Public lecture series
IGNITE 2024 will run from Thursday 20 to Tuesday 25 June. We will have a variety of pre-recorded talks and fantastic in-person public lectures taking place in the lecture theatre at UHI Inverness on Inverness Campus. Places are limited so book your tickets now.
In-person lectures
In-person lectures
Manufacturing Madness: The Story of How Schizophrenia Became Schizophrenia and Why it Matters
- Ryan McLean, Research Fellow - UHI
Schizophrenia is a complex mental illness that can cause hallucinations, delusional thinking, and depression. Schizophrenia has been subject to over a century of debate and controversy, playing out in the scientific literature and wider society. However, before 1908, no reference to Schizophrenia can be made because it did not exist. This lecture will trace the history of Schizophrenia, and the anxieties of the society that produced it, to explore what its origins mean for modern Schizophrenia research.
- 20 June - 1pm-2pm
- Inverness Campus
Decarbonising Aviation: The Challenges and Opportunities
- Prof Andrew Rae, Professor of Engineering - UHI
A description and evaluation of the technological proposals to decarbonise aviation, including the world-leading activities taking place in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
- 25 June - 1pm-2pm
- Inverness Campus
A summary of ‘nature-based’ methods of sustainably managing and restoring the freshwater environment
- Hamish Moir
The talk will discuss the ‘nature-based approach’ to the management and restoration of the freshwater environment. This approach adopts sustainable ‘green’ methods to managing rivers, wetlands etc than the more traditional civil engineering approach. Working with and reinstating natural river process and utilising environmentally sensitive materials, provides solutions that are effective while also delivering significant biodiversity benefit, climate change resilience, carbon storage and aesthetic appeal.
- 25th June - 6pm-7pm
- Inverness Campus
Pre-recorded lectures
A song for Lighthouse Bill
- Mary Ann Kennedy
Nick and Mary Ann chose as our contribution to the UHI/Northword Storytagging project a response to a poem about Bill Gault’s life serving with the Northern Lighthouse Board and the final days of service before automation. Long time pharolophiles, the sea is with us daily, looking across the sea-loch of Loch Linnhe to Ben Nevis from Watercolour Music’s studios in Ardgour. This is the kind of project we love to work on – a blend of real life, learning from others’ lived experience, drawing from the world immediately around us, and creating a new perspective on the subject. The fact that we get to mess around on the water is something of a bonus! Techniques included convolution reverb, sonification of data, field recording on and around Skerryvore Lighthouse and Tiree, and singing with the seals.
Dubh-Shneachd - Black Snow
‘Dubh-Shneachd - Black Snow’ is a vocal/electronic work created for the 11th International Symposium on Antarctic Earth Sciences and designed for performance in the historic Playfair Library at Old College, University of Edinburgh. ‘Black Snow’ is contemporary in nature but inspired by the relationship between Gaels and the natural world around them.
At its heart are the events of the winter of 1829, known in the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and Islands of Scotland as Bliadhna an t-Sneachd Dhuibh – The Year of the Black Snow - when the winter lasted so long that huge numbers of cattle died and great hardship ensued. 'Black Snow’ challenges contemporary concepts of severe and unusual weather and climate change as a modern-day phenomenon. It also celebrates the natural relationship between people and their surroundings, their inate understanding of the interplay of the elements, and the ability of humans to use humour and conviviality to endure hardship.
‘Black Snow’ also plays with the challenges of the Playfair Library as a performance space, using the acoustics of a striking and unusual room to build a soundscape that fills its entire space in all three dimensions. The music draws its text from a fragment of a pibroch song, ‘M ’Agh Donn’ (My Brown Heifer), and part of the Kintail song, ‘Thoir a-nall am Botal’ (Fetch over the Bottle), and the soundscape is created from manipulated instrumental and electronic sound, and also sounds from nature, including the sound of stones bouncing over a solid frozen loch down the road from Watercolour Music in Ardgour.