Nominations are being
solicited for joining the Steering Committee of the Women’s Classical Committee
UK. The
Steering Committee runs the WCC UK,
including organizing events, workshops, and future development of the WCC UK. Two
new Committee members will be elected by the membership, and will serve for
four years, with the option to renew for a further four year term. The Steering
Committee wishes to encourage a diverse organization comprised of
representatives from any background, location, or career level.
In addition to nominations of others, we also strongly encourage members to nominate themselves if they are interested in the roles. Nominees must be members of the WCC UK in good standing (please check with Carol Atack, carolatack at gmail.com, if you are unsure of your membership status). Names of nominees should be submitted to Thea Lawrence, the Elections Officer, by Friday 31st of January 2020.
The Elections Officer will then contact nominees for
permission to place their candidacy on the ticket. The Elections Officer will
require a short CV (1 page) and an election statement from each nominee. These
will be made available on the WCC UK website for members to review prior to voting.
For previous examples of such materials, see here.
Voting will open on Monday 3rd March and run until Friday the 3rd of April 2020. The elected members will be announced in early April, and will assume office at the AGM later in the year.
If you have any questions about the Steering Committee or the process of elections, please e-mail us at womensclassicalcommittee at gmail.com
We are very excited to be starting preparations for the launch of our Short-term Mentoring Scheme. This is the final element of our new mentoring programme, which complements both the Take A Graduate Student To Lunch scheme we run at the Classical Association conference and the Mentoring Triads which are running this academic year for the first time.
The short-term scheme provides the possibility of consulting a mentor on a specific topic for a brief consultation by e-mail, for a short period of no more than three months. The WCC UK will maintain a database of mentors, and assign mentees to appropriate mentors as and when they sign up. Mentors and mentees may join the scheme at any time of year, and people may be both mentors and mentees at the same time.
In order to set up this scheme, we need mentors! The guidelines for mentors are as follows:
You should respond to your mentee’s initial email within two weeks.
You are not obliged to advise on any issues other than those that you signed up to the scheme to help with.
You should be clear and explicit about your ability to comment on any written material, and provide a clear timeframe of when you can provide comments if you are able to do so.
You agree to communicate by email in the first instance. Any other means of communication should be arranged at your and your mentee’s discretion.
Please remember that your mentee may have had different experiences from your own when giving advice.
Please make reasonable time for your mentee, and inform them of the timeframes in which they might expect to receive responses from you.
The scheme administrator will ensure that no mentor is overburdened at any given time.
After sign-up, mentors will be consulted annually as to whether they wish to remain on the database. You can request to be removed from the database at any time.
Signing up does not guarantee that you will be matched with a mentee.
The full WCC UK Mentoring Code of Conduct can be viewed here.
If you would like to sign up to offer support as a mentor as part of this scheme, please use this form.
The scheme will open for mentees in roughly one month’s time, once a database of mentors has been accumulated. Please note that you can still sign up to be a mentor once the scheme is open to mentees.
This scheme is for members of the WCC UK in good standing only; if you would like to sign up to the WCC UK, you can do so here.
The WCC UK steering committee and liaisons note that the University and College Union are calling for industrial action consisting of strikes from Monday 25th November to Wednesday 4th December, and action short of a strike from Monday 25th November. We support the aims of the strike, particularly since UCU is seeking to address issues around the gender and ethnicity pay gap, casualisation, stress and mental health which impact our members.
In our own launch survey, we identified that women were much more likely than men to be in casualised or part-time positions than men, even though about the same number of men and women are employed in the discipline. In a 2019 survey on the impact of casualisation in higher education, 71% of respondents said they believed their mental health had been damaged by working on insecure contracts and 43% said they believed that such contracts had affected their physical health. Other studies have also revealed that young workers are more likely to experience anxiety or depression if they are employed on temporary or casual contracts. The gender pay gap also exists at all HEI institutions where classics is taught; in the HE sector, women on average were paid 15.9% less than their male colleagues in 2018.
We recognise that the decision whether to strike or not is a difficult one, particularly for those in precarious employment. We encourage our members at striking institutions to consult the national UCU strike fund guidelines and to enquire about the details of their local branch strike fund, and then make decisions accordingly. Members at non-striking branches may wish to donate to the national fund or a nearby local fund in solidarity. If you have further questions about strike action, we encourage you to contact your local branch for guidance.
Dr. Victoria Leonardwrites, giving us an update on the #WCCWiki team’s activities this month.
With two major conferences in ancient and medieval studies back-to-back, early July 2019 was a particularly productive time for those who work across both disciplines. The gender bias of Wikipedia transcends boundaries of study, and women in both fields are poorly represented on the largest and most influential source of information in the world. #WCCWiki embarked on an epic mission to rebalance the gender gap at both the Leeds International Medieval Congress, 1-4 July and the FIEC/Classical Association Conference, 5-8 July 2019.
Following an enormously successful
roundtable on #Foremothers in the morning, a Wikipedia editathon to improve
the representation of women in Late Antique, Byzantine, and Medieval Studies
was held in the afternoon on Tuesday 2 July. It was organised by Dr Victoria
Leonard and Sukanya Rai-Sharma, and was co-sponsored by the Women’s Classical Committee (UK) and the Society for Medieval Feminist
Scholarship.
The event was free and open to the
public. Dr Kate Cook delivered an expert training session for those who had
never edited Wikipedia before, which was followed by a communal editing session,
also supported by Dr Richard Nevell. Our scope was wide and included women
related to Art History, Archaeology, Digital Humanities, Modern Theories,
Religious Studies, and Theology as well as History. #MedievalWiki attracted 15 editors, with 14 women and 1 man. We
were able to edit 25 articles, create 2 new articles, and add 4,300 words to
Wikipedia on women historians. The articles we created and edited attracted over
4,000 page views in five days.
Our achievements included a new article for Professor Geraldine Heng, author of The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, and a new article for Professor Ruth Dean, an expert on Anglo-Norman literature. Other articles were improved such as those for Professor Monica H. Green and Susan Reynolds. Pictures were taken at the IMC of Professor Miri Rubin and Professor Bettina Bildhauer which were uploaded to their pages. The page on Llanllugan Abbey, a monastery of Cistercian nuns and one of only two Cistercian women’s monasteries in Wales, was improved and a beautiful image of a stained glass window depicting a nun kneeling in prayer was also uploaded.
Professor Miri Rubin and Professor Bettina Bildauer
On Friday 5 July, three days after
#MedievalWiki, an editathon was held to improve the representation of women Classicists
(broadly conceived) at the FIEC/Classical Association Conference. Katie Shields
and Dr Anna Judson led the training, with productive interjections from Professor
Juliana Bastos Marques. As at #MedievalWiki, 1-2-1 guidance was available for
those learning to edit Wikipedia following the training.
The event attracted about 18 attendees
in total, all of whom were women. Professor Sarah Bond and Juliana Bastos
Marques were notable exceptions as senior women; most people who attended were
graduate or early career women, as is the trend. Both events were well
organised and received excellent institutional support. Our inclusive and
friendly atmosphere made the events fun and created solidarity, and no one got
left behind or stuck learning to edit. We were able to disseminate valuable
digital humanities skills alongside reasons to use them.
Contributors at #WCCWiki, Institute of Education, University of London, 6 July 2019
Through the #WCCWikievent we created two new articles, edited 18 articles, and added 4,500 words to Wikipedia. These pages received over 200 page views in two days. We also uploaded five images, featured on the Wikipedia pages for Professor Sarah Bond, Professor Helen Lovatt, Professor Rebecca Futo Kennedy, Professor Alison Keith, and Professor Judith Mossman. Our contributors created pages for Professor Lydia Baumbach and FIEC (Fédération internationale des associations d’études classiques).The page for Professor Ida Ostenberg was created a while ago and is a solid collaboration between #WCCWiki editors, and now includes an image. When the plenary speakers for CA/FIEC were announced, none of the women speakers had pages, a situation transformed by #WCCWiki.
Professor Sarah Bond, Professor Alison Keith, Professor Helen Lovatt, Professor Rebecca Futo Kennedy, Professor Judith Mossman
There is, of course, still much work to
be done. The keynote speaker at the CA/FIEC Professor Corinne Bonnet still does
not have a page, and the page for Professor Paula da Cunha Corrêa does not have an image. Two of the women keynote
speakers at the IMC, Professor Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli and Professor Emma
Dillon, do not have Wikipedia pages, and Professor Marina Rustow‘s
page has no image.
We are always looking for contributors,
and we would especially like to diversify our editing community. #WCCWiki
continues to attract few participants who are men; we warmly appreciate our
contributors who are men. It would be fantastic to receive more support from a
wider demographic, including men and more senior historians and academics; the
burden of this labour is falling on the shoulders of precarious, under or
unemployed, early career women as facilitators and contributors. The
intersectional representation of women historians online is everyone’s
business, and everyone benefits from this representation being improved.
If you would like to find out more
about #WCCWiki, please visit the Project Page here. You can also search for #WCCWiki and
#MedievalWiki on Twitter without needing an account, and here and here are threads about these events. You can also
follow @tigerlilyrocks (Victoria Leonard), @Anya_Raisharma
(Sukanya Rai-Sharma), @SocietyMedFem (Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship), and @womeninclassics
(Women’s Classical Committee UK).
Stained glass window at Llanllugan Church, depicting a kneeling nun
The organisers would like to thank the International Medieval Congress, Fédération internationale des associations d’études classiques, the Classical Association, and Wikimedia UK for their invaluable and generous support of our initiative, without which these events would not have been possible. We especially acknowledge the time and expertise of the women trainers which was freely given in all senses.
If you’re planning to be at the FIEC/CA meeting between 4th July and 8th July, we are delighted to invite you to the WCC UK social!
Saturday 6th July, 6-8pm, at the Marquis Cornwallis in Bloomsbury (31 Marchmont Street).
There will be nibbles and the first round is on the WCC UK, after which there will be an open bar.
If you’re planning to come, please drop our Treasurer Dr. Carol Atack at line at carolatack at gmail.com, so we can make sure we have enough nibbles laid on!
This reception is co-sponsored by Australasian Women in Ancient World Studies. If you’d like to come and chat to other people interested in issues of gender, diversity and equality in both the ancient world and the profession, you are very welcoem to come along!
We will once again be running our ‘Take a Grad Student to Lunch’ mentoring scheme at the CA/FIEC conference in London on 5th-8th July 2019. The scheme is open to WCC UK Members, and offers the opportunity for postgraduate students to seek a one-off mentoring session from a senior academic over lunch during the conference. Mentors and mentees will be matched by the WCC UK Mentoring Officer, and mentors will contact mentees directly prior to the beginning of the CA. Many mentees use the scheme to seek general advice and guidance, though more specific enquiries are welcome; mentees should note these on the application form to ensure matching with an appropriate mentor. This scheme requires a minimal time commitment on the part of the mentor: a brief email exchange to arrange the meeting, and the duration of the meeting, along with optional provision of feedback.
In order to be eligible as a mentee, you should currently be registered as an MA or PhD student or equivalent, at any stage of the process from registration through to final submission post-viva. In order to be eligible as a mentor, you should be employed on a permanent contract. We especially welcome more senior academics (e.g. Senior Lecturers, Professors) as mentors. The scheme is open to all genders. Mentors and mentees participating in the scheme are expected to abide by the WCC’s Mentoring Code of Conduct.
If you are a member of the WCC UK in good standing, you will have received an email containing details of how to sign up for the scheme. In these schemes, it is far more likely that mentees sign up than mentors, so we are keen to attract additional mentors from outside the organisation; if you are not a WCC UK member but would be willing to act as a mentor in the event of a shortage of mentors, please contact the Acting Mentoring Officer, Christine Plastow, at christine.plastow [at] open.ac.uk. Please also feel free to get in touch with any questions about the scheme
Friday June 7th, 2019 – Worsley Building, (Worsley SR 9.58b), University of Leeds
We are pleased to invite you to the Women’s Classical Committee UK’s 2019 ECR Event: Tools for a Classics Career. This event includes a series of discussions and sessions aimed at giving ECRs a range of resources and information useful for those planning or embarking upon an academic career. The programme is as follows:
10:30-11: Registration
11-12:30: Employment rights and UCU – what could your Union be doing for you?
12:30-1pm: Alternative or small sources of funding – what are they, and how can you find them?
1-2pm: Lunch
2-3:30pm: Academic career planning and prioritising – a discussion featuring academics involved in hiring at a range of institutions, on how to make decisions to best prioritise for your desired career.
3:30-4:30pm: Surviving a Teaching Fellowship – discussion with recent teaching fellows who will share their tips and advice for those working in (often temporary) teaching-only positions.
4:30-5:30pm: Toolkit Planning – a session based on the preceding sessions, aimed at planning and discussing resources which could be put together as a permanent source of help and information for ECRs in Classics.
To register, please contact Dr Jane Draycott at jane.draycott@glasgow.ac.uk. Registration is free for WCC Members, or £5 for non-members. If you’d like to become a member before the event, find out more here.
Thanks to the generous support of the Classical Association, we have bursaries available to support travel costs. Please indicate in your registration if you would like to apply for one of these.
Child-friendly Policy The Women’s Classical Committee UK is committed to making our events as inclusive as possible, and recognises that the financial and practical challenges of childcare often impede people from participating in workshops and conferences. Anyone who needs to bring a dependent child or children with them in order to participate in one of our events is usually welcome to do so, but we ask you to inform us of this in advance so that we can take them into account in our event planning and risk assessment. Attendees who wish to bring children are welcome to do so; the safety and well-being of children remains their carers’ responsibility at all times. The designated quiet room may be a suitable space for nursing.
If you have any questions, please contact the organisers: Jane Draycott (jane.draycott at glasgow.ac.uk), Kate Cook (k.j.cook at leeds.ac.uk), or Virginia Campbell (v.campbell atexeter.ac.uk)
Our 2019 AGM will take place on Friday 10th May at Cardiff University, from 10am to 6.30pm.
Registration
You can register for the event online via Eventbrite; please note that you will need to register separately for the last talk of the day, which is open to the public; free registration is also available via Eventbrite. There are options for in-person registration for the whole AGM, the morning only or the afternoon only. Spaces are limited. Registration is free for paid-up members of the WCC UK, who have received instructions on how to access this ticket type over e-mail; if you need a reminder, please drop us a note at womensclassicalcommittee at gmail.com.
Applications for travel and childcare bursaries are warmly welcomed from postgraduate students, early-career researchers and other low-waged attendees. If you would like to apply for a travel bursary, please e-mail Carol Atack (carolatack at gmail.com), giving your name, institution (where applicable) and reason for applying for a bursary.
Please drop us a line with any specific dietary requirements after you have registered.
Accessibility
The main entrance of the building where the AGM will take place can be accessed by a ramp or steps. There are two sets of automatic doors to enter the building. The building is equipped with two lifts. There is an accessible toilet on the ground floor of the building. We will have the use of a quiet room in a building about five minutes’ walk from where the AGM will take place. If you have more questions, please e-mail us.
Child-friendly Policy
The Women’s Classical Committee UK is committed to making our events as inclusive as possible, and recognises that the financial and practical challenges of childcare often impede people from participating in workshops and conferences. Anyone who needs to bring a dependent child or children with them in order to participate in one of our events is usually welcome to do so, but we ask you to inform us of this in advance so that we can take them into account in our event planning and risk assessment.
Attendees who wish to bring children are welcome to do so; the safety and well-being of children remains their carers’ responsibility at all times. We have access to a private room a short distance from the AGM meeting if it is required for nursing. If you would like to discuss your needs further, please get in touch.
Provisional Programme
9.30am – arrival and registration
10.00am – Welcome and WCC report – Virginia Campbell and Claire Millington, WCC UK co-chairs.
10.15am – speaker – Juliana Bastos Marques (Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro)
11.15am – break-out groups to discuss current professional issues facing women in UK classics – sign up during registration. Topics will include casualisation, the REF and Brexit, and we are very happy to take suggestions. One group will have the opportunity to explore Roman spinning techniques with Magdalena Ohrman (UWTSD).
12.30pm – lunch.
1.15pm – Foremothers panel: our speakers share the stories of some of the women who have inspired them, followed by an open floor for attendees to share their experiences. Chair: Victoria Leonard (RHUL).
Speakers: Absent Foremothers – Mathura Umachandran (Oxford) Finding foremothers as a mixed race archaeologist: challenges and hopes for the future – Zena Kamash (RHUL) When one early Professorin doesn’t make equal opportunities: what lessons do we still need to learn? – Maria Pretzler (Swansea)
2.45pm – break.
3pm – Race, ethnicity and equality in UK Classics: where are we at and what can we do? A town hall style debate which will include discussion of the recent Royal Historical Society report into Race, Ethnicity & Equality in history as a discipline. Chairs: Liz Gloyn (RHUL) and Ellie Mackin Roberts (RHUL).
4.15pm – WCC UK business meeting.
5.30pm – Foremothers: Bringing It All Back Home – Susan Deacy (Roehampton)
A note on catering: coffee is not permitted in the room where we are holding the AGM, although there is a coffee shop in the building. Lunch will be served in a building about five minutes’ walk from where the AGM will take place.
The 2019 AGM of the Women’s Classical Committee UK is generously supported by the Classical Association and the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University.
Elections are now open for two positions on the Steering Committee of the WCC UK for April 2019 to April 2023. The Steering Committee runs the WCC UK, including organizing events, workshops, and overseeing future development of the WCC UK. Committee members serve for four years, and may stand for a second consecutive term. Three members of the WCC UK have been nominated to stand for election to the Steering Committee. A short CV and statement have been provided by each candidate for review by members of the WCC UK prior to voting.
Voting opens on 25th February and will run until 22nd March 2019. The elected members will be announced in late March, and will assume office at the AGM in April of 2019. If you are a member of the WCC UK in good standing, you will receive an email with a link for voting online. If you do not receive an email or have any questions, please contact the Elections Officer, Thea Lawrence (Thea dot Lawrence at nottingham dot ac dot uk).
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