On May 23rd I presented a paper titled “Fake News as a Tool of Social Division and the Role of the Museum” at DIVISIONS– the annual postgraduate conference of the College of Arts at the University of Glasgow. This was my first time participating in a conference as a speaker and an overall positive first experience. The conference team did an excellent job in organising the event, as well as in moderating discussions and chairing panels.

Studying for my master’s degree for a year now, I have been specialising in a certain domain within the Humanities reading literature that rarely escaped my own field. The conference was a great way of reminding myself how closely the Humanities are interlinked. Bringing students of different disciplines and universities into the same room is a guarantee that interesting discussions will be held. It was really interesting seeing how the same questions may give birth to different answers, or even how the same answers may rise from different approaches.

My panel, “Contemporary Approaches”, consisted of three speakers including myself. The different academic backgrounds (Modernities: Literature, Culture, Theory; English Literature; Museology-Archaeology) ensured that different insights on Brexit and Misinformation would be heard and the presentations were followed by a vivid discussion with the audience. Issues raised during the discussion included issues such as the boundaries of participatory practice and contemporary art within the museum, as well as Brexit and climate change.

On May 31st I am also presenting a similar paper for the Postgraduate Conference of the University of Stirling. The conference’s theme for this year is Disruption and you can find the full program here. Hopefully, after this week I will get enough time to write here in detail about the issues I am presenting.