Futures Fortnight Week 2 Event Descriptions

Monday 7th June

Public Speaking…Bite-Sized Everyone can become an effective public speaker. Delivered by expert Paul Dubois from Apropos Productions, this session will give you the confidence to ace presentations on your course and at interviews. You’ll learn about non-verbal communication, how to manage nerves, using your voice and presenting information in a confident and positive way, especially when virtual. At the end of this session you’ll be able to say this on your CV:  Presentation skills: Attended public speaking training to develop my confidence in structuring and delivering effective presentations, using a positive tone and body language and presenting information in an engaging and persuasive way

Unlock the Potential of Social Media This session isn’t about becoming a vlogger / content creator / influencer. It’s about how everyone, whether you like social media or not, can use social platforms as a career research tool and to make a good impression with future employers. At the end of the session you’ll have some great tips and know who to follow to find vacancies, events and more. Here’s who you’ll meet and what you’ll learn: - Tamsin Russell from the Museums Association: how sites like Twitter are used in the arts and heritage sectors to network, run events and share ideas - Dinita Moore – a freelancer and social media consultant: the importance of building and maintaining your profiles online when you’re working freelance - Ellie Gibbons, a marketer from publishers Pan Macmillan: how people in publishing keep themselves plugged-in to the industry using social sites - Ben Mills, a recruiter from Facebook on how recruiters use sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to find candidates, and what you can do to stand out

Using Archived Oral Testimonies in Research This session looks at the contextuality of oral history through the lens of the archive, with a focus on how methodology and institutional objectives shape the nature of the archived material. With a specific focus on Holocaust oral testimony, students will examine how recontextualising archived interviews and recordings therefore expands our understanding of the information they contain and explore how to utilise these sources in their own research.

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Tuesday 8th June

Project Skills for Humanities Students Take a look at job ads often chosen by humanities grads and the same skill comes up over again. Whether in publishing, journalism, the media, law, research or the civil service… employers want people who can do a good job of managing projects. From creating a new app to building a hospital, project professionals make it happen. And you are already managing projects in your life, perhaps without realising it. In this session, brought to you by Association for Project Management, project professionals with humanities degrees will walk through some of their project experiences, explaining the key terminology and why project-based working is here to stay. There’ll be plenty of time for your questions too, so that by the end of the session you’ll have a better understanding of the profession, as well as how to manage your own projects. At this end of this session you’ll be able to say this on your CV:  Project management: Attended a training session run by the Association for Project Management on project fundamentals. Learned the key terminology used in professional project management, and the benefits of effective processes.

Heritage Placements Launch Are you interested in a career in the heritage sector? In this session Dr Matthew Smith will introduce paid research internship opportunities being offered this summer in partnership with Chertsey, Egham and Windsor Museums. Helping you to refine your research, writing for a public audience, and digital media skills, these internships will mix team and individual tasks aiming to bring local history to life and support our local museums.

Wednesday 9th June

CV Review Clinic This is a practical, interactive 40-minute workshop that will help you perfect your CV, tailoring it for a specific role or sector. We’ll talk through key principles and tips, and then you will work through a checklist, with advice from the Careers Consultant, to review and improve your CV. Be sure to bring your CV!

Thursday 10th June

‘Women in History: a Wikipedia editing workshop’ Hosted by Kate Cooper (History) and Victoria Leonard (History), with support from Wikimedia UK.

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The event is for all RHUL staff and students who are interested in enhancing the visibility of women in Wikipedia's history pages (including female historical actors, female historians, and female practitioners in historical fiction and media). The event will follow a workshop format in two parts. In part one, after an introductory presentation, participants will work in small groups to make minor corrections or additions to existing Wikipedia pages. In part two, each participant will set up a new Wikipedia page for a subject of their choosing, adhering closely to the Wikipedia editing guidelines. One-on-one support will be provided during part two.

Microsoft Excel: More Important Than You Might Think Former humanities students often tell us that Excel turned out to be way more important than they’d ever expected when they start their first job. Often they have to quickly upskill themselves via YouTube on things like functions and pivot tables. Save yourself this task by attending this one-hour session run by the experts at FDM. At this end of this session you’ll be able to say this on your CV:  Microsoft Excel: Attended additional training to develop skills in aggregation, logic and look-up functions plus the basics of pivot tables and charts

Humanities and Human Rights: Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge, Schiff Visiting in Holocaust Studies

This year’s Schiff Visiting in Holocaust Studies Professor is Lyndsey Stonebridge, Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham.

 A one-hour seminar based on Professor Stonebridge’s Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights (2020). This is open to all undergraduates and would be especially useful for students of literature, history, and those with an interest in human rights.  Professor Stonebridge’s work focuses on twentieth-century and contemporary literature, political theory, and history, Human Rights, and Refugee Studies, drawing on the interdisciplinary connections between literature, history, politics, law, and social policy.

Friday 11th June

Beyond the Humanities: A Career in Law Whilst pursuing a career in law with no previous legal knowledge may seem daunting, many lawyers have said that they have benefitted from studying a different discipline prior to law. This session will outline how to convert to a legal career. It will cover the pathways to becoming a paralegal, solicitor, and barrister. The session will also address some of the skills that can be transferred from a humanities degree into the legal sphere and which are

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Dressed in (dis)comfort - Bridgerton, Historical Accuracy and the Costume Drama as a Source of Comfort in the Pandemic

The release of Bridgerton did not only play into the cards of those of us who enjoy seeing corsets and bustle skirts on screen but it seemed to have radiated a general fascination with most of Netflix’ audience. Nostalgia and escapism were what people have been looking for – but why and how does the costume drama provide this relief so well?

Storytelling Through the Archive This interactive session traces the lives and experiences of Jewish refugees who came to Britain during the Holocaust through a variety of documents, texts and artifacts. We will explore the challenges and limitations of using archival sources and discover alternative ways of understanding the individual lives of those who were forcibly displaced from their homes. Archival sources can tell us a lot about the past, but they can sometimes raise more questions than answers. We will discover the need for intertextuality when it comes to refugee histories and learn how to piece these fragments together to create stories.

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