PGR-led events

PGR-led initiatives make a significant contribution to the research culture in the arts and humanities at Manchester.

Current initiatives

PGR History Research Network - The Brown Bag Seminar

Coordinated by Camilla de Koning
Supported by artsmethods@manchester and the Department of History

The PGR History Network plays a vital role the professional formation of historians at the University of Manchester. As a peer-led initiative, it provides a space to explore research ideas, methodologies and skills in a supportive and inclusive environment.

The Network was established in 2014 and provides a monthly research seminar followed by a roundtable discussion of the approaches, methods and skills used in developing the work. During the pandemic, the Network moved online, hosting a hugely popular range of talks, including the ‘Covid-19: History in 20 Minutes’ flash talks which, for the first time, collaborated with history PGRs across the UK and further afield.

As we’ve returned to campus, the Network has become a popular monthly seminar and social series. The series enables students from across years, and crucially in different areas of the discipline, to meet and discuss work in progress. This is followed by a social event, in which more informal links and communities of practice can be established and developed. The Network is a vital component in the development of communities within SALC and it aims to be as interdisciplinary as possible, drawing upon the rich coalescing of subjects such as archaeology, anthropology, languages and religions.

The monthly Brown Bag Seminars start on Monday 14 November 2022, from 11:00 to 13:00, in Ellen Wilkinson CG.59. All welcome!

Benjamin Freud reading group

Walter Benjamin and Sigmund Freud are seminal figures in the humanities, exploring the shifting configurations of subjectivity and experience in the twentieth century. This reading group will facilitate nuanced discussion of Freud and Benjamin's complicated, often controversial, oeuvres in a lively, informal, critical setting.

Four meetings around four different themes are planned, from 16:00-17:00 on Thursdays, in C1.18, Ellen Wilkinson Building:

  • 26 January 2023: Childhood
  • 23 February 2023: Melancholy
  • 30 March 2023: Reproduction
  • 27 April 2024: Fascism/war

Readings will be provided via a mailing list. Please email Thomas.grocott-2@postgrad.Manchester.ac.uk to join the mailing list and register your interest in attending.

Past initiatives

artsmethods has supported numerous events, including:

Events organised by postgraduates are expected to enhance the professional development of participants as career researchers.

They should have a methodological or theoretical focus and are expected to be interdisciplinary in nature, as well as bringing together research communities from across Manchester, the North West and beyond.

Examples are:

  • research seminars and symposia
  • reading groups
  • researcher workshops
  • atelier
  • public engagement events
  • bespoke research methods activities and training