15 research outputs found
SAP - Song Archive Project Publication
No full textPLEASE NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE FULL BOOK TEXT - PUBLISHER POLICY ONLY ALLOWS ACCESS TO AN EXTRACT OF THIS BOOK IN THE UWE BRISTOL RESEARCH REPOSITORYThe publication brings together specialists from a wide range of disciplines and academic institutions whereby selected video work from Buchheim’s Song Archive Project facilitate a process of dialogue and exchange between the contributors and the editors. SAP looks at the act of singing and the role of amateur song in contemporary culture drawing together contributions from the fields of art, musical psychology, behavioral psychology, neurology, philosophy and fictional writing.Contributors:Dr Jens Asendorpf is a psychologist, professor and head of department for Psychology at the Humboldt University, Berlin.Sean Ashton is a writer of fiction and and criticism and a contributing editor of MAP Magazine.Dr Liam Devlin is a writer and visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths University of London and the University of Wales, Newport.Dr Alinka Greasley is senior lecturer in Psychology of Music in the School of Music, University of Leeds.Dr Oliver Sacks is a physician, author, and professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.Dr Iain Biggs is reader in Visual Art Practice in the Department of Art & Design, UWE, Bristol, and is a director of PLaCE.Yvonne Buchheim is an artist and senior lecturer at the University of the West of England
Covid reflections: a reader
No full textThis is a collection of personal and professional reflective experiences shaped by the Covid crisis from across the UK public health community, curated and edited by Royal Society for Public Health colleagues Colonel David Bates and Richard Shircore (David also leads the context discussion).
This Reader consists of seven independent papers reflecting on the Covid Pandemic from March 2020 to October 2022. Its development has been prompted by the Hallet Enquiry (sic) into the crisis created by the event that continues to shape socioeconomic and political conditions in the UK and globally which continue to severely weaken human security. The team felt that although the strategic response to the pandemic was being considered in detail no strategy can be formulated without understanding how it impacts on the field workers, planning staffs and the public. This Reader seeks to redress this knowledge deficit. The Editors used their personal contacts and social media to request contributions starting in October 2023 and are very grateful for the frank and fulsome response of contributors. Apart from editing some sections, for clarity and focus, the Editors have not attempted to influence any of the content, hence each paper appears unique in the author’s original style including typography. This provides a strong ethnographic message that this is about individual understanding turned into intelligent discourse through personal reflection. Each author was invited to reflect on the issues following their professional or clinical experience of ‘Covid’ that impacted on their responsibilities and areas of influence in order to address the challenge of how pandemics and epidemics could or should be managed better. A common theme is that both prevention and management of pandemics are significantly enhanced by political and health policy adhering to the key elements of the Ottawa Charter which has health security at its core. The authors were therefore specifically requested to focus on their reflections with a view to gathering their qualitative opinions based on their expertise rather than crafting an academic paper for peer review with references. This collection may serve as the framework for a formal paper in due course, with the benefit of a ‘Reader’ keeping the Contributors free from Editorial direction.
Authors and contributions:
Colonel David Bates ARRC - Global Health Security in the Age of CoViD -19;
Professor John Ashton CBE - The Diary of a Plague;
Major (Retired) Laura Morgan RAMC - The Civil-Military Perspective;
Professor Maggie Rae CBE - Covid Reflections;
Richard Shircore MSc FRSPH - An Alternative to Lockdown? Try a Different Paradigm;
Iain Stainton, University of Cumbria Lecturer - Policing Covid;
Ann Wylie FRSPH - Revising Health promotion courses linked to reflections from Covid-19
The new spin: Effects of information control behaviours on source trustworthiness and persuasion
No full textGiven the high level of skepticism from the public toward politicians, this research explores the communication styles that separate public figures who are trusted and supported from those who are not. Contrary to conventional practice, it is argued that the use of ‘spin’ in political communication is a large factor contributing to the public’s negative perception of politicians. Political spin is defined as a communication style encompassing specific behaviours designed to appeal to the media, control information, and contain the meaning audiences derive from a message. This research operationalised spin as it is used in political communication and compared participants’ responses to messages with low and high levels of spin. The present research comprised three studies. In Study One, interviews were conducted with communication professionals to define the concept and specific ‘information control behaviours’ associated with spin. An ‘authenticity’ scale was then developed to measure audience responses to low and high-spin messages. In Study Two, 50 participants were randomly assigned to view a series of low or high-spin political messages. Participants rated messages from a confederate politician as well as actual politicians, government officials, and corporate representatives using the Authenticity Scale. Study Three was conducted throughout the 5-weeks of political campaigning prior to a general election. A representative sample of 60 voters was used each week in a repeated measures design to rate the political candidates and two confederate politicians using the Authenticity Scale. It was found that participants were able to clearly discern the degree of spin used by politicians when communicating a message. Messages containing a high level of spin elicited more negative attitudes and significantly lower levels of support for politicians, than messages containing a low level of spin. Specifically, participants’ perceptions of source trustworthiness and credibility were significantly higher for politicians using a low-spin style of communication. The findings are discussed in terms of the expectancy disconfirmation theory. The findings suggest that adopting a new low-spin style of communication will assist public figures to communicate more persuasively and to better engage an increasingly skeptical public
'F- F- Felt it': Breathing Feminist, Queer and Clown Thinking into the Practice and Study of Sarah Kane’s Cleansed and Blasted
No full textThis thesis uses studio practice, scholarly research, close reading of text, performance observation and conversation with practitioners to establish diverse readings of Sarah Kane’s Cleansed. It includes original material from the 2012 productions of Cleansed in Japan (Kamome-za Fringe Theatre), and in Ireland (Bare Cheek Theatre). It notes practice on Cleansed in gallery spaces (Cast-Off Drama, UK). It offers a dramaturgical approach to workshopping the play from a feminist and queer position, informed by theories of gender and transgender, and the marginalised, loving and delinquent practice of clowning. The research discusses principles of breath, voice and sexuate difference drawing primarily on the philosophies of Luce Irigaray, on the voice practice of Cicely Berry and the clown teaching of Sue Morrison.
The work challenges the ‘in-yer-face’ theatre discourse on Kane arguing that it represents a McDonaldization of its subject matter, and an insidious trivialisation of her texts. It offers new thinking on the opening night of Blasted (1995), suggesting that the ‘furore’ was fuelled by collective male hysteria and superstition; its roots centred in mourning. Analysing Cleansed in relation to Edward Bond’s Saved and Lear, it explores tropes of ghosts, stitching and the silent scream, and argues that Kane militates for gynocentric time and becoming. It analyses the symbol of the perimeter fence as a feature of 1980s Britain, noting the strength of binary associations configured in it with reference to both English football hooliganism (male) and the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (female). It argues that Kane sets up heteronormative binaries in Cleansed to debate and contest them.
A key conclusion of the thesis is that Cleansed politically addresses and dramatises issues of transgender experience presenting accounts of gender violence, mutability, transitioning, the sharp fractures and silences of gender dysphoria, but also, ultimately, queer desire, love and optimism
Lives and limbs : re-membering Robert Jones : a biography
No full textThis is a biography of Robert Jones, 1857-1933. He was a surgeon, and is credited
with bringing orthopaedics from its quack past into its scientific present. This work
explores Jones’ life and times, and examines whether he is entitled to the epithet
‘father of orthopaedics’.
It looks at the history of bonesetting, the influences on Jones’ development
and medical training, and some key moments in his career – notably his involvement
in the building of the Manchester Ship Canal, the planning of Heswall Children’s
Hospital, and the Great War. It argues that although there are other medical men
who could have been credited with fathering orthopaedics, he is indeed the father –
at least of orthopaedics in Britain, if not internationally.
This version of Jones’ life begins with something of his biographer’s journey,
before it explores what and who influenced Jones, and in turn what his legacy has
been to the medical profession.
The accompanying Critical Commentary explores whether or not it is possible
to offer a definition of biography as a genre in the light of its history and purpose. It
examines critical views, considers the mythology that grows up around historical
figures, and also explains the rationale for the structure chosen for organising the
material presented in this new biography of Robert Jones, Live and Limbs: Re-membering Robert Jones
Popular political oratory and itinerant lecturing in Yorkshire and the North East in the age of Chartism, c. 1837-60
No full textItinerant lecturers declaiming upon free trade, Chartism, temperance, or anti-slavery could be heard in market places and halls across the country during the years 1837-60. The power of the spoken word was such that all major pressure groups employed lecturers and sent them on extensive tours. Print historians tend to overplay the importance of newspapers and tracts in disseminating political ideas and forming public opinion. This thesis demonstrates the importance of older, traditional forms of communication. Inert printed pages were no match for charismatic oratory. Combining personal magnetism, drama and immediacy, the itinerant lecturer was the most effective medium through which to reach those with limited access to books, newspapers or national political culture. Orators crucially united their dispersed audiences in national struggles for reform, fomenting discussion and coalescing political opinion, while railways, the telegraph and expanding press reportage allowed speakers and their arguments to circulate rapidly.
Understanding of political oratory and public meetings has been skewed by over-emphasis upon the hustings and high-profile politicians. This has generated two misconceptions: that political meetings were generally rowdy and that a golden age of political oratory was secured only through Gladstone’s legendary stumping tours. However, this thesis argues that, far from being disorderly, public meetings were carefully regulated and controlled offering disenfranchised males a genuine democratic space for political discussion. Its detailed research into Yorkshire and the North East, demonstrates both the growth of popular political speechmaking and the emergence of a class of professional lecturers. It identifies a paradigm shift from classical oratory to more populist styles of speaking, as more humble speakers took to the platform; and it argues that through the growth of popular political oratory the platform had been rehabilitated by the 1860s and the lecture format commercialize
Algorithms for the ATLAS High Level Trigger.
No full textFollowing rigorous software design and analysis methods, an object-based architecture has been developed to derive the second- and third-level trigger decisions for the future ATLAS detector at the LHC. The functional components within this system responsible for generating elements of the trigger decisions are algorithms running within the software architecture. Relevant aspects of the architecture are reviewed along with concrete examples of specific algorithms and their performance in "vertical" slices of various physics selection strategies
Isaac Cruikshank and the Notion of British Liberty
No full textThis is a history of communication, specifically those communications found in past (imagined) communities which augmented, shaped and renegotiated shared culture. This culture, perceptible during the late Georgian era in public forms such as books, pamphlets, prints, performance, architecture, paintings and a wide range of ephemeral material, positions itself inextricably within the visual imagination. This then is also a history of visual communicative cultures, of the various shapes and forms that occupied the ocular registers of past peoples. Graphic satire was one of these contemporary visual forms and it is therefore a task of this thesis to place this printed single-sheet medium within the lives and cultural perception of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Britons; specifically, due to where these satires were published, Londoners. Like all historical sources, graphic satires present specific challenges. They were publicly facing compositions designed to shock and provoke; outwardly packed with sex, titillation, violence and prurient curiosity, framed by lewd, deliciously vicious and bawdy narratives, and set against the dirt and grime of London's streets.
Hence satirical prints were as much an aspect of rude culture as visual culture, yet this does not mean they had nothing serious or important to say. Indeed one of the major thematic agendas of graphic satire in this period concerned notions of British liberty. It is therefore the central task of this thesis to unpick how and why this medium represented libertarian values in the way it did
The Persistence of Minimalism
No full textThe following work develops a new and general theory of minimalism – one addressing both its transhistorical and interdisciplinary dimensions, and capable of accounting for existing minimalism of every epoch and in every medium, while suitably open to embrace minimalist work yet to be created. To offer such a theory it is necessary not only to revisit the histories of minimalist practice and criticism, but also to consider its radical philosophical ground and implications. Hence its principal thesis – that minimalism exemplifies the persistence and facticity of the Real – grapples at once with the ontological heart of minimalist theory, and its practical instantiation through canonical as well as rarely considered examples. Divided into three parts, the first part addresses minimalism as the manifestation of particular aesthetic properties in relation to critical and theoretical trends. Since it becomes apparent that no single descriptive or theoretical account adequately frames minimalism, the discussion turns to the possibility of discovering a philosophical ground equally radical to the minimalist objects it addresses. The Real – an indifferent field of forces from which contingent entities are subtracted from within an irreversible temporal passage – offers precisely this radical continuum. Minimalism, by exposing the continuity between radical poiesis and an essentially quantitative understanding of Being, clarifies the indifferent persistence of the Real in every existential situation. Penetrating to the heart of this proposition, parts two and three respectively address minimalism in terms of its quantitative logic of Being – every exemplary subtraction from which is instantiated a type of existential calculation – and its exemplary aesthetic manifestation in terms of an existential transumption – a constructive poietic displacement by which minimalism renders itself maximally intelligible in terms of its objecthood and persistence. The work concludes with a typology which reorients and confirms the substance of the preceding argumentation
From bad weapons to bad states: the evolution of U.S. counterproliferation policy
No full textOne of the key features of the 2002 United States National Security Strategy was an abrupt shift from the traditional U.S. approach to proliferation threats that prioritized deterrence and promotion of nondiscriminatory nonproliferation norms, to an approach called counterproliferation that emphasized military preemption and direct challenges to adversarial state identity. This thesis asks the question, what caused counterproliferation to largely replace deterrence and nonproliferation as the central national security policies of the U.S. concerning unconventional weapons? The thesis argues that to understand this policy change requires not merely an appreciation of changes in the post-Cold War international security environment, but also an examination of how culturally shaped threat conceptions among American policymakers interacted with capabilities development and policy institutionalization within the U.S. military. As no current theory adequately addresses those dynamics, complimentary strategic culture and organizational theory models are presented as the framework for analysis. This thesis will contend that policy shift from NP to CP resulted from the merging of strategic cultural efforts aimed at legitimizing conceptions of proliferation threats as originating from state identity, with a military organizational drive to avoid uncertainty through the development of counterproliferation capabilities. Together these strategic cultural and organizational responses to shifting proliferation threats altered the menu of choice for policymakers by institutionalizing and legitimizing a policy response that directly challenged existing nonproliferation norms and practices. This thesis relies on a detailed case study of the evolution of counterproliferation policy from 1993 to 2002, with particular focus on the analysis of public discourse, declassified policy planning and Department of Defense documents, and participant interviews
