Making art matter : narrating the collaborative creative process

This dissertation positions art production as a form of social activism by investigating how participation within artistic collaborations constructs "mattering maps" where individual transformation and political change are linked by collective processes of making meaning. The three sites examined--Oujé-Bougoumou, The Bread and Puppet Theater, and Le Centre Artisanal des Femmes--all facilitate creative production as an apparatus for political action. In analyzing each, the dissertation highlights the affect of art making as a way of theorizing the becoming of subjectivity necessary for social activists. Invoking a locational feminism, this project contends that a situational conception of identity subverts modernist appeals to an essential humanistic subject, while maintaining the possibility of individual agency. The creative processes enacted at each site necessitate the construction of a new model for art history that narrates collaborative production. Therefore, rather than describing the examples in terms of art objects, finite events, or hypothesizing their effects upon viewers, this dissertation creates particular meaning by shaping the discourse around the production of communities; the performance of collaboration; the transformative pedagogy of "organic intellectuals;" and the creation of cultural democracy. In doing so the specificity of each of the activist interventions can be documented, while attendantly theorizing the impact of participation within creative production as a process of making art matter as social activism

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Models of Organising Adult Safeguarding

Professionals express divergent views about whether adults at risk are best served by safeguarding work being incorporated into social workers’ casework or being undertaken by specialist workers within local area or centralised teams. This paper draws on findings from the final two phases of a three-phase study which aimed to identify a typology of different models of organising adult safeguarding and compare the advantages and disadvantages of these. We used mixed-methods to investigate four different models of organising adult safeguarding which we termed: A) Dispersed-Generic, B) Dispersed-Specialist, C) Partly-Centralised-Specialist and D) Fully-Centralised-Specialist. In each model, we analysed staff interviews (n = 38), staff survey responses (n = 206), feedback interviews (with care home managers, solicitors and Independent Mental Capacity Advocates) (n = 28), Abuse of Vulnerable Adults (AVA) Returns, Adult Social Care User Survey Returns (ASCS) and service costs. This paper focuses on qualitative data from staff and feedback interviews and the staff survey. Our findings focus on safeguarding as a specialism, safeguarding practice (including multi-agency working, prioritisation, tensions, handover, staff confidence and deskilling) and managing safeguarding. Local authority (LA) participants described and commented on the advantages and disadvantages of their organisational model. Feedback interviews offered different perspectives on safeguarding services and implications of different models

Management of complex symptoms in multiple sclerosis (MS)

People with MS can present with a complex range of symptoms. Some of these include dysautonomia (autonomic dysfunction), fatigue, cognitive impairment, and mood disorders. These symptoms must be managed in order to optimise intervention outcomes

Histology in 3D:development of an online interactive student resource on epithelium

Epithelium is an important and highly specialised tissue type that makes up the lining of inner and outer surfaces of the human body. It is proposed that a self-study tool adds to efficient learning and lecturing on this complicated topic in medical curricula. This paper describes the development and evaluation of an online interactive 3D resource on epithelium for undergraduate medical students. A first evaluation was carried out by means of an online survey (n = 37). The resource was evaluated positively on the website in general, its visual contents and its value and potential for the medical curriculum

Woody plant encroachment intensifies under climate change across tundra and savanna biomes

CITATION: Garcia Criado, M. et al. 2020. Woody plant encroachment intensifies under climate change across tundra and savanna biomes. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 229(5): 925–943. doi:10.1111/geb.13072The original publication is available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14668238Aim: Biomes worldwide are shifting with global change. Biomes whose extents are limited by temperature or precipitation, such as the tundra and savanna, may be particularly strongly affected by climate change. While woody plant encroachment is prevalent across both biomes, its relationship to temperature and precipitation change remains unknown. Here, we quantify the degree to which woody encroachment is related to climate change and identify its main associated drivers. Location: Tundra and savanna biomes. Time period: 1992 ± 20.27–2010 ± 5.62 (mean ± SD). 1876–2016 (range). Major taxa studied: Woody plants (shrubs and trees). Methods: We compiled a dataset comprising 1,089 records from 899 sites of woody plant cover over time and attributed drivers of woody cover change across these two biomes. We calculated cover change in each biome and assessed the degree to which cover change corresponds to concurrent temperature and precipitation changes using multiple climate metrics. Finally, we conducted a quantitative literature review of the relative importance of attributed drivers of woody cover change. Results: Woody encroachment was widespread geographically and across climate gradients. Rates of woody cover change (positive or negative) were 1.8 times lower in the tundra than in the savanna (1.8 vs. 3.2%), while rates of woody cover increase (i.e., encroachment) were c. 1.7 times lower in the tundra compared with the savanna (3.7 vs. 6.3% per decade). In the tundra, magnitudes of woody cover change did not correspond to climate, while in the savanna, greater cover change corresponded with increases in precipitation. We found higher rates of woody cover change in wetter versus drier sites with warming in the tundra biome, and higher rates of woody cover change in drier versus wetter sites with increasing precipitation in the savanna. However, faster rates of woody cover change were not associated with more rapid rates of climate change across sites, except for maximum precipitation in the savanna. Main conclusions: Woody encroachment was positively related to warming in the tundra and increased rainfall in the savanna. However, cover change rates were not predicted by rates of climate change, which can be partially explained by climate interactions in both biomes. Additional likely influences include site-level factors, time-lags, plant-specific responses, and land use and other non-climate drivers. Our findings highlight the complex nature of climate change impacts in biomes limited by seasonality, which should be accounted for to realistically estimate future responses across open biomes under global change scenarios.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/geb.13072Publishers versio

Reflecting on researcher practice relationships in prison research : A contact hypothesis lens

Interactions between researchers and professionals need to be carefully managed in the criminal justice context. This chapter explores the utility of the theoretical lens of the contact hypothesis as a means to understand and improve these relations. The COLAB consortium is used as a case study of a typical partnership between professionals in practice and researchers in academia to illustrate this. We use the reflections of four of its members from both professional and researcher European institutions to explore how the conditions of contact proposed by the contact hypothesis may have impacted on the experiences of participants. Strategies through which these relations can be optimised in the interest of prison research, but also the care and management of people in contact with the criminal justice system, are proposed.publishedVersio