Reinvention Centre Academic Fellowship awarded to Dr Anne-Marie Kilday

Dr Anne-Marie Kilday, Assistant Dean for Teaching and Learning in the School of Arts and Humanities has recently been awarded a two-year Academic Fellowship from the Reinvention Centre worth £10,000.

This funding has been awarded to support the development of a clear and transparent policy for the delivery of research methods across undergraduate programmes in the School of Arts and Humanities. By the end of the fellowship, the School aims to have a progressive research skills pathway in each of its undergraduate degree programmes. Specifically, the project will construct an interdisciplinary research strand using the Independent Study Modules offered to second year students in the School of Arts and Humanities to encourage them to engage with research in their subject in relation to Oxford and the local community. Examples could include researching Oxford writers (English and Publishing); researching Oxford art (History of Art and Fine Art); researching Oxford people (History, Languages, Film Studies and Music), etc. This research strand would thus act as a 'skills bridge' between first and second year to the final year research project. Students would be asked to undertake a supervised research project which would be much smaller in scale and requirement than the final year research project, but would still enable them to engage with the appropriate and necessary research skills.

The research strand will be led and co-ordinated across the School by the Assistant Dean for Teaching and Learning along with the requisite ISM module leaders. The work carried out by students in this research strand will be published via a School Web-Magazine entitled 'HALO' (Humanities Arts Learning Oxford) and prizes will be given at graduation to the most innovative and original research projects. Student work will be assessed (by tutors and peers) prior to publication in the magazine. One of the most important impacts of this proposed project is that it will help to foster a school identity amongst Arts and Humanities students. In addition, it is hoped that through the initiative of the School web-magazine, more prospective undergraduate applicants will become enthused about the programmes and opportunities offered in Arts and Humanities. Off-campus, applicants (and their parents) will be able to see how students learn, the range of skills engaged with and the varied nature of the outputs of undergraduate academic endeavour.

The web-magazine can also be used for recruitment purposes at open days, visit days, sixth-form conferences and on school visits. As the recognition of the value of undergraduate research intensifies, it is also hoped that by meeting the objectives proposed above, the School will encourage more of its undergraduate students to go on to do postgraduate research work in Arts and Humanities subjects at Oxford Brookes. Although the initiatives and objectives indicated above all directly relate to the Arts and Humanities curriculum, the research strand proposal for second year students will enable the School to build a closer relationship between its externally-facing links (such as Oxford Contemporary Music, OVADA, Oxford Inspires, etc.) and its undergraduate degree programmes, as students would be undertaking research related to the local community.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09 Oct 2008 around 10am

Filed Under #Research