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SELCS Turing Summer Schools

This programme offers students a unique chance to acquire intimate familiarity with the rich past and vibrant cultural present of different cities – mainly but not exclusively in Europe.

The summer schools

UCL’s School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS) has created credit-bearing summer schools taught in – and about – an annually changing suite of partner cities: Barcelona, Bologna, Madrid, Paris, Rome, São Paulo, and Stockholm to date. The UCL European Institute has advised SELCS on the creation of the Summer Schools and is currently delivering one of the programmes.

Funded under the UK's Erasmus successor Turing, the schools explore the heterogeneous cultural traditions, histories, conflicts, and urban transformations at play in these cities. Diverse forms of site-specific learning and teaching serve to advance a dynamic, speculative range of creative-critical expression.

The schools are run as small-group seminars with bespoke activities, often co-hosted with local partner institutions, i.e. guided tours, museum visits, fieldtrips, plays. They foreground the disciplinary perspectives of literary, visual and cultural studies, but will also draw on the research methodologies of anthropology, political theory, human geography, museum studies, archaeology and the performing arts.

2024 summer schools

 

How the modules work

These 15-credit modules will be taught in an intensive 4-week block in early summer as a part of the 120 credits taken the following academic year, that usually runs from late September to early June. Each individual summer school is made up of two parts. The first half consists of ca 15-20 hours of intensive group activity, led by UCL academics whose research focuses on the culture and language of the respective region. This activity will be followed by a second half of self-guided independent study in the city. For more information, please contact the 2023-24 programme convenor Dr Annika Lindskog (a.lindskog@ucl.ac.uk).

Application, eligibility, requirements, cost

Apply now

The 2024 call for applications is now live. Please click on this link to find out who can apply and how, and to learn about practicalities and requirements, cost and financial support: 

Previous summer schools

Student feedback

Much more than a course, this has been an experience
Thank you for putting together a stimulating programme with interesting material, giving us the opportunity to talk to such interesting people and facilitating such a positive learning environment

Paris 2022, led by Thibaut Maus de Rolley

Sao Paolo 2023, by Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva

Memory maps

Many of the previous SELCS summer school modules have used the Memory Mapper software developed by UCL CASA to write short assignments and map their explorations on interactive online maps. Browse their perambulations here:

Barcelona Memory Map

Rome Memory Map

Stockholm Memory Map

Paris Memory Map

 

Image credits: Stockholm Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash; Rome photo by Carlos Ibáñez on Unsplash; Barcelona photo by Uta Staiger; Paris café photo by Meizhi Lang on Unsplash.