Bhangra: Mystics, music and migration

Bhangra: Mystics, Music and Migration explores the origins of this folk song and dance from the Panjab in South Asia and its development into part of modern British culture in the hybrid soundscape of British Bhangra and beyond. This book originated in academic research and the Heritage-lottery funded Bhangra Renaissance project. Through ethnographic research, oral history interviews, performances, photography, story-telling and community activity it celebrates the past contribution of all those involved in Bhangra. This ground-breaking work provides an in-depth history of the spiritualism of performance and song, and an overview of the artists involved in influencing its development, as well as contemporaries leading the way of Bhangra’s renaissance amongst the South Asian diaspora in the UK and around the world

The co-production of historical knowledge: implications for the history of identities

This essay argues that understanding people’s lives, emotions and intellectual reasoning is crucial to exploring national identity and that ‘the co-production of historical knowledge’ provides an approach or methodology that allows for a deeper comprehension of people’s self-identities by encouraging a diverse range of people to participate in the research process. We argue that many academic historians have maintained an intellectual detachment between university history and public and community history, to the detriment of furthering historical knowledge. We argue for a blurring of the boundaries between university and communities in exploring modern British history, and especially the history of national identities. It includes extracts of writing from community partners and a brief photographic essay of projects related to exploring identities

The Search for the ‘Essence’ of Bhangra through Panjabi heritage

This research examines the concept of Bhangra from my perspective as a practitioner and supported by ethnographic research. The thesis explores the foundational elements that constitute the art form of contemporary Bhangra. It looks at the historical developments of dance, of music and of spiritual essence. It suggests a time at which these elements fused together in the form of Malkit Singh’s ‘Gur Naal Ishq Mitha’. This historical development is also represented in an interactive online timeline that charts other pioneering artists, poets, saints and Gurus who have contributed to its evolution. A performance was devised that pulls together all the elements explored within the thesis culminating in an experience that encapsulates the diverse nature of contemporary Bhangra within the Panjabi diaspora. Now published as Bhangra: Mystics, music and migration by University of Huddersfield Press: http://unipress.hud.ac.uk/catalogue/books/bhangramysticsmusicandmigration.ph

Synthesis and applications of polyester dendrimers and hyperbranched polymers

Dendrimers are an important new class of macromolecule which have many potential applications from drug delivery to metal extraction. A number of methods have been developed for the synthesis of dendrimers and related hyperbranched polymers. We chose the divergent initiator core method to synthesise three series of dendrimers with phloroglucinol, hydroquinone and naphthalene-2,6-diol as the core moieties, using DCC in the presence of DPTS as the esterification agent. The fluorescence of the naphthalene core was used to investigate the microenvironment of the core. Early investigations indicate there is a marked change in the core’s environment between generations two and four. MALD1-MS was tested as a method for the analysis of dendrimers and hyperbranched polymers. Molecular masses of dendrimers were obtained within 2 Da in every case, although low mass ions are sometimes observed. The origin of the low mass species is not yet entirely clear although there are indications that these arise from both the MALDI-MS process and during synthesis. 'lhe synthesis of poly(3,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid), again using the DCC- DPTS esterification agent was investigated. This method was found to give hyperbranched polymers which were difficult to handle. Studies by MALDI-MS indicate the difficult handling properties are a result of DCC being bound to the hyperbranched polymer. Thus, a modification of Fréchet’s method was used to prepare poly(3,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid). It was demonstrated that the hydroxyl terminated dendrimers and hyperbranched polymers could be functionalized at the branch termini with units such as acetyl, pent-4-enoyl, oleoyl and lineoyl. Epoxy terminated dendrimers and hyperbranched polymers were also prepared. The epoxy terminated dendrimers were analysed as potential crosslinking agents for polyester powder coatings. Initial results indicate that the epoxy groups prefer to react with one another rather than with the resin and thus little curing of the resin was observed