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Where do you put the bomb?
Get PDFThis essay accompanies two audio pieces which the reader can access via embedded web-links. It is an analytical reflection on the FALLOUT project in which descendants of Nuclear Test Veterans were interviewed with an intention of creating a piece of verbatim theatre. The project however mutated into the creation of a series of audio portraits which mixed the recorded testimonies of the descendants with interviews with experts from other disciplines and dramatic fictional scenes, tying them together with narrative poetry. The first part of the essay describes the creation of the pieces and the decisions behind the form and content. In doing so it discusses notions of authenticity, audience, and reach in relation to verbatim theatre. To aid this articulation the essay suggests that audiences might be categorised in three ways, a tourist audience, an audience of theatre goers, and an invested audience. The attempt to reflect on the mutation from story to portrait draws heavily on the work of anthropologist Joseph Masco. Part 2 is an analysis of the two audio pieces with reference to Masco’s concept of the nuclear uncanny. Masco’s work on the individual, local and national psyche in America following the Manhattan project borrows from Sigmund Freud’s famous notion of The Uncanny, in which contradictions between the strange and the familiar are embraced to create an anxiety which changes an individual’s relationship with their surroundings
Travellers’ Tales of Mingrelia and of the Ancient Fortress of Nokalakevi
Get PDFThe last decade has seen a flourishing of the tourist industry in Georgia, as increasing numbers of Western travellers discover its beauty, history and culture. However, it is still not well known, perhaps in part due to 70 years of Soviet occupation, and the destabilising effect of its expansionist neighbours to the north and the south over many years prior to that. Despite this, a number of travellers have left evocative accounts of the region since the 14th century, and this paper considers what these historical sources can tell modern scholars about life in Mingrelia, western Georgia, and particularly in Nokalakev
A ‘satisfied settling’?:Investigating a sense of belonging for Muslim students in a UK small-medium Higher Education Institution.
Get PDFIn West European and North American Higher Education (HE), students of Islamic faith often feel overlooked, disregarded and marginalised by traditional post-secondary education colleges and Universities (Stevenson, 2014). This paper presents the findings of a research study conducted at a small-medium sized University in the UK to explore Muslim students' sense of belonging at the Institution, aiming to assess whether the University of Winchester followed a western trend of housing barriers to a full HE experience for minority student groups (Harper & Quaye, 2015). As the student population in the UK is growing to 50% of 18-24-year-old adults, so too is the number of students from diverse and underrepresented groups such as: students of faith, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students, disabled students and students with caring responsibilities (Lea, 2015). Therefore, understanding Winchester's Muslim student populations' sense of belonging and engagement at the Institution was to be deemed necessary. This study spanned over Winter 2017 / Spring 2018 using semi-structured interviews with 20% of the Muslim student population at the University, with findings suggesting that although the HEI has a very small Muslim population, students generally felt valued and a sense of belonging to the Institution. However, this was seen to be one-sided (fuelled mostly by positive academic experiences) and was implicated by being of minority status, to which the article labels as a ‘satisfied settling’. The article will also discuss how simple implementations by HEIs can further engage and enhance the university experience for these students
A machine learning approach to predict perceptual decisions: an insight into face pareidolia
Get PDFThe perception of an external stimulus not only depends upon the characteristics of the stimulus but is also influenced by the ongoing brain activity prior to its presentation. In this work, we directly tested whether spontaneous electrical brain activities in prestimulus period could predict perceptual outcome in face pareidolia (visualizing face in noise images) on a trial-by-trial basis. Participants were presented with only noise images but with the prior information that some faces would be hidden in these images, while their electrical brain activities were recorded; participants reported their perceptual decision, face or no-face, on each trial. Using differential hemispheric asymmetry features based on large-scale neural oscillations in a machine learning classifier, we demonstrated that prestimulus brain activities could achieve a classification accuracy, discriminating face from no-face perception, of 75% across trials. The time–frequency features representing hemispheric asymmetry yielded the best classification performance, and prestimulus alpha oscillations were found to be mostly involved in predicting perceptual decision. These findings suggest a mechanism of how prior expectations in the prestimulus period may affect post-stimulus decision making
The Cathedrals Group Choir Festival Report
Get PDFThis research originated in a desire to undertake combined research across the Cathedrals’ Group of Universities, which was the substance of a joint conference at Newman University in September 2017. Funding was allocated by Winchester University for a research project that would be carried out jointly with Canterbury Christchurch University in the figure of Professor Stephen Clift.In Winchester, the Rev Professor June Boyce-Tillman was the Principal investigator and Maria Busen Smith was appointed as a research assistant, Dr David Walters managed the project and Holly Pye carried out the administration and the design of this report. The team are grateful for the Vice Chancellor of Winchester University, Professor Joy Carter and Professor Kate Adams, Head of Research for their support of this project
Reappraising David Livingstone's The Geographical Tradition:A Quarter of a Century On
Get PDFThe quarter of a century since the publication of David Livingstone’s (1992) The Geographical Tradition provides an apt moment to reflect on the book’s theses, lacunae and legacies, and to take stock of the ways in which its provocations and reception might instruct the wider project of rendering the discipline’s history. In framing this themed intervention, we engage the assertion that contextualisers need contextualising; there exists scope to heighten awareness of the location within time, space and culture from which contextualist historiographies of geography are written. We call attention to the meaning and implications of the particular and situated contextualist methodology mobilised and executed in The Geographical Tradition
Human occupation of northern Europe in MIS 13: Happisburgh Site 1 (Norfolk, UK) and its European context
Get PDFThe timing, environmental setting and archaeological signatures of an early human presence in northern Europe have been longstanding themes of Palaeolithic research. In the space of 20 years, the earliest record of human occupation in Britain has been pushed back from 500 ka (Boxgrove) to 700 ka (Pakefield) and then to >800 ka (Happisburgh Site 3). Other sites also contribute to this record of human occupation; a second locality at Happisburgh, referred to as Site 1, attests to human presence at around 500 ka (MIS 13). This paper provides the first comprehensive account of research undertaken at Happisburgh Site 1 since 2000. The early human landscape and depositional environment was that of a river floodplain, where an active river channel, in which the grey sand was deposited, was abandoned, forming a floodplain lake, with marginal marsh/swamp environments, which was infilled with organic mud. This succession is sealed by Middle Pleistocene glacial deposits. An assemblage of 199 flint flakes, flake tools and cores was recovered from the grey sand and organic mud. The evidence from Happisburgh Site 1 is placed in the context of the wider British and European MIS 13 record. The growing evidence for a significant dispersal of humans into northern Europe around 500 ka raises critical questions concerning the environmental conditions under which this took place. We also consider the evolutionary and behavioural changes in human populations that might have enabled the more widespread and persistent period of human presence in northern Europe at this time
“Perhaps she only had a banana available to throw”: Habitus, racial prejudice and whiteness on Australian Football League message boards
Get PDFThis article presents the findings of 2,415 posts collected from two prominent Australian Football League message boards that responded to a racist incident involving a banana being thrown at Adelaide Crows player, Eddie Betts, in August 2016. It adopts Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to examine the online practice of fans for evidence of racist discourse and the extent to which this was supported or contested by fellow fans. The overall findings are that online debates about race in Australian Rules Football and wider Australian society remain divided, with some posters continuing to reflect racial prejudice and discrimination towards non-whites. However, for the vast majority, views deemed to have racist connotations are contested and challenged in a presentation centering on social change and racial equality
