The School of Modern Languages and Cultures presents a series on The Creative-Critical beginning in September 2026. Convened and organised by Professor Abir Hamdar, the series features an online symposium on the The Creative-Critical and the Global South, an online panel on The Creative-Critical and Pedagogy: Research-Led Teaching, and a two-part, in-person workshop series on the lecture form, open to all Faculty of Arts and Humanities PGR students who have completed their first annual review.
EVENT ONE: Online Symposium
The Creative-Critical and the Global South
Monday 7 September 2026, 10:30am–3:00pm (UK time).
In the last decade or so, we have witnessed a remarkable shift in how we carry out scholarly research and academic writing with the emergence of what is now known as the “creative-critical”. From literary writing to visual outputs and performative pieces, the boundary between what is “critical” in creative outputs and what is “creative” in critical work has become fluid. Yet creative-critical work from and about the Global South remains largely overlooked within the body of scholarship on the creative-critical. This symposium seeks to address this gap by focusing on creative-critical work related to the Global South. What locally informed approaches to the creative-critical are emerging from Global South contexts? How are these approaches conceived and shaped by the particular contexts with which they engage with and the audiences they seek to address? How and in what ways are creative-critical practices that focus on the Global South foregrounding alternative forms, themes and methods within this field? How do these forms and themes attend to the diversity and complexity of Global South societies? And how do they speak to, depart from, problematize, recreate and intersect with the history of the creative-critical in European and North American contexts?
EVENT TWO: Online Panel
The Creative-Critical and Pedagogy: Research-Led Teaching
Monday 14 September, 10:00 am – 1:30 pm (UK time)
The emergence of the field of the Creative-Critical has had a significant impact on how we undertake scholarly research, writing and practices. Yet one of the central questions in all this is the extent to which the Creative-Critical now impacts teaching practices, approaches and pedagogies more generally. This panel focuses on Creative-Critical pedagogies in research-led teaching to ask: What does a Creative-Critical approach in the classroom involve? What models of pedagogy does this approach draw on? How are educators combining criticism and creativity (whether writing, visual or performative) in the teaching of research-led modules? What forms of experimentation are employed in the delivery of lectures, in classroom exercises and in assessments? How can a creative-critical approach contribute to decolonial practices in the classroom?
EVENT THREE: PGR Workshop, in-person
The Creative-Critical and the Lecture
This two-part workshop will focus on the lecture form, both as a mode of public and academic address and as a pedagogical genre. The workshop is for PhD students in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities who have completed their first annual review.
Part 1: This session examines selected extracts from philosophical, literary, and pedagogical writings to explore key ideas presented by writers, philosophers, and educators on the lecture form. We will also reflect on: Why the lecture? How and in what ways has the traditional lecture form been divisive historically and in the present? What power dynamics underpin its unilateral approach? Why have writers persistently employed the lecture form for their public talks and for publishing their writings? For all its controversy, why has the lecture endured? In what form or shape does it live today?
Part 2: This practice-based session will give students the opportunity to rediscover and reimagine the lecture form and to experiment with unsettling the conventional lecturing habits we have long adopted. Drawing on disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields as well as on a range of creative and multimodal media forms, students will have the space and opportunity to prepare, rehearse and try out a short lecture piece – whether public facing or classroom focused. Students will also be provided with the opportunity for shared reflection on their experimentation methods and shared insights on challenges.
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