbock concentrating on the tale of how the Essex campus came to take the shape it did in the mid-1960s.

To find out more go to: http://www.essex.ac.uk/history/news_and_seminars/newsEvent.aspx?e_id=6359

The Independent newspaper noted that, 'For many years, Ken Worpole has been one of the shrewdest and sharpest observers of the English social landscape.' In the 2011 lecture he challenged existing notions of what is beautiful and meaningful about landscape today, particularly in a time of ecological concern, and argued that it is on the borderline between land and sea that many of our most pressing environmental and moral concerns are highlighted.

In this talk, Professor Pretty emphasised the importance of the relationship between people and nature and how the ever-changing world casts a shadow over memory, time and place.

To find out more about Professor Jules Pretty go to: http://www.essex.ac.uk/bs/staff/profile.aspx?ID=1242

Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Ken Plummer, discusses his new book in this seminar, which looks at the idea of Cosmopolitan Sexualities. The global human world is stuffed full of human sexual and gender diversity. Some 7 billion people in some 200 countries are living with a seething world of sexual multiplicities, diversities, pluralities – arguably under conditions of globalizing multiple modernities, accelerating global consumer capitalism, widening inequalities, new media and ever rapid change. Professor Ken Plummer asks how do we live with this diversity and effervescence; how do we live in the Sexual Labyrinth? In this talk, he traces the evolution of Cosmopolitan Sexualities and outlines some of the problems and dilemmas it faces. Ken's book will be published late 2014 or early 2015. For more information, visit his website: http://kenplummer.wordpress.com/.

Primo Levi’s 'If This is a Man' is the immensely powerful and moving memoir of his incarceration at Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 and 1945. First published in Italian in 1947, it was translated into English by Stuart Woolf in 1959.

Professor Stuart Woolf, who held the first chair in Modern History in the Department of History at the University of Essex,discusses his experience of translating Levi’s text, and the impact that this has had on his own life and work as a leading historian of modern Europe.

The lecture was given in memory of Heinz (Harry) Lubasz, a founding member of the Department of History at the University of Essex. Born in Vienna in 1928, Harry escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe to Britain on a Kindertransport; he went on to become a leading scholar of Marx, and eminent teacher of the history of the Holocaust. He died in 2012.

This talk was part of Holocaust Memorial Week. To find out more go to: http://www.essex.ac.uk/history/holocaust_memorial_week/default.htm