Beyond the Ivory Tower: Research and Society
PGR Student Conference Thursday 18th September 2014
Windsor Building. 9.30-5pm followed by drinks reception.
| 9:30am | Registration | ||||
| 10:00am 10:10am | Welcome Key note speech
Windsor Auditorium |
Professor Rosemary Deem, Vice Principal (Education) Professor Justin Champion, Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas
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| 11am | Poster Exhibition Coffee | Poster Exhibitors:Nuha AlhazmiSara Alshareef
Bader Alwasel Alice Cook |
Aly DamaniAnkit Gaur
Kisley Di Giuseppe Krista Godfrey |
Mike HorswellAndrea Jimenez Cisneros
Chrysovalantis Kyriacou Laurenz Langer |
Arthur Brogden Male Francisco OteizaJulia Rodriguez
Rachel Slavny |
| Panels | Papers and abstracts | ||||
| Session 1.1
11:20am -12.30pm |
Higher Education and Research(room tbc) | Chair: Shadi Alabdul Razak
Many social scientists claim that there is a wide gap between the production and use of social science. My research explores the experiences, motivations, and career trajectories of academics who bridge this gap. In this paper I will focus on the structures, processes, and agents of mediation which support the movement of social scientific ideas into policy and practice.
The geo political, economic and social order is enforceable in part because of the role played by mainstream education replicating and supporting societal messages. The paper develops the subject Conversation Studies and twelve related methodologies, including Knowledge Creating Conversations and The Arts–Science–Education–In–Performance (ASEIP) Model of Global Learning, to open the relatively closed world of the academe to alternative arguments, methodologies and languages.
Although sampling and research populations are tightly linked together, unlike sampling there are very few discussions about research populations. This study aims to develop a taxonomy of research populations for the first time.
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| Session 1.2
11.20am-12.30pm |
Arts and Culture(room tbc) | Chair: Andreea Ionescu
The paper will discuss what Britpop music can tell us about the British youth and their attitude towards British identity in the 90’s. It will explore why it’s so important to engage with a cultural phenomenon such as Britpop and the relationship between national identity, popular culture and the everyday life of ordinary people.
Casting is a process which is inherently tied up with cultural values and my research looks at the impact that the casting process has on the interpretation of Shakespeare’s female roles in contemporary performance. This paper will make a case for the importance of considering casting when analysing performance, as well as exploring how the depiction of Shakespeare’s female roles relates to notions of gender, power and prestige.
The novels and short stories of the modernist women writers, with their experimental narratives and embrace of daring themes related to marriage, sexual freedom and a woman’s place in society, were considered radical in their time. This research explores the possibilities for adapting these texts to the stage, with a focus on identifying the overlap between feminist and modernist adaptation strategies towards a feminist-modernist theory of adaptation that would most dynamically open them up to be reinterpreted and (re)experienced. |
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| Session 1.3
11.20am-12.30pm |
Communities and connections(room tbc) | Chair: Emily Boxell
Have you ever wondered whether homeless people think differently to the wider society? This research discovers the values of the London homeless community with some surprising results.
The importance of promoting health in prisons has gained significant political backing with prisons identified as potential ‘healthy settings’ with which to improve the overall health of the population and reduce inequalities. This talk will explore the key approaches and themes associated with promoting health in prisons. This will include the relevance of the wider determinants of health (including health literacy) and the conflicts that exist in empowerment and control in promoting health whilst also being imprisoned.
Is my Control vital? The conference presentation will provide an avenue for academia to engage the participants and public in a discourse on Locus of Control, its linkage with, and in order to raise the profile of mental illness and wellbeing in the society at large, as well as the disparity in mental health profile of a target population.
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| 12.30pm | Lunch in foyer | Lunch and poster exhibition | |||
| Session 2.1
1.20pm-2.30pm |
Research and impact(room tbc) | Chair: Stephen Joseph
There is crucial ‘transit’ of knowledge that needs to be made from theory to practice in order to allow theoretical subjects like classics, history, philosophy or literature to have a practical significance in our lives. To achieve that we need to unravel the past through systematic theoretical analysis so that we provide ourselves with options and alternatives for the practical aspects of the wider social development and eventually for the structure of healthier future societies.
Impact is undoubtedly on academics’ agendas. This presentation seeks to probe exactly what we mean by impact by asking what sort of impact we, as postgraduates, want to make. There are two competing narratives that seem to be apparent and advanced in discourses around impact – these can be conceptualised as top-down and bottom-up. Over the course of the presentation I will give an overview of these differing versions and discuss the opportunities and challenges they offer in the quest for impact.
Politics and society in general present researchers with a reality that is qualitatively different from the life in academia. This paper explores the practice of parrhésia as a way in which scientists can give advice to policy makers in a world of power/knowledge without becoming automatons that do little more than rationalize the exercise of power.
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| Session 2.2
1.20pm-2.30pm |
Natural environment/ Science(room tbc)
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Sharing is truly caring. The VetCompass project at the Royal Veterinary College analyses veterinary practice clinical data to reveal the health of UK pets. Study results are strategically relayed to the general public via newspaper articles, radio interviews, infographic posters, social media campaigns and interactive websites to reshape our world view of canine and feline health. A positive influence on the behaviour of current and prospective pet owners is essential for these studies to improve animal welfare at a population level.
My research involves measuring small concentrations of gases emitted from soil surfaces in an old oak plantation in Hampshire. The gases are greenhouse gases and pollutants produced by natural processes but the rates of production are affected by anthropogenic factors and my measurements help to validate numerical models used for planning new forests such as those planted for biofuels and to increase CO2 uptake.
Chemicals emitted from snow have a significant influence on the atmospheric chemistry by altering the concentration of ozone and radicals. This paper will discuss the impact of the changing climate and increasing carbon production on snow chemistry.
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| Session 2.3
1.20pm-2.30pm |
Politics and culture(room tbc) | Chair: Rebecca Swartz
This paper will examine two examples of the interaction between crusade scholarship and wider perceptions of the crusades. Firstly, the YWAM Reconciliation Walk (1995-99) and reactions to it; and secondly as stemming from ‘neomedievalist’ uses of crusade rhetoric in the War on Terror and the academic counterattack.
The Hellenistic honorary decrees for benefactions related to war constitute an essential part of the civic discourse of euergetism in a world where war was ubiquitous. War still concerns us today and there is a whole civic ideology about the virtues manifested by military officials. This paper will explore the official language used to denote martial virtues in the Greek world in the Hellenistic period with a view to revealing the interaction between the promotion of values and the contemporary political social, and cultural contexts.
Plato’s Republic is perhaps best remembered – or indeed misremembered – for the similarities between the society proposed in the dialogue and the society proposed by Karl Marx and later imposed by Lenin. This paper, however, aims to highlight some faults Plato saw with the society, which seem to suggest he never actually believed such a system come could ever come to fruition; these were ramifications overlooked by Marx, which, if heeded, may have led to a drastic change in the events of the 20th century.
Reality and Assumptions: Analysing the Public Perception and Media Representation of Cybercriminals Targeting Digital Banking. |
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| 2.30pm | Coffee | Poster exhibition | |||
| Session 3.1
2.50pm-4.00pm
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Academics, activists and contemporary issues(room tbc) | Chair: Nikki Soo
During the Second World War both the United States of America and Great Britain instituted policies of internment. This paper will address how the internment experience has been remembered and memorialised in both America and Britain, and how in recent years efforts have been made in popular culture, such as films and books, to engage the interest of younger generations.
This paper tackles the empirical significance of organic intellectualism – in a Gramscian sense – in the Arab World by highlighting my personal experience as an activist on the ground and the role I intend to play as a researcher. Both roles are shown as complementary to resist mutative counter-revolutionary forces, regressive discourse, and modes of oppression in the Arab World.
This paper will look at a participatory theatre project in Singapore using Playback Theatre to engage community participants and audience in a social and artistic dialogue on migration and its impact on their city.
The scholarship on social movement does not only suffer from theoretical confusion regarding the development, dynamics and outcomes of social movements, but also predominantly bases its findings on Western societies. This lack of consideration of other regions of the world results in an incomplete and distorted understanding of social movements in general. My paper therefore highlights the benefits for the scholarship of analysing the policy outcomes of social movements by using women’s movements in the Arab world. |
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| Session 3.2
2.50pm-4.00pm |
Education(room tbc) | Chair: Rebecca Swartz
This research aims to quantify where inefficiencies in resource allocation are originating, through the identification of best practice within the primary school sector. The hypothesis is that relative inefficiencies exist in resource use and allocation between schools and there exists the scope of maximizing output (educational output) further through the judicious allocation of resources and learning from best practice.
Supported by right-wing think-tanks, the current Government has been keen to create and encourage ‘military ethos’ initiatives in the education sector. This paper will discuss how historical research is vital to understanding and challenging the projections of cultural memory on which such policies depend.
Do our students really think that they learn more English vocabulary when studying it online? If so, how? And most important, how do they suppose this new vocabulary blends into their language skills? This is a paper about students’ perceptions of themselves as 21st century language learners.
This paper will present an alternative coaching model of Teacher Training in relation to Autism and Inclusive Education. This was also supported by the implementation of a Reflective Model (RM) that I have previously created. The aspiration here was that the participant would develop her own capacity for reflection in action, while acting as autonomously as possible within her own context. The final target would be for the teacher to have a scientific approach within her own school context, and able to create conditions wherein the Best Practices developed were suited to her specific reality. |
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| Session 3.3
2.50pm-4.00pm |
Management/ organisations(room tbc) | Chair: Shadi Alabdul Razak
The emergence of the Web 2.0 phenomena of crowdsourcing appears to be having an impact on heritage stakeholders such as curators, archivists and digital media coordinators. This research focuses on working directly with museum personnel in order to understand how their increased engagement with the public through social media may be challenging both their professional roles, their technological capabilities, and the very IS systems embedded within the organisations themselves.
Technology Innovation hubs are spaces where computer scientists, technologists, software developers and entrepreneurs congregate to network, collaborate and exchange to bring their ideas to fruition. In the past four years, these organizations have been emerging in Africa, and they are situated in a context where technologists, web developers and programmers find significant barriers in applying their skills, a major one being lack of affordable broadband for instance. Tech hubs then offer a shared space where they can access this vital infrastructure. This paper explores whether and how innovation takes place in technological hubs in resource-constrained environments and their impacts on social development
Intentions are generally believed to be the best predictor of planned behavior, especially when the behavior is rare, hard to observe, or involve unpredictable time lags such as Entrepreneurial behavior. The aim of this paper is to explain and understand the important role played by family in developing these entrepreneurial intentions amongst the youth of India, where despite the high entrepreneurial potential the level of entrepreneurship is amongst the lowest in the world. |
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| 4.00pm | PlenaryWindsor Auditorium | Panel and Q&APlenary speakers:
Professor Ben O’Loughlin, International Relations, Politics Dr Harriet Hawkins , Cultural Geography Dr Jane Hamlett, Modern British History
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| 4.40pm | Awards for poster exhibitionsWindsor Auditorum | ||||
| 5pm -7pm | Close and drinks reception in foyer | ||||
PGR Conference 2014: Beyond the Ivory Tower 