There are lots of ways to get involved with the work of the WCC UK! Take a look at what’s currently going on…
Open liaison posts: we are still looking for volunteers to take on the roles of disability liaison for both staff/post-PhD and post-graduates. Drop us a line to find out what’s involved!
Financial affairs: we are currently looking for members to serve on a new bursary committee, or who would be interested in shadowing the treasurer and finding out more about the treasurer’s work.
AGM 2019: Next year’s AGM will take place in Cardiff. Get in touch if you want to help out, or have suggestions for a theme.
Mid-career: we are looking for a host institution for our 2019 mid-career day; this has been held in London and in Durham, so we’re after somewhere in a different geographical region.
Working with schools: we’re putting together plans for an event working with schools to bring feminist and gender-informed perspectives on classics to the next generation of classicists. We’d love to hear from you if you’d like to get involved in organising this event.
Our #WCCWiki project, which seeks to improve the representation of women classicists on Wikipedia in terms of both quality and quantity, is going from strength to strength, and is always looking for new editors – the next editathon will be 22nd June, 1-3pm, and you can find out more about how to take part at their project page.
Do any of the above appeal? Then drop us a line at womensclassicalcommittee at gmail.com, and we’ll put you in touch with the right member of the committee to get things moving. We can’t wait to hear from you!
Earlier this month, the Women’s Classical Committee UK wrote to the FIEC/CA programme and national committees about their recent call for papers. This is the text of that letter.
Dear FIEC Programme Committee and National Committee,
I write on behalf of the Women’s Classical Committee UK steering committee and liaisons to express our shared concern about the guidelines recently issued for the FIEC Congress:
It is the tradition of both FIEC and the Classical Association to represent as wide a range of speakers as possible. Panels are more likely to be selected if they include speakers from more than one country, and if they include junior as well as senior speakers. Panels consisting only of men or only of women are unlikely to be selected unless a powerful case is made for an exception.
We are glad to see the issue of all-male panels being explicitly addressed. However, the final line of this paragraph draws an unfortunate equivalence between all-male and all-female panels as if these represent the same sort of problem.
All-male panels have been dominant in the discipline since the institution of conferences as an academic practice. They remain common, and often pass unremarked, yet they are a sign of wider issues about the representation of female scholars in our discipline in many areas, not only conference presentations. Equating all-male and all-female panels ignores the history of women being excluded from classics and from the academy more broadly, and overlooks the structural sexism which still results in women’s voices being silenced in scholarship.
We are also concerned about the practical consequences of this policy for colleagues whose gender expression is not adequately described by the male/female binary, and who may be put under undue personal scrutiny in order to justify that a panel does or does not consist of a single gender.
While we welcome FIEC’s move towards inclusivity and addressing the historical systemic oppression of women through the opposition to all-male panels, we urge you to reconsider your policy on all-female panels.
The Women’s Classical Committe UK intends to nominate members to the REF Classics sub-panel. We ask candidates seeking nomination by the WCC UK to provide answers to the questions below (in brief bullet points) by 30th November 2017, and to send them to the WCC UK’s current co-chair Amy Russell (amy.russell AT durham DOT ac DOT uk). The questions mirror those asked in the HEFCE nomination form, with the addition of question six which is specific to the WCC UK.
We will be making nomination decisions based on the published HEFCE criteria (captured in these questions), with the additional criterion that your nomination should further the WCC UK’s aims (for which see question 6). We will evaluate candidates of all genders according to the same criteria. Forms will be circulated to our Steering Committee and Liaisons for comment, before a final nomination decision is made by a small sub-committee formed from current SC members. A full list of SC members and liaisons can be found on our website. We do not intend to publish the list of those nominated by WCC UK.
Please circulate this call for applications widely, as we welcome nominations or suggestions for nomination from the broadest pool of candidates possible.
Questions for Candidates for Nomination
Please answer the following questions:
1. Do you have previous REF panel experience? Give details.
2. What modern languages are you able to assess in?
3. What are your areas of expertise, including (if applicable) experience in wider use and benefits of research?
4. Provide evidence in support of your nomination (e.g. key achievements and academic appointments; esteem indicators such as editorial posts; experience of research management, commissioning, using or benefitting from research; experience of leading/managing/practising interdisciplinary research; experience of peer review, research quality standards, or of evaluating impact, benefits, or quality of research).
5. Do you wish to be considered for nomination as an interdisciplinary research adviser?
6. How will your appointment to the sub-panel help to advance WCC UK’s published aims? Our aims are:
– Support women* in classics**
– Promote feminist and gender-informed perspectives in classics
– Raise the profile of the study of women in antiquity and classical reception
– Advance equality and diversity in classics
* By ‘women’ we include all those who self-define as women, including (if they wish) those with complex gender identities which include ‘woman’, and those who experience oppression as women.
** By ‘classics’ we understand the study of the ancient Mediterranean world and its reception, including but not limited to scholarship by students and post-holders in academic departments of Classics and Ancient History.
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