Treasures from UCL

Treasures from UCL
Author: Gillian Furlong
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 99
Release: 2015-06-04
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1910634360

UCL has one of the foremost university Special Collections in the UK. It is a treasure trove of national and international importance, comprising over a million items dating from the 4th-century AD to the present day. Treasures from UCL draws together detailed descriptions and images of 70 of the most prized items. Between the magnificent illuminated Latin Bible of the 13th-century and the personal items of one of the 20th-century’s greatest writers, George Orwell, the many highlights of this remarkable collection will delight and intrigue anyone who picks up this book.

Treasures from Ucl

Treasures from Ucl
Author: Gillian Furlong
Publisher:
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2015-06-04
Genre: Libraries
ISBN: 9781911307242

UCL has one of the foremost university Special Collections in the UK. It is a treasure trove of national and international importance, comprising over a million items dating from the 4th century AD to the present day. Treasures from UCL draws together detailed descriptions and images of 70 of the most prized items. Between the magnificent illuminated Latin Bible of the 13th century and the personal items of one of the 20th century's greatest writers, George Orwell, the many highlights of this remarkable collection will delight and intrigue anyone who picks up this book.

The World of UCL

The World of UCL
Author: Negley Harte
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2018-05-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1787352943

From its foundation in 1826, UCL embraced a progressive and pioneering spirit. It was the first university in England to admit students regardless of religion and made higher education affordable and accessible to a much broader section of society. It was also effectively the first university to welcome women on equal terms with men. From the outset UCL showed a commitment to innovative ideas and new methods of teaching and research. This book charts the history of UCL from 1826 through to the present day, highlighting its many contributions to society in Britain and around the world. It covers the expansion of the university through the growth in student numbers and institutional mergers. It documents shifts in governance throughout the years and the changing social and economic context in which UCL operated, including challenging periods of reconstruction after two World Wars. Today UCL is one of the powerhouses of research and teaching, and a truly global university. It is currently seventh in the QS World University Rankings. This completely revised and updated edition features a new chapter based on interviews with key individuals at UCL. It comes at a time of ambitious development for UCL with the establishment of an entirely new campus in East London, UCL East, and Provost Michael Arthur’s ‘UCL 2034’ strategy which aims to secure the university’s long-term future and commits UCL to delivering global impact.

London’s Urban Landscape

London’s Urban Landscape
Author: Christopher Tilley
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2019-05-07
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1787355608

London’s Urban Landscape is the first major study of a global city to adopt a materialist perspective and stress the significance of place and the built environment to the urban landscape. Edited by Christopher Tilley, the volume is inspired by phenomenological thinking and presents fine-grained ethnographies of the practices of everyday life in London. In doing so, it charts a unique perspective on the city that integrates ethnographies of daily life with an analysis of material culture. The first part of the volume considers the residential sphere of urban life, discussing in detailed case studies ordinary residential streets, housing estates, suburbia and London’s mobile ‘linear village’ of houseboats. The second part analyses the public sphere, including ethnographies of markets, a park, the social rhythms of a taxi rank, and graffiti and street art. London’s Urban Landscape returns us to the everyday lives of people and the manner in which they understand their lives. The deeply sensuous character of the embodied experience of the city is invoked in the thick descriptions of entangled relationships between people and places, and the paths of movement between them. What stories do door bells and house facades tell us about contemporary life in a Victorian terrace? How do antiques acquire value and significance in a market? How does living in a concrete megastructure relate to the lives of the people who dwell there? These and a host of other questions are addressed in this fascinating book that will appeal widely to all readers interested in London or contemporary urban life.

The UCL Institute of Education

The UCL Institute of Education
Author: Richard Aldrich
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2021-06-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1787359514

The history of the UCL Institute of Education is one of persistent renewal. Since its founding in 1902 as the London Day Training College, through its establishment as a university institute and merger with UCL, the IOE has constantly grown into new areas of learning and social research. As a locus for leadership, it has exerted influence upon the nature and direction of education nationally and internationally. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, the connections between internal history and external historical developments are sensitively teased out. The result is an elegantly written history, characterised by substantial scholarship and analysis, and enlivened by illustrations and anecdote. The pages of this book are peopled with some of the most influential, and at times controversial, figures of education, including Sidney Webb, Cyril Burt, Susan Isaacs, Sophie Bryant, Richard Peters, Basil Bernstein, Ann Oakley, Celia Hoyles and Stephen Ball. Two new chapters extend Richard Aldrich’s text to 2020. These examine the extraordinary years of growth in the early 2000s, followed by a period of consolidation, merger with UCL and subsequent expansion. The IOE is unique in successfully pursuing a world-leading research agenda while also supporting a wide range of teacher education, having an impact in London, across Britain and the world.

How the World Changed Social Media

How the World Changed Social Media
Author: Daniel Miller
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2016-02-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1910634484

How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and explores the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we becoming more individual or more social? Why is public social media so conservative? Why does equality online fail to shift inequality offline? How did memes become the moral police of the internet? Supported by an introduction to the project’s academic framework and theoretical terms that help to account for the findings, the book argues that the only way to appreciate and understand something as intimate and ubiquitous as social media is to be immersed in the lives of the people who post. Only then can we discover how people all around the world have already transformed social media in such unexpected ways and assess the consequences

Shaping Higher Education with Students

Shaping Higher Education with Students
Author: Vincent C. H. Tong
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2018-03-06
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1787351114

Forging closer links between university research and teaching has become an important way to enhance the quality of higher education across the world. As student engagement takes centre stage in academic life, how can academics and university leaders engage with their students to connect research and teaching more effectively? In this highly accessible book, the contributors show how students and academics can work in partnership to shape research-based education. Featuring student perspectives, it offers academics and university leaders practical suggestions and inspiring ideas on higher education pedagogy, including principles of working with students as partners in higher education, connecting students with real-world outputs, transcending disciplinary boundaries in student research activities, connecting students with the workplace, and innovative assessment and teaching practices. Written and edited in full collaboration with students and leading educator-researchers from a wide spectrum of academic disciplines, this book poses fundamental questions about learning and learning communities in contemporary higher education.

How and Why to Read and Create Children's Digital Books

How and Why to Read and Create Children's Digital Books
Author: Natalia Kucirkova
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2018-12-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1787353494

How and Why to Read and Create Children's Digital Books outlines effective ways of using digital books in early years and primary classrooms, and specifies the educational potential of using digital books and apps in physical spaces and virtual communities. With a particular focus on apps and personalised reading, Natalia Kucirkova combines theory and practice to argue that personalised reading is only truly personalised when it is created or co-created by reading communities. Divided into two parts, Part I suggests criteria to evaluate the educational quality of digital books and practical strategies for their use in the classroom. Specific attention is paid to the ways in which digital books can support individual children’s strengths and difficulties, digital literacies, language and communication skills. Part II explores digital books created by children, their caregivers, teachers and librarians, and Kucirkova also offers insights into how smart toys, tangibles and augmented/virtual reality tools can enrich children’s reading for pleasure. How and Why to Read and Create Children's Digital Books is of interest to an international readership ranging from trainee or established teachers to MA level students and researchers, as well as designers, librarians and publishers. All are inspired to approach children’s reading on and with screens with an agentic perspective of creating and sharing. Praise for How and Why to Read and Create Children's Digital Books 'This is an exciting and innovative book – not least because it is freely available to read online but because its origins are in primary practice. The author is an accomplished storyteller, and whether you know, as yet, little about the value of digital literacy in the storymaking process, or you are an accomplished digital player, this book is full of evidence-informed ideas, explanations and inspiration.' Liz Chamberlain, Open University 'At a time when children's reading is increasingly on-screen, many teachers, parents and carers are seeking practical, straightforward guidance on how to support children's engagement with digital books. This volume, written by the leading expert on personalised e-books, is packed with app reviews, suggestions and insights from recent international research, all underpinned by careful analysis of digital book features and recognition of reading as a social and cultural practice. Providing accessible guidance on finding, choosing, sharing and creating digital books, it will be welcomed by those excited by the possibilities of enthusing children about reading in the digital age.' Cathy Burnett, Professor of Literacy and Education, Sheffield Hallam University

The Venice Variations

The Venice Variations
Author: Sophia Psarra
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2018-04-30
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1787352390

From the myth of Arcadia through to the twenty-first century, ideas about sustainability – how we imagine better urban environments – remain persistently relevant, and raise recurring questions. How do cities evolve as complex spaces nurturing both urban creativity and the fortuitous art of discovery, and by which mechanisms do they foster imagination and innovation? While past utopias were conceived in terms of an ideal geometry, contemporary exemplary models of urban design seek technological solutions of optimal organisation. The Venice Variations explores Venice as a prototypical city that may hold unique answers to the ancient narrative of utopia. Venice was not the result of a preconceived ideal but the pragmatic outcome of social and economic networks of communication. Its urban creativity, though, came to represent the quintessential combination of place and institutions of its time. Through a discussion of Venice and two other works owing their inspiration to this city – Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital – Sophia Psarra describes Venice as a system that starts to resemble a highly probabilistic ‘algorithm’, that is, a structure with a small number of rules capable of producing a large number of variations. The rapidly escalating processes of urban development around our big cities share many of the motivations for survival, shelter and trade that brought Venice into existence. Rather than seeing these places as problems to be solved, we need to understand how urban complexity can evolve, as happened from its unprepossessing origins in the marshes of the Venetian lagoon to the ‘model city’ that endured a thousand years. This book frees Venice from stereotypical representations, revealing its generative capacity to inform potential other ‘Venices’ for the future.

Fonthill Recovered

Fonthill Recovered
Author: Caroline Dakers
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2018-05-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1787350452

Fonthill, in Wiltshire, is traditionally associated with the writer and collector William Beckford who built his Gothic fantasy house called Fonthill Abbey at the end of the eighteenth century. The collapse of the Abbey’s tower in 1825 transformed the name Fonthill into a symbol for overarching ambition and folly, a sublime ruin. Fonthill is, however, much more than the story of one man’s excesses. Beckford’s Abbey is only one of several important houses to be built on the estate since the early sixteenth century, all of them eventually consumed by fire or deliberately demolished, and all of them oddly forgotten by historians. Little now remains: a tower, a stable block, a kitchen range, some dressed stone, an indentation in a field. Fonthill Recovered draws on histories of art and architecture, politics and economics to explore the rich cultural history of this famous Wiltshire estate. The first half of the book traces the occupation of Fonthill from the Bronze Age to the twenty-first century. Some of the owners surpassed Beckford in terms of their wealth, their collections, their political power and even, in one case, their sexual misdemeanours. They include Charles I’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the richest commoner in the nineteenth century. The second half of the book consists of essays on specific topics, filling out such crucial areas as the complex history of the designed landscape, the sources of the Beckfords’ wealth and their collections, and one essay that features the most recent appearance of the Abbey in a video game.