Editorial Note: The book review as "performance"

The growth of the Internet presents challenges to knowledge transfer; such knowledge is formed contextually and dialogically, a negotiated discursive construct that is created between people. The editorial makes a case for book reviews and review essays which are auto-ethnographic, "performative" and critical. The shift to a more dialogic exploration of emergent knowledge through the book review as social discourse is discussed. The essence of qualitative research itself is explored as the bedrock of book reviews. Reviews are considered as polyvocal attempts at interfacing with cultural/relational/linguistic accounts of the real. A narrative approach to reporting on reviewed books is encouraged, permitting authors to reveal themselves in the relationships presented through their writing. A case is made that a phenomenological approach to writing reviews would be more interested in the person who writes than in the act of writing itself. It is through the creative representations of the reviewed book that reviewers can fashion their own individual Gestalt or worldview woven from the writing under review. The report itself mediates between researcher/writer and reviewer/reader. Such an approach opens up opportunities to write book reviews "performatively". Finally, reviewers are encouraged to create both a dialogue with the author under consideration as well as with their reader

The online multi-agency support barometer

This report presents the findings of a small feasibility study which sought to investigate the use of an online risk management Barometer. The barometer was developed with a view to helping multiple agencies communicate about vulnerable and 'at risk' patients within mental health settings.The Barometer is an online tool which allows staff from multiple agencies to access and share information with other staff if a patient is at risk.The key aims and objectives of this small research project were i) to evaluating how professionals felt about their current risk assessment tools, ii) to assess the ease of use and the relevance of questions within the Barometer tool and iii) to discuss some potential modifications/problem areas of incorporating the Barometer tool within mental health services and across a multi-disciplinary perspective.The research was conducted in three mental services within the South Essex Partnership Trust (2 x CAMHS and 2 x Adult Services) using a mixed-methods approach

Objects of Storytelling and Digital Memory (MEMO)

Memories can be formed around contact with physical objects that populate our everyday lives, we make sense of the physical world by the memories we create. We can create levels of understanding in relation to objects by organising significant memories into stories that hold meaning. The story of an object can involve the story of the personal relationship people have with it, the object can be a trigger on more than one level. In this project the physical, acts as a bridge to the virtual to provoke memory and sometimes instigate new memory formation in relation to an object. The artefacts of collective digital memory are accessed and rearranged through interaction with objects, the performance of this interaction gives space in which memories and stories about the objects and virtual artefacts can form. Physical manifestations of meta-data are used to create an unconventional interface to a database of existing memories. This paper seeks to frame the project theoretically and describe the resulting piece of work

From Peer Tutors to Writing Center Colleagues: The Potential of Writing Center Internships

The current conversation surrounding peer writing tutor professional development frequently includes discussions of authority, autonomy, and oversight. At the University of Michigan's Sweetland Writing Center, our conversations have followed similar trends with the added complication of an unusual setup when it comes to one-to-one writing consultations. Because Sweetland is staffed entirely by what the field calls "professional consultants" (university writing faculty with MFA or Ph.D. degrees), "professional development" has meant simply carrying out the work of the Academy, that is, attending conferences, publishing books and articles, conducting research, and revising curriculum. Yet in the Peer Tutoring Center – a space populated by upper-level undergraduates who have completed two semesters of intensive training taught by Sweetland faculty in the theory and practice of tutoring their peers – "professional development" has raised many issues of power and authority, at least for the faculty and staff supervising them. When the "professional consultants" seek to "professionalize" the student peer tutors, the emphasis shifts from self-improvement and self-interest (in the economic sense) to quality control and consciousness-raising. The question becomes one of how to help undergraduates transition from self-interest (in the psychological sense) to community- or organizational-interest, that is, how to help them identify with the body that oversees themUniversity Writing Cente

Engaging with 'impact' agendas? Reflections on storytelling as knowledge exchange

The ‘impact agenda’, that is the whole gamut of initiatives related to knowledge exchange and public engagement that have been articulated in recent years, has had and continues to have a significant shaping influence on the way in which academics carry out their research. Within a UK context, the Research Excellence Framework (2008-2013) has made an explicit engagement with this agenda virtually compulsory for research-active academics by introducing ‘impact’ as a new criteria on which the research performance of universities, departments and individual researchers is assessed. The new emphasis on impact, defined as the ‘demonstrable contribution’ that research makes ‘to society and the economy’ beyond specialist academic audiences, has generated much discussion and controversy among academics. The ‘impact agenda’ has been critiqued on a number of grounds, ranging from diluting standards of academic excellence (Jump 2012), to limiting academic freedom by tying fundable academic enquiry to policy objectives, to concerns about the difficulties and costs involved in assessing ‘impact’ (Martin 2011). The widespread perception that academic autonomy is increasingly threatened by the twin forces of ‘audit culture’ and the commodification of higher education has been exacerbated by the broader climate of economic austerity and related cuts in university funding. Meanwhile, ‘impact’ itself remains a poorly understood and nebulous concept even as ‘impact case studies’ are embedded within REF criteria and scores. The difficulty in clearly defining the rules of the game stems from the fact that each discipline, research community and individual researcher has their own notion of ‘impact’ as it pertains to their work. Nonetheless, there is a real danger that lack of clarity, compounded with the obligatory compliance to impact assessment, may encourage a strategic ‘game-playing’ and a random incentivisation of short-term ‘impact’ activities by university management, rather than a vision of what meaningful engagement with non-academic publics may look like. In the light of this, the basic aim of this chapter is to reflect critically on the difficulties of implementing impact agendas with recourse to a Research Networking initiative (Translating Russian and East European Cultures), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The chapter focuses on knowledge exchange, since a key and recurring point of reflection throughout the initiative concerned the nature and practice of knowledge exchange (cf. Mitton et al. 2007) across academic and non-academic ‘communities of practice’ (Wenger 1998). This topic is explored here though a case study of one particular strand of the TREEC Network Initiative dedicated to storytelling. The heart of the chapter reflects on storytelling as a way to facilitate ‘knowledge exchange’, as well as on the ability of the storytelling events organised to bring together different publics. Whilst critical of ‘impact agendas’, I proceed from the position that, as publicly funded researchers, academics have a responsibility to contribute to the wider society through their knowledge, skills and resources, and that beyond strategic compliance to impact assessment ‘knowledge exchange’, broadly defined, has always been and should remain an integral part of university activities

'Girlfriends and Strawberry Jam’: Tagging Memories, Experiences, and Events for Future Retrieval

In this short paper we have some preliminary thoughts about tagging everyday life events in order to allow future retrieval of events or experiences related to events. Elaboration of these thoughts will be done in the context of the recently started Network of Excellence PetaMedia (Peer-to-Peer Tagged Media) and the Network of Excellence SSPNet (Social Signal Processing), to start in 2009, both funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme. Descriptions of these networks will be given later in this paper

Look back in wonder : how the endings of short stories can be their most powerful and effective distinguishing features

Drawing on her experiences as a writer and teacher of short fiction, the author offers an interrogation of the defining qualities of short stories, with a particular focus on how the ending of a narrative can be one of the most useful ways of teasing out generic differences between short fic-tion and other prose forms. A survey of critical and writerly opinion leads into a practical demon-stration of how endings work, with detailed reference to James Joyce’s Dubliners. The essay concludes by suggesting ways in which Dubliners prefigures the composite novels and story cy-cles that are prominent features of contemporary practice