TALKSocSci

The header image was provided by Michael Richardson

This image captures my work with the North East Young Dads and Lads Project and BALTIC, through our workshops with Albert Potrony - the artist behind the Equal Play exhibition. Here we are making model dads (literally) as a stimulus for deeper conversations about what makes a model dad through explorations of masculinity and fatherhood. More can be found about our work together and the ways in which we’re investigating  intergenerational dynamics through archival work with the anti-sexist men’s movements of the 1970s and 1980s, in this article in The Guardian

This collaboration has received Institute funding for pilot projects and is more recently supported by the School of GPS impact and engagement fund. 

Gulwali is the author of The Lightless Sky – My Journey to Safety as a Child Refugee which recounts his powerful migration journey from Afghanistan. In this talk Gulwali reflects on the hostile environments and bordering regimes he has intimately encountered as well as possibilities for sanctuary. The talk was followed by insights from Newcastle's City of Sanctuary (Rosie Tapsfield) and Newcastle's University of Sanctuary (Lucy Backhurst) and Q&A

This event addressed recent changes to global research, especially in the context of funding cuts. Critically this session also highlighted opportunities for new funding routes and partnerships. We explored this question with insights from Dean of Global-Humanities and Social Sciences (Chris Whitehead),Geography (Alex Hughes) as well as Research Funding Development Team (Elisa Miles and Lorraine Smith). This session also explored possibilities for new partnerships in creative sectors with guest speaker Elliot Graves (Alchemy Immersive).View the slides from this event here

Watch this session - Part 1 & Part 2

Over the last months, we have come to realise that education at a distance, facilitated by a suitable array of digital technologies, is possible and, in some circumstances, desirable. Across all sectors, but perhaps especially in higher education, people are querying the assumption that learning and teaching should happen in particualr physicalsettings. With information available online, personalisation and subject expertise via Zoom and our fast-developing digital pedagogies – do we need to go back into the classroom?

This event considered the costs and benefits of physical presence and digital options for education. Can we indeed ‘have it all’ online, or are there aspects of the shared material space that can’t be recreated virtually?

Facilitated by Pam Woolner and Christian Lawson-Perfect

Watch this session - Part 1 & Part 2

Professor Allyson Pollock and Professor Roger Burrows talked about how the Government does… or doesn’t engage with science from their own academic perspectives.

Allyson Pollock explored the view that there has been a clear lack of transparency in Government decision making and an absence of strong leadership, she will also discuss the contribution from public health and communicable disease control in SAGE advice. Roger Burrows talked about the ‘Cummings view’ of science, nudge theory and neo-reactionary movement.  Nudge theory is a concept in behavioural economics, political theory and behavioural sciences which proposes positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions as ways to influence the behaviour and decision making of groups or individuals. Sometimes abbreviated NRx the neo-reactionary movement is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, reactionary philosophy.

In this session, Rachel Pain and Rosanna Bellini discussed current research at Newcastle which is examining policies, behaviour changes and technologies that might help to address domestic violence. Domestic violence has been described by the World Health Organisation as a global public health epidemic. Two women a week and at least three commit suicide as a result of domestic abuse in the UK, and it is a leading cause of homelessness, poverty, physical and mental ill health. Rosanna Bellini, a Digital Civics Doctoral Trainee, will discussed her work on designing digital behaviour change tools and services for perpetrators. Rachel Pain, a Professor in Human Geography, presented survivors’ suggestions for trauma-informed social and institutional responses.

Liz Todd, Director of the Institute for Social Science and Professor of Educational Inclusion and Matej Blazek, Lecturer in Human Geography discussed the often complex and tricky issues in researching children's out of school lives.

Liz's talk questioned how to you analyse more fully children’s out of school lives, and specifically the impact that out of school activities might have on educational success? The Nuffield funded project with NATCEN aimed to combine the secondary data analysis of more than 11,000 children aged 5-11yrs from the millennium cohort study with the National Pupil Database (children’s attainment results) - and then combine this with case studies of what children, parents and teachers said about activities accessed from a number of schools in Newcastle and London. The findings were fascinating - but we did not succeed in painlessly combining this large volume of mixed data.

Matej's talk explored ethnographic research of youth work while taking on the role of youth worker. He discussed the role of geography in youth work itself, in research of youth work, and how geographical imaginations can help us shape attentive methodologies (and more than that!).

This session explored how we can work with others beyond the university to collaborate, co-produce, and co-create.

Speakers:

Simon Hanson, Federation of Small Businesses

What businesses really need in terms of useful engagement with researchers, how can people improve their approach, what works best? Simon Hanson from the Federation of Small Businesses - talked about the realities external organisations, in particular small businesses, face when engaging with academics and institutions. Simon has also worked with the University on the H2020 ACCOMPLISSH project.

Karen Laing, Education, Communication and Language Sciences

Following the H2020 ACCOMPLISSH project which explored how the impact of the social sciences and humanities could be enhanced through co-creating research, UK partners have continued to work together to develop a guide to co-creating research aimed at those considering working as a ‘quadruple helix’ (QH) in the UK. Our quadruple helix partnership consists of a collaboration between university, industry, local government and VCSE’s. A review of existing guides and toolkits uncovered a lack of resources for this purpose, and two roundtables and a call for evidence explored the needs of external partners. It was felt that a ‘bank’ of resources is needed, rather than a printed guide or toolkit. To this end, a QH advisory group have already produced some practical resources and tools for new partnerships. We are now currently in the process of producing a video which will showcase case studies of co-created research. Karen talked about the key learning generated by this work for supporting research partnerships.

Professor Jonathan Sapsed, Newcastle University Business School

Jonathan has a wealth of experience working with creative and digital businesses in the North East through Creative Fuse North East, and in Brighton though Brighton Fuse. He now works through the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC) which is part of part of the Creative Industries Clusters Programme led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and funded through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. He shared insights from collaborating with large and small businesses, as well as intermediaries, government and cultural organisations.

This event was supported by the ESRC IAA Business Boost project.

This session explored methodologies at Newcastle and provided a forum for discussing how we do research in innovative ways: What is unique about our methodological social science landscape? How we can we develop it?

Presentations were delivered by Natasha Mauthner, Professor of Social Science Philosophy and Method and Director of Research at Newcastle University Business School, and Liz Todd, Professor of Educational Inclusion and Director of NISR (now Institute for Social Science).

This event was supported by the ESRC Impact Accelerator Account.

We have subsequently developed the Methods Hub – which you can access here.

The question for this session, ‘What is inequality and does it matter?’, was addressed by Professor Roger Burrows and Suzanne Moffatt.

This event was supported by the ESRC Impact Accelerator Account.