Leading with principles, not product
What does excellence look like in co-produced research? Reflections from the Brigstow Institute A core part of Brigstow’s work has always been to question who, and what universities are for. More importantly, what value they bring to society. In the past few years, Brigstow has identified these questions of value appearing increasingly in the wider…Continue reading→
Addressing the Elephant in the Room
As the awarding of our first ever round of Exploratory Research Funding approaches we wanted to share the whole story of the journey this theme has been on. Many of you might not know that our latest funding theme was born out of an initiative which surfaced nearly two years ago called The Elephant in the Room: Animal Studies, Postcolonialism & Museums/Collecting. During an early ideation workshop to scope interest in this area, multiple…Continue reading→
Whispers in the Archive
Early January 2025, I hit icy air getting off a U2 bus in Bristol, and make my way to the Theatre Collection for the first time. Though I’ve walked past this place countless times over various life stages and personal eras, this is my first visit – enabled by our Brigstow Institute funding for our…Continue reading→
Introducing our new (pilot) funding structure
Brigstow has funded over 270 projects since its inception as a University Research Institute in 2016, and we have seen the most fabulous ideas develop. From early thoughts to incredible new radically interdisciplinary collaborations involving community members and artists in novel and exciting ways. Many of these have gone on to be successful in securing…Continue reading→
Research Associate opportunity: Free bus travel, children and young people
Brigstow Institute are recruiting one or two Post graduate researchers (PGR) students or research-experienced community members to help undertake a short-term and part-time research project from early August to end of October in response to the recent announcement that children and young people under the age of 16 will be able to travel for free…Continue reading→
The Hidden Wastes Walkshop
Mathilde Braddock leads a “Hidden Wastes walkshop” for participants in the Wasting Time workshop 1. A “walkshop” around campus To kick off our Wasting Time project, we ran a “walkshop” called Hidden Wastes in the Anthropocene, co-designed by me, Mathilde Braddock, founder of Steps in Stone, and Claire Corkhill, Professor of Mineralogy and Radioactive Waste…Continue reading→
How do we know a river? Experimenting with the sociodigital futures of rivers
What would a more caring approach to environmental policies look like? This was the initial guiding question for this project on the sociodigital futures of rivers. We wanted to work with art-based methods, to explore embodied and emotional relationships to rivers. We wanted to do so with a transdisciplinary group of people, all interested in…Continue reading→
NIGHTWALKER: Creative essay on women walking at night, the night body and darkness in the city.
Preamble In the early 1800s a frenzy of street lighting completely rearranged England’s cities and our night. Overcome with the spectacle of engineering, street lighting was rolled out at a pace. An appropriate arrival point and symbol for the age of enlightenment. It also marks the strengthening of a nyctophobia that has persisted ever since….Continue reading→
Wasting Time Zine
Welcome to the Wasting Time zine! Come with us on a journey that moves from deep history to the deep future, as we use speculative storytelling and creative practices to follow wastes and their processes, to bring different aspects of the Anthropocene into focus. Why the zine The three workshops of the Wasting Time project…Continue reading→
Co-constructing Commons
By Claudia Firth We, myself and Emilia Melville, two researchers at the University of Bristol, applied for the Brigstow Ideas Exchange fund to work closely with the Bristol Commons Network (BCN), a newly emerging grassroots organisation which we have both been involved with as participant observers. Our community partner was Coexist, the organisation that initiated…Continue reading→