As a solely postgraduate community, Ustinov College provides a unique and vibrant academic environment where Ustinovians engage in dialogue and debate across different cultures and disciplines. The Global Citizenship Programme includes the Café Politique, Café Scientifique, Café des Arts, the Ustinov Seminar, and Race Crime and Justice teams, who organise seminars and debates with academics, activists and research students to share their research or insights on topics of interest. In addition, the Ustinov Annual Conference was set up in 2015 to explore the intersection of academic theory and real life practice.
Academic staff from across different departments of Durham University and beyond are members of our Senior Common Room which organises discussion groups on hot topics, careers seminars for future academics, and aims to provide support and mentoring research students.
Ustinov College's flagship scholarly programme, the Global Citizenship Programme, is student-led with our scholars delivering weekly seminars, events and activities across a range of themes to our College community, as well as staff and members of our wider residential community. Speakers both internal and external to the University are invited to participate in a wide range of talks and discussions, with some events being presentations focussed, others delivered more as an interview with a speaker, and some being panel-led.
Starting this academic year, we are delighted to introduce our new initiative, ‘Ustinov SPARK’ (Ustinov Students Providing Access to Research and Knowledge). Ustinov SPARK is designed to support the depth and breadth of the research being undertaken by our postgraduate college community as it is communicated across a wide range of audiences and to hopefully 'spark' interest across new and exciting themes and topics. We are keen to run a series of events, providing Ustinovians a platform to deliver short summaries of their amazing research to non-specialist audiences; this may include audiences within the University but also externally to groups across our local community.
As part of Durham University’s Global Week 2024 (Feb 26th – Mar 1st 2024), Ustinov SPARK is delivering a week of morning sessions (one 60 min session per morning) in individual schools to KS2 children. This will take the form of 5 PhD students delivering bite-sized presentations of their research (on a global theme) to KS2 pupils in an engaging and age-appropriate way. The children will also have a few moments to ask questions of each student at the end of each talk and at the end of the 5 presentations, the children will then vote for their favourite. It’s intended to be a fun, interactive introduction to global themes in an age-appropriate way, and will also benefit our postgraduate students in developing their skills of communication and engagement.
This activity is being delivered in the schools, with full support from senior College staff, and at no cost to the schools involved. We are absolutely delighted to be able to launch SPARK in such a community focussed, collaborative way and look forward to hearing what the children and their teachers think of our 'junior conferences' in Global Week!
Future SPARK events will be detailed here, and advertised more widely, as they are organised.
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