Tag Archives: University of Exeter

The Value of Humanities

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There has been much discussion recently about value for money in higher education and, in particular, the value of Humanities degrees in the current economic climate. In a recent article entitled ‘Humanities as Vocation’ on the popular higher education blog WonkHE, Dr Jon Wilson, Vice-Dean Education in Arts and Humanities at KCL, noted the importance for Humanities degrees in making a clear connection to real-world employment:

As many humanities scholars are doing, we should also build our subjects’ practical connection with the real world into our teaching…..Those links are being made in different ways in universities now. They might involve creating communities of practice, where alumni in related fields discuss and help shape the curriculum and career choices of current students.[1]

This point strikes me as being ever-more important and working with alumni is an increasing focus for Humanities at Exeter. A quick look at the College’s Alumni Profiles gives an indication of the huge variety of different careers Humanities’ graduates hold and increasing numbers are willing to share the benefits of their experience with current students. Students can access valuable knowledge for a variety of different careers through engagement with willing alumni, who often give up their time to act both as advisors to current students and also to get more directly involved in the delivery of the curriculum.

One such example of a course that embeds learning into the curriculum is the Liberal Arts ‘Think Tank’ module. Think Tank asks students to work in small groups to tackle a key social, political, business or economic challenge. Challenges are posed by Humanities’ alumni who have gone on to work in variety of different careers. The skills that students develop through their degree – in-depth research, creative thinking, and professional presentation to name just a few – are utilised to come up with solutions that the students present back to their alumni mentor, lecturers, and peers at the end of the module. Students get the benefit of working directly with these industry experts throughout the project whilst simultaneously learning how former Exeter students have used their degrees in their future careers.

I graduated from the Exeter’s Classics and Ancient History Department in 2013 and volunteered to set a Think Tank challenge for the first time in 2017. Having worked in a number of different Higher Education roles, I’ve spent the past two years working in the Exeter’s own Global Partnerships Team as a Business Partner focused on Humanities and Social Sciences. Global Partnerships is responsible for Exeter’s engagement with other universities all over the world, forging new connections with international partners that will enhance our education and research. It’s a role I find fast-paced, challenging, and (usually) very rewarding.

I was eager to take part in Think Tank for a number of reasons, not least because I was intrigued to see what solutions the students might propose to some of the challenges the UK higher education sector is currently facing. I therefore asked the students to devise a strategy for how a UK university like Exeter should work on the international stage to meet the challenges facing the higher education sector over the next 10 years. They had to think about some of the big questions facing higher education at the moment – how do we prepare for the changes that Brexit will bring? What new opportunities for research funding are out there and how can we make the most of them? How can we continue to attract the best international students from around the world? Other alumni gave students the opportunity to work on challenges as diverse as responding to the divisions laid bare by the Grenfell Fire tragedy or devising new campaigns for the RNLI.

I was pleasantly surprised when eight students chose to work on the challenge I had set and when they presented their findings after eight weeks of work, I was struck by the depth of their research and the originality of aspects of their thinking. So impressed was I, that I pointed my students in the direction of a paid internship opportunity some of my colleagues were advertising to support the delivery of a major international conference. The experiences gleaned through ‘Think Tank’ helped one of the students get the job, despite a very competitive field.

Exeter can make a strong argument that Humanities degrees offer students great preparation for a wide variety of careers; in addition to glancing through our alumni profiles, recent information from the Destinations of Leavers of Higher Education (DHLE) survey and Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) data suggests that Exeter’s Humanities’ graduates tend to perform well after they leave the College. My experiences have convinced me that alumni engagement has a key part to play in this picture; not only is it good for the students, but it’s great for alumni to be able to harness the enthusiasm and skills of the students they work with.

[1] https://wonkhe.com/blogs/humanities-as-vocation/

Written Dr James Smith, Assistant Head of Global Partnerships, University of Exeter, Streatham Campus

Frank Barlow’s The Feudal Kingdom of England: 60 years in print

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Written by University of Exeter alumnus David Bates (BA History 1966; PhD 1970)

2015 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of The Feudal Kingdom of England, Exeter Historian Frank Barlow’s influential account of the Anglo-Norman world, a text which has been instrumental in the study of the subject ever since. Frank Barlow (1911-2009) is among the most distinguished of the academics who have worked for the University of Exeter and its previous incarnation, the University College of the South West of England. The recipient of many honours, his recent inclusion in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography elevates him to the status of being one of the men and women identified as having made an outstanding contribution to British national life over the last two millennia.

Frank Barlow

Professor Frank Barlow at his desk. Photograph courtesy of Marjorie Bowen and Bob Higham.

First appointed at Exeter as Lecturer in History in 1946, while holding the rank of Major after war service, he became Professor of History and Head of the Department of History in 1953, holding both positions until his retirement in 1976. For those who studied History at Exeter in those days, the predominant memory will probably be of Frank striding into the Queen’s Building Lecture Theatre to lecture to the Medieval British History class, often held at 9 o’clock on a Tuesday morning. A tall man, he would arrive in the Lecture Theatre standing bolt upright, exuding seriousness of purpose, and always wearing a gown. Spell-bindingly brilliant and on those Tuesdays a magnificent antidote to residual sleepiness, the lectures would be laced with anecdotes that illuminated the distant past through the use of modern analogies and jokes at the expensive of the academic stars of his day. Each one of these would be accompanied by an infectious high-pitched laugh.

Probably less apparent to those who studied History as undergraduates was that Frank was an extremely productive and highly original historian. That his text-book, The Feudal Kingdom of England, first published in 1955, is still in print may well constitute some kind of record. Its incisiveness and its clear exposition of complex themes have inspired many towards the study of the Middle Ages. His three biographies of Edward the Confessor (1970), William Rufus (1983), and Archbishop Thomas Becket (1986), also all still in print, have dominated interpretation of their subjects ever since. There is surely a remarkable irony in the fact that Frank was writing royal biographies during the supposedly revolutionary 1960s and 1970s. A first impression might be that this was old-fashioned, but in fact he was doing it in a way that now seems very modern and far ahead of its time. His capacity to explore personality and contextualise a life places his books in the forefront of the genre. Also a magnificent editor of difficult Latin texts, he continued to publish outstandingly important work into his nineties. He was a dedicated servant of the University of Exeter, serving as Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Public Orator. He also continued to be active nationally as a Fellow of the British Academy and regionally in the Devonshire Association in his nineties. The continued and present high standing nationally and internationally of Exeter’s History Department owes a huge amount to his skilful use of the opportunities for expansion presented by the post-Robbins expansion of universities in the 1960s and early 1970s.

The recent deposit of Frank Barlow’s papers in the University Archives makes accessible to the wider world not only the record of the career of an outstanding scholar and academic, but also a remarkable witness to the life of the University during a very important period.

Those who wish to know more about Frank Barlow should consult, David Bates, ‘Frank Barlow (1911-2009)’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 172 (2011), 3-24.

MA International Film Business – Term One

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Last term the College of Humanities welcomed its first student cohort on the inaugural MA International Film Business programme at the University of Exeter.

JimW-Mike Leigh 11Chairman of the London Film School (LFS) and multi-award-winning director Mike Leigh with Deputy Vice Chancellor (Education) Professor Nick Kaye. Photo by Jim Wileman.

In an exciting partnership with the London Film School, MA International Film Business students have had the opportunity to explore the filmmaking industry both here in the south-west and the capital, where the students have been studying since January. Co-directed by Angus Finney of the London Film School and Professor Will Higbee at the University of Exeter, the programme provides students with an understanding of the film industry and its practices, key business tools, and an insight into world cinema and the role of film culture.

During their first term, MA International Film Business students were taught by film specialists from the College of Humanities and the Exeter Business School. A number of notable industry experts came to speak to the students. These included film director and producer Don Boyd, British independent producer James MacKay, US/UK film producer Gavrik Losey and Ken Dearsley, Independent Consultant and Partner of the Intellectual Property and Technology group IPT.

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US/UK film producer Gavrik Losey came in last term to speak to students. Photo by Theo Moye

Another industry speaker to visit the University was local filmmaker and pop-up cinema entrepreneur David Salas. David worked with the students to curate their own pop-up cinema event, asking them to prepare and present a series of short films for the general public in the Bill Douglas Museum at the University of Exeter. The six groups of students put on a varied and exciting programme of films, each spanning different genres, styles and languages.

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During the course of this year, we hope to let you know the progress of these students as they embark on their next term of study at the London Film School.

The students are due to attend the Berlinale festival, taking place from the 5 – 15 February. If you wish to follow the festival online via Twitter, search for the following hashtags #MAIFB, #Berlinale and #BerlinaleMoments

For more information about the MA International Film Business programme, please visit the College of Humanities website.