We note that the the Research Excellence Framework 2021 has invited nominating bodies to make further nominations to REF sub-panels. We ask candidates who seek nomination to the REF Classics sub-panel by the Women’s Classical Committee UK to provide answers to the questions below (in brief bullet points) by Friday 27th March 2020, and to send them to the WCC UK’s Administrator, Liz Gloyn, at womensclassicalcommittee at gmail.com. The questions mirror those asked in the HEFCE nomination form, with the addition of Q6 which is specific to the WCC UK.
The sub-panel seek nominations in the following areas:
Subpanel member (practicing researcher) with expertise in ancient philosophy
Subpanel member (practicing researcher) with expertise in Language, Linguistics and Literature (with particular expertise in the early Aegean)
Impact assessor from the heritage sector with a focus on classical antiquity
Impact assessor from the museums sector with a focus on classical antiquity
A specialist advisor in the Ancient Near East: language & textual sources
A specialist advisor in Ancient (Pharaonic) Egypt: language & textual sources –
A specialist advisor in Modern Greek: history and culture
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. We note that at present, of the 14 current members of sub-panel 29, 10 are women; we will be taking this gender imbalance and its implications for unequal distribution of the service workload into consideration in our nominations. The WCC UK will avoid nominating from institutions already represented on the sub-panel wherever possible.
Forms will be circulated to our Steering Committee 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.
The AGM is a chance for the members of the WCC UK to discuss our plans for the next year and meet other members; we have speakers to talk on the AGM, and also have discussions about current issues for women in Classics and related fields. Anyone is welcome to attend if they support the aims of the WCC UK.
We are working on a schedule and will be sharing more about the theme, the programme and registration details in due course. In the meantime, save the date – we look forward to seeing you there!
The WCC UK is pleased to announce the opening of two mentoring schemes.
Firstly, the Short-term Mentoring Scheme is now open for mentees. This scheme matches mentees with mentors for discussion by email of a specific issue for a short period, not to exceed three months. Mentees will be matched with a mentor within two weeks of sign-up. Full guidelines for the scheme can be viewed here. Mentees can sign up for the scheme here, and mentors can sign up here (thanks to those who have already signed up as mentors). This scheme will remain open year-round. Members are welcome to sign up both as mentors and as mentees.
Secondly, the Take a Grad Student to Lunch Scheme will run for the third time at this year’s Classical Association Conference in Swansea, 17th-20th April. This scheme matches mentors and mentees for a one-off mentoring lunch during the conference. Mentees should be enrolled on an MA or PhD course at any stage from registration to post-viva final submission; mentors should be employed on a permanent contract. We would particularly like to encourage senior staff members (Senior Lecturers/Professors) to sign up as mentors. Both mentors and mentees can sign up using the same form here. Applications close on Friday 6th March.
To access either of these schemes, you should be a member of the WCC UK in good standing; please see the Membership Page for details.
By signing up for any of the WCC UK’s mentoring schemes, you agree to abide by the WCC UK’s Mentoring Code of Conduct.
If you have any questions about these schemes or any other aspect of mentoring through WCC UK, please contact the Mentoring Officer at christine.plastow at open.ac.uk.
We have had some recent changes in the WCC UK Steering Committee which we wanted to update you on.
Sadly, our co-chair Claire Millington has had to step down for personal reasons. Claire’s term was due to last until the April 2021 AGM. We are very grateful to Laurence Totelin for agreeing to step in to take up the co-chair role earlier than she was scheduled to. We are also extremely grateful to Claire for all she has done during her time on the WCC UK steering committee, including her leadership of the #WCCWiki initiative and her work on governance issues.
Our long-standing ECR liaison, Kate Cook, has agreed to become a full steering committee member, following our standing practice when we have had a steering committee member step down in the past; we will be preparing a formal policy on how we handle these kinds of transitions for approval at the AGM.
Kate’s move means that we have a vacancy for an ECR liaison, to work with Anna Judson. Acting as a liaison is a great opportunity to meet new people and get some event organising experience in a friendly environment; at the moment we are at the early stages of planning an ECR event for 2020. If you’d like to volunteer or to find out more about what being a liaison involves, please e-mail us at womensclassicalcommittee at gmail.com.
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!
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