Speakers 

Dr Kieran Hodgkin and Dr Rhiannon Packer

Dr Kieran Hodgkin is a Senior Lecturer in Education within the School of Education and Social Policy at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Kieran has published widely in the field of transition. Through the lens of young people, Kieran has explored the expectations and experiences of young people making the transition between primary and secondary school and further to higher education. His other research interests include ethnography and research ethics. Kieran is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7546-2187

Dr Rhiannon Packer is a senior lecturer in Additional Learning Needs and teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate courses at Cardiff Metropolitan University. She worked for nine years as a secondary school teacher and was a Head of Year for five years before moving into Higher Education. Her research interests include exploring the educational transition experiences of learners in a range of settings, the learner journey for quiet, shy, and anxious children, supporting learners with Specific Learning Difficulties and bilingualism. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1976-8410

Seminar description

Drawing upon research conducted by Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Pontio Research group, this seminar will look closely at a collection of studies centred upon educational transitions. The seminar will draw comparisons between different phases of educational transitions and explore how transitions can be conceptualised and researched from the micro to the macro level. The session is aimed at ECRs, mid-career researchers, and anyone interested in educational transitions. A full list of the relevant articles will be included in the presentation.

Take a step away from colour… into this visually striking exhibition of art created solely using black and white. Featuring drawings, paintings, prints, textiles and sculpture, each artwork demonstrates the breadth of what can be created without the usual colour palette, revealing different techniques to create depth and contrast. The exhibition, curated by DJCAD MFA Curatorial Practice student Molly Reid, includes work by Eduardo Paolozzi, Alison McKenzie and Sheila Macfarlane as well as various DJCAD alumni. 

Open Mon-Fri 9.30am-7pm, Sat 11am-4pm. Please note that earlier closing may apply on weekdays during the summer vacation. We advise arriving no later than 5pm.

Find out more about University of Dundee Museums

Host: Yogesh Kulathu

Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Medical Sciences Institute, SLS

Abstract:

The reprogramming of somatic cells to an induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell state requires profound signalling, transcriptional and epigenetic rewiring. Similarly, the regeneration of mammalian tissues involves significant changes in cell behaviour and the transient acquisition of functions mediate the repair of damage. These changes can be thought of as adaptive cell reprogramming. We previously demonstrated that protein citrullination is induced upon the introduction of the Yamanaka transcription factors into somatic cells, where it precedes and mediates their reprogramming. We have since found that the induction of citrullination is a general, evolutionarily conserved feature of tissue regeneration. The cells that activate citrullination are mutually exclusive with the iPS or tissue stem cells, suggesting that they act as “active bystanders” that mediate reprogramming in a non-cell-autonomous manner. Our findings open a new research avenue into the study of citrullination and extracellular chromatin as cell communication mechanisms that mediate cell fate transitions.

Bio:

Maria Christophorou is a Principal Investigator in Epigenetics at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, UK. Her lab studies biochemical mechanisms that modulate the function of epigenetic regulators, focussing primarily on protein citrullination. She studied Biology at MIT as a Fulbright Scholar and completed a PhD at UCSF, where she studied mechanisms of p53-mediated tumour suppression. As a postdoc she was funded by EMBO and Human Frontier postdoctoral fellowships and focussed on chromatin biology. Working at The Gurdon Institute, Cambridge University, she discovered that the citrullinating enzyme peptidylarginine deiminase (PADI4) regulates pluripotency and described a molecular mechanism via which PADI4 mediates chromatin decondensation. She started an independent group as a Wellcome Trust and Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow and Wellcome-Beit Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, before moving to Babraham Institute in 2020. Maria is passionate about bringing the citrullination research community together. She organised the first international conference on citrullination in 2022 and co-organised an EMBO Workshop in 2024.

Kate Evans is currently a doctoral student in Education at the University of Dundee. Living in Orkney, she has worked as a teacher in both primary and secondary schools on a number of its islands. She has been researching the experiences of island children as they manage the transition from small island primary school to the local town secondary school, adjusting to the new daily life pattern which includes travel by ferry. Working to achieve a tangible outcome, the school-based research group has devised a game to help children prepare for the challenges they will meet, both in terms of the journey and fitting socially into a bigger school. Two of the participants recently successfully trialled the game in their former primary school. 

In this conversation with Professor Divya Jindal-Snape, Kate will discuss some of the thinking that has fed into the game, and the process of development and trialling of the game itself. 

In a future session we hope to have a conversation with some of the research group to find out how they see both process and product of this kind of research. 

Join us for a discussion of the project itself and the ways it might have relevance for other very small, remote schools.