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Introduction to a seminar on the State of the Field in Community Learning and Development on Friday 13th June 2024, University of Edinburgh.
No full textToday’s seminar comes out of the concerns the organisers of this event have about the narrow framing of the current independent review of Community Learning & Development. For example, the overview of the review states:
Community Learning and Development (CLD) is a professional practice within education with delivery stretching across all stages of lifelong learning…The purpose of CLD is to provide early intervention and prevention to those experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, inequality of opportunity within the education and skills system. (Scottish Government, No Date)
As a result of this perceived narrowing of the scope of CLD work, four of us working on CLD programmes in Scottish universities wrote an open letter (Galloway et al, 2024) to express our concerns and invite support from the field of practice. Our concerns are summarised by this extract from the letter:
We argue that the learning and development components of CLD cannot be separated without losing the ethos and values of the profession in relation to social justice. We also note that within the terms of reference, ‘educational’ refers explicitly to learning and skills for employment, neglecting longstanding broader social justice aims for lifelong, life wide education as recognised formally by the Scottish Government
Psychiatric Care as an Other-than-Human Entanglement: Anthropological Reflections on Forest Therapy
No full textWhat can we learn about the therapeutic landscapes of in-patient psychiatric care by focusing on the invisible, the seemingly unimportant? To explore how mental affliction and caregiving acts are connected to other-than-human dimensions and sensory experience, I analyse the role of trees and forests in a Swiss in-patient psychiatric clinic. Using ethnographic vignettes and introducing the forest as a therapeutic landscape, I discuss the role of trees in a ward’s day-to-day life, a psychiatric sufferer’s modes of self-perception in the forest, and a physiotherapist’s active ‘tinkering’. My central argument addresses a problematic element in the research on psychiatric care in Switzerland: it is largely devoid of anthropological attentiveness to sensory perception and the atmospheric. I propose an alternative view where the experiences of illness, recovery, and violence are fundamentally co-created by a sensory context—including its marginalised, nonhuman, and atmospheric dimensions—and a conceptual framework informed by an anthropological adaption of feminist notions of ‘matters of care’ as well as sensory and ecological anthropology.
Normative Language and Judgements of Cognition: A Methodological Reflection on Difficult Sign Language Interactions
No full textIn this article, I investigate the case of a deaf woman, Silivia, who lived in western Uganda. Silivia did not use standardised sign language and was commonly considered to be ‘mad.’ However, some of her interlocutors disagreed, arguing that perceptions of madness arose because those around Silivia did not invest enough in attempting to communicate with her. I use experiential and analytical reflection on the methodological challenges of working with Silivia to explore what difficult moments tell us about how communication and everyday assessments of cognitive function are mutually implicated for deaf people in Uganda. Adopting a theoretical approach that understands languaging as a collective or distributed process, I argue that comprehensibility is not something that is determined by the qualities of a person’s expression, but rather something that happens to and through communication, mediated through social and environmental constraints. These include normative linguistic ideologies and frames of comprehensibility that may encode ableist expectations (for example, that ‘good’ communication is quick and efficient). In this context, I argue, interpretative difficulties that arise in the use of less conventionalised forms of visual languaging make some deaf people particularly subject to stigmatisation
Do Mandates Work? Investigating the Impact of the REF 2021 Open Access Policy at the University of Leeds
Full text linkThis talk investigates the effects of the REF 2021 OA policy at the University of Leeds, both analysing the data on institutional deposit patterns, and drawing on interviews conducted in summer 2021 with School and Faculty staff from across the University who were involved in administering the Open Access policy. These administrators were responsible for explaining the policy requirements to research staff, encouraging deposit and monitoring compliance rates, and in some cases depositing manuscripts on behalf of authors. As such they engaged directly with a wide range of researchers from many different disciplines, and the interviews paint a nuanced picture of the contested open access landscape. Thematic analysis of the interviews suggests that, though there were some barriers to deposit in the early days of the policy, by the end of the policy period institutional deposit had become embedded in researchers’ practice; however, this had not led to increased understanding of or enthusiasm for open access, and deposit continued to be motivated by the need for REF compliance rather than any broader benefits. Participants also related variance in researchers’ attitudes towards open access to differences of discipline, seniority, and investment in “traditional” research practices such as publishing in high impact journals. The research suggests that whilst mandates for institutional deposit can be a useful tool in increasing open access rates rapidly, other – potentially more transformative – approaches are needed to genuinely engage researchers and create lasting change
Open Research and the Research Culture Action Plan at the University of Edinburgh
Full text linkOpen Research improves research quality by increasing transparency and opens resources to society generally. Universities across the UK are adapting to incorporate and encourage open research by academics. In this talk, we describe how an Open Research theme is being incorporated in the next iteration of Research Culture Action Plan (RCAP), which reflects work with the Library Team\u27s Open Research roadmap. For example, the RCAP includes Open Research in Reward and Recognition for the promotion process. These initiatives dovetail with work being done by the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) through its Open Research Programme. We then ask for audience feedback to gain cross-university and international suggestions on how to promote Open Research through the RCAP, and to identify potential barriers, which may vary across Schools and Colleges
The New Real Observatory Platform: Connecting Generative AI and the Environment
Full text linkThe New Real Observatory enables accessible, legible and tangible cultural experiences of our changing climate and our role within it. The platform, and the programmes it supports, provide a way for leading digital artists to experiment with environmental datasets, climate models and generative tools to fuel a new generation of environment-conscious projects
Can AI Clear the Net(Zero)?
Full text linkSet the (not easy) challenge of wrestling with the BIG question: Can AI be net negative from a climate perspective?, University of Edinburgh Data Scientist Dr Daga Panas shares her thoughts on some of the paradoxes of working with big data and powerful algorithms for planetary good
Trans Embodiment, Aging, and the Heterotopia of Domestic Space: Reimagining Kinship and Futurity in For Nonna Anna and Wild Side
Full text linkThis article engages with the domestic space in two contemporary transgender narratives, For Nonna Anna (2017) and Wild Side (2004). Building on Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, it argues that these films highlight the domestic sphere as a site of both cultural tradition and queer potential. Contrasting the frequent focus in queer cinema on gay male cruising and public encounters, this essay pivots to the home environment, demonstrating how religious iconography, inherited furnishings, and daily rituals become charged with intergenerational memory and transformative possibilities. Through an analysis of mirror scenes, informed by Foucault’s claim that mirrors act as both utopias and heterotopias, this paper reveals how trans protagonists simultaneously reflect and disrupt normative temporalities. Christina’s relationship with her aging Nonna, for instance, foregrounds reciprocal vulnerability, while Stéphanie in Wild Side fuses past and present by navigating chosen kinship with her mother and lovers. Bringing the work of Sarah Ahmed, Jack Halberstam, Cynthia Port, and Alison Kafer into conversation with Foucault, this essay contends that trans bodies and elderly figures share a marginal relationship to linear futurity, suggesting alternative modes of care and intimacy. By centering aging and trans bodies, the films challenge Lee Edelman’s “no future” paradigm, proposing instead a queer futurity aligned with José Muñoz’s utopian hermeneutics. Far from being mere backdrops, homes in these films operate as heterotopic refuges that accommodate non-normative practices of embodiment, kinship, and care, reimagining the family dwelling as a horizon of queer futurity. In doing so, they offer insight into how domestic environments can reshape cinematic explorations of transness, aging, care, and kinship
5-Hydroxytryptamine receptors in GtoPdb v.2025.3
Full text link5-HT receptors (nomenclature as agreed by the NC-IUPHAR Subcommittee on 5-HT receptors [201] and subsequently revised [183]) are, with the exception of the ionotropic 5-HT3 class, GPCRs where the endogenous agonist is 5-hydroxytryptamine. The diversity of metabotropic 5-HT receptors is increased by alternative splicing that produces isoforms of the 5-HT2A (non-functional), 5-HT2C (non-functional), 5-HT4, 5-HT6 (non-functional) and 5-HT7 receptors. Unique amongst the GPCRs, RNA editing produces 5-HT2C receptor isoforms that differ in function, such as efficiency and specificity of coupling to Gq/11 and also pharmacology [41, 500]. Most 5-HT receptors (except 5-ht1e and 5-ht5b) play specific roles mediating functional responses in different tissues (reviewed by [479, 395])