LAHP Roundtable Series
- Date
- Friday 09 Oct 2026 - Thursday 05 Mar 2026
- Venue
The Garrett Centre
- Address
Bethnal Green, E2 6LX
- Timings
Friday 9 October 2026, 6-8pm
Friday 6 November 2026, 6-8pm
Friday 4 December 2026, 6-8pm
Friday 5 February 2027, 6-8pm
Friday 5 March 2027, 6-8pm- Price
- Free, but please RSVP
Over the next several months LADA will host The London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP) Roundtable Series. These events are designed for students and interested publics to consider the past, present and future of higher education and research. Join us for discussion on how to undertake practice based research, what makes a good (and bad) PhD supervisor and the ‘value’ of research in and of itself.
Roundtable 1: Led by Practice
Friday 9 October 2026, 6-8pm
Booking details to follow.
Roundtable 2: Engaging Which Publics Exactly?
Friday 6 November 2026, 6-8pm
Our second Roundtable centres publics – and who and how and why we’re looking to ‘engage’, whether that’s via academia, public-facing work in cultural institutions, policy, and so on. Contributors include: Dr Richard Martin (Director of Participation, Whitechapel Gallery); Dr Jana Scholze, (design curator, Kingston); Ben Swaby Selig (co-curator of the British Pavillion at the 20th Architecture Biennale di Venezia 2027, V&A East, tbc); and social justice archivist Dhelia Snoussi (North Kensington Social Justice Archive Project). Together, our speakers will consider cultural institutions, exhibitions, biennales, curating, public programming, and workshopping as means and methods, and how these forms and formats have the capacity to be and do in ways that align with their political/ethical commitment to audiences, publics, collaborators, participants, citizen assemblies, communities, co-designers, co-producers, co-creators, co-curators…
Chair: Dr Elaine Tierney (V&A)
Booking details to follow.
Roundtable 3: The Bad Supervisor
Friday 4 December 2026, 6-8pm
Our third Roundtable hones in on the supervisor, a central but under-examined figure in the PhD ecology. From the Latin super, over/above, and videre, to see/to observe, it’s worth foregrounding the figure’s roots in managerialism and colonial administration – no wonder bad behaviour flourishes in the techno-bureaucratic neoliberal university! In this session, we’d like to identify/discuss The Overseer’s ‘bad practice’ or ‘worst practice’ even (as opposed to ‘best practice’) vis-à-vis abuses of power, knowledge, authority, etc. Together, we’ll look to re-imagine this figure, this role, in ways that are innovative, experimental, hopeful, critical, radical, ethical, care-ful, and do so as speculatively as we can imagine! Ultimately, we’re asking what all this means – and what it might look like – for the future of doctoral education in the Arts and Humanities. Contributors tbc.
Chair: Dr Marquard Smith, UCL/Academic Director, LAHP
Booking details to follow.
Roundtable 4: Value/Futility
Friday 5 February 2027, 6-8pm
Our fourth Roundtable tackles the thorny question of value/futility in the Arts and Humanities in general, and specifically in doctoral education. Contributors to this conversation are: social changer Professor Shakuntala Banaji (LSE), weightlifter Professor Broderick Cho (RCSSD), Dr David Dibosa (Director of Research and Interpretation, Tate, tbc), and Professor Peg Rawes (architecture/philosophy/material ecologies, UCL). Together, they will rise to the challenge of interrogating and re-imagining the idea of ‘value’ in Arts & Humanities research, whether that’s its societal/economic ‘benefits’, its ‘impact’, its ‘value’ in and of itself, and how it might actually change the world! (#KarlMarx).
Chair: Dr Sria Chattergee, Head of Research Initiatives, Paul Mellon Centre.
Booking details to follow.
Roundtable 5: Now That’s What I Call a PhD Programme
Friday 5 March 2027, 6-8pm
This fifth and final Roundtable attends to the past/present/future of PhD programmes in the Arts and Humanities with the winding down of the hugely successful doctoral training partnership model. Our contributors Professor Irit Rogoff (Goldsmiths), Professor Roshini Kampadoo (Westminster), and Professor Hala Mansour (RCA) are responsible for initiating/leading/managing innovative PhD programmes, and they’ll be pondering what comes next!
Chair: Professor Nishat Awan, Professor of Architecture and Visual Culture, UCL.
Booking details to follow.
London Arts and Humanities Partnership
The London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP) is one of ten Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded Doctoral Training Partnerships in the UK. LAHP supports outstanding doctoral research across the arts and humanities and provides an enriched research environment for doctoral researchers through training, cohort development, collaborations and partnerships.
More informationMarquard Smith
Marq is an enthusiastic, creative, and careful academic, curator, programmer, editor, mentor, and consultant. He enjoys working between higher education and cultural institutions (galleries, museums, NPOs, charities, etc.), devising and realising exhibitions, public programmes, and publishing initiatives. He love collaborating, leading and managing research culture, and working with colleagues and students; and has a particular commitment to doctoral education in the Arts & Humanities.
Currently, Marq is Academic Director of LAHP, an AHRC doctoral training partnership. He also works with MA & PhD students at UCL IoE and UCL Slade School of Fine Art, and is Professor of Artistic Research at Vilnius Academy of Arts.
Previous roles as an academic leader/manager include: Acting Director, PhD Programme, UCL Slade; Programme Leader, MA Museums & Galleries in Education, UCL IOE; Head, School of Art & Design History, and co-founder & co-director, Visual & Material Culture Research Centre, Kingston: Research Leader & Head of Doctoral Studies, School of Humanities, RCA: and Founding Director, Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, Westminster.
Marq is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Visual Culture, Founder of the International Association for Visual Culture, and Deputy Director (Collaborations & Partnerships) of the AHRC’s London Arts & Humanities Partnership (LAHP).
More informationAccess Information
Event information
This is a seated event. Various seating options will be available including fold out chairs, office chairs, a sofa and a bench. All are welcome to join in a relaxed space and are free to come and go as they please. The lighting will be fixed with no sudden changes and microphone amplification will be used. It is a relaxed space where participants are able to come and go as they need to.
LADA space
The building is wheelchair accessible by lift and provides a wheelchair accessible ground-floor bathroom. All bathrooms are gender inclusive. There is no isolated quiet space inside, but there is a small quiet outdoor area. Some of the art on display in the space includes naked bodies. You can find more information and see photos of the space here. Should you have any particular access requirements, please email [email protected] and we will be happy to offer further support.
Content notes
Please email [email protected] if you would like more information on what to expect.
Please note the events will be recorded.
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