"The integrity of the electoral process is absolutely fundamental to democracy, to ensuring those who are eligible to vote are able to do so and to have that vote counted. Electoral law has been highlighted by, among others, parliamentary committees as being in need of urgent reform. The research is crucial as it shines a systematic light into how electoral administration works in practice, bringing that evidence not just to academic audiences but also to policymakers. If our electoral process is to improve and become more inclusive, it is vital that these messages are heard."

Summary

The integrity of the electoral process in Britain has long been taken for granted. Recent events however show that there are a range of difficulties in running elections in Britain. The research aims to identify problems in the electoral process, to propose solutions and to bring both problems and solutions to the attention of policy makers to try to provide well run and inclusive elections which put voters at the centre of the process.

The research

How the electoral process works is fundamental to ensuring that everyone who is eligible to vote can exercise that right and be assured that their vote will be counted. This is central to democracy, as well as to inclusiveness and equality in the political process. However, as recent events across the world have shown, electoral processes should not be taken for granted. While the potential for manipulation and electoral fraud often makes headlines, the complexity of election administration is little understood. Election administrators are undoubtedly the ‘unsung heroes’ of the electoral process. But given the size of the logistical challenge in a national election, where many millions of votes are issued and counted, difficulties can arise. These can develop into issues which can be used to undermine confidence and trust in the results, but also in the electoral and political process more generally.

The research has taken two main approaches. The first has been to utilise data on returning officers’ performance standards and election funding data from the UK Electoral Commission and the UK Government’s Cabinet Office. This data has been integrated with local authority census 2011 and other socio-economic and electoral data. Findings have included:

• Evidence of variation in electoral administrative performance across Britain.
• Measured in different ways (total spending, registration spending, £ per elector) and in different elections (2009 EP, 2010GE, 2014 EP) spending on election administration led to improved performance in running elections.
• Other administrative issues also impacted upon election quality. Running multiple constituencies led to higher performance; running different levels of elections concurrently led to lower performance.

The second approach has been to conduct original surveys into electoral administration. With Toby James (UEA) and funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust, we conducted the first British survey of polling station workers in the 2015 general election. We have since followed this up with poll worker surveys in the 2018 and 2019 local elections. This work has looked at the motivations for people volunteering to work on election day, and examined the problems that they face in polling stations. In short, electoral fraud is not the problem suggested by some. Instead, people being incorrectly registered is the most common difficulty experienced by almost all polling station workers at some point in the day. These findings have fed into policy reports and commentary (https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2018/08/conversationvoterid/), and been presented in evidence to parliamentary committees (https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201919/cmselect/cmpubadm/244/244.pdf)

We were also commissioned by the UK Electoral Commission to conduct an evaluation of electoral administration in the 2016 EU Referendum. We found that while the process was generally well run in terms of its electoral administration, there were difficulties with electoral registration, with overseas voting, and with inappropriate campaigning among other things. Our full findings can be found here: (https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/sites/default/files/pdf_file/A-Clark-and-T-S-James%2C-Electoral-Administration-at-the-EU-Referendum-September-2016.pdf) A peer reviewed article based on this research is forthcoming in Local Government Studies.

Recent publications

• James, T. S. and Clark, A. (e-pub 2019) ‘Electoral Integrity, Voter Fraud and Voter ID in Polling Stations: Lessons from English Local Elections’, Policy Studies https://doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2019.1694656
• Clark, A. (2019) ‘The Cost of Democracy: The Determinants of Spending on the Public Administration of Elections’, International Political Science Review, 40, (3), pp354-369. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0192512118824787

Recent policy inquiry contributions

• Scottish Parliament Finance and Constitution Committee, Stage 1 Report on Referendums (Scotland) Bill, October 2019 https://sp-bpr-en-prod-cdnep.azureedge.net/published/FCC/2019/10/31/Stage-1-report-on-the-Referendums--Scotland--Bill/FCC052019R7.pdf
• House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Electoral Law: The Urgent Need for Review, 1st November 2019 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201919/cmselect/cmpubadm/244/244.pdf

Summary

What do town planners do all day? This question has received little scholarly attention yet, in an austerity-driven, increasingly privatised context, it has deep sociological significance. Our ethnographic fieldwork, part of a UK-wide ESRC-funded project involves spending time with planners in five organisations in public and private sectors.

The research

Since 2018, Professor Geoff Vigar and ethnographer Dr Abigail Schoneboom, both from the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, have been engaged in ethnographic fieldwork (carried out with colleagues at the University of Sheffield) centred on five organisations conducting town planning work. Our goal is to observe the texture of contemporary planning practice, including dynamics such as work intensification, collegiality and commercialisation.

One of the primary aims of this part of the project is to attempt to see through the eyes of planners as social actors, representing their social world not as an easily reducible set of rules but as a thickly described, complex entity. We have spent several months with planners, observing office interactions, attending meetings with developers and others, and observing planning committees as well as conducting site visits and carrying out a series of interviews with planners, elected members and other stakeholders. We have used a combination of traditional participant observation and innovative participant-led photography.

In keeping with the ethnographic tradition we have focused our attention on micro-level processes of everyday life in the planning office, tuning in to aspects such as office tea-drinking rituals -- a paper authored by Dr Schoneboom and fellow WITPI researcher Dr Jason Slade (U. Sheffield) on this topic won Best Paper at this year’s Ethnography Symposium. This type of close-up exploration in turn provides us with critical insights about wider structures of power and commercialism both in the planning sector and in wider society.

Ethnography is just one strand of the Working in the Public Interest (WITPI) project, which is overseen by Professor Malcolm Tait at the University of Sheffield. The WITPI research team, which comprises academics from University of Sheffield, University College London as well as Newcastle University, has been engaged in a highly collaborative, 28 month process also involving a series of:

• UK-wide focus groups led by Dr Zan Gunn (Newcastle University)
• biographical interviews with planning professionals led by UCL’s Dr Ben Clifford
• archival work with a contemporary literature review led by Sheffield’s Dr Andy Inch

Findings/conclusion/closing statement

Our ethnographic work has revealed processes of work intensification and, in local authority contexts, a concerning level of developer power. There is a sense of resignation to a much reduced discretionary acting space where planners are able to make small changes, but can do little to tackle wider societal challenges. At the same time a strong sense of collegiality and commitment to the potential of planning survives. These findings will be integrated with the findings of the wider WITPI study.

Find out more

WITPI website: http://witpi.group.shef.ac.uk/

Report from the focus groups: https://www.rtpi.org.uk/WITPI

Award for tea paper: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/apl/news/item/ethnographyprize.html

Summary

In 2017-2018 a pilot project was funded through the school of GPS Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Committee Innovative Teaching Fund establishing a collaboration with Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books and the module GEO3135: Geographies of Gender & Generation.

Further details can be found via the Vital North Partnership Blog, including Chi Onwurah’s (MP for Newcastle Central) support for the project’s work on tackling issues of equality, diversity and inclusion.

In 2018-2019 this collaboration continued and the module has grown as a result; with 82 students now working with 90 school children across two schools in the region. An intergenerational practice event was held in the Great North Museum: Hancock as a culmination of the work together on Friday 16th November 2018.

Engagement and Place

An exciting context to this work has been set by Newcastle University’s new strategic vision and the project speaks to its priorities on Engagement and Place, especially ideas of social inclusion and educational attainment. Appropriately, this project is embedded within local communities (through schools and charities) and champions more inclusive understandings of inclusion: such as widening participation, social mobility and accessibility. This builds on Newcastle University’s world leading reputation as a Civic University.

City of Dreams

The project is a timely intervention given the wider NewcastleGateshead City of Dreams initiative to make the region “the best place to be young” and recognises children and young people as active and creative citizens, able to improve their life chances. The NewcastleGateshead Cultural Venues talk of the transformative potential of opportunities and life chances for children and young people in the region through a decade long commitment launched in 2018.

Threshold Crossing

Crossing thresholds has two-fold relevance in this work. Firstly, in teaching, like the work of Moffat and McKim (2016) by utilising creative learning the project addresses more difficult threshold concepts in understanding, in this case, intergenerational practice (methods of intentional age integration). Secondly, in research, by working outside of traditional social science within arts and cultural spaces with children and young people in the local community, this project speaks to a “threshold crossing” critique of arts based regeneration. The result of which creates research-led teaching which directly addresses the intersectional concerns of age, race, class, gender and sexuality.

Positive Reading Environments as a Key Finding

A report by Scholastic (2014) who surveyed across different age ranges (6-8; 9-11; 12-14; and 15-17 years old), found that not all engaged readers come from privileged homes and note significantly, that engaged readers from poorer backgrounds consistently outperform less engaged readers from more privileged homes. This led to their ultimate conclusion that reading enjoyment was proved more important for children’s educational success, than family socio-economic background. What they then call for is greater recognition for the role of schools and wider communities to create positive reading environments. This project makes space for a wider reading community.

Literacy and Social Justice as a Key Outcome

Through recent feedback on the project one teacher stated ‘I firmly believe that such exchanges can impact positively on aspirations, especially when in a memorable setting and different to the norm.’ This forms part of some early evidence that this work can help promote more inclusive understandings of “inclusion” within the EDI agenda. It does so by making space for critical discussion of the social barriers facing children and young people – particularly with regard to widening participation and raising aspiration.

Conclusion

This project seeks to grow social science within more traditionally arts and humanities arenas while the transformative potential is clear. A mandate has been set on opening up more inclusive understandings of inclusion within the university – and within arts and cultural venues.

Impacts

[i] The project has fed into the Elmer and Friends Exhibition at Seven Stories (2019-2020); [ii] The work has been featured at the National Co-Ordinating Centre for Public Engagement; [iii] The work has been supported by MP for Newcastle Central; [iv] The work has been written up as a journal article for Children’s Geographies.

More information

Moffat, K. and McKim, A. (2016) Transforming conceptual space into a creative learning place: crossing a threshold. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 15(3-4): 414-434 Scholastic. (2014) Kids and Family Reading Report. Accessed: 17/11/17

Contact Dr Michael J Richardson

Summary

Since 2019, Newcastle University has hosted the North East Child Poverty Commission – a longstanding network of representatives from public, private and third sector organisations in the region which aims to build support for actions that improve the lives of the more than 1 in 3 children living in poverty in the North East.

The research

The North East Child Poverty Commission (NECPC) was first established in 2011 having evolved from previous regional groupings dedicated to tackling child poverty that were in place from 2005.

The Commission is not a charity nor a constituted body, but rather a stakeholder network whose stated aim is to ‘provide a strong regional voice to raise awareness of the issue of child poverty in the North East and to work collaboratively to tackle the problem’.

Although independent of Newcastle University, the Commission and its co-ordinator have been housed within the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology since 2019 – providing new opportunities for academics, voluntary organisations, local authorities and others to work together to address the structural causes of poverty and its diverse impacts on children, young people, their families and communities across the North East.

The Commission's work is bolstered by Newcastle University's strong track record of leading research on a range of issues relating to poverty and inequalities and how they affect children and young people – for example, the wide-ranging impact of poverty on a child's education, the effects of growing up poor on children's physical health and mental wellbeing, or the impact of in-work poverty on families.

One of the roles of the Commission’s co-ordinator is to work with academics and key stakeholders to help match the needs of the voluntary sector with research expertise across the University, and to use existing research/evidence to highlight areas where changes in policy are needed.

The work of the North East Child Poverty Commission is supported by a grant from the Millfield House Foundation, which funds policy work with the aim of reducing poverty and inequality in the North East of England.

Conclusion

The NECPC’s partnership with Newcastle University will enable the Commission to harness and build on the University’s track record of expertise in this area, and use it to make an effective, evidence-based case for change to individuals and organisations with the power and resources to make a difference.

Find out more

North East Child Poverty Commision

Summary

Nepal faces a large problem of trafficking of women and this research centres upon the post trafficking experiences of women and how their lives develop.

The research

Data was gathered from and with the women themselves and illustrated how post trafficked women may be stigmatised and discriminated against, including through lack of access to citizenship and ensuing rights. The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and evaluated as ‘outstanding’. By bringing sexuality and citizenship into dialogue with debates on livelihoods this project is helping to generate a way of understanding the relationship between sexuality, gender and development. The research goes beyond the immediate 'rescue' of returnee trafficked women and combines a focus on livelihoods with the need to address the issues related to their right to citizenship.

The Advisory Group on the project played a key role in disseminating the research to relevant audiences. The project has disseminated its findings at conferences, meetings with relevant ministers and through the Nepalese press. Researchers from Newcastle University have worked with policy makers locally and internationally to ensure that project findings feed into current citizenship debates and anti-trafficking strategies in Nepal and the wider South Asia region. This research was undertaken with project partners Shakti Samuha (right), an anti-trafficking nongovernmental organisation run by returnee trafficked women.

The research team have been successful in contributing to policy development by providing advisory information to the government of Nepal on the National Action Plan to combat trafficking and the Chair of the Nepali Fundamental Rights Committee. The research team have also provided conceptual input to a new large Department for International Development (DfID) anti-trafficking regional project, influencing the programme's focus on returnee trafficked women's rights to livelihoods. In August 2013 Shakti Samuha received Asia's prestigious Magsaysay award. Established in 1957, the Ramon Magsaysay award is Asia's highest honour and is widely regarded as the region's equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize. Recipients are hailed as "Asia's heroes of change" and are awarded to "honour the spirit of greatness and selfless leadership"

The Board said of the decision to award Shakti Samuha: 'In electing Shakti Samuha to receive the 2013 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board trustees recognises its founders and members for transforming their lives in service to other human trafficking survivors, for their passionate dedication towards rooting out a pernicious social evil in Nepal, and the radiant example they have shown the world in reclaiming the human dignity that is the birthright of all abused women and children everywhere.'

Summary

This research project looks into local dynamics and roles of digital media in citizen participation, and collective action, for spatial justice in Manizales, Colombia.

The research

Matters of digital communication and the city should not be studied separately in relation to urban and social development, especially today when digital media is more and more integrated in daily life. As technology evolves and digital spheres of information become more accessible, the ways in which people interact with each other and with the urban spaces are also changing. Consequently, the study and understanding of local communication trends in cities is needed to enrich participatory planning strategies.

Manizales is allegedly becoming a role model in Colombia in terms of ICT innovation and social progress. This offers an interesting landscape to explore public participation and digital media appropriation for issues around urban development and inclusion around decision making in the city.

This research is built around around the questions:

1. How do citizens mobilise towards spatial justice aims in the supposed inclusive city?
2. To what extent local strategies of collective action, both online and offline, can affect notions and practices of citizen participation in urban planning?

There are three main elements to consider while doing the literature review for this research: (1) various ways of understanding citizens’ participation in urban studies. (2) Uses of digital media in local participation. (3) Inclusive and socially just models of urban planning. These need to come together framed by the particularities of the socio-political context to find the most pertinent discussions in related fields such as sociology, urban studies, urban geography and communication studies (Figure to the right).

Fairly traditional Social Science methods support this methodology:

• semi-structured interviews
• participant observation (for five months)
• group exercises about perceptions on participation
• field notes recording
• qualitative analysis of first hand and pre-existing data

The digital aspect played a key role in the methodology as well; digital ethnography or netnography was employed for about a year, following different actors and being part of conversations on Facebook and Whatsapp groups. Furthermore, a digital device called JigsAudio designed and developed in OpenLab at Newcastle University (by PhD researcher Alexander Wilson) was used during the groups exercises (with 10 groups of 3 or 4 people).

Conclusion

At the moment, this research project is in an early stage of analysis, organising, coding and structuring key findings from the field in connection with existing or missing relevant discussions from the literature. I would be interested in getting in touch with other researchers sharing similar interests or methodologies.

Some of the early reflections revolves around issues such as:

• Seeking spatial justice can become a unifying goal for social movements in the city. Leaders swing between protocolary and insurgent ways of collective action.
• Different uses of social media can be linked to strategic reasons or also be purely circumstantial. How much of this is related to cultural habitus and generational approaches to technology?
• Collaborations with academia and the educational purposes of urban activism. Getting more and young people to understand and be interested about urban planning.
• Spatial marginality translating into digital exclusion.

Summary

The contemporary landscape of populist politics and global insecurity makes the question of community more contested than ever. This project aims to find a workable definition of ‘community under stress’ moving it away from the increasingly ineffective notions of cohesion and integration, and instead thinking through alternative forms of solidarity.

The Research

The workshop will apply social scientific lens (broadly defined) to the notoriously complex issue of community, something that cannot be understood by a single disciplinary focus. The notion of community demands an interdisciplinary approach that takes account of culture, politics, geography, policy, community engagement and activism. In short, it not only necessitates transcending disciplinary boundaries, but also calls for the practical engagement on the ground, boosted by social science in an effort of continually finding new ways of approach to everyday communal life and its challenges.

Understanding how to accommodate needs arising from thinking about communities beyond the notion of cohesion or integration is best achieved by harnessing the power and the expertise of various stakeholders, from top academic researchers to seasoned community activists. The workshop will thus bring together top researchers and third sector practitioners to co-produce knowledge that could lead, in the first instance, to a conceptual re-definition of community.

Different participants will be asked to respond to the deceptively simple question of ‘what is community’ from their particular perspectives and experiences. In doing so, we aim to push the paradigm of community beyond the standard parameters of its definition. The interactive mode, exchanging current knowledge by deploying diverse frames of reference, will help to identify the blind spots that every perspective carries with it and lead to a collective, working re-definition of community as a social reality, broadly speaking.

Community Question is of larger, global relevance, even though the places where it is felt are localised. The concept of community is also one of the foundational, core concepts in Sociology, going back to its classical origins. In spite of the many arguments highlighting its ineffectiveness as a research tool, community is continually relevant to everyday political and cultural life, taking up the central position in policy, and supporting the social imagination on the ground, as the continually renewed ‘metaphor we live by’.

Bringing together perspectives from social theory, rural sociology, geography, cultural history and literature, as well as community practice, we attempt to reroute and disrupt the common-sense notion of ‘fitting into’ a community, or building community by re-enforcing existing social structures and identities.

Conclusion

Living in ‘turbulent times’ is counteracted by instinctive appeals to cohesive and integrated communities. We will push the paradigm of community beyond this common sense response, by treating community as a social medium; something closer to a renewable resource, rather than a type of physical and symbolic space.

More Information

Email Dariusz.Gafijczuk@newcastle.ac.uk

Summary

How do we get beyond simplistic models of the public understanding of science to a more sophisticated understanding of how 20th century citizens have responded to science and the futures it creates? What can we learn from science fiction about how technoscientific futures have looked and felt to ordinary people over the last 100 years?

The research

Unsettling Scientific Stories is an AHRC-funded project with centres at Newcastle University and the Universities of York and Aberystwyth. Drawing on perspectives from the sociology and history of science, utopian studies, and science fiction studies it explores the centrality of science fiction to peoples’ engagements with technoscience and its futures.

Our project examines how speculative fictions have been central to peoples’ active understanding of science and technology; their reflections on living in fast-changing technoscientific societies; and their critical responses and resistances to futures of technocratic domination and control.

Environment, Crisis, Complexity: since the 1970s, the idea of ecological limits to economic growth has been a key trope emerging simultaneously in environmental science and eco-science fiction. Alongside cybernetic models of planetary futures, popular SF offered rich qualitative explorations of life on an overpopulated, polluted and resource-poor planet – as well as utopian visions of a sustainable, sufficient and low-growth society. How might SF help us today, and what can the social sciences learn from SF as we try to anticipate Anthropocene futures?

Prospecting Futures: online brings sociological perspectives to bear on science fiction and its readers.

Our project examines how speculative fictions are part of peoples’ active understanding of science and technology, helping them to imagine probable, possible and desirable futures. We are working on contemporary speculative fiction texts – Octavia E Butler’s Parable series; Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy –and with science fiction readers and online communities to explore how situated readings shape ethical, political and affective engagement with texts and futures.

More information 

Miranda Iossifidis (2018) Uses of Science fiction: everyday readers, ambiguous hopefulness and environmental justice. Invited talk, Visual Cultures Public Programme, Goldsmiths College

Lisa Garforth (2017) Green Utopias: Environmental Hope Before and After Nature. Cambridge: Polity.

Lisa Garforth (2019 forthcoming) ‘Environmental limits, now and then: crisis, systems modelling and science fiction.’ Osiris special issue: Presenting Past Futures: SF and the History of Science.

Summary

Freedom City Comics (FCC) is a 16-page comics anthology made as a collaboration between seven academic researchers and nine comics creators. Its seven chapters present snapshots of the history of civil rights and politics on Tyneside (geographic area in the North East of England), connected by the overarching theme of freedom.

FCC was part of Freedom City 2017 festival, celebrating the anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s 1967 visit to Tyneside to collect his honorary degree from Newcastle University. In addition to Dr King’s visit and speech, FCC’s chapters include: freeborn rights, freedom from slavery, political participation, the right to work, and the right to migration and asylum. 37000 free printed copies were distributed in the North East of England, and the comic is free to read online.

The research

In this early-stage paper we use a sociocultural approach to address the comics medium. We outline the Freedom City Comics project and identify three instances of this comic’s role as a boundary object:

• First, the creation of the comic as a collaboration between 16 academic researchers and comics creators, with a focus on the role comics can play in troubling the boundaries of the academy with positive implications for both public access to information and indeed the purpose of universities.
• Second, the evaluation of the comic through empirical research with a sample of readers. This offers insights into the complexity of what different readers in our sample liked about FCC.
• Third, the development of a learning framework in partnership with two teachers. This locates the comic at the boundary of collaboration with teachers, connecting the creative and academic intent of the comic with specific curricular content.

Conceptualising a collaboratively-created comic as a boundary object (Akkerman and Bakker: 2011) helps identify its plural and evolving roles and advance earlier work on collaboration across boundaries. Taken together, these three stages address the multifaceted role of a single comic through its creation, distribution, and use. Presenting FCC as an example of applied comics, or comics for specific purposes, we contribute to advancing the theory, methods, and practice of comics in the field of education. Specific findings from the project evaluation include:

• This sample of children aged 10-13 are rarely the main audience for academic articles and books. Nevertheless when asked what they liked about the art, writing, and content of the comic, respondents did comment on what they liked in the content – the history, as historical research – of FCC. In respondents’ own words:
• This is one of the best one because it has more information, it is reliable and trustworthy (library, age 12-13).
• I like this one because I like older texts because it shows history is great (school, age 11-12).
• this sample of readers were not typically comics readers: only 16 of 86 respondents said they read comics other than FCC.
• further findings were nonetheless positive, with most respondents saying they would recommend FCC to friends (62 of 67 respondents) and to family (56 of 67 respondents)
• a tally count of responses shows that each chapter of FCC was among someone’s favourites. Finding that no chapter was no-one’s favourite, and that no single chapter was unanimously preferred, supports our use of an anthology format. We used multiple snapshots of history told in multiple styles, rather than a single continuous approach, to appeal to a range of readers’ unpredictable preferences.

More information

This poster is adapted from our conference paper: Wysocki, L., and Leat, D. (2018) ‘Collaborative comic as Boundary Object: the creation, reading, and uses of Freedom City Comics / Cómic colaborativo como Objeto de Frontera: la creación, lectura y usos de Freedom City Comics’ presented at Unicómic XX, University of Alicante, Spain, August 2018.

Freedom City Comics is available to read free online. FCC team: Patrice Aggs, Joan Allen, Ragavee Balendran, Brycchan Carey, Mack Chater, John Clark, Brittany Coxon, Matthew Grenby, Rachel Hammersley, Ian Mayor, Sha Nazir, Paul Peart-Smith, Matt Perry, Brian Ward, Terry Wiley, and Lydia Wysocki

Summary

One of the key areas of financial cuts and policy transformations after the advent of austerity has been services delivered to children and young people, which have seen larger reductions in levels of funding than public services generally (Youdell and McGimpsey, 2015). As the state retreats, these services are increasingly delivered by charities and voluntary sector organisations, who have aimed to fill this gap in provision (Buckingham, 2012). By filling this gap, the organisations also become subject to market or outcomes-based funding structures (Quinn, Tompkins- Strange and Meyerson, 2014). With the near-ubiquity of personal mobile devices such as smartphones, digital technology has also begun to enter this space, offering opportunities to help – or hinder – the sector.

The research

Working with a charity that delivers both youth and social work to young people in and leaving care, I sought to help them get to grips with how they might start to engage with digital technology. I adopted a participant observation approach and conducted interviews, but as this work develops it will turn more towards Participatory Action Research as I work with the organisation and young people to actively develop responses to the situations they are encountering.

Increased documentation, data capture and accountability practices

Although organisations may secure funding, it is ultimately dependent upon specific ‘outcomes’, which require large amounts of documentation to be created, demonstrating certain criteria in language that workers often feel doesn’t match to the situations people are in. As one worker said, “y’know, I have to frame things as a barrier to work because of the terms of the funding, but really it’s that they’re depressed or don’t feel like they can leave the house. It can feel a bit like ticking boxes… and it’s quite draining.”

The circulation of knowledge and ‘best practice’

‘Best practice’ is often circulated at events such as ‘Learning Lunches’, where a practitioner or organisation shares knowledge in a lecture-like format. In one of these lunches, the presenter – the head of a mental health organisation for young people – would repeatedly present complex ideas as too complex; then present much less nuanced versions. Resilience, for example, became just about being able to ‘bounce back’. The only time this didn’t happen was in explaining the (supposed) neurophysiological responses of the brain to Adverse Childhood Experiences.

Practitioner views of neurophysiological responses to social situations

Perhaps because of the prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences, workers often think of things in neurophysiological terms. One worker spoke at length about how the brain functioned in response to trauma, and felt that it was “useful in understanding where someone might be coming from”. The same told me that if you yelled at water before it froze, it would freeze in a less aesthetically pleasing pattern. “It’s all resonance, isn’t it?” Another worker told me that they heard when young people are subject to Adverse Childhood Experiences, their DNA starts to fray at the ends.

Conclusions and future work

Certain forms of knowledge are privileged both in the funding and circulation of practice. Yet if practitioners do not fully understand the knowledge that is being delivered to them – or are not allowed to fully get to grips and question the nature of that which is being taught – then their ability to put this into practice well is questionable. As digital technologies begin to enter this space (and rely heavily upon limited views of people’s lives), the need for nuance in complex concepts is ever more important. Future work will focus on understanding how certain forms of knowledge become privileged, the role of funders in this process and practitioners’ experiences of this.

More information

Heather Buckingham. 2012. Capturing Diversity: A Typology of Third Sector Organisations’ Responses to Contracting Based on Empirical Evidence from Homelessness Services. Journal of Social Policy 41, 3: 569–589.

Rand Quinn, Megan Tompkins-Stange, and Debra Meyerson. 2014. Beyond Grantmaking: Philanthropic Foundations as Agents of Change and Institutional Entrepreneurs. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 43, 6: 950–968.

Deborah Youdell and Ian McGimpsey. 2015. Assembling, disassembling and reassembling ‘youth services’ in Austerity Britain. Critical Studies in Education 56, 1: 116–130.

Contact Kieran Cutting

Summary

The EU’s requirements for country-by-country reporting of payments to governments by oil, gas and mining (extractive) and forestry companies consist of the Accounting Directive’s Chapter 10 provisions and the equivalent provisions of the Transparency Directive (collectively ‘the Directives’). The provisions require in-scope companies in the extractive and forestry sectors to publicly report details of payments they make to governments on an annual and per-country basis, including at project level. The reasoning behind the provisions was that by increasing transparency concerning substantial payments made to governments of resource-rich countries by significant corporations in the extractive and forestry sectors, these governments would become more accountable for the usage of the revenues they receive. The need for greater accountability arises from the concern to see improved socio-economic development of these countries. Hence, the provisions could help overcome the ‘resource curse’.

The research

The research reflects and responds to civil society’s request for independent timely research in relation to the EU review of the law:

• Creation of the STAR Collective of academics across 19 EU universities to gather and analyse reports across EU jurisdictions.
• Design and usage of a disclosure checklist to benchmark disclosures, building on the findings of earlier work.
• Interviews with stakeholders.

Countries and companies analysed:

• Reports were found in 19 EU Member States.
• 245 reports analysed, 92 relating to the financial year beginning on or after 1/1/2015 (mainly published in 2016) and 153 relating to the financial year beginning on or after 1/1/2016 (mainly published in 2017).
• Drawing on findings from interviews with regulator, legislator, preparer, industry representative, advisor/auditor, investor and civil society stakeholder groups.

Findings

• Reports are being used and found useful by civil society as intended. There is evidence of support for the EU reporting requirements in the corporate world.
• Lack of precision over payment recipients. 24% (2015) and 19% (2016) of companies do not report the name of the government entity to which payments are made.
• Member States’ statutory obligation to monitor compliance is mainly not met.
• There is no EU central repository for retrieving reports; access to reports in different countries varies and is not straightforward.
• There is evidence of variability across countries in the way companies interpret types of payments to government, reporting requirements for joint operations and substantially interconnected projects.

Recommendations

• Better filing, preferably at a central repository at the EU level, to improve accessibility.
• The creation, updating and publication by the EC of a list of in-scope companies at EU level.
• Enhanced regulation, requiring at least limited assurance audits and/or their reconciliation to audited figures.
• More effective government monitoring of compliance with the provisions.
• Clarification in terms of the reporting principle to apply under joint operations, project-level aggregation, the categories of payments and the specificity of payment recipients.
• A general requirement to disclose the basis of preparation of numbers in the reports.
• Enhancing format consistency and machine- as well as human-readability.

More information

www.publishwhatyoupay.org/resources/eu-law-academics-report

Contact Louise Crawford

Summary

‘Housing Hope: the place of politics and people in housing governance’ is a current research project that develops doctoral work examining neighbourhood housing regeneration. It considers on-going struggles in housing, both within local government and local communities.

The research

As local governments transition to become self-funding following central government cuts, approaches to housing, property and land are changing. This national trend was considered at a local level through research into various housing policy interventions in the neighbourhood of Bensham and Saltwell, Gateshead. Carried out between 2014 and 2017, this study examined decision-making, politics and how people felt towards housing regeneration. A particular focus was on Housing Market Renewal, a 2002-2011 central government regeneration scheme that led to the demolition of houses, and the formation of a public-private partnership that is building new houses. The research was carried out as part of an ESRC PhD studentship in the Department of Geography at Durham University. Methods included 38 formal interviews, 40 informal interviews, focus groups, archival research and document analysis.

Conclusion

• Housing governance is becoming increasingly market-led, but there are questions as to the viability/ sustainability/inclusiveness of this approach.
• A lack of transparency exists within the public-private partnership; the Council’s involvement is hidden from view, information is not publicly available, and little consultation has taken place.
• A narrowing of local politics and democracy is occurring as decision-making is officer-led and increasingly excludes alternative local views on housing.
• ‘Evidence’ collected by out-sourced ‘experts’ is questionable. A ‘failing housing market’ was inaccurately presented, and community consultation was shaped to exaggerate resident’s support for demolition.

Recommendations

• These findings should be understood as wider risks to local government, alongside considerations of financial risks and viability.
• Heightened scrutiny of ‘experts’ and ‘evidence’ should take place in the future use of consultants and evidence collection, with more space made for local knowledge and voices.

More information

Contact Emma Ormerod

Summary

Working in collaboration with age-sector organisations and education providers, the Active Voices programme supports older people to contribute more effectively to the communities in which they live. This can, in turn, help to build the capability of cities and communities to become more age-friendly.

The research

The Active Voices initiative builds on earlier experience of a programme conducted in Ireland and led by Thomas Scharf. Called ‘Touchstone’, and involving a partnership of three national age-sector organisations aimed at supporting the development of the national Age Friendly Ireland programme, the work in Ireland took the form of an adult-learning programme involving fifty older people of different backgrounds and from different parts of Galway City and County Galway. Touchstone provided opportunities to explore a range of themes with older people, such as how to deal with media, ageism, and the older person as a researcher. It also offered participants the chance to initiate their own small-scale projects. Above all, the older person was positioned at the centre of the experiential learning process. The educational programme was accompanied by a research project that sought to increase knowledge about the factors that influence the motivation of older people to become civically engaged, and the supports they require to remain engaged. The research identified the challenges older people in Ireland sometimes face through being involved in their communities, and the enablers and barriers that impact on their civic engagement.

Key research outcomes of the Touchstone project include:

• The programme had a positive impact on the civic engagement of participating older people, providing knowledge and skills that could assist them in future engagement roles;
• The adult learning and community education approach adopted in the programme motivated course participants not only to continue existing civic engagement activities but to take up new engagement roles;
• Newcomers to civic engagement were motivated to try out various activities through project work; participants who were more experienced in civic engagement activities felt motivated and re-energised to continue their engagement;
• Involving older people in the development of the programme contributed to its success and created opportunities to secure the programme’s future sustainability;
• The programme was enhanced by the involvement of experienced facilitators from collaborating organisations, who had extensive knowledge of working with groups of older adults in an empowering way.

These insights have helped to inform the development of future Touchstone programmes in Ireland and also of the comparable Active Voices programme aimed at older people in North East England. Developed as a partnership between Newcastle University, the Elders Council of Newcastle and the Workers Educational Association, the six-week Active Voices course has been delivered to a range of groups in different locations, supporting people’s endeavours to become engaged in the life of their communities. A participant in one of programmes reflected on how Active Voices has impacted on her community roles in the following way:

“I must admit that I didn’t really have a clue as to what I was signing up for, but I am really glad I did. This was an amazing course which covered just about everything I needed to know in my role as a volunteer at various organisations (although I hadn’t even realised it!). The sessions covered power (who has it, how to use it, etc.) and how to do research or complete a project – both subjects chosen by us, covered from planning to completion. There was even a session covering the press and media, very useful as in these days of austerity you never know when you might need to call on them with help to raise funds or advertise your event.”

Conclusion

Worldwide, demographic ageing challenges countries to respond to the needs and aspirations of a growing population of older people. One key response has been to develop initiatives that seek to make cities and communities more age-friendly. Age-friendliness also requires effective learning opportunities that allow older people to engage more effectively in their communities. The Active Voices programme has the potential to support older people to become more effective advocates of age-friendly initiatives.

More information

Contact Thomas Scharf

Summary

Our research programme examines geographical inequalities in health, locally, nationally and internationally.

The research

We employ a range of qualitative and quantitative methods to explore how place shapes health and health inequalities. Recent and current projects include:

• Northern Health Sciences Alliance Funded Project exploring the role of health in explaining productivity differences between the North and rest of England
• NIHR School of Public Health funded research mapping the neighbourhood food environment in England and its impact on health outcomes
• NIHR School of Public Health funded systematic review examining the effects, and cost-effectiveness, of place-centred strategies to improve health and reduce health inequalities
• NIHR Public Health Research funded project, Communities in Control, examining local control and involvement about where they live, and the health consequences

Conclusion

Our work helps to understand and reduce place-based inequalities in health.

Find out more

Current Projects

http://www.fuse.ac.uk/research/healthinequalities/

https://sphr.nihr.ac.uk/category/research/inequalities/

https://communitiesincontrol.uk/

Publications

Bambra, C., Munford, L., Brown, H., et al (2018) Health for Wealth: Building a Healthier Northern Powerhouse for UK Productivity, Northern Health Sciences Alliance, Newcastle. http://www.thenhsa.co.uk/app/uploads/2018/11/NHSA-REPORT-FINAL.pdf

Bambra, C. (2016) Health Divides: where you live can kill you, Bristol: Policy Press[CB1] .

McGowan, V., Wistow, J., Lewis, S., Poppay, J. and Bambra, C. Identifying pathways to health improvement in a community-led area-based empowerment initiative in England: Evidence from the Communities in Control Study, Journal of Public Health, https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdy192

Copeland, A., Kasim, A.S., and Bambra, C. (2015) Grim up North or Northern Grit? Recessions and the English spatial health divide (1991 – 2010), Journal of Public Health, 37: 34-39

Summary

This programme of work focuses on the impact of cuts to the welfare state and how this is affecting the lives of people reliant on state benefits.

The research

The work includes research undertaken in 2014 on the impact of the ‘bedroom tax’ which led to a reduction in housing benefit for social housing tenants deemed to have a ‘spare’ bedroom, and more recent research in 2018 examining the impact of the introduction of Universal Credit, a benefit designed to ‘simplify’ the system and to ‘facilitate’ the transition of benefit claimants into work. The introduction of Universal Credit has been beset with difficulties and criticised from many quarters, for being associated with rising levels of poverty, debt, homelessness and increased foodbank use. A National Audit Office report on the implementation of Universal Credit published in 2018 identified that, despite Universal Credit amounting to the most significant change in the UK’s welfare system since its inception, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has not measured how many Universal Credit claimants are having difficulties because it does not have systematic means of gathering intelligence from delivery partners. Although the DWP found that 4 out of 10 Universal Credit claimants they surveyed were experiencing financial difficulties, very little research on vulnerable claimants with complex needs has been reported.

The research undertaken so far has used qualitative research methods, in order to examine the lived experiences of people who are claiming benefits. At the time of the research there were insufficient large-scale data sets available to quantify the impacts of welfare changes at a population level.

Conclusion

Both these pieces of work demonstrate the deleterious impacts of these welfare cuts on the health and wellbeing of those affected. Specifically, the bedroom tax has increased poverty and had broad-ranging adverse effects on health, wellbeing and social relationships within the community in Newcastle where the study took place, and the findings strengthen the arguments for revoking the bedroom tax.

Research findings from studying 33 vulnerable people claiming Universal Credit add considerable detail to emerging evidence of the deleterious effects of Universal Credit on vulnerable claimants’ health and wellbeing. Our evidence suggests that Universal Credit is undermining vulnerable claimants’ mental health, increasing the risk of poverty, hardship, destitution and suicidality. Major, evidence-informed revisions are required to improve the design and implementation of Universal Credit to prevent further adverse effects before large numbers of people move on to Universal Credit, as the UK government has planned.

More information

https://eprint.ncl.ac.uk/file_store/production/211572/0569F24C-E6DA-418B-9A00-FA6463E7EFF4.pdf

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/7/e029611

Summary

This project presents a unique amalgam across artistic practice, planning and rural sociology. By doing so, it explores the role of artist in residency programmes in planning consultation practices and in social science research.

The research

This project draws on an artist in residence programme between Newcastle University’s Centre for Rural Economy and Berwick Visual Arts, an arts organisation in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland. The programme is primarily funded by Arts Council England. Whilst ‘in residence’, artists are invited to develop work to an ‘open brief’ in response to a broad rural social science theme. Rather than positioning the artist in isolation, the artist in residency requires the artist to engage with the communities of Berwick and Northumberland.

The ‘open brief’ in the 2016 residency drew on rural housing research, one of the most contested issues in England, linked with processes of counterurbanisation and gentrification, and resulting in characteristic inequalities in rural England well debated in rural sociological and planning research. The ambition for the residency was, firstly, to provide new perspectives on rural housing research, and, secondly, to provide a space for engagement between the local communities, planners and researchers. Through the interdisciplinary collaboration between Menelaos Gkartzios (rural sociology and planning), Julie Crawshaw (art studies and planning), James Lowther (visual arts) and appointed artist in residence Sander Van Raemdonck (sculpture, printmaking), the research explored how Sander Van Raemdonck’s artistic process worked towards these residency ambitions.

The first artistic practice developed by Sander was Guide the Guide, a structured walk with invited residents in and around a particular post-industrial coastal site, whose proposed development includes a masterplan with new terrace housing and refurbishment of existing buildings. Sander gave participant residents a ‘map’ with images on it and a list of ‘stops’ which constituted the tour. At each stop, the residents talked: about the history of the site and its past industry; the types of housing development that have been built; the style of housing they would like to see in the area, etc. Guide the Guide follows the footsteps of artists using walking strategies. As Sander acknowledged, Guide the Guide was a strategy to meet the local community and together explore the site under investigation.

As inspired by Guide the Guide, the interdisciplinary research team then developed a second walk, rehearsing the walk developed by Sander – but this time with a different audience: planning professionals. We called this a ‘walkshop’ to highlight that it was a bodily acted workshop: through walking. Our ambition was to reflect on the qualities of Sander’s artistic practice though particular planning expertise. What we managed to do with the ‘walkshop’ was to meld artistic and social science methodologies, as afforded by the residency programme, and thus to explore the role of artist residency programmes in planning practice and social science research.

Conclusion

Following those artists and social scientists that already utilise walking as a method, we argue that the artistic walk supported a multi-sensory way of discussing the development potential of the particular site. More critically, we argue that artist in residence programmes provide rich opportunity to develop interdisciplinary research with artists.

More information

Academic Paper (open access)

Artist in Residence Sander Van Raemdonck

Sander Van Raemdonck’s personal website