By Eva Kekou, 4Humanities International Correspondent

I had the big honor and pleasure of attending the 4Humanities Symposium, “Showing the Arts and Humanities Matter,” which took place September 18th at UCL.

It is so incredibly nice to get to know a community and the people you have worked for and been in touch with virtually in the real world.

I traveled all the way from Athens to London for the symposium, and it was one of the very few cases in which this travel was well worth it. It was a fertile, involving and academic symposium that brought people with different ideas and experiences from different disciplines, geographical regions and backgrounds together.

The a one-day symposium consisted of three sessions. Our day started with Professor Alan Liu’s presentation and concluded with Professor Prescott’s presentation. The symposium also included talks from Dr. Ruediger Klein, Neil Griffiths, Dr. Anna Uochurch , Eleonora Belfiore, and Amy Westwell and Oliver Milne.

I enjoyed all of the lectures and I especially liked the fact that students were given the opportunity to express themselves. This shows that bottom-up politics will not bring more attention to the arts and humanities unless we carefully attend to all aspects and views of the issue, particularly the students who are suffering from cuts in higher education.

The symposium ran very smoothly in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, allowing people to interact and exchange ideas, get to know each other and establish a network through real face-to face time. It has been a fruitful experience for me in particular, and I believe bringing people together to discuss and suggest ideas and solutions in such a positive way was very productive.

In order to reflect the symposium’s collaborative feel, I will be writing a collaborative post with fellow international correspondent Ernesto and the symposium’s artist in residence Dr. Lucy Lyons. This report will include photographs of the event and the sketches Lucy made during the event.