Released: 07.01.09

Mark Dowd:  “God is Green” - January 14 2009, UCP Marjon Chapel at 7:30 pm

We are honoured to welcome Mark Dowd, award winning documentary maker, and Campaign Strategist for Operation Noah.Mark Dowd has been a television producer and presenter for over 20 years, and was the Churches Media Council's choice as Religious Broadcaster of the year in 2006. His 50 minute film, “God is Green”, was originally aired on Channel 4, and was nominated for a 2007 Grierson Award. Its key question,’ has religion a key role to play in the battle to stave off runaway climate change?’ is explored in a way which is serious, but with light and humorous touches.On January 14th we will present a screening of this film, followed by an update by Mr Dowd and the opportunity for lively discussion of the issues raised.  All are welcome to this free event.

Professor David Harris: “Work and Leisure in Higher Education” - 13th February 2009, 7.30pm, HDC 101

David Harris has been at Marjon since 1973, after working at the UK Open University in the Institute of Educational Technology. He has taught a variety of undergraduate and post graduate courses in Education, Leisure, Media, Sociology and Sport Development, for Marjon and for other institutions, including the UKOU and some Australian universities, and he has publications in each of these fields, dating from 1976. He has a long-standing interest in distance education and electronic teaching, which includes running his own experimental website. Current interests include working with the materials in the UCP Marjon archive.

Even though work and leisure are usually seen as opposed activities, there are a number of connections which are worth exploring. Higher education is an activity which offers the chance for both work and leisure in different combinations.

Among the important connections between work, leisure and HE, there are some powerful theoretical approaches which embrace all three, like the one usually known as “Macdonaldization”. Less well known outside sociology, the work of Pierre Bourdieu also covers all those fields. Analogies between the three fields are still fruitful in terms of suggesting research problems, as in my own interests in comparing the work on popular and educational electronic media and their effects.

At the level of policy and practice, the most effective combination of work and leisure in HE has been discussed since the establishment of our own College. Modern debates turn on whether the rather obscure pleasures of academic work can be enjoyed by all students, despite the emphasis on work-like characteristics. Can HE become a form of “serious leisure”?

Dr Maurice Hindle - "Shakespeare on Film" - 19th March 2009, 7.30pm, HDC101

Dr Maurice Hindle is Senior Faculty Manager in Arts for The Open University in London, and teaches literature for The Open University. His research interests are wide-ranging, including the Gothic novel, Eighteenth-century and Romantic period fiction and poetry, and more recently, Shakespeare on film. As well as producing editions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and William Godwin’s Caleb Williams for Penguin Classics, he has published a new edition of Daniel Defoe’s novel Colonel Jacque for Pickering and Chatto’s Works of Daniel Defoe (2008). He is currently planning a mini-series of books to develop further topics explored in Studying Shakespeare on Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He lives near the Angel, Islington, in London. (For further information on him and his publications see www.mauricehindle.com )