Suffragettes: women in public

This paper takes a generational approach to understanding what the suffragettes were fighting for and why. This involves looking at how the problem of women’s equality appeared at the time, and how it intersected with women’s experience. It also involves a discussion of how gaining the vote intersected with other, wider changes that changed subtly the meaning attached to the public and private spheres over course of the 20th century

Blaming the Baby Boomers does today’s young people no favours

One of the nastiest narratives to have developed over the past decade is that of “boomer blaming”, where the alleged good fortunes of the generation born in the 20 years or so after World War II (definitions of the boomer generation vary, often according to what it is being blamed for) are presented as the cause of myriad social problems

Universities and the construction of a new generation gap

Universities today operate as institutions where a specific set of ‘21st century’ skills and values are promoted. This is particularly the case with first-generation university students, where the attempt to move students away from the influence of their background is made explicit. One assumption here is that the role of the university should be to distance students from the norms, expectations, knowledge, and experiences of older generations – both inside and outside the academy. This paper investigates the extent to which the focus on skills and values disrupts the generational transfer of knowledge in favour of training to meet present-day economic and political imperatives

Is it time to resist calls for more mental health interventions in education

Talk to the ResearchEd conference, 9th September 2017

Post-Brexit boomer blaming: The contradictions of generational grievance

Following the UK’s 2016 referendum on membership of the European Union (EU), a narrative emerged positioning Baby Boomers as ‘to blame’ for the result, which drew largely on a pre-existing claim that this generation is responsible for a range of contemporary social problems. Using cultural script analyses of the ‘Baby Boomer problem’, this paper considers the development of this narrative and its implications for the sociology of knowledge. A study of newspaper articles published around the time of the EU Referendum finds that the Baby Boomer motif is employed as a metaphorical shorthand for a range of ‘troubling conditions’ (Mills 1970), including economic crises, cultural conflicts, and political divisions. The escalating rhetoric of ‘Boomer-blaming’ pursued by claimsmaking organisations has sought to consolidate and extend a sentiment of generational grievance, which informs wider claims about a political divide between old and young. One consequence has been the weaponisation of the concept of generation: a development that threatens to undermine the value of this concept as a way of understanding social and historical change

“Helicopter parents”, higher education, and ambivalent adulthood

This article discusses a tension that is increasingly discussed in relation to higher education in the United States and the United Kingdom, regarding the level and nature of parents’ involvement in their adult children’s educational success and social development. The problem of the 'helicopter parent', who hovers over their older child's education and social life, is increasingly framed as a causal factor in young adults’ struggles to cope with the demands of a university environment in which they live away from home, and are expected to exercise a greater degree of independence, self-motivation, and personal responsibility in engaging with their studies than when they were at school. This discussion is extended to the struggles that the ‘Millennial generation’ allegedly experiences in managing the pressure of work and life after university. A thematic exploration of the literature on the problem of the ‘helicopter parent’ finds that this narrative is fraught with contradictions, particularly in the extent to which parental behaviours, practices, and expectations can be isolated from the wider cultural and institutional dynamics that implicitly or explicitly discourage young adults from aspiring to independence and adulthood. As such, criticisms of ‘helicopter parents’ both express, and evade engaging with, a deeper sense of uncertainty about the socialisation of emerging adults

Development of fiber shields for engine containment

Tests were conducted in translational launchers and spin pits to generate empirical data used in the design of a Kevlar shield for containing engine burst debris. Methods are given for modeling the relationship of fragment characteristics to shielding requirements. The change in relative importance of shield mounting provisions as fragment energy is increased is discussed

Development of MCAERO wing design panel method with interactive graphics module

A reliable and efficient iterative method has been developed for designing wing section contours corresponding to a prescribed subcritical pressure distribution. The design process is initialized by using MCAERO (MCAIR 3-D Subsonic Potential Flow Analysis Code) to analyze a baseline configuration. A second program DMCAERO is then used to calculate a matrix containing the partial derivative of potential at each control point with respect to each unknown geometry parameter by applying a first-order expansion to the baseline equations in MCAERO. This matrix is calculated only once but is used in each iteration cycle to calculate the geometry perturbation and to analyze the perturbed geometry. The potential on the new geometry is calculated by linear extrapolation from the baseline solution. This extrapolated potential is converted to velocity by numerical differentiation, and velocity is converted to pressure by using Bernoulli's equation. There is an interactive graphics option which allows the user to graphically display the results of the design process and to interactively change either the geometry or the prescribed pressure distribution

Subsonic panel method for the efficient analysis of multiple geometry perturbations

An accurate and efficient method was developed for the aerodynamic analysis of a series of arbitrary small geometry perturbations to a given baseline configuration. The method is appropriate for wing-fuselage configurations in incompressible potential flow. Mathematical formulations are presented for three computer programs that are employed. The first program is a conventional surface panel method for calculating the baseline singularity distribution. The second program calculates a partial derivative matrix. Each element of the matrix is the rate of change of singularity strength at one point with respect to a surface coordinate of a different point. For each baseline configuration, the calculated quantities from the first two programs establish an input file for the third. The third program calculates the surface pressure distribution and forces and moments for a series of geometry perturbations