University of Warwick Press: Journals
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The Burden of Research in Architecture: Why do researchers not have an equitable share in the glory of being called architects?
No full textArchitecture can be called a domain of infinite intangible equations. Advancement and innovative technologies in architecture are owed to the researchers who work behind the scenes and bring about these impactful changes. Nevertheless, there seems to be a significant disparity between research practitioners and practitioners in architecture, even with these notable advancements.
Architectural researchers follow a meticulous process that includes understanding the background of field visits and documentation. These steps form a creative journey and involve skills similar to design in terms of generating visuals. Researchers in architecture face the added difficulty of the age-old research methodology clash: quantitative or qualitative? Overcoming these barriers and succeeding as a researcher who contributes to society while maintaining one\u27s individual researcher characteristics is a considerable task.
However, the question arises of why, despite these struggles, researchers in architecture do not have the same recognition that practitioners have and are often classified as second-class citizens in the architectural fraternity. The hypothesis framed in this reflection hopes to show that the field of architecture needs researchers. Especially with the advancement of artificial intelligence, their role becomes primary in contributing to the data pool.
Therefore, the way forward is to give due diligence to architecture researchers and provide ample opportunities and funding while also holistically respecting their role in their community and society
A Decolonising Approach to Policy Impact in the Global South: Lessons for research culture
No full textEfforts to decolonise Higher Education are a key element of work to develop a more inclusive and equitable research culture, but what this means in the context of research impact has seldom been explored in depth. In particular, the pursuit of policy impact in Global South countries throws up particular potential challenges around the reproduction of postcolonial power structures and inequitable partnerships that academic staff need to be prepared to navigate. The University of Nottingham Institute for Policy and Engagement, along with international partners, has begun to explore what decolonisation means in the policy impact context, and what researchers, universities and the sector as a whole might do to ensure this growing area of work takes proper account of the cultural and historical contexts in which it takes place
Addressing Ethnic Health Inequities by Improving the Inclusiveness of Digital Health Research for South Asians
No full textSouth Asians are one of the largest ethnic minority groups in the United Kingdom. They face the multi-faceted burden of higher prevalence of long-term health conditions, worse access to health services, and poorer health outcomes. With the increase in digitally enabled health services, it is important to ensure that digital health apps are helping to address existing ethnic health inequities instead of creating new or exacerbating existing ones. Therefore, we need to engage with South Asians (SAs) early on and widen their participation in digital health research. However, there are several barriers to doing this effectively. Based on their experience of engaging with South Asians for developing and evaluating four health apps, the authors recommend technology developers and health researchers to understand the cultural context of common health behaviours of South Asians, and then consider the accessibility features of digital health apps and inclusivity of research procedures. This will contribute to making digital health research more inclusive for South Asians, and ultimately to reducing ethnic health inequities
An Early Career Perspective on the Value of Interdisciplinary Training Networks: Reflections on the Medical Research Foundation’s National PhD Training Programme in Antimicrobial Resistance Research
No full textAs a global society, we face various challenges that threaten economic, social, and ecological stability and security. Tackling complex global challenges, such as antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and climate change, requires collaboration and the integration of diverse perspectives from across the full spectrum of disciplinary approaches. This requires an increasing number of effective interdisciplinary researchers. In this reflective article, I present a case study narrative based on my own experience to examine how my interactions with an interdisciplinary training scheme (the Medical Research Foundation’s National PhD Training Programme in Antimicrobial Resistance Research (MRF-PhD-AMR Programme)) helped me develop as an interdisciplinary early career researcher. I describe three key interactions I had with the MRF-PhD-AMR Programme during and after my doctoral studies, and how these interactions offered me different opportunities to develop the capacity to effectively navigate interdisciplinary spaces. My reflections help highlight the importance of supporting doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in engaging in training opportunities that cross disciplinary boundaries, to enable them to become more effective interdisciplinary researchers.
Funding Acknowledgment
My doctoral research exploring antimicrobial usage in UK livestock farming was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/J500148/1]. My attendance at MRF-PhD-AMR Programme events was funded by the Medical Research Foundation [grant number MRF-145-0004-TPG-AVISO]. At the time of writing, I am employed as a Knowledge Exchange Fellow on the ACCESS (Advancing Capacity for Climate and Environment Social Science) project, which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/W00805X/1].
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Afghanistan and Its Challenge to Feminism
Get PDFThis article examines Afghan women\u27s resistance against the return to power of the Taliban since August 2021. It also critically evaluates the different attitudes that global feminists have expressed about the plight of the Afghan people and the much needed solidarity with Afghan women
A Comparative Study of Photon Radiation-Shielding Properties of Different Glass Types for Use in Health Facilities
No full textThe usage of X-ray generating devices and gamma-ray sources such as 60Co and 137Cs for medical diagnostic and therapeutic applications has increased globally. However, exposure to radiation from these sources can cause detrimental effects on biological tissues. Thus, to optimise radiation safety, effective radiation shields are required. This study used the photon shielding and dosimetry (PSD) software to simulate and compare the photon shielding properties of phosphate, bismuthate, tellurite, silicate and borate glass for use in medical facilities. The parameters investigated included mass attenuation coefficient (MAC), linear attenuation coefficient (LAC), half-value layer (HVL), mean-free path (MFP), and effective atomic number (Zeff). The results showed that bismuthate glass had the highest MAC and LAC values followed by tellurite, silicate, phosphate and borate glass respectively. It was also found that bismuthate glass had the lowest HVL and MFP values followed by tellurite, silicate, phosphate and borate glass. Since materials with high MAC and LAC and low HVL and MFP are associated with higher photon stoppage powers, bismuthate glass are better photon shielding materials compared to the rest of the glass examined in this study. Conversely, borate glass presented the least shielding potential compared to phosphate, silicate and tellurite glass
Forme esposte: Spazi metrici e retoriche dell’installazione tra versi e prose di ricerca
No full textIl saggio intende indagare la fenomenologia di alcune forme metrico-installative o metrico-espositive rintracciabili nelle scritture di ricerca del Duemila, in prosa e in versi. Tali «spazi metrici», per riprendere la celebre definizione di Amelia Rosselli (1962), avvalendosi di una pluralità di strategie formali, veicolerebbero una struttura di senso allegorica nonché un dispositivo di ricezione del testo che attesta una contaminazione intermediale fra i linguaggi della poesia e quelli delle arti visive, con riferimento in particolare all’installazione contemporanea. Partendo dal concetto di allegoria metacognitiva (Ciaco 2022) si proverà pertanto a far luce sulla specificità delle architetture testuali che ciascun autore o ciascuna autrice allestisce per verbalizzare lo spazio installativo. Si analizzeranno a tal proposito alcune tipologie di spazi metrici contemporanei e le modalità compositive soggiacenti a tali architetture nelle scritture di autori e autrici pubblicate negli ultimi due decenni: Gherardo Bortolotti, Marco Giovenale, Laura Pugno, Mariangela Guatteri.
This essay aims to investigate the phenomenology of some metric-installative or metric-exhibiting forms traceable in 2000s «scritture di ricerca», both in proses and verses. Such «metrical spaces», following Amelia Rosselli’s (1962) famous definition, making use of several formal strategies, would convey an allegorical structure of meaning as well as a device of text reception that attests to an intermedial contamination between the languages of poetry and visual arts codes, with reference to contemporary installation. Therefore, starting from the concept of metacognitive allegory (Ciaco 2022), a reading hypothesis will be made to shed light on the specificity of the textual architectures that each author sets up to verbalize the installation space. In this regard, some contemporary forms of metrical spaces and the compositional modes underlying such architectures will be analyzed, within different writings of some authors published in the last two decades: Gherardo Bortolotti, Marco Giovenale, Laura Pugno, Mariangela Guatteri
On Weathering: Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Struggles Around the Nicaragua Mural in Berlin After 2018
Get PDFThis article looks at the process of historical reinterpretation and anti-imperialist struggle around the Nicaragua mural in (former East) Berlin to demonstrate how internationalist solidarity does not unfold singularly but in a multi-layered, often contradictory manner. Since 2018, this mural has turned from an inconspicuous site into a place of contestation. On the one hand, for residents, the mural has transformed into a projection of rescuing and reinstating memory of the former GDR’s efforts of internationalist friendship and solidarity. On the other hand, it has become a site for political struggle for Nicaraguan exiles living in the area. Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Nicaragua and Germany in 2018–2019 and 2023, this article complicates how memory practices shape everyday lives in Berlin for German and Nicaraguan residents alike. Their divergent interpretations of the mural’s meaning sheds light on the tensions of memory politics vis à vis political and historical reinterpretation and demonstrate the potential for the Nicaragua mural to place a magnifying glass over the anti-imperial politics of Berlin
Changing the Picture and Music for Hope: Cultural Expressions of Solidarity in the UK with El Salvador at the End of the Cold War
Get PDFThis paper focuses on UK-based cultural expressions of international solidarity with El Salvador either side of the end of the Cold War and El Salvador’s civil war. The article centres on a mural titled Changing the Picture, painted in Greenwich from 1985, which depicts a message of hope for overcoming state repression sponsored by multinational capital and Western powers; and Music for Hope, an ongoing musical education programme beginning in 1996-7 based in the Bajo Lempa, a coastal region of El Salvador, but set up and supported by a British solidarity network. After exploring the political meanings and initiatives of solidarity in the UK during the Salvadoran civil war, we analyse Changing the Picture’s central message of anti-imperialism, the depiction of collective popular struggle and the artwork’s place within the cultural politics of London in the mid-1980s. The paper then examines how the communitarian message of popular democracy present in the mural has been articulated in new cultural forms by Music for Hope, particularly through the latter’s pedagogical, horizontal and prefigurative practice of teaching music to children and adolescents and encouraging the formation of musical groups. As such, this paper foregrounds cultural and artistic practice as a central but underexplored dimension of international solidarity. Highlighting the literature on the shift in political culture, produced by the culmination of the Cold War, from a frame foregrounding revolutionary or political struggle to one centred on trauma, we explore how Changing the Picture and Music for Hope reflect different historical conditions. If the solidarity depicted in Changing the Picture reflected the final years of a period in which the revolutionary horizon was considered possible, Music for Hope emerged at a time that forced the initiative to confront the traumatic legacies of the civil war years. Despite these differences, the article argues that there is far more that connects the two examples, especially their emphasis on community agency. In doing so, we show that artistic expression can not only represent a powerful medium through which solidarity politics are communicated, condensing both local and international contexts in a radical vision of hope, but that cultural action can also structure the participatory practice frequently at the heart of international solidarity politics
The Semiotics of Solidarity: Reinterpreting Artefacts of Latin American Resistance in Contemporary Leeds
Get PDFThis paper examines reinterpretations of solidarity with Latin America through a student-led project at the University of Leeds. The project, ‘Thinking Inside the Box: 1973’ (hereafter, TITB), was a collaboration between the University of London – specifically, King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London, and the London School of Economics – and the Universities of Leeds and Liverpool in 2023. The broader framework of TITB seeks to generate liberatory and transformative learning by approaching the educative process with students as co-creators and co-curators of knowledge. The approach draws from decolonial theory by seeking to challenge the hierarchical practices of mainstream education in which the teacher imposes knowledge on the student. In dialogue with Freirian concepts of collective interpretation and ‘conscientisation’ (Freire, 1968), scholars and students involved in the project used archives to run a series of events and public engagements. It connects students to each other and to a range of archival materials, broadly themed around 20th century Latin America, to inspire them in designing, developing and delivering an output of significant impact by engaging with local communities; in this case, the Chilean diaspora of the dictatorship. The project promotes the co-curation of knowledge, teaching and learning, and supports students to practice autonomy in their journeys of content and skills acquisition (Grimaldi, Carvalho and Natale, 2022; Grimaldi and Rofe, 2023)