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Congratulations on completing your studies at UCL!
The Faculty of Arts & Humanities is delighted to welcome you, and your guests, back to UCL for the forthcoming virtual graduation ceremonies.
Your ceremonies are taking place between Monday 19 and Friday 23 October 2020.
Hear from your department
Take a look at some highlights from each department over the last few years.
- Arts & Sciences
The Department of Arts & Sciences is delighted to take this moment to congratulate graduating students, both from the Department and across the Faculty.
At this time of celebration for our graduands and their families and friends, we reflect on a small selection of highlights from the last few years.
Dr Graham Woodgate reflects in this piece on the swift transition to remote learning at the beginning of the pandemic. In particular noting the need for new virtual social spaces which helped our students and staff stay in touch with one another in tough times.
Professor Tim Jordan reviews the successes of the Department in his article, specifically celebrating winning three UCL Education Awards.
We hope to continue hearing from you into the future and look forward learning of all your many future achievements.
- EISPS
Congratulations on completing your studies during unprecedented times. We hope you are able to celebrate this outstanding achievement with your family and friends.
You will of course have your own personal highlights from your time at UCL. At this time of celebration, we would also like to remember a few departmental highlights from your time with us. Take a look at our new departmental newsletter and read over some great highlights.
We hope to stay in touch into the future and hear of your successes in whatever you go on to do next.
- English
Congratulations to all those graduating this October in the Department, the Faculty and across the whole of UCL. In the trying circumstances of this pandemic, you have shown resilience in achieving your English degree from one of the best universities in the world.
We remember at this time of celebration for our graduates, just a few highlights from your time here at UCL’s Department of English Language and Literature.John Mullan, Head of Department, was appointed Visiting Professor of English Literature at Gresham College and will be delivering a free online lecture series on The Powers of the Novel.
Steven Knight (UCL English 1980 and Honorary Fellow of UCL) was awarded an OBE for services to drama, entertainment and to the community in Birmingham, alongside several other UCL staff in the Queen’s 2020 New Year’s Honours.
We extend further congratulations to Sarah Ang on winning the Author of Tomorrow award as part of the 2020 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. Her short story, titled Pearl Diving, has won her £1,000 and a digital publication.
PhD Candidate, Harvey Wiltshire took over the entrance to the UCL Main Library and curated a selection of book spines over the 29 steps leading up to the building.From Late Spring 2019, Steps to Progress, a project created by English PhD Candidate Harvey Wiltshire, will be taking over the entrance space to the UCL Main Library. Each of the 29 steps leading up to the library will be transformed into the spine of a book, and together this communally created installation will represent a new take on the literary works that we think reflect the diversity that defines both UCL and the society in which we live.
Steps to Progress invites you to suggest texts for inclusion in the installation. These texts could be ones that you have studied, cherished, read for pleasure, or read to challenge yourself, and which you believe reflect who you are and the communities in which you live and work. There are absolutely no restrictions on what texts you can suggest poetry, prose, contemporary, experimental...anything goes.
We wish you all every success in the future and hope to hear from you through alumni networks.
- Greek & Latin
The Department of Greek and Latin would like to congratulate all students graduating this year. We know that it has been a difficult journey for you, especially during the last few months. You have all coped extremely well and completed your degrees with impressive results. We wish you all the best for your future careers and hope that you will stay in touch with us.
We send regular newsletters to all alumni and invite alumni to the annual Housman Lecture, the Greek Play and other events. We also welcome visits to the Department (when possible) and messages from alumni. Moreover, we are interested in alumni passing on their experiences to current students and are keen to create a Greek and Latin community of staff, current students and alumni.
Gesine Manuwald, Head of Department
- Hebrew & Jewish Studies
The Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies would first like to congratulate all graduating students on your significant achievement. Graduation ceremonies are very special events and we hope you enjoy your virtual graduation event, and are able to share the day with your family and friends.
Many of this year's graduating students will remember a really important project, Translating Covid-19 information into Hasidic Yiddish. Yiddish, the traditional language of Eastern European Jews became an endangered language post-WWII, but remains the everyday language of up to 700,000 Hasidic Jews globally, with major centres in New York, London, Antwerp, Jerusalem, and Bnei Brak.
Very few studies exist on Hasidic Yiddish grammar or language use. The project aims to change this situation by providing the first in-depth description of the grammatical and sociolinguistic features characteristic of the Yiddish used by Hasidic communities. Especially important during the coronavirus pandemic, in effectively communicating potentially life-saving information.
We wish you all the best for the future, whatever it is you go on to do next, and hope you stay in touch with us via alumni networks and events.
- Information Studies
Our Department celebrated 100 years since our foundation as the first British School of Librarianship in 1919-1920. Throughout the decades we have offered professionally grounded education, based on some fundamental principles, our history, the context and evaluation of information, whilst also focusing more recently on developments in digital technology.
We are thrilled to see you graduate and join over one-hundred years of graduates.
We are the only department in the UK which brings together the unique portfolio of programmes in library and information studies, information science, archives and records management, publishing and digital humanities. With contributions from our alumni, we are putting together a centenary (online) exhibition which will be launched in November and which we will add to over the next few months.
Dr Melanie Ramdarshan Bold won UCL funding (Beacon Bursary, Grand Challenges, HEIF Knowledge Exchange and Innovation) which enabled her to increase awareness of theatre audiences of the experiences of authors of colour in the British publishing industry in collaboration with Words of Colour and Theatre Peckham; to host a series of virtual masterclasses for emerging writers of colour, with Words of Colour and Spread The Word; and to explore the reading practices of adolescents from marginalized groups.
Dr Sam Rayner was appointed Vice Dean Wellbeing for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
We hope you stay in touch with the Department well into the future, through our alumni network, and look forward to hearing about all your future successes.
- Philosophy
The Department of Philosophy is immensely proud of this cohort of graduating students, completing your studies in challenging times.
During your time at UCL, the Department has inaugurated the Harriet and Helen Lecture, dedicated to topics relating to underrepresented groups in the discipline.
The lecture is named is in honour of John Stuart Mill's wife and step-daughter who contributed to John Stuart Mill's work both by conducting the domestic labour required to sustain his work, and by significantly influencing the content of Mill's thought.Lecturers have included Prof Amia Srinivasan (Chichele Professor of Professor of Social and Political Theory, University of Oxford; and a former member of our department).
A highlight for many graduating students is the setting up of our very own magazine, the Bentham Digest. A student-led publication packed with artworks, student essays, interviews with famous philosophers and staff members.
We wish you all the best in the future and hope you stay in touch with UCL and the Department of Philosophy, to share with us all your future successes.
- Slade School of Fine Art
Professor Andrew Stahl
It feels like we have been through some kind of evolutionary process these last months. For all the final year Fine Art undergraduates, the shock and disappointment not to ‘exit’ by way of the well-established ritual of the Degree Shows, was palpable and profound for staff and students alike. The Slade's normal transformation of studio spaces into showing spaces in our iconic Slade Building, had to suddenly shape shift and arrangements were made for a digital exam submission. All the materiality, complexities and excitement of looking at art, became mediated through the computer screen. This was not ideal, but it allowed you all to proceed, get your degrees and leave the school to pursue opportunities and continue journeys.
It would be an error to remember this cohort of students and frame their last weeks at UCL within the crisis of the Coronavirus pandemic. Slade students made a varied and diverse body of work; poetry, performance, video, sculpture and painting, addressing personal, political, social and historical perspectives and re-contextualising their relationship with the world, and with this country’s past, present and future. Protest and resistance, activism and change motivated and generated a distinctive set of practices, and then, the academic year came to a close with the crescendo of the Black Lives Matter Protests.
Admittedly, it’s a little difficult to be celebratory at this time of great change, we have to acknowledge the time ahead doesn’t feel particularly optimistic. But we are so proud of all of you, of the work that you have made and all of the conversations that we have had together. Fine artists are by nature resilient, inventive and innovative and Slade students are outstanding at maintaining valuable, close and supportive networks: we know that you will keep your conversations alive, and that you will create the self-confidence to continue making art.
I just want to congratulate you on all your many achievements. I am looking forward to your celebratory exhibition and the chance to congratulate you all in person. What a brilliant year group you have been. I hope you are all well and enjoying yourselves in this difficult time whatever you are doing now. You are all BRILLIANT. I feel so lucky to have worked with such wonderful artists.
- SELCS
The School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS) congratulates all those graduating this year. During the tough times over the last few months, you have coped exceptionally well in competing your studies. We wish you all the best for the future, whether you’re continuing your studies or entering the world of work.
In commemorating this special time of personal celebration for our graduands, we also think back to highlights from the past few years. In SELCS, we were thrilled to celebrate our tenth birthday as a School. Back in 2010, six language departments, each of which with a long and distinguished history, merged together to form our School, the largest department within the UCL Arts & Humanities Faculty. Moreover, of the fourteen languages and language-based degree programmes represented in SELCS, it was Dutch Studies, the oldest such centre in the English-speaking world, which celebrated a very big birthday – its centenary (1919–2019).
We look forward to getting through the current public health crisis and beyond and hope you will stay in touch with us through our alumni community, events, website and social media.
