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Getting Under The(ir) Skin: Applying Personas and Scenarios with Body-Environment Research for Improved Understanding of Users’ Perspective in Architectural Design
Get PDFThe aim of this paper is to move established positions in architectural design by discussing a more refined user perspective. The motivation is threefold. Firstly, fields like environmental psychology and cognitive science for architecture have in recent years brought novel insights on the embodied nature of human spatial experience, and the extensive effects of the built environment on people’s psychosomatic health and behaviour that are not well-captured by existing building standardization systems. Secondly, while the fast growing trends of user-centred and research-based design in architecture have showed that users’ experience is a valuable source of design knowledge, the methods for incorporating this wealth of new insights in the architectural design process are still underdeveloped. Finally, the example of the newly built psychiatric department in Aabenraa, Denmark, whose interior, despite an international architectural award in 2016, had to be re-designed one year after construction due to poor understanding of the users, indicates existing discrepancies in the current approaches to translating research information in user-centred design.
To address these issues, we discuss the experiences from a new masters’ course in ‘Architecture, Health, and Well-being’ and propose that user-centred methods like ‘personas’ and ‘scenarios’ used in IT, marketing, and product development also have a potential to develop more in-depth research-informed user perspectives. As well as, to help students envision and strengthen the architectural quality of the programming and building design throughout the architectural design process, by supporting a ‘design empathic’ understanding and immersion in user perspectives. 
Scientific Personas in Theory and Practice – Ways of Creating Scientific, Scholarly, and Artistic Identities
Get PDFThe concept of scientific persona was developed by historians of science at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin fifteen years ago in order to understand how science works and how it can be conducted in a credible way. The Latin word persona means mask and the discussions of the term were elaborations of Marcel Mauss´s introduction of the concept in an article published in 1938 (Mauss 1938). In Mauss´s conceptualisation, persona was a feature that characterized societies in an evolutionary stage—a stage where members of the society had started to perceive themselves as individuals, but were still expected to fulfill certain, culturally defined roles. In such contexts, persona was not mask to cover the ‘real’ self of the performer, but a mask that enhanced certain features of the person. Transferring Mauss’s approach to the scientific world, Lorraine Daston and Otto Sibum (2003) defined, in an often cited article in Science in Context, scientific persona as an intermediate between individual biography and social (scientific) institution: it is a cultural identity that forms the individual in body and mind, and creates a collective with a shared and recognizable physiognomy (ways to be and to behave). Daston and Sibum characterized scientific personas as templates that emerge and develop in historical contexts and used the concept to investigate the creation of certain types of scientists: when, how and why have distinct “scientific personae” emerged
Value-adding to health professional student placement experiences: Enhancing work readiness and employability through a rural community engagement program
Get PDFEnriching health professional students’ placement experiences through targeted community-engagement has the potential to help develop their preparedness to provide healthcare to the broader community. The program, developed in 2011, consisted of short, extracurricular community-engaged learning experiences integrated with the students’ professional placements. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the program was adding to the students’ rural health placement experiences based on perceptions of both the students themselves and UONDRH staff.
A mixed methods approach used a student survey (n = 96), which included both closed and open-ended questions, and semi-structured interviews with staff members involved in delivery of the community engagement program (n = 15). Data were explored together for intersections and commonalities. The overarching key concept was ‘Enhancing Work Readiness and Employability’. Both student and staff perceived that students’ participation in community engagement improved their employment prospects. Three themes that emerged from the data, which underpinned and supported the key concept. They were: ‘Expanding professional practice capabilities’; ‘Building confidence and showing motivation’ and ‘Better understanding the nature of rural practice’,
The results of this study provide support to the notion that there was value for students in this form of short-term, community engagement activities, many of which could be readily integrated into existing health professional education programs with considerable benefits. . It would also lend itself to other non-health professional programs, such as law, journalism or business studies, as a means of broadening the students’ perspectives beyond the limits of their own professional horizons
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TRAUMATIC CHANGE: THE DYNAMICS OF CHARACTER AND CHRONOTOPE WHEN BAKHTIN’S ‘OTHER’ IS HARMFUL
Get PDFBakhtin’s world is predicated on the identity forming paradigm of self and other in dialogue. This dialogue occurs within the chronotope—the time-space—unique to the self. Yet this world does not consider the impact of trauma on the self, nor the way in which traumatic change shifts identity, and informs the relationships between self-chronotope and self-other. Reading concepts of literary trauma theory into Bakhtin’s world enables writers to create resonant characters that meaningfully depict the lived experience of trauma
Experiences of people with disabilities during and after Tropical Cyclone Pam and recommendations for humanitarian leaders
Get PDFThe situation and needs of people with disabilities following Tropical Cyclone Pam (TC Pam) were generally not captured in formal mainstream assessments led by the National Disaster Management Office. Where the needs of people with disabilities were identified, these were not prioritised during the response (Government of Vanuatu 2015); and some people with disabilities missed out on distributions altogether. Reflections on the response hypothesized that mainstream assessment methodologies and tools generally missed people with disabilities, and that agencies tended not to automatically include them in their efforts (Ministry of Justice and Community Services & CARE 2015).More detailed information regarding the situation and needs of people with disabilities was required to support effective inclusion of people with disabilities in recovery activities. Vanuatu does not currently have reliable quantitative data on the prevalence, location and experiences of people with disabilities. In response, Oxfam in Vanuatu, Vanuatu Society for People with Disabilities (VSPD), Disability Promotion and Advocacy Association (DPA), the Ministry of Justice and Community Services (MoJCS), Nossal Institute for Global Health and CBM Australia worked with key government organisations to undertake a disability situation and needs assessment in one affected island (Tanna), in order to meet this data gap
“Why would a dead girl lie?”: Hannah Baker as Willful Child ‘come to voice’ in 13 Reasons Why
Get PDFThis paper examines representations of hostile and benevolent sexism in the young adult novel 13 Reasons Why (Asher, 2007), and how the female protagonist, Hannah Baker, resisted such manifestations of rape culture. Hannah exercised such resistance by taking on a willful girl-child (Ahmed, 2014) subject position through the creation of her métissage of taped testimonial messages recorded for thirteen peers who in some way influenced her death by suicide. As such, her project enabled Hannah to ‘come to voice’ (hooks, 1994) particularly in response to three sexist characters – Tyler, Bryce, and part-time narrator, Clay
Constructing the Persona of a Professional Historian. On Eileen Power's Early Career Persona Formation and Her Year in Paris, 1910-1911
Get PDFThe medieval historian Eileen Power (1889-1940) was one of Britain’s most eminent female historians of the first half of the twentieth century. Becoming Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics in 1931, Power gained academic recognition to a degree that was difficult for women to obtain in this period. Numerous writings on Power discuss the period 1920-1921, when she travelled around the world as an Albert Kahn Fellow, considering it a formative year in her career and indicating the importance of travel for achieving scholarly success. In contrast, little attention has been paid to the significance of Power’s first academic journey in 1910-1911, when she spent a year in Paris. This stay abroad would however be equally important since it was then that she decided to pursue a career in medieval history.
At the time, even if women had an academic degree, they were not self-evident, professional scholars. Therefore, the main question in this article is whether and how Power started to build her scholarly persona while in Paris, attempting to construct an identity for herself as a credible and reliable academic. This will be addressed by analysing her personal writings; specifically, her diary and her letters to her close friend, Margery Garrett
China’s Financial Regulations: Are Other WTO Members’ Concerns Realistic or Overcritical?
Get PDFSince China’s WTO accession it has been involved in four WTO disputes relating to financial services as the respondent, while other WTO Members remain concerned that China continues to limit access to foreign financial services and service suppliers. As other WTO Members’ concerns could be either realistic or overcritical, this paper aims to explore whether there are any further inconsistencies in China’s GATS obligations and financial regualtions. After reviewing all WTO Members’ concerns on China’s financial services, this paper examines the consistency of four frequently and constantly raised issues with the GATS agreement and China’s WTO obligations. As a result, this paper finds that two regulations are inconsistent with Article XVI and Article XVII of the GATS: the 20 per cent cap on shareholding in a Chinese-funded bank by a single foreign financial institution, and the 1 million RMB minimum for foreign banks’ local currency business. Further, China still has not complied with its transparency obligations under the Accession Protocol and Working Party Report. These findings are significant for the Chinese government as well as other WTO Members who already have or want to have close trade relations with China in financial services