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

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

Intimate Migrations: Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Migrants in Scotland: Preliminary Findings Report

This report presents the findings of a pilot study on lesbian, gay and bisexual migration from Eastern Europe to Scotland, carried out by Francesca Stella. This has fed into a larger project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, which runs January 2015-December 2016

Sexual citizenship, nationalism and biopolitics in Putin’s Russia

The chapter explores the articulation between sexuality and nationalism in Russia, where sexual and reproductive rights have become increasingly politicised, as evidenced by legislation restricting access to abortion (2011) and forbidding ‘gay propaganda’ to minors (2013). Media and academic analysis has typically focussed on the ‘gay propaganda’ laws. However, an exclusive focus on LGBT rights overlooks the fact that recent restrictions on sexual and reproductive rights affect other social groups (particularly women). The chapter considers how restrictions on citizens’ sexual and reproductive rights are justified in the name of the national interest, and how family and demographic policies are deployed in the construction of ideals of nation and national belonging which are both sexualised and gendered. We draw on Foucault’s concept of biopower as a technology of power concerned with the control of social and biological processes at the level of the population. The chapter is based on a discourse analysis of legal and media texts. Theoretically, it offers an alternative perspective to debates about sexuality and nationalism (Puar 2007, Fassin 2010), which have typically emphasised liberal sexual values as a marker of national identities in the US and western Europe

Issledovanie zhizni lesbiianok v sovetskii period: pokolencheskii podkhod

No abstract available

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

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

Intimate Migrations: Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Migrants in Scotland: Preliminary Findings Report

This report presents the findings of a pilot study on lesbian, gay and bisexual migration from Eastern Europe to Scotland, carried out by Francesca Stella. This has fed into a larger project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, which runs January 2015-December 2016

Lesbian identities and everyday space in contemporary urban Russia

Within the social sciences, the extensive literature on homosexuality as a socio-cultural construct and on ‘queer’ identities and experiences generally focuses on Western European or Anglo-American societies. Sexuality and homosexuality remain relatively unexplored fields of enquiry within Russian studies, even if it is usually acknowledged that the complex transformations undergone by Russian society since the fall of the communist system have deeply affected sexual practices and attitudes to sex and sexuality. This thesis addresses a gap in the literature by exploring how ‘lesbian’ identities, broadly understood as encompassing the whole spectrum of LBT (lesbian, bisexual, transgender/transsexual) women’s sexualities, are (re)constructed and (re)negotiated in contemporary Russia. It draws on data generated through participant observation, ethnographic interviews with sixty-one queer-identified women, and expert interviews with activists in local community initiatives; ethnographic data is framed within a broader analysis of discourses on lesbianism in popular culture and the media. The thesis critically assesses the centrality of the ‘East/West’ binary in the existing literature on Russian sexualities. Rather than imposing Western-centric categories of identity, it explores women’s own identifications and the meanings they attach to them, framing them within shifting discourses on sexuality, gender and morality across the Soviet and post-Soviet period. The thesis also looks at how sexual identities are performed, negotiated and expressed across everyday contexts such as the home, the workplace, and the street. It interrogates women’s strategies of identity negotiation, highlighting the constraining effects of heteronormative and gendered notions of respectability, but also foregrounding the importance of individual agency. The thesis also maps ‘lesbian/queer’ space in the different urban settings of Moscow and provincial Ul’ianovsk. It explores how ‘lesbian/queer’ space is collectively carved out of the city landscape, while also examining the cultural practices and patterns of socialising attached to specific ‘lesbian’ settings; it also highlights the role of ‘lesbian/queer’ space in validating and performatively producing shared notions of non-heteronormative sexual identities

Introduction

This collection seeks to encourage new ways of thinking about the connections and tensions between sexual politics, citizenship and belonging by bringing together a diverse range of critical interventions within sexuality and gender studies. The book is organised around three interlinked thematic areas, focusing on sexual citizenship, nationalism and international borders (section 1); sexuality and ‘race ’ (section 2); and sexuality and religion (section 3). In revisiting notions of sexual citizenship and belonging, contributors engage with topical debates about ‘sexual nationalism’, or the construction of western/European nations as exceptional in terms of attitudes to sexual and gender equality vis-à-vis an uncivilised, racialized ‘Other’. The collection explores macro-level perspectives by attending to the broader geopolitical and socio-legal structures within which competing claims to citizenship and belonging are played out; at the same time, micro-level perspectives are utilised to explore the interplay between sexuality and ‘race’, nation, ethnicity and religious identities, both in individuals’ lived experiences and in activism and forms of collective belonging. Geographically, the collection has a prevalently European focus, yet contributions explore a range of trans-national spatial dimensions that exceed the boundaries of ‘Europe’ and of European nation-states. They consider, for example, links between former European imperial powers and their former colonies; the construction of a European ‘core’ and its ‘peripheries’ in discourses on sexual and reproductive rights; and forms of belonging shaped by migration from within and outside ‘fortress Europe’

PASIREOTIDE-INDUCED HYPERGLYCEMIA IN ACROMEGALY PATIENTS: EVALUATION OF PATHOPHISIOLOGICAL MECHANISMS AND EFFICACY OF ANTIDIABETIC TREATMENT

Pasireotide LAR (PAS) has a safety profile similar to first-generation somatostatin in analogues (SSA), except for a higher frequency of hyperglycaemia-related adverse events. However, consensus on the best management of PAS-induced hyperglycaemia in acromegalic patients has still to be defined. The current study aim at investigating the effects of long-term PAS treatment on glucose metabolism, besides GH and IGF-I control, by evaluating the clinical management of hyperglycemia adverse events in acromegalic patients followed in two Italian referral Centers, participating to the PAOLA study, a randomized, Phase III study assessing the efficacy and safety of PAS compared with patients with inadequately controlled acromegaly during first-generation SSA. Moreover, the role of metabolic parameters (weight, BMI, fasting glucose and HbA1c levels) and markers of disease activity (GH, IGF-I, duration of PAS treatment) were investigated as potential predictors of hyperglycemia development. A total of 31 patients (16 F/15 M, mean age 47.6 years) entered the present study, including 18 randomized to PAS (group 1), and 13 to continued treatment with octreotide LAR 30 mg or lanreotide Autogel 120 mg (group 2) for six months (core study). All patients in group 2 who remained uncontrolled at 6 months had the opportunity to switch to PAS in the extension phase. In all patients, fasting glucose and HbA1c were evaluated every 6 months, according to the study protocols. At baseline, pre-existing diabetes mellitus (DM) was found in five patients (27.7%) in group 1 and one (7.7%) in group 2 (p=0.34), whereas pre-existing prediabetes, defined as impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) or impaired fasting glucose (IFG), was seen in one patients (5.5%, IGT) in group 1 and in three patients (23.1%, 2 IGT, 1 IFG) in group 2 (p=0.34). Patients were treated with PAS for a mean time of 34 months (6-67 months). Hyperglycemia-related adverse events were reported in 15 patients (83.3%) in group 1, occurring after a mean time of 5 months (1-16 months). One patient required treatment discontinuation because of diabetes adverse event. Four out five patients with DM at baseline (80%) reported worsening of hyperglycemia during PAS treatment. One patient with IGT at baseline (100%) developed overt DM. Six (50%) and four (33.3%) patients with normal glucose tolerance (NGT) at baseline developed IFG and DM, respectively, during PAS treatment. In group 2, three (23%) patients reported hyperglycemia-related adverse events during the core phase (during first-generation SSA therapy), after a mean time of two months. Particularly, overt DM occurred in two patients (15.3%) with baseline NGT and in one patient (7.7%) with IGT at baseline. All cases were of mild severity, defined as grade 1. During the extension phase, nine patients (69.2%) reported hyperglycemia-related adverse events after a mean time of seven months (2-17 months) from the beginning of PAS treatment. One diabetic patient (33.3%) reported worsening hyperglycemia. Among patients with NGT at baseline, three (16.6%) developed pre-diabetes (2 IFG, 1 IGT), and two patients (15.3%) developed overt DM during PAS treatment. All cases reported in group 1 and 2 were of mild-to-moderate severity, defined as grade 2-3, and were judged to be related to PAS. The risk to develop hyperglycemia correlated neither with baseline BMI, weight, GH, IGF-I, glucose and HbA1c levels, or duration of PAS treatment (p=0.41). Similarly, glucose status did not significantly correlate with biochemical control at the last follow-up (p=0.66). At study entry, three patients (16.6%) in group 1 and one patient (7.7%) in group 2 were already treated with antidiabetic drugs. In group 1, starting of new antidiabetic treatment was required in eight patients (44.4 %) throughout the study, and metformin (MET) was the drug of choice in all these patients. Four (50%) out eight patients did not control glucose and HbA1c levels despite MET monotherapy, needing further therapies. In fact, MET was associated with DPP-4 inhibitor in one patient (25%), GLP-1 agonist in two patients (50%), and GLP-1 agonist and glargine insulin in one patient (25%) to control hyperglycemia. Two patients previously treated with antidiabetic drugs (1 patient with MET plus glargine insulin, and 1 patient with glargine insulin monotherapy) needed a dose adjustment to control hyperglycemia. In group 2, one patient (7.7%) started MET during the core phase. During the extension phase, starting of new antidiabetic treatment was required in seven patients (53.8%), and MET was the drug of choice in all these patients. Three (42.8%) out seven patients did not control glucose and HbA1c levels despite MET monotherapy, requiring further therapies. MET was associated with DPP-4 inhibitor in one patient (33.3%), GLP-1 agonist in two patients (33.3%), and GLP-1 agonist and detemir insulin in one patient (33.3%) to control hyperglycemia. The results of the present study confirm the known negative effect of PAS on glucose metabolism, however treatment intensification with DPP4 inhibitor and GLP-1 agonist resulted in good glycemic control in most patients. Further studies are needed to deeply evaluate the mechanism of PAS-induced hyperglycemia in acromegalyc patients, investigating the effect of PAS on insulin secretion and hepatic/peripheral insulin sensitivity