Education for transformative leadership in Southern Africa

This article argues that education for transformative leadership in a southern African context needs to nurture an understanding of the relationship between spirituality and charisma. This argument is based on a review of some literature pertaining to transformative learning, transformative leadership, and African value systems. The article explores the relationship between transformative leadership and transformative learning and education theories, and relates them to a specific southern African context. It proposes three arguments. First, transformative education may facilitate the transformative leadership development process. Second, transformative education and transformative leadership, although offering features that are sympathetic to African indigenous values, must also take account of particular African contexts. The article does not claim to be reporting from empirical research on this issue but, to support its position, draws on recent literature from an ongoing southern Africa leadership development project and some early empirical data from a small, related study in one southern African country. Third, the article suggests that a key difference between transformative learning and transformative leadership perspectives is the transformative leadership focus on charismatic qualities that inspire motivation to change. However, a defining conceptual thread of spirituality runs through the transformative learning and leadership literature that resonates with southern African core value systems. It is this thread that provides the overall conceptual link between the different strands of thought

It’s more than just books: working with a corporate marketing team to promote library services

In 2005, the Library at the University of East London reviewed its printed promotional material and general marketing strategy, working with the University’s communications team. The issues considered included: evaluating the strategy to decide whether it should be short-term or long-term; the problem of information overload; defining the library's "message"; the most appropriate format to use. The main elements involved in the development and implementation of the new promotional brochure are presented, including: design aspects; branding and slogans; editing and checking. Concludes with an assessment of whether the new scheme worked and discusses the experience of working with non-librarians in a project

Multilingual gendered identities: female undergraduate students in London talk about heritage languages

In this paper I explore how a group of female university students, mostly British Asian and in their late teens and early twenties, perform femininities in talk about heritage languages. I argue that analysis of this talk reveals ways in which the participants enact ‘culturally intelligible’ gendered subject positions. This frequently involves negotiating the norms of ‘heteronormativity’, constituting femininity in terms of marriage, motherhood and maintenance of heritage culture and language, and ‘girl power’, constituting femininity in terms of youth, sassiness, glamour and individualism. For these young women, I ask whether higher education can become a site in which they have the opportunities to explore these identifications and examine other ways of imagining the self and what their stories suggest about ‘doing being’ a young British Asian woman in London

Argumentation-Based Contract Monitoring in Uncertain Domains

Publisher PD

BioNanoAdhesion: atomic force microscopy study of the electrostatic properties of pyridine-and imidazole-based polycationic surfaces

Self-assembled monolayers of pyridine- and imidazole-based disulfides are currently being produced on low roughness gold surfaces. The electrostatic interaction between these surfaces and an atomic force microscope cantilever, modified with a silica microparticle, will subsequently be investigated as a function of environmental pH. The results can be used towards the development of improved nanoparticulate non-viral gene delivery vectors

Breast cancer tumour detection using microwave radar techniques

A breast cancer detection technique using multi-static radar is proposed herein. Images of a breast tumour are produced using this technique, with backscatter data. A wideband antenna design suitable for a breast cancer detection system is also described. Practical measurements are performed using a network analyser and a pair of antennas that are used to simulate an array. These initial images demonstrate the successful detection of a tumour phantom immersed in a liquid phantom with similar dielectric properties as the breast tissues

Breast tumour detection using a flat 16 element array

A new experimental prototype of a breast cancer detection technique using real aperture multi-static radar is presented. The system comprises a fully-populated 16 element flat array and an associated system to switch between different transmit and receive elements. 3D images are produced using backscatter signals from a synthetic breast phantom. After suppression of skin reflections, initial images demonstrate the successful detection of 4-mmdiameter tumours