FACULTY NEWSLETTER Edition 5 - April 2016

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: MICHAEL NEWMAN Michael Newman, War, Peace and World Order, has was prepared to take substantial risks in order to released a new book, Six Authors in Search of Justice: contribute to its overthrow, and survived a transition to a Engaging with Political Transitions. This book seeks to new regime. Each thought deeply about the evolving makes an original and readable contribution to defining situation with viewpoints derived from a combination of the nature of justice in the aftermath of a repressive lived experience and intellectual and artistic creation. regime. While considering transitional justice as conven- Each illuminated key questions with reference to a tionally defined, this work explores broader conceptions particular country, while developing wider insights. The of justice and is distinct in approaching the subject book demonstrates that their writings provide a valuable through a discussion of the lives and works of six writers: addition to academic analysis and external policy advice Victor Serge in Stalinist Russia, Albert Camus in Vichy that too often fails to take sufficient account of reflective France, Jorge Semprún in Spain under Franco, Ngũgĩ wa understanding, social and cultural contexts and the Thiong’o in colonial and post-colonial Kenya, Ariel specificity of each situation. It also highlights the evolving Dorfman in Chile under Pinochet, and Nadine Gordimer in and multi-dimensional nature of justice and injustice in apartheid South Africa. Each lived under a brutal regime, political transitions.

GLOBAL FACULTY SYMPOSIUM AT NYU FLORENCE Emily Gee, Seeing London’s Architecture In March 2015, I was honoured to represent NYU London, of colleagues from a number of global sites, including along with Eliya Ribak, Cultural Foundations, at the Global New York. Each faculty member submitted an essay on Faculty Symposium on "The Material Archive: The Politics the wider subject and these were grouped into three of Provenance, Preservation, and Place”, kindly hosted by discussions sessions: Collect, Archive and Display. I led the NYU Florence. The densely-packed two days included a Display session and introduced questions about the role full programme of papers around the subjects of muse- of purpose-built museum architecture or house museums ums, display, archives, preservation and presentation. in representing or shaping the philosophy of museum content; the importance of context in how we understand or engage with a collection; and the risks to the preserva- tion of collections when a museum undergoes a change of fortunes or an unresolved battle of ideologies. The assembled faculty with a wide range of expertise and experiences made each session both fun and thought- provoking.

The setting of our discussion was extraordinary and it was a real treat for us to study and enjoy the architecture, landscape and collection at Villa La Pietra. It was also strange to discover that my great grandparents' family name from Florence – Capponi – were the family that owned the house for 300 years! The tiny room of recently restored, ornithologically-correct frescoes of birds dating from the 1740s was a particular delight. We chatted with Brilliantly organized and chaired by archaeologist and NYU London conservation students who were engaged in Gallatin Assistant Professor Hallie Franks and Patrick hands-on work to protect the dresses of the glamorous McCreery, it was a stimulating and productive gathering Hortense Mitchell Acton, who owned the villa in the early of interesting ideas and people. I thoroughly enjoyed twentieth century. meeting and working with the diverse group of faculty and made some good friendships with an excellent group (continued on page 2) FACULTY NEWSLETTER April 2016 02

GLOBAL FACULTY SYMPOSIUM AT NYU FLORENCE (CONT.) (continued from page 1) It was a great symposium that wove together a number of ideas and subjects in an imaginative way. I also found it valuable for gaining a better understanding of NYU and its global sites that will certainly enrich my relationship with NYU London students. At the end, we managed some quick visits to take in the remarkable architectural history of Florence, the cathedral of course, and also Brunelleschi’s Ospedale degli Innocenti (1419-27). The connection of this to the eighteenth century Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury, a minute’s walk from NYU London, was a poignant reminder of the international resonance of social history and museums, which empha- sised the importance of just this sort of symposium.

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: BENEDICT O’LOONEY Benedict O’Looney, Seeing London’s Architecture, is a The building attempts to be as open and welcoming as few weeks away from completing a new project in South possible. Its brickwork comprises banded stripes of yel- London – a women’s and children’s wing for the Croydon low & red bricks from Leicestershire, and the main win- Mosque. It opens during this year’s Ramadan festival in dows have traditional clay tiled arches as in Roman archi- June. tecture.

The Croydon Mosque is one of the biggest mosques in The theme of familiar, natural and vernacular materials is Britain and they have developed their site in in Croydon carried on inside by exposing the south wall structure in three phases since the 1980s. In 2011 Benedict was and the underside of the laminated timber roof. Between commissioned to design a new wing and worked up a the main load-bearing timbers, painted timber slats fol- project that attempts to harmonize traditional Islamic low the arcing line of the curved and inclined roof. architecture with London’s familiar brick Victorian and Edwardian public buildings. A particular reference point The next stages of work in Croydon will be to make a long is London’s Victorian Board Schools with their daylight- mosaic frieze to the front elevation with Arabic and Eng- filled interiors and decorative brickwork. lish script, and to build a free-standing minaret to the front of the Croydon Mosque ensemble of buildings.

The international spirit of NYU London is echoed in the eclectic influences of this new project for Croydon!

This new building will be filled with activity: at the ground level, is the new men’s wudhu (bathing area), loos and a last rites, (janazah) room. Above this are the ladies’ wudhu and meeting spaces. Occupying the top two floors of this building is a bright, day-lit double height prayer room reserved for women and children. FACULTY NEWSLETTER April 2016 03

FACULTY NEWS

Peter Cave, Central Problems of Philosophy, released a Vijay Chudasama, Organic Chemistry I, was highlighted by new book in October 2015 (published in November 2015 Chemical Communications as one of their Emerging in the States), The Big Think Book: Discover Philosophy Investigators for 2015, in a recent special issue. He was a Through 99 Perplexing Problems. He has also written a keynote speaker at the ADC Summit, presented at PEGS chapter on 'Death as Annihilation' in The Wiley Blackwell Europe in Lisbon last year, and recently gave invited pres- Handbook of Humanism, edited by Copson and Grayling entations at GSK and Imperial College London. He is now and released in May 2015. part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN) in Chemical Biology. Clive Bloom, Gothic Literature and Cultural Foundations, recently published Thatcher's Secret War: Subversion, In 2015 Phillip Drummond, British Cinema, was the Coercion, Secrecy and Government, 1974-90, which has external Panel Member on the Quinquennial Review of been nominated for the Bread and Roses Prize for out- the vibrant School of Film and Media at the University of standing radical book of 2015. He has also been invited to Lincoln. He edited The London Film & Media Reader 3: The become a patron of Searchlight Research Associates, the Pleasures of the Spectacle, a collection of 60 essays from Anti-Fascist magazine, as well as a member of the Interna- The Annual London Film & Media Conference, published tional Conference of Beliefs and Behaviour In Education as an e-book by The London Symposium. In the current and Culture. Later in the year he will be giving Keynote academic year he is speaking at conferences in Britain, addresses at both the University of Timisoara in Romania France and Italy organised by New York University in and Trinity Dublin. fhfhfhf (continued on page 4)

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: VINCE MITCHELL

Sabbatical is still an amazing privilege of our profession, ‘Consumer captivity within service contexts; how consum- writes Vince Mitchell, Introduction to Marketing. ers prepare and react to them’, ‘Why should I attend? The value of business networking events’ and ‘The effect of Whilst away from NYU London in Spring 2015 on sabbati- peers vs parents on ethical attitudes towards the internet cal from Cass, I’ve was working hard on earning the privi- of Generation Y consumers’. lege of being allowed to take sabbatical. Although six months isn’t a long time, it is enough time to move big In addition, I engaged in some more practitioner-based projects forward and to gain a wider perspective on the work and chaired two industry conferences on ‘From big daily research and education issues that we all face. My data to smart data’ and a cross-industry conference on main tool gaining psychological perspective was to have a ‘Data analysis to Data Insight’ together with undertaking a different physical perspective by exploring the burgeoning research project for the Marketing Society (the UK’s lead- Asian education market with extensive trips to Taipei, ing practitioner community) looking at over 100 winning Bangkok, Beijing, Hong Kong and Hanoi to visit establish- case studies over the last 30 years of their awards to ana- ments such as; the University of Shenzhen, Chinese Uni- lyse trends and changes within marketing practice. I was versity of Hong Kong and the British University of Vietnam. busy too developing new educational materials including; a new course on cross-cultural consumption which I deliv- Three things struck me. First, the entrepreneurial spirit ered at the Wirtshaftuniversitat, Vienna, a paper on ‘Why and practice of these Asian countries which far outstrips study Marketing?’ for students thinking about subject anything we have in the UK. Second, was the refreshing choices and attending a Harvard Business School seminar nature of the communal aspects of more caring collectivist on teaching the case method. Finally, I had my acting cultures, coming from the individualistic and masculine- debut in a promotional video for our newly launched MSc dominated UK. Third, the quality, variety and value of Marketing, Strategy and Innovation at Cass. To make your- Asian cuisine was a daily mouth-watering indulgence of self smile, check out the video at https:// the senses which fuelled me to focus on publishing a cou- www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fvu7WZpers. ple of papers on ongoing research projects including; FACULTY NEWSLETTER April 2016 04

FACULTY NEWS (CONT.) London, the British Association for Film, TV, and Screen Perote, J. 2016. Multivariate Moments Expansion: Studies, the Société de recherches sur le cinéma Application of the Dynamic Equicorrelation Model. anglophone, Academic Conferences London, and the Journal of Banking and Finance, forthcoming. DOI: 1.1016/j.bankfin.2015.12.012 Mediterranean Studies Association. In July 2016 he will direct FILM & MEDIA 2016: The Fifth Annual London Film Ñíguez, T. M. 2016. Evaluating Monthly Volatility & Media Conference - Questions of Cultural Value and in Forecasts using Proxies at Different Frequencies. Finance the course of the year will publish a further edited Research Letters, forthcoming. DOI: 10.1016/ collection, The London Film & Media Reader 4: Visions of j.frl.2016.01.008 Identity – Global Film & Media. In Fall 2016 he will launch a new collaborative course on World War 1 with Ñíguez, T. M., Paya, I., Peel, D., and Perote, J. 2015. Higher-Order Risk Preferences, Constant Relative Risk colleagues in Washington Square. Aversion and the Optimal Portfolio Allocation. Working Paper 1520. Bank of Spain. ISSN: 1779-8666 (online) Clive Gabay, World Politics, has published a new book with Lexington, Exploring an African Civil Society: Sophie Von Stumm, Personality, is launching moo-Q, a Development and Democracy in Malawi 1994-2014. He has also received a two year research grant from the Arts new scientific iPhone application with her lab that allows and Humanities Research Council (£175,000) for a project people to track their mood and brainpower over time. entitled 'Historicising Contemporary Africa Rising moo -Q is available for free in the iPhone app store, for Narratives'. more information visit http://www.hungrymindlab.com/

moo-q/. She has also won a Rising Star Award by the Scott Kelly’s, British Politics, latest pamphlet, ‘Raising productivity by improving higher technical education: Association for Psychological Science (APS) in December Tackling the Level 4 and Level 5 conundrum’, was 2015. The award recognizes early career researchers who published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) have already made a contribution to psychological sci- in July 2015. He also wrote an article on the same subject ence and also show great promise. for the Guardian’s Higher Education Network, also published last July. Emma Sweeney, Creative Writing, has a new novel, Owl

Song at Dawn, which has been acquired by Legend Press. Trino Manuel-Ñinguez, International Economics, has The press release can be found here: https:// recently published three articles: Ñíguez, T. M., and emmaclairesweeney.com/2015/10/15/owl-song-at-dawn TEACHING CASES THE HARVARD WAY Vince Mitchell Here I share some of my learning and observations from pendence, i.e., from self to between students, such that attending a recent seminar on case teaching by Harvard they see it as part of their job to help other students un- Business School while on my sabbatical. Let’s assume derstand using their knowledge and experience. Impor- you’ve chosen a good case which is of interest to tantly for experiential learning, though, is to give time for students, relevant to the course learning outcomes, and reflection on case issues which again can be done indi- at the right level of complexity. vidually or in groups and can be incentivised through the allocation of marks for written reflections. Making sure First, a key ingredient to successful case teaching is not students work diligently in all the elements is essential to only knowing the way you want the case discussion to go a good case learning experience. and pre-writing out board plans- which will appear on the walls of your classroom as the case unfolds- but also Second, is to give particular thought to the set questions getting students to preflect and reflect. Preflection comes you will ask because cases have multiple ways of being in two forms, individual preparation and group analysis, interpreted and the questions you ask can also be a set of both of which can be incentivised by having to hand in a instructions to guide student thinking. For example, preliminary case analysis, marked or unmarked, prior to ‘What’s the problem here?’ gives no instruction to the class. The bulk of the thinking comes during the class student, but ‘What’s the marketing problem for John?’ discussion, hence it is important for everyone to follow frames and focuses their thinking and the subsequent the discussion. Here, there needs to be an explicit shifting discussion. ‘What’s the marketing problem for John, but of the learning contract from independence to interde- (continued on page 5) FACULTY NEWSLETTER April 2016 05

TEACHING CASES THE HARVARD WAY (CONT.) (continued from page 4) let’s not consider the budgeting decisions’ can also help dents, together with your guidance in the closure of the them in what not to look at. To engage students more, case, derive generalisable principles from the specific de- asking a specific student to pretend to be John and then tails. However, case method can sometimes fall down asking the question, intensifies the debate. Questions because not all cases produce generalisable principles, tend to be open ended towards the beginning of a case which is why the instructor might have to add frame- and closed towards the end, but you can reverse it by works or theory to the case to beef up the learnings dur- asking a closed ended question to get students to take a ing the case sum up. Alternatively, a short theory/ position initially, like ‘who would launch now as opposed framework lecture could be given after the case to delay’ and then use the two polarised groups to unpick discussion covering the relevant ideas which could be their stances and discuss the underlying reasons for their used to help come up with and justify suggested solutions choice. for the case. Of course, even without this, the students have had experience of working through problems with Third, is the case teacher skill in responding which the aid of group discussion and an experienced facilitator. sometimes requires unlearning the habit that every com- ment requires the lecturer to give a wordy response. Seventh, is out of date cases as perceived by students. Sometimes, a gesture or acknowledgement, asking the Here you can rightly insist the learnings are still relevant, class to comment, restating the comment for clarification, rather than defensively defending the use of a 1980s pushing the idea to an extreme, or simply saying nothing, case, the suggestion is to find a really old case from 50, can all to be used instead of giving your opinion. 100 or even 200 years ago and show how it can be useful in teaching us lessons. Then the criticism of irrelevance Fourth is to understand that students can become diminishes and relatively speaking, your 1980’s case is frustrated and even confused with the analysis. However, really quite new. This, together with some very recent this confusion is the glue on which, when the theory or cases, should address most students’ concerns. framework solution is poured later, the theory will stick. The less the frustration and working the problem, the less Finally, as the case method is highly didactic, it exposes impact the framework, theory or solution will have. At the relationship between lecturer and the class like few this stage, it’s not a bad technique to go sometimes into other teaching techniques. To keep this on track, Harvard ‘meta comment’ mode and explore what’s happening in advocate some quick feedback during the course. One the learning process in the class room to help students quick, simple and effective mid-course feedback understand and stay with the case journey. technique is to ask students to anonymously write down in three minutes one thing you should quit doing, start Fifth, at least from a student perspective, is the doing and keep doing. Another easy one which is more frustration that there isn’t one answer, there are many about the course- rather than about you- is one thing you right ones. This puts more emphasis on the way of like, one thing to improve and one thing you’d like to arriving at solutions and what the characteristics of good know. Since students, like many of us, often think that solutions are, such as that they use evidence and reason their opinion is generally shared and therefore more well and consider all the important factors. What can also important, one way of dealing with conflicting student be helpful here is to at least identify some wrong solu- feedback is to show the dilemma, e.g., 20% class said tions during the discussion and explain why. cases were too hard, and 25% said they were too easy, so what should I do? This not only shows students that their Sixth, some consider that cases are theoretical. In good opinion isn’t generally shared, but also shows why you case executions theory is taught inductively, i.e., stu- can’t do much about it without upsetting part of the class.

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