Heritage and Stigma. Co-producing and communicating the histories of mental health and learning disability

University engagement with mental health services has traditionally been informed by the vocational and pedagogical links between the two sectors. However, a growth in the interest in public history and in the history of mental healthcare has offered new opportunities for those in the humanities to engage new audiences and to challenge perceptions about care in the past. The introduction of the ‘impact agenda’ and related funding streams has further encouraged academics to contribute to historical debates, and to those concerning current services. One such example of this is the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Heritage and Stigma project at the University of Huddersfield, which was conceived to support mental health and learning disability charities in the exploration and dissemination of their own histories. Using this project as a case study, this paper will draw on primary source material to reflect on the opportunities and challenges of working in partnership with such groups. In particular, it will consider the need to address issues of stigma and exclusion in tandem with a critical understanding of the moves to ‘community care’ instigated by landmark legislation in the form of the 1959 Mental Health Act. Overall, it provides evidence of an inclusive, coproductive model of design and highlights the positive contribution to communicating mental health made by those based in the humanities

What do children want from the BBC? Children’s content and participatory environments in an age of age of citizen media

Members of the project team delved into the issue of news provision for teens, a notable gap in the BBC’s provision of news for citizens between Newsround and adult news, respectively. There already appears to be an acknowledgement within the BBC that this audience is under-served and that something must be done to address this gap

Societal output and use of research performed by health research groups

The last decade has seen the evaluation of health research pay more and more attention to societal use and benefits of research in addition to scientific quality, both in qualitative and quantitative ways. This paper elaborates primarily on a quantitative approach to assess societal output and use of research performed by health research groups (societal quality of research). For this reason, one of the Dutch university medical centres (i.e. the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC)) was chosen as the subject of a pilot study, because of its mission to integrate top patient care with medical, biomedical and healthcare research and education. All research departments were used as units of evaluation within this university medical centre

Building a Small Cinema: Resisting Neoliberal Colonization in Liverpool

In its stated aim of “creating cinemas not supermarkets,” the Small Cinema project voiced its alterity to the recent redevelopment of Liverpool’s city center and those of other former industrial cities throughout the Midlands and the north of the UK. These regeneration projects addressed the problem of a shrinking manufacturing base by replacing them with service industries, a move which has entailed the privatization of vast tracts of public space. Conversely, the building, functioning, and general praxis of the Small Cinema project suggests a mode of practice that more accurately fits within the paradigm of a collaborative commons than a capitalist marketplace. The project’s exemption from market criteria grants it the freedom to pursue public over private goods, thereby constituting a point of resistance to the ongoing neoliberalization of the city and changes to government policy that make it increasingly difficult for non-profit projects to exist. Historically speaking, cinemas have been accessible to the working class in a way that other artistic media have not. However, while the history of film as a tool for political subversion is well documented, less attention has been paid to the physical construction of independent cinematic space, its programming/running, and its potential as a node of resistance to neoliberal colonization. This paper uses the case study of the Small Cinema project in Liverpool as a means by which to understand how cinematic spaces can counteract the effects of policies that continue to have such a detrimental impact on the arts and education, as well as social health and well-being

Paper: 'Households and families in seventeenth-century London'

A paper given at the European Association for Urban History Conference, Stockholm, 31 August 200

The Equality and Human Rights Commission. Challenges and opportunities

This report summarises the one-day workshop entitled 'The Equality and Human Rights Commission: Challenges and Opportunities', which took place in London on June 17 2011. It was convened by Jonathan Breckon, Director of Policy and Public Affairs at the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Dr. Thomas Pegram, a 2011 Visiting Fellow in Human Rights at the Human Rights Consortium (HRC), School of Advanced Study. The purpose of the day was to provide a forum for practitioners and scholars from across disciplines to undertake an appraisal of the EHRC

Research Grant Final Report to the AHRC (Ref 16429)

The final report to the AHRC on the research project: 'People in Place: families, households and housing in early modern London

Paper: 'Family and household in late seventeenth-century London'

A paper given at the Economic History Society Annual Conference, University of Reading, 1 April 200

Corruption and business integrity: law, policy and company practices

Since the 1990s the international community has become acutely aware of the role of businesses in the growth of corruption globally and the debilitating effects of corruption on economic growth and development. A multitude of strategies from regulation in the form of international legal instruments and self-regulation in the form of codes of conduct through to training of employees and involvement of NGOs and citizens in tackling corruption have emerged and these have been vociferously advocated by international organizations, chambers of commerce and NGOs. This article examines the extent to which these strategies have impacted on the policies and practices of businesses through a survey of companies listed in The Times (London) which included all industry sectors with the exception of banking and finance. The survey findings indicate that despite the huge efforts in devising and publicising anti-corruption strategies by the international community these strategies seem to have had limited impact on the policies and practices of companies

Ruled by the seasons

Multimedia CD ROM allowing pupils to investigate life in rural Scotland in the nineteenth century. CD-ROM focusing on industrialisation, urbanisation and migration providing the historical context for life in rural Scotland under radical transformation in the nineteenth century.Uses the Journal kept between 1879 and 1892 by James Wilson, a farmer in Banffshire, north-east Scotland, to illustrate life in rural society. Ruled by the Seasons contains the 1881 census for Banffshire allowing students to trace the people and places described by James Wilson, analyse socio-economic profiles of farms, villages and towns while also studying their local area