The disrupters: Lessons for low-carbon innovation from the new wave of environmental pioneers

We need disruptive forms of innovation 13 cheaper, easier-to-use alternatives to existing products or services, often produced by non-traditional players for previously ignored customers. This report tells the stories of eight such "disrupters" and draws wider lessons for low-carbon innovation. Its recommendations include: 1. Government should provide an enabling policy framework within which low-carbon innovation ca

A consideration of copyright for a national repository of humanities and social science data

In 2011 the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) began work on the development of an interactive national Trusted Digital Repository for contemporary and historical social and cultural data. Copyright and intellectual property rights were identified as essential areas which the DRI, as a content holder and data publisher, needed to investigate in order to develop workflows, policy and the Repository infrastructure. We established a Copyright and IP Task Force (CIPT) in January 2013 to capture and identify IP challenges from our stakeholder community and the DRI’s demonstrator collections. This report outlines the legislative context in which the CIPT worked, and how the CIPT addressed copyright challenges through the development of policies and a robust framework of legal documentation for the Repository. We also provide a case study on Orphan Works, detailing the process undertaken by the Clarke Stained Glass Studios Collection, one of DRI’s demonstrator projects, in preparing their content for online publication in the Repository

Occasional Paper 13 - What role do maintained nursery schools play in Early Years sector improvements?

The thing that really concerns me is that once MNSs have gone, that level of expertise and social service will also. It seems that there’s a sort of double quality to the MNS, which is constantly evolving, high level pedagogy and providing areas of expertise, like special needs, and so on. But also support for the family. There's very specific expertise that's going to go to waste… (Leader of a Maintained Nursery School

What could possibly go wrong? (by way of introducing ‘the ethnographer’ to a primary school assembly)

This récit recounts the experience of the author in engaging with the idea of ‘who is the ethnographer’ to a whole-school assembly, before entering an English primary school to begin a year-long ethnographic study. Its purpose is three-fold. First, to re-visit the intentions, excitements and possibilities of the author, introducing herself to teachers and children alike in this forum as a creative performance. Second, to recount ‘what actually happened’ in the assembly through her re-engagement with an account she made of it immediately following the event. Third, in light of the somewhat unexpected (and certainly chaotic) occurrences, to consider just what this produced and enabled, ethnographically, that may not have otherwise become possible

[Review] Karin Murris (2016)The posthuman child – educational transformation through philosophy with picture books, 282 pp. ISBN 9781138858442

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‘Being yourself’: everyday ways of doing and being gender in a ‘rights respecting’ primary school

This paper engages with some everyday ways of doing and being gender which proceed from a dominant liberal rights policy and practice discourse within one English ‘rights-respecting’ primary school in England. Drawing on three ethnographic vignettes of data from different spaces within the school, it utilises a Butlerian analytic to interrogate the kinds of subjects that children are entitled and obliged to be as they take up different subject positions proposed to them in the school. The paper engages with this empirical data, to foster and ignite critical sensibilities, especially as these relate to ‘taken-for-granted’ discourses of children’s rights which presume the participation of all children regardless of their differently gendered subjectivities. This analysis puts in question the universal, normative and essentialising effects of the category of the rights-respecting child as always unproblematic and forever productive

Doing the rights thing: an ethnography of a dominant discourse of rights in a primary school in England

This thesis is the product of qualitative ethnographic research conducted over ten months. It considers the implications of adopting a dominant discourse of ’Rights’ as a framework for guiding both the policy and practices of a large state primary school in England. More than this, it interrogates how ‘Rights’ (and ‘Respect’ with which it is conventionally coupled) link to, and inform, subordinate discourses of ‘Equality’ and ‘Diversity’. Guided by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) ‘Rights Respecting Schools’ (RRS) initiative, these four values of rights; respect; equality; and diversity are highlighted as pivotal in shaping the lived experiences of everyday schooling amongst children, parents, teachers, support and ancillary staff. My work involves applying theorizations of post-structuralism to problematize these values within this environment. I operationalize discourse analysis to make sense of my ethnographic data in a manner which I attribute to Laws (2011). I do this, in order to scrutinise some everyday occurrences of school life, acknowledging that they can be understood in many different ways, ‘all and none of which can be seen as ‘true’’ (Laws, 2011, p.15). Like Laws, I acknowledge that what I wish to achieve is a way of reading aspects of school life and what goes on there, in new and different ways in order to see things what may have been overlooked or taken-for-granted previously. The purpose of my research is ‘not to unravel and find a truth or even many truths’. It is ‘to trouble, to deconstruct the operations of dominant discourses’ (Laws, 2011, p.15) in order to generate new ways of seeing, being and understanding. Applying a range of theoretical lenses enables me to strike a note of caution concerning the all too appealing and apparently transparent quality of rights, respect, equality and diversity within the institution of the school. My reading of these rights discourses suggests that the RRS policy text shapes school practices, in very particular ways. Some school subjects describe these as productive of an ‘ethos’ that is: ‘happy’, ‘carefree’ and ‘joyful’. Such positive accolades are attributable to a schooling genealogy that long pre-dates the introduction of the RRS. The rights discourses tend to promote a regulative, procedural rationale of a ‘consensus’ (Rancière, 2004) of schooling. This works to produce an idea of ‘common sense’ value (Hall and O’Shea, 2013). It cloaks difficulties and contradictions implicit within fundamental assertions of ‘rights’, especially foreclosing any claim of them as inherently ‘political’, despite protestations of their power to ‘transform’. Disjuncture, diversity and difference are difficult to deal with institutionally. The discourses produce particular regimes of truth which means that certain ways of doing and saying can be ruled in, and others out. Expectations of the enactment of a ‘Ubiquitous Rights Respecting’ school subject (as either adult or child) are demanding and contradictory, whilst, at the same time, the constitution of the ‘Rights Respecting Citizen’ is imagined as: either, ‘adult’ who is already ‘prefigured’; or, ‘child’ who is, ‘Yet-To-Be’. However, the performative qualities of the rights, respect, equality and diversity discourses present moments of ‘dissensus’ (Rancière, ibid) which leave traces. I suggest that these generate the possibilities for a (re)imagining of ‘common sense’ refracted as ‘good sense’ (Hall and O’Shea, ibid) that offer, not (another) manifesto for democratic schooling, but sources of insight which may enrich attempts to use initiatives like RRS as schools’ guiding frameworks

Resisting relocation and reconceptualising authenticity: the experiential and emotional values of the Southbank Undercroft London UK

The tagline, ‘You Can’t Move History: You Can Secure the Future’, encapsulated the battle at the heart of the campaign to retain the Southbank Undercroft skate spot in the light of planned redevelopment of the Southbank Centre, London. The 2013-15 campaign against relocation adopted a position of no compromise and provides a lens through which three key areas of heritage theory and practice can be examined. Firstly, the campaign uses the term found space to reconceptualise authenticity and places a greater emphasis on embodied experiences of, and emotional attachments to, historic urban spaces. Secondly, the paper argues that the concept of found space opens up a discussion surrounding the role of citizen expertise in understanding the experiential and emotional values of historic urban spaces. Finally, the paper considers the wider relevance of found space in terms of reconceptualising authenticity in theory and practice. The paper is accompanied by the award-winning film ‘You Can’t Move History’ which was produced by the research team in collaboration with Paul Richards from Brazen Bunch and directed by skater, turned filmmaker, Winstan Whitter

Novel tools to reduce the virulence of batrachochytrium dendrobatidis

Rebecca Webb aimed to develop methods to quantify and reduce virulence factors in the amphibian chytrid fungus. She developed a viability assay and characterised the role of glutathione. She then explored two horticultural antifungal methods (RNA interference and mycovirus-mediated hypovirulence) to determine their feasibility for controlling amphibian chytridiomycosis

The Role of Physical Attractiveness in Adolescent Romantic Relationships

This dissertation explores the role that physical attractiveness plays in many aspects of adolescent romantic relationships, such as relationship longevity, relationship satisfaction, and power dynamics within the relationship. Three specific questions are examined in this project. First, is partner physical attractiveness associated with relationship satisfaction? Second, do adolescent couples who are well ―matched‖ according to physical attractiveness remain together longer that those who are not? Third, does the couple member who is higher in physical attractiveness have more power in the relationship? To examine these questions, we used data collected from 99 middle adolescent and 106 late adolescent dating couples. We used survey data, as well as observational coded data of recorded conversations in which the couples discussed an issue of disagreement in their relationship. In order to control for non-independence of partner-members’ responses, data was examined with hierarchical linear modeling when appropriate. Physical attractiveness was unrelated to general relationship satisfaction or to any positive relationship experiences. However, physical attractiveness was positively associated with negative aspects of relationships, such as possessiveness and emotional painfulness. Matching was unrelated to relationship length or status. In couples in which the female was the more attractive member, both couple members enacted the power pattern (self persuading followed by partner giving in) more frequently compared with other couples. Findings and implications are discussed within the framework of evolutionary, social, and feminist psychology theories. Limitations and directions for future research are also discussed