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Reimagining citizen research: a postdigital arts-based approach to inclusive research methods
Full text linkLeft feeling isolated by the Covid-19 pandemic, artists working within Art in Motion (AIM), a participatory contemporary arts organisation operating as a collective of learning-disabled and neurodiverse artists and non-learning-disabled and non-neurodiverse artists, based at Spike Island, an international centre for the production and exhibition of contemporary art in Bristol, UK, wanted to reach out to similar UK-based arts organisations. Their goal was to understand the challenges these organisations were also facing and to build a sense of community. A citizen research project, taking an arts-based, practice-led, and participatory approach, was developed by artists working within AIM to challenge assumptions about learning-disabled and neurodiverse artists engaging in research and inform the inclusive development of the visual arts sector in the UK within a postdigital landscape. The project’s approach followed the recent expansion of longstanding notions of citizen science into the social science and humanities. The project involved the co-development of accessible, practice-led, creative research tools that built on the creative practice of artists working within AIM, bridged the digital and the physical, and took an overarching postdigital perspective. Visual metaphors were drawn on and a ‘suitcase’ of practice-led research tools was developed, where researchers could select tools needed for a series of both virtual and in-person research trips. Such tools included reflective practice, questionnaires, interviews, visual scribing, and mapping. This article charts the development of the project as artists took on the collective role of researchers in a postdigital context. It reflects on the positionality and experience of a collective of artists working as citizen researchers, while expanding upon the concept and the value of research for a diverse art collective in a hybrid virtual-physical art context. It concludes that citizen research can be made more inclusive and accessible through arts-based, imaginative methods, particularly when researchers hold multiple identities and active roles in the research process
Cultivating connections, disrupting boundaries: introducing the Journal of Creative Research Methods
No full text"A notable shew of horses": equine encounters in John Stow's 'Survey of London'
Full text linkIn John Stow's 'A Survey of London' (1603) horses hide in plain sight. The Survey is a seventeenth-century chorography that offers an unrivalled insight into the history of early modern London by walking the reader through the City ward by ward. Along the way, the Survey looks beneath the urban topography and uncovers associated traditions past and present. For this reason, the Survey is frequently cited in literary and historical studies of early modern England and is itself the subject of scholarly attention. However, what has been hitherto unrecognised is the significance that the Survey draws on a pronounced horse culture and participates in the sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century revival of chivalric romance literature as a way of engaging with how the Reformation and early modern urbanisation changed the City.
My thesis aims to redress this considerable gap in Survey scholarship. Drawing on animal, memory and literary studies, my cross-disciplinary approach is the first to explore how the depiction of urban horse-men hybrids evokes what I describe as chivalric nostalgia in the Survey and how this nostalgia functions as a set of textual strategies. Chapter Two examines the nostalgia-inducing properties of processioning aristocratic and civic horse-(wo)men and concludes with an analysis of reflective nostalgia in the Survey's portrayal of pre- and post-Reformation Midsummer Watches. Chapter Three explores how the Survey establishes the gold standard for all equine encounters through the lens of likely and unlikely martial horse-men. The resulting chivalric nostalgia is shown to put Smithfield under concrete threat of early modern urbanisation. Chapter Four demonstrates how the Survey engenders zoomorphic horse-man hybridity in its nostalgic renderings of public punishments in Cornhill and judicial processions to The Elms gallows in Smithfield. Ultimately, this thesis argues that chivalric nostalgia in the Survey sets up Smithfield as the equine heart and seat of chivalry in the City and as a historiographical phenomenon of genre-spanning importance warrants further investigation
Optimizing MRI scheduling in high-complexity hospitals: a digital twin and reinforcement learning approach
Full text linkMagnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) services in high-complexity hospitals often suffer from operational inefficiencies, including suboptimal MRI machine utilization, prolonged patient waiting times, and inequitable service delivery across clinical priority levels. Addressing these challenges requires intelligent scheduling strategies capable of dynamically managing patient waitlists based on clinical urgency while optimizing resource allocation. In this study, we propose a novel framework that integrates a digital twin (DT) of the MRI operational environment with a reinforcement learning (RL) agent trained via Deep Q-Networks (DQN). The digital twin simulates realistic hospital dynamics using parameters extracted from a MRI publicly available dataset, modeling patient arrivals, examination durations, MRI machine reliability, and clinical priority stratifications. Our strategy learns policies that maximize MRI machine utilization, minimize average waiting times, and ensure fairness by prioritizing urgent cases in the patient waitlist. Our approach outperforms traditional baselines, achieving a 14.5% increase in MRI machine utilization, a 44.8% reduction in average patient waiting time, and substantial improvements in priority-weighted fairness compared to First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) and static priority heuristics. Our strategy is designed to support hospital deployment, offering scalability, adaptability to dynamic operational conditions, and seamless integration with existing healthcare information systems. By advancing the use of digital twins and reinforcement learning in healthcare operations, our work provides a promising pathway toward optimizing MRI services, improving patient satisfaction, and enhancing clinical outcomes in complex hospital environments
Mise-en-scène do Mercado
No full textThis photographic project focuses on three urban markets in Portugal, each undergoing different phases of renewal: Mercado de Arroios in Lisbon, Mercado do Bolhão in Porto, and Mercado dos Lavradores in Funchal. The aim was to document and catalogue the distinctive features and underlying character of these places while they were being subjected to significant alterations and changes. Extensive photographic investigations were conducted at the sites during a three-year period, involving numerous reconnaissance photo-walks. The work was inspired by Gordon Cullen’s investigative photographic explorations in towns and cities, which he collated in his seminal text Townscape (1961). This material provided a framework to navigate the complex interplay of forms, features and experiences that I encountered within each market
Consumer behaviour changes during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study of Gibraltar
Full text linkObjectives: The study aimed to assess the change in consumer behaviour in Gibraltar due to COVID-19. The study also intended to evaluate the use and impact of media on consumer behaviour. Consumers' online behaviour during the pandemic was also assessed in the study. Methods: Quantitative research involving 226 customers from Gibraltar was conducted using a structured questionnaire. Results: Consumers displayed anxiety and stress due to COVID-19, which ultimately influenced their purchase decisions. However, customers in Gibraltar did not display the stockpiling tendencies. Social media, TV, and word of mouth were the most used communication channels for consumers in Gibraltar. Media worsened the fears related to COVID-19 amongst the consumers in Gibraltar. Consumers resorted to online shopping during the pandemic and experienced an unusual online shopping experience. Conclusions: The study concluded that consumers in Gibraltar experienced a change in their behaviour because of COVID-19. Marketers are advised to adopt an agile response strategy, focus on customer engagement and experience, support customers' mental health and deploy a crisis management strategy to deal effectively with the crisis
Teaching in the postdigital era: from neoliberal rationality to postdigital positionality
Full text linkIn the neoliberal culture surrounding Higher Education (HE), a dominant policy discourse assumes that teaching is automatically ‘enhanced’ through digital technologies. Underpinning this simplistic approach are notions of harnessing a ‘digital revolution’, including new generative AI tools, that now pervade people’s daily lives, to measure performance and improve outcomes. Whilst this slots easily into a policy rhetoric focused on generic processes, it also ‘forecloses comprehensively examining world makings and social constructions of reality in a digital age’. The term ‘postdigital’ is not a perfect concept either, but it describes our messy, hybrid era, where students and teachers are no longer in a world where digital technology and media is separate, virtual, ‘other’ to a ‘natural’ human and social life.
In this chapter the consumerist narrative that has long alienated the HE teaching community is first explored through the notion of ‘McPolicy’. Drawing on Ritzer’s McDonaldisation thesis, critical linguistic analysis of policy documents revealed that technologies or buzz phrases are frequently attributed with outcomes usually associated with human beings. Yet a widespread shift to learning in personal spaces during the pandemic, clearly revealed the shortcomings of McPolicy in failing to recognise the deeply contextual, postdigital nature of education and related inequities. Considerable data was also generated, capturing diverse individual experiences. Therefore, the second half of the chapter contrasts McPolicy with a postdigital discourse which opens, rather than closes, debate. It raises questions about whose rationalities, values and discourse we really wish to train AI educational systems on, as we reconsider the social contract of HE? This is a cross-sector debate which enables the realities of diverse postdigital positionalities to be confronted and gives voice to a biodigital-postdigital discourse which is now much more relevant for Higher Education
Accelerating change: flood hazard-disaster databases in the Indian Himalayan region
Full text linkExecutive Summary: The Problem: Increasing Disaster Risk in Mountain Regions and a Gap in Historical Disaster Knowledge. Disaster statistics for mountain regions reveal a concerning trend of increasing event occurrence, injuries and fatalities, and socio-economic impacts. This reflects increases in population, infrastructure exposure and vulnerability, as well as increasing hazard frequency and magnitude. Amplifying future concerns are complex/contested climate change trajectories and their impact on hazard processes. In response, a much better evaluation of future risk is required, and this needs an improved understanding of historical disaster impacts and losses. Closing this gap will support improved disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and sustainable infrastructure planning and development goals, underpinning improved wellbeing and livelihood. The Time for Action, Surging to 2030: Accelerating Implementation of Flood Hazard-Disaster Databases in the Indian Himalayan Region The UNDRR 'Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030' (SFDRR) is driving global efforts to stem disaster losses and build resilience via a targeted approach. Since 2015 the SFDRR has continued to mature from an elaborate framework statement to that of a growing implementation effort, now with a 'Surge to 2030'. India as a signatory of the SFDRR, and member of the pan-national Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, has embraced calls to develop and implement methodologies for the compilation of improved disaster loss data to reduce future disaster impacts, particularly in high-risk flood locations such as the Indian Himalaya. Whilst India can utilise multiple existing global, national, and state disaster databases, it is accepted that these are not necessarily comprehensive, interoperable, accessible, or sufficiently localised. Accordingly, there is a need for new partnership efforts to deliver disaggregated and sub-national flood disaster data. Key Policy-Practice Options: (1) Enhancing Knowledge in the Kullu District & Himachal Pradesh: Using 'HiFlo-DAT' to revise disaster management plans and the HVRA database; engage local communities in two-way knowledge sharing; and review planning requirements for infrastructure projects (State and National) (2) Indian National Disaster Management Policy & Practice Development: Undertake policy review on flood database curation, application and governance; consider the integration and hierarchy of Indian disaster databases; and undertake dedicated review of LLOF and GLOF floods (3) Upscaling of Historical Flood Databases across the IHR: Via partnerships and an array of data sources
