TRAC 19 & "Coffee and Circuses"
This week I will be heading down to the Women's Classical Committee AGM, where there'll be talks/workshops from Susan Deacy and Juliana Bastos Marques (plus a bunch more folk) on the theme "Foremothers". I am excited to become part of the community of the WCC because they have trans inclusive guidelines meaning I don't have to feel like the odd one out who shouldn't be there!
Anyway, I'll try and write something up about that once I've actually gone! In the meantime I thought I'd give a late summary of my time at TRAC 2019 @ University of Kent.
The plenary speech was //amazing//. Given by Zena Kamash, she spoke on Decolonising Archaeology in the modern day. Dr Zena Kamash is a British Iraqi archaeologist, and senior lecturer at Royal Holloway in Roman Archaeology in the Middle East and Britain. Zena surveyed lecturers on Roman Archaeology worldwide on their teaching subjects (ie. locations, themes, periods of Roman archaeology), and their background (mainly their gender and race/ethnicity, what country they were from, and what country they taught in). The statistics she got from this were shocking to many of the people there, as they showed how few BAME folk went on to do postgraduate study and research compared to the proportion of the population of the UK they make up. I'm probably not doing Zena justice so you can just watch the talk here, and follow Zena on Twitter @ZenaKamash.
The sessions I attended for the rest of the weekend focussed mostly around identity. My first session on the Friday was called "Who am I? and if so, how many? Identity research and research identity", organised by Sarah Scheffler, Dominik Maschek, Henry Clarke, and Daniël van Helden (AKA fuzzy set guy). It focussed on addressing our own biases as modern researchers, and how that affects the way the past is presented today. It was great to see prominent researchers think about their own biases in a constructive way, and discussing how it is a fallacy to assume we can avoid putting these biases in our research. It did get a little bit white, hetro, straight folk realising identity exists and they aren't the default, but I think it was still good to see and am excited to see if it helps researchers look past themselves when writing research and acknowledging their personal biases. Dan brought up a quote from Ludwig Wittengenstein: "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".
Later that day I got to see Nat Harlow, Caistor Roman Project veteran and pal of mine, talk about the AR app for Caistor and what we know about the settlement there Venta Icenorum. The app allows visitors to wonder round a field in rural Norfolk but on their phone screen see a Roman town and talk to it's inhabitants. She was a great speaker as always, and got us laughing at the end with an easter egg in the app that makes all the inhabitants of the town dance!
On Saturday I participated in Lisa Lodwick and Zena Kamash's workshop on diversifying reading lists. This involved looking through reading lists of university courses on Roman Archaeology, and looking at the proportions of white/non-white, British/non-British, and male/female. We discussed the issues with guessing someone's gender from their name, or from googling them and looking at a photo, and to a lesser extent the issue of doing that to identify BAME people. However, I think this is still an important thing to do as it highlights an issue that many don't really see, which is the lack of women, trans, and BAME folk on reading lists, especially when it comes to women who make up a large proportion of the field but not of our reading lists.
Then was the AGM where it was announced that the next TRAC will be in Split, Croatia (a surprise to no one)! I ran for a position on the steering committee but fell short by a few votes, alas. Though many people were very supportive of my having run, and reassured me I should run again if I manage to make it to Split. One, rather half cut, guy even came up to me with a big pat on the shoulder proclaiming "Miller, I want you to know I voted for you!" which was very amusing, but also kind and encouraging.
That's one element to highlight of my trip, I experienced only one/two incidents of transphobia the whole weekend. To some that sounds like an outrage (and obviously it is), but they were both from the same guy (who I won't name and shame). Everyone else at the conference was totally respectful, used my pronouns, and listened to my thoughts from a trans non-binary perspective and took note. It shouldn't be an amazing or astounding thing, showing a person basic respect, but it really lifted me up and helped me be confident talking to everyone when often I get scared I'm going to end up spending whole events explaining "what" I am, or just hiding from disrespectful people.
Zena and I headed off together after the AGM to organise the unplanned unconference, that Phil Smither kindly asked us to run. The idea of the unplanned unconference was that delegates could put topics they wanted to discuss on a whiteboard in the foyer and then they'd be discussed in an "unconference" style. I and Zena made up the majority of ideas on the whiteboard, Phil thought we ought to present. It went really well and we got lots of people talking about erasure in the past and present.
The last proper thing I did at the conference was chat with David Walsh about my research for his podcast Coffee and Circuses. I spoke about how my identity led me to research marginalised identities in the past, particular the Roman period as it is so colonial. I also chatted about my experience of TRAC. If you want to check that out then you can here.
Then came the party! It was fun but a little too loud for tired autistic me. Me, Zena and a couple others chatted about a TRAC tea party being invented for people who liked to chat and not drink. It would certainly be nice to see a more accessible party that wasn't completely deafeningly loud. Maybe a silent disco! Anyway, I eventually had enough drinks bought for me that I got on the dance floor and partied though!
I had a great time at TRAC and look forward to visiting Split next year!
I'm going to be at a few upcoming events, so if you want to chat feel free to say "hi". I've listed them here, partially to remind myself!
Upcoming Events
Women's Classical Committee AGM
10th May @ Cathays Park Campus, Cardiff University
13th May @ G.34 Barbara Strang Teaching Centre, Newcastle University
I'll be giving a talk on how to make postgraduate study safe and accessible for trans/nonbinary folk, and then helping run the rest of the event.
TAG 2019 (if I get funding!)
16th - 18th December @ UCL