Hello, Salonnieres! May is fast approaching. Did you know that in Oxford, crowds greet the dawn of every May Day with revelry, music, and public inebriation? That all sounds well and good until you realise that there's also Morris dancing involved. The Salon is allergic to Morris dancing, so we are going to celebrate May with a Salon presentation. And - sing along, you know the words - tea and cake!  

Following the joint research seminar with IDeoGRAMS of last month, next month’s Salon returns to one of the postgraduate research group’s main objectives, to act as a forum for ongoing research within the department. The Salon in May will be led by Megan Leyland, giving a paper titled ‘To be handed down to posterity’: The 3rd Countess of Harewood and the architecture of Harewood House. This is part of Megan’s ongoing doctoral research on 'Gender, Patronage and Architecture in the Nineteenth-Century Country House'. Megan has also been selected as one of University of Leicester's fifty best postgraduate researchers, selected competitively from over a thousand doctoral researchers, and her work on the country house and as part of the Department of History of Art and Film will be featured in the upcoming University of Leicester Festival of Postgraduate Research (17^th May). Congratulations, Megan!

In addition, there will also be a short presentation from Ben Wynne from the University of Leicester Library. Following recent discussion within the Salon about changes to the Library website, Ben has very kindly agreed to talk to us about making the most of the research materials and resources offered by the David Wilson Library.

The Salon will take place on Wednesday 2^nd May from 13:00 to 15:00 in ATT LG02 (Attenborough Seminar Block Basement). All are welcome!

The Salon would also like to thank everyone for the high level of attendance and support shown at last month’s joint research event with IDeoGRAMS. We hope that, like us, you found the Ethical Choices in Visual Culture Research’s presentations interesting and productive, and the subsequent discussion engaging and useful. Following the success of that event, we will be holding a further joint research event with IDeoGRAMS in June in order to open up the discussion to producers, curators, and archivists of visual culture material. We hope to invite representatives from media companies, galleries, moving image archives, and other individuals who will be able to contribute to a shared dialogue and greater understanding of the relationships that tie academia and institutions together. This day-long event will be held on Friday 15^th June in Bankfield House; more information on registration to follow. The following day (Saturday 16^th June), there will also be a one-day workshop, ‘British Society on the small screen? The Historian, Television and History', in the School of Historical Studies which Salonnieres may find interesting. This workshop is funded by the Economic History Society and is free to attend.

 

The Salon session proper on 6^th June will be a session of mini-presentations based loosely around the theme of ‘It's The End of the World As We Know It’. The literal translation of apocalypse is ‘revelation’ or ‘a lifting of the veil’; consequently we are looking for submissions for ten-minute presentations, looking at representations of change and revelation as much as more commonly understood conceptions of apocalypse, and post-apocalypse. If you want to practice giving research presentations, this could be an enjoyable and easy way to do so! Please contact us at vrb3 at le dot ac dot uk with your proposals. 

You can also keep up to date with what's going on at The Salon on Twitter @thesalon_haf, or join the Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/155452421216246/. If you would like to contribute to the blog with posts about ongoing research, issues that you've come across as a postgraduate student or even just interesting links, then we would be happy to have you!

We hope to see all of you in May.

The Salon is a Morris dancing-free space.