A Few People, a Brief Moment in Time: Architectural Education Experiments 1987-91

This essay draws together an account of pedagogic experiments in architectural education that took place at the Polytechnic of the South Bank School of Architecture, Postgraduate Diploma (RIBA Part 2) between 1987 and 1991. Revisiting this period of holacratic autonomy and student-led collaborative education, the essay aims to shed some light on the value of manifesting transformative creative educational models in the contemporary context of design education. Charting an extraordinary period of student agency, the work considers how the notion of social and individual political resistance, manifested as creative action, can inform a transformative and liberating feminist methodology. Thirty years after these events, amidst the march of the privatisation and commodification of architectural education, the increasing homogenisation of a skills-based, profession-led curriculum, may be a moment to reconsider the potential embedded in an alternative, rebellious, feminist design studio and practice

Implementation of GDPR: Learning with a local administration case study

The General Data Protection Regulation has come into force in the European Union in May 2018 in order to meet current challenges related to personal data protection and to help harmonise the data protection across the EU. Although the GDPR was expected to benefit companies, being private or public, by offering consistency in data protection activities and liabilities across the EU countries and by enabling more integrated EU wide data protection policies, it poses new challenges to companies. However, if we take a step back and think that this regulation has been in transit for more than 2 years, and that only after the implementation of this regulation has begun the real concern is: are companies ready to make this leap?This work has been supported by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019

Aeolianite and barrier dune construction spanning the last two glacial-interglacial cycles from the southern Cape coast, South Africa

The southern Cape region of South Africa has extensive coastal aeolianites and barrier dunes. Whilst previously reported, limited knowledge of their age has precluded an understanding of their relationship with the climatic and sea-level fluctuations that have taken place during the Late Quaternary. Sedimentological and geomorphological studies combined with an optical dating programme reveal aeolianite development and barrier dune construction spanning at least the last two glacial–interglacial cycles. Aeolianite deposition has occurred on the southern Cape coast at ca 67–80, 88–90, 104–128, 160–189 and >200 ka before the present. Using this and other published data coupled with a better understanding of Late Quaternary sea-level fluctuations and palaeocoastline configurations, it is concluded that these depositional phases appear to be controlled by interglacial and subsequent interstadial sea-level high stands. These marine transgressions and regressions allowed onshore carbonate-rich sediment movement and subsequent aeolian reworking to occur at similar points in the landscape on a number of occasions. The lack of carbonates in more recent dunes (Oxygen Isotope Stages 1/2 and 4/5) is attributed not to leaching but to changes to carbonate production in the sediment source area caused by increased terrigenous material and/or changes in the balance between the warm Agulhas and nutrient-rich Benguela ocean current

R.A.Fisher, design theory, and the Indian connection

Design Theory, a branch of mathematics, was born out of the experimental statistics research of the population geneticist R. A. Fisher and of Indian mathematical statisticians in the 1930s. The field combines elements of combinatorics, finite projective geometries, Latin squares, and a variety of further mathematical structures, brought together in surprising ways. This essay will present these structures and ideas as well as how the field came together, in itself an interesting story.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Adolescent Religiosity and Selective Exposure to Television

Relying on the Adolescent Media Practice Model and selective exposure theory, this study investigated whether religious adolescents watch less mature television entertainment programs than their less religious peers. Program maturity was measured using V-chip ratings, with higher maturity scores indicating content that included more sexuality, violence, and/or adult and sexual language. The responses from 1,335 16- to 18-year-olds who completed Wave 2 of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) survey were analyzed. Findings indicate that religiosity contributes to explaining the variance in television maturity means, with more religious adolescents indicating a preference for less mature television entertainment. Gender, race, income, and parents’ monitoring of teens’ media were also found to influence television maturity. Teens’ attitudes toward premarital sex appeared to mediate the effect of religiosity on their television entertainment choices

The 'new majority' and the academization of journalism

The academization of journalism is reliant on the development of the field founded in scholarship demonstrated through the publication of research in peer-reviewed specialist journals. Given the profile of journalism faculty, this means inducting practitioners into a culture of critical research. In Australia at least, this cohort of neophytes is predominantly comprised of middle-aged women who were surveyed about their personal attitudes to research. They were mostly open to the idea of becoming researchers but were inclined to proceed cautiously without necessarily severing their ties with practice. There was evidence to suggest that a generally positive orientation to research was not capitalized on and that they remained uncertain about the role of research. On the other hand, they appeared not to have adopted the orthodoxy of implacable opposition to scholarly inquiry. The change in gender composition in the academy may provide, contrary to historical, but more in line with contemporary, evidence, a renewed impetus to the project of academizing the field

Framing alleged Islamist plots: a case study of British press coverage since 9/11

In the decade post 9/11 , the UK terrorist threat was associated with a series of high profile counter terrorism operations, linked to specific plots. These terrorism related episodes received significant media attention and, as a consequence, were a visible sign of the contemporary terrorist threat. This paper seeks to identify the dominant frames rendered in news media reporting on these episodes. Through a longitudinal study of UK press coverage, the analysis reveals that two prominent frames were present, an inevitability and preparedness frame, with alleged plots serving to underline the risk posed by contemporary terrorism,and a belonging and responsibility frame, which cast later episodes as belonging to the Muslim communities disrupted by polic

“There was something very peculiar about Doc…”: Deciphering Queer Intimacy in Representations of Doc Holliday

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in American Nineteenth-Century History on 8-12-14, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2014.971481This essay discusses representations of male intimacy in life-writing about consumptive gunfighter John Henry “Doc” Holliday (1851-1887). I argue that twentieth-century commentators rarely appreciated the historical specificity of Holliday’s friendships in a frontier culture that not only normalized but actively celebrated same-sex intimacy. Indeed, Holliday lived on the frayed edges of known nineteenth-century socio-sexual norms, and his interactions with other men were further complicated by his vicious reputation and his disability. His short life and eventful afterlife exposes the gaps in available evidence – and the flaws in our ability to interpret it. Yet something may still be gleaned from the early newspaper accounts of Holliday. Having argued that there is insufficient evidence to justify positioning him within modern categories of hetero/homosexuality, I analyze the language used in pre-1900 descriptions of first-hand encounters with Holliday to illuminate the consumptive gunfighter’s experience of intimacy, if not its meaning