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“I don’t feel things like a normal person”: Exploring the experiences of neurodivergent staff working in a prison setting.
No full textIncreasing research has begun to explore the lived experiences and needs of neurodivergent people in prison. However, this research has typically focussed on the experiences of prisoners, and the lived experiences and needs of neurodivergent prison staff remain overlooked. Therefore, this study aimed to address gaps in existing knowledge by qualitatively exploring how neurodivergent people experience working in a prison environment. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight neurodivergent staff working in prisoner-facing roles. Interviews explored staff’s career journeys from initial recruitment and induction processes to their daily interactions with prisoners, other staff, the prison environment. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of the data identified three group experiential themes. Broadly, themes captured the ways in which participants reconciled their professional and personal identities as neurodivergent people in the prison, issues related to navigating the social world and workplace culture within a prison, and practical challenges associated with working in a custodial environment. Findings contribute to a richer understanding how prisons can better accommodate neurodivergent staff, promote inclusivity, and enhance workforce wellbeing. Implications for policy, staff training, and organisational support structures to enable neurodivergent employees to flourish are discussed
Using archival research in marketing
No full textArchival research is an under-rated and under-utilised research method that has much to offer. This chapter explores how and why to use archival data in research, as well as how to conduct archival research and analyse the findings. The chapter gives practical guidance for using archival research and considers its strengths and limitations. It also outlines how a researcher may adopt this methodology as a central component of their studies. By the end of this chapter, you will be able to assuredly plan and execute a research study using archival research as a chosen methodology
What Music they Make
No full textBram Stoker’s novel Dracula, released in 1897, has been an immensely popular cultural text and a seminal work in the horror genre. This has seen it recreated on stage and screen and inspired many other adaptations and new imaginings across literature, stage and screen media. However, within this canon there is a paucity of radio and audio drama adaptations of the original novel beyond the audio book format which tends to be limited in sound treatment including music, not to mention lacking ambisonic, immersive audio for the listener.
The authors/creators will present an audio-visual experience that will bring the famous Dracula story to life using carefully crafted soundscapes recreating pivotal segments from the book using 360 immersive sound and visual clues to spark the listener’s imagination and transport them back in time and space to the locations in the novel.
The circa twenty-minute continuous audio piece will involve little to no dialogue and include locations such as Dracula’s eerie castle in Transylvania and haunted graveyards using all original audio-visual content to adapt the original text into this unique multimedia experience.
This is an artistic collaboration involving creative practitioners across the School of Arts at the University of Derby involving music composition, audio production, dramaturgy and immersive audio technology, as art merges with technology to place the listener in the centre of the story and bring Dracula back to life in this truly chilling sonic experience
Heap
No full textHeap, 2025
Stoneware toasted ceramic tiles, tin oxide, aluminium castor wheels, cement-based grout, plywood, softwood timber.
Heap is a site-specific sculpture inhumed in ceramic tiles that preserve surface indentations cast from a familial headstone at Burngreave Cemetery belonging to the artist’s antecedent: surname Heap. The name of the structure becomes performative—assimilating the surname to burial heap-mounds and archaeological unearthings. In form, the necro-architectural sculpture evidences practices of inversion informed by the earliest uses of casting in ancient death masks and votive reliefs. The tiles are abstractions–figurations of bodily absences–presences observing an infra-thin separation between ‘the ‘mortiferous layer’ of its surface [the cast], from the living context in which we find it [the headstone]: life/death’ (Krauss 1996:77). Heap, therefore, performs a dissection or spatio-temporal cut of site, architecture and body. This procedural dissection may be read within the context of Karen Barad’s agential cut; where matter ‘cuts together/apart as a “holding together” of the disparate itself [...]’ (2012:46). The gridded composition, synonymous to graph paper and space-time nets, allows the loculi-like structure to be performative in its presence: at once material–immaterial, swaying between flat–volumetric, presenting a continuum of spacetimematterings. Heap builds on Sharples’ companion pieces Soft Shell (2023) and Gurney (2023), which methodologically attend to ‘agencies that interconnect substance, flesh and place’ (Alaimo 2018:436).
Shown as part of the exhibition NECROLOGY at Haarlem Artspace, Wirksworth
Experiences of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) international postgraduate students on a Social Work programme: Support strategies towards bridging attainment gap
Get PDFThere is evidence of significant difference in students’ attainment within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) between Black Minority Ethnic (BME) students and their white counterparts. Though some of the reasons for low attainment such personal issues are applicable to all students, BME students are faced with other barriers such cultural and societal challenges. This study aims to analyse the experiences of BME international postgraduate students on the Social Work programme and to identify effective support strategies towards bridging the attainment gap. This research uses interpretative phenomenological analysis to interpret the teaching and learning experiences of students. Ten BME international postgraduate students were invited to join two focus group discussions over two months. The focus group discussions were transcribed verbatim and coded using NVivo software version 14. The coding resulted in three main themes (a) academic experiences, (b) personal experiences, (c) support strategies and three sub-themes for each theme. These themes informed the development of the Three-Door Framework for enhancing BME academic student experience was developed to assess students’ academic background, current situation and plan next steps. The application of the Three-Door Framework can be applied to HEI policies/practices on how tutor group sessions are carried out in HEIs. The significance of this research is that, showing an interest in and taking a holistic approach in understanding BME students’ academic backgrounds and how this is influenced by the personal challenges creates a sense of belonging and ultimately improves students’ attainment. Future research should explore the experiences of academics and professionals who support BME students and develop strategies to compliment the Three-Door Framework
A stakeholder-informed framework for the sustainable management of coastal lagoons in West Africa
Get PDFCoastal lagoons are highly susceptible to the impacts of climate change. In lagoons of the Global South development challenges and growing coastal populations compound climate stressors to create complex inter-connected problems that cross social, economic and environmental boundaries. The successful governance of lagoons thus requires multidimensional approaches that combine disciplines and incorporate multiple knowledges. A stakeholder informed management framework was developed for West African lagoons using a transdisciplinary and participatory approach. A network of researchers from across the region, collectively known as the Resilient Lagoon Network, facilitated participatory platforms for stakeholders to share their experiences of the stressors facing lagoons and their management. Participants were from academia, government organisations, NGOs, traditional authorities and coastal lagoon communities. The information acquired enabled an understanding and relative importance of the challenges facing lagoons as well as what constituted good management practice and an appreciation for the breadth of lagoon stakeholders. From this information a framework was created comprising three strands that outlined the “what, how and who” of sustainable lagoon management. The “what” consists of a series of social, economic, environmental and governance indicators, linked to the sustainable development goals, that provide a checklist for lagoon sustainability. The “how” outlines tenets of good governance with an emphasis on equity, participation, cooperation and open communication. The “who” maps the range of possible lagoon stakeholders. The framework has been sense tested with lagoon practitioners and made available across the region. Although based on the experience of West African lagoon stakeholders, it could be used to inform the management of lagoons across the Global South
Investigating human-nonhuman entanglement through approaches in artistic research
No full textThis panel explores how we encounter the spectrum of life from different perspectives, in different environments, in different relationships, between human and non-human Others. The panel brings together representatives from southern and central Europe and different parts of Finland, all with considerable hybridised artistic and academic practices.
Based on the framework given by the arts-research project “How to live together in sound? Towards sonic democracy,” the panel opens up this discussion to investigate and share encounters with a wider group, expanding the practices, themes, perspectives, and dialogues therein. The project aims to expand and enhance sonic awareness for empowering sonic citizens and investigates ecologically sustainable and socially integrative, fair, and peaceful environments as well as structures of decision-making in production, organization, and distribution of sound. Our sonic environments are considered sonic commons, networks and agencies for sound perception, generation, and dissemination in which we should be able to live together in self-determined and sustainable ways. The project is funded by the Kone foundation and hosted by the University of the Arts Helsinki.
The panellist’s themes are: encountering the Other through artistic research embedded in traditional Sami ways of living within contemporary society; seeing the world with a shifted perspective through the gaze of non-human Others; learning from non-human mammals though observed acts of empathy; combining place and sound performance towards an environmentally conscious approach to becoming one with nature’s orchestra; and shared listening in sonic relationships with/in man-made places and environments.
The format seeks to highlight intersections between the panelist’s propositions, based on their case-studies and referring to the main issue from their own practices; the moderators then frame these contributions in an overarching discussion around the central topic
Artistic co-discovery in multispecies collaboration
Get PDFBartram + Deigaard are the collaborative duo of artists Lee Deigaard (US) and Angela Bartram (UK) engaged in a transoceanic, international collaboration and dialogue exploring dualities of mind and being, multi-species empathy and the ethics of animal collaboration. Bartram + Deigaard test the edges, the margins, the overlaps and the interstitial spaces of and within collaboration and interspecies potential ‘doubling(s)’ in their artistic research. Doubling here relates to mirroring and sharing between species, of mind and body, and the myriad divergences that bind through the recognition of this process. Brought together by a shared brain mentality with regard to animal studies, as that which is a recognised field of discourse, and of being and not being, recognising and refusing to affirm the non-human as apart from our common animality, they work sympathetically and empathetically although situated geographically far apart. Born of an openness to involve the non-human fully in creative thinking, making and staging, they create situations of co-learning where all collaborators can contribute and learn from each other, and they willingly embrace the unanticipated shifts to the process each species brings.
Using diverse methods, processes and materials, and curious to a myriad of opening potentialities, they explore working as humans from an animal-centric perspective. They bring sensitivities to their research with the non-human animal as both artistic subject and collaborator, of behaving as animal to observe and engage with empathy and openness to the unexpected, and particularly to animal insight and revelation. Iterative long-term projects in photography, video, installation, drawing and printmaking foreground proximity and proprioceptive, nearly devotional studio and caretaking practices centring on respiration and companionate movement. This text explores being mindful and sensible with balancing sympathies and empathies within an often-unbalanced system of agency predicated in environments structured by and for humans (including spaces intended for animal habitation). It discusses the unscripted learning that occurs through interspecies collaboration, and what each animal (human and non-human) can teach the other when both are given full creative agency. Offering examples of their own individual and collaborative work within a critical framework to explain pertinent propositions and findings, it will demonstrate how openness is key for possibilities to flourish. It will discuss how equality and responsive creative co-learning environments can produce revelatory results creatively instigated and directed by the non-human
Cross-cultural psychology and compassion
No full textCross-cultural psychology evaluates how cultural factors influence people’s behaviour and mental processes. Cross-cultural psychology aims to understand individual differences and commonalities, and to develop an appreciation, respect, and knowledge of cultures distinct from one’s own. Compassion refers to the emotional response of understanding, empathising with, and desiring to alleviate or reduce the suffering or distress of others. Compassion involves noticing the pain or difficulties another person is experiencing and being motivated to help, often characterised by acts of kindness, support, and caring. This entry paper explores the intersection of these two concepts, illustrating how insights from cross-cultural psychology can contribute to fostering compassion
SUDCOPA: WSN-based IoT energy optimization and load balancing through a context-sensitive minimum clustering radius
Get PDFIn Wireless Sensor Networks for the Internet of Things (WSN-Based IoT), energy optimization and load balancing are essential to maximize network lifetime and performance. The DCOPA protocol, used to elect Cluster Heads (CHs), employs a fixed Radius of Clustering (RC) for all CHs, which can lead to energy inefficiencies and load imbalance. To overcome these limitations, we developed UDCOPA, a protocol that introduces an adjustable Adaptive Radius of Clustering (ARC) depending on the Residual Energy (Renrg) and Distance to the Base Station (DBS) of each CH. However, UDCOPA keeps the minimum communication Radius (RMin) the same for all CHs, which is not fair given that CHs have different performances. This uniformity can be detrimental to energy efficiency and network load balancing. In response to these challenges, we propose Sensitive Unequal DCOPA (SUDCOPA), a new method that dynamically adapts RMin according to the specific performance of each CH, including residual energy and the number of times the node has been elected CH. This approach, centered on a context-sensitive minimum clustering radius, aims to optimize energy and ensure better load balancing in WSN-Based IoT