53,386 research outputs found

    Engaging with 'impact' agendas? Reflections on storytelling as knowledge exchange

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    The ‘impact agenda’, that is the whole gamut of initiatives related to knowledge exchange and public engagement that have been articulated in recent years, has had and continues to have a significant shaping influence on the way in which academics carry out their research. Within a UK context, the Research Excellence Framework (2008-2013) has made an explicit engagement with this agenda virtually compulsory for research-active academics by introducing ‘impact’ as a new criteria on which the research performance of universities, departments and individual researchers is assessed. The new emphasis on impact, defined as the ‘demonstrable contribution’ that research makes ‘to society and the economy’ beyond specialist academic audiences, has generated much discussion and controversy among academics. The ‘impact agenda’ has been critiqued on a number of grounds, ranging from diluting standards of academic excellence (Jump 2012), to limiting academic freedom by tying fundable academic enquiry to policy objectives, to concerns about the difficulties and costs involved in assessing ‘impact’ (Martin 2011). The widespread perception that academic autonomy is increasingly threatened by the twin forces of ‘audit culture’ and the commodification of higher education has been exacerbated by the broader climate of economic austerity and related cuts in university funding. Meanwhile, ‘impact’ itself remains a poorly understood and nebulous concept even as ‘impact case studies’ are embedded within REF criteria and scores. The difficulty in clearly defining the rules of the game stems from the fact that each discipline, research community and individual researcher has their own notion of ‘impact’ as it pertains to their work. Nonetheless, there is a real danger that lack of clarity, compounded with the obligatory compliance to impact assessment, may encourage a strategic ‘game-playing’ and a random incentivisation of short-term ‘impact’ activities by university management, rather than a vision of what meaningful engagement with non-academic publics may look like. In the light of this, the basic aim of this chapter is to reflect critically on the difficulties of implementing impact agendas with recourse to a Research Networking initiative (Translating Russian and East European Cultures), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The chapter focuses on knowledge exchange, since a key and recurring point of reflection throughout the initiative concerned the nature and practice of knowledge exchange (cf. Mitton et al. 2007) across academic and non-academic ‘communities of practice’ (Wenger 1998). This topic is explored here though a case study of one particular strand of the TREEC Network Initiative dedicated to storytelling. The heart of the chapter reflects on storytelling as a way to facilitate ‘knowledge exchange’, as well as on the ability of the storytelling events organised to bring together different publics. Whilst critical of ‘impact agendas’, I proceed from the position that, as publicly funded researchers, academics have a responsibility to contribute to the wider society through their knowledge, skills and resources, and that beyond strategic compliance to impact assessment ‘knowledge exchange’, broadly defined, has always been and should remain an integral part of university activities

    Context and the development of metaphor comprehension

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    Running title: Metaphoric understandingIncludes bibliographical references (leaves 9-10)Supported in part by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement under cooperative agreement no. OEG 0087-C100

    Imperfect justice : Fritz Lang's Fury (1936) and cinema's use of the trial form

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    This essay examines Fritz Lang's portrayal and use of justice in his first Hollywood film, Fury (1936) a film in which the main character, Joe Wilson (played by Spencer Tracy) is mistakenly arrested for a crime he did not commit. Lang was one of many notable German émigrés who fled Nazi Germany for America and eventually Hollywood. He returned on several occasions to the theme of justice, which is my starting point for this article. Before analysing Fury in detail, in particular its final trial scene, the article compares the film briefly to other Lang films about the law such as Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Lang's conception of justice differs from the dominant Hollywood view of the law, a realisation that is discussed in relation to other depictions of the law in Hollywood (such as Twelve Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird). In Lang's cinema, the law is not a fixed, stable and trustworthy institution, but rather one that is gullible and open to abuse. Lang places more faith in notions of personal moral justice, which win out in the end in Fury. This article also contextualises Fury and the work of Fritz Lang within existing discussions of the law and film, from which Lang is largely and notably absent

    Megacylops viridis Jurine, abyssal form in Lake Maggiore. [Translation of: Memorie dell'Istituto Italiano di Idrobiologia Dott.Marco de Marchi 17 57-79, 1964]

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    Megacyclops viridis Jurine, noticed in Lago Maggiore in 1912 by De Marchi from the littoral vegetation of Pallanza, is a normal member of the littoral plankton of the lake. The subgenus Megacyclops, created by Kiefer in his revision of the viridis-vernalis group, contains european and american species some of which are today considered as varieties of the species viridis. This paper examines morphology and of the distribution of the Italian viridis in Lake Maggiore
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