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Institute for Social Sciences Research (ISSR) newsletter - February 26 2021

Published on 26 February 2021

Our ISSR newsletter from February 26 2021, including items on ISSR engagement, research, impact, and our Graduate community

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ISSR Seminar programme - Dates for the diary

March 16 - 'TikTok and COVID-19: Doing Social Science in Dynamic Digital Environments' - Register via EventBrite

April 15 - 'Disabling Justice: Impairment as Crime and Punishment'. Register via EventBrite

May 20 - 'Why and How Individuals Commit Professional Misconduct' with Professor Will Harvey.

Research and Impact

IIG Funding Call Spring 2021 (period of award 1 April – 31 July 2021)

We provide a platform to explore opportunities and to stimulate new research ideas and approaches, by encouraging interdisciplinary collaborations across the partnership in the Schools of Business, Health Sciences, Social Sciences and Education and Social Work. It is hoped that we can create a research culture that supports the development of transformational activity and maximises impact, locally and globally.

The Interdisciplinary Incubator Grants (up to £3,000) can go towards activities such as seminars, workshops, guest lectures, preparing a grant application, employing research assistance for research activities such as transcription, conducting a literature review or interviews, designing methods or for dissemination activities, for example, producing a video or producing high-quality reports etc. Funds must be spent by 31 July 2021 with no carry forward after this date.

Application deadline: Thursday 25 March

Announcements: Wednesday 31 March

If you would like to apply for funding and would like to discuss your application further, please contact ISSR

SafePod Coming to Main Library in 2021

SafePod is designed to provide secure and safe remote access to sensitive data for research purposes.

Initiated in early 2019 by Dr Alistair Geddes(Geography and Environmental Sciences) in the School of Social Sciences in collaboration with colleagues from LLC, we are pleased to announce installation will take place around the end of November. SafePod is funded by the ERSC and run by the Scottish Centre for Adminstrative Date Research.

To find out more on SPN read the Library's latest blog

Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee

Professor Colin Reid, Law in the School of Social Sciences was among the experts giving evidence to the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee of the Scottish Parliament as part of its work on the environmental consequences of Brexit.

Evidence from the experts and the bodies responsible for regulating the environment showed the great uncertainty that still exists over how the new arrangements will operate.

The Committee hearing can be seen on the Scottish Government website.

Newly announced

Critical Legal Conference 2021: Call for Streams now open

Since 1986, the Critical Legal Conference (CLC) has been a key site for the critical study of legal and political questions, attracting radical legal and political thinkers from across the globe. In 2021, the CLC will be hosted (blended) by the University of Dundee for the first time, adopting the theme of ‘Frankenlaw!’ inspired by historical connections between Dundee and Mary Shelley’s novel.

Frankenstein’s monster is characterised by the joining together of dead parts into a reanimated whole, brought (back) to life by modern science. As a conceptual figure, it signifies both unity and separation, life and death, and the power of reason to structure and animate otherwise individual and decaying parts. Rendered as a form of law—as a Frankenlaw—it conjures questions of detachment and community, touching and separation, independence and being bound, unity and corporation, the rational resolution of multiplicity—and the modern social order: a divided whole, a community of atomistic modern subjects under a single, sovereign hierarchy.

The conference will be blended, with fully-online as a contingency. Closing for submissions on 31 March with the call for individual papers then opening from April to June.

TCELT Research Seminar - 3 March 12pm, online

The linguistic demands of the transition from primary to secondary school in English, maths and science subjects

Presenters: Dr Duygu Candarli and Professor Alice Deignan

Dr Duygu Candarli is currently a Lecturer in Language Education in the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Dundee. Her research interests are second language writing and assessment, academic discourse/school language, and corpus linguistics.

Professor Alice Deignan is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the School of Education at the University of Leeds. She is currently the Principal Investigator of an ESRC-funded research project 'Linguistic Challenges of the Transition from Primary to Secondary School'. She specialises in lexical approaches to language analysis and teaching, and applications of corpus linguistics to the study of metaphor, metonymy and pragmatics.

This seminar is based on an ESRC-funded research project 'Linguistic Challenge of the Transition from Primary to Secondary School' led by Professor Deignan at the University of Leeds. This project aims to advance our understanding of the linguistic demands of the transition from primary to secondary school (Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3) in the UK school context. We created two corpora of written school language registers in the subjects of English, maths, science, geography, and history, representing KS2 (years 5 and 6) and KS3 (years 7 and 8) academic language registers, collected from the primary and secondary schools in northern England. In this presentation, we will present a case study that investigates the differences and similarities between KS2 and KS3 academic language in terms of lexical sophistication, by using natural language processing techniques.

3 March 2021, 12:00-13:00pm, through Microsoft Teams

If you would like to attend the seminar please contact Professor Divya Jindal-Snape

Everything you need to know to be an engaged health researcher - Mon 8 March 6-7pm

You are invited to attend a Zoom webinar hosted by the Canadian AGEWELL Network of Centres of Excellence. The webinar will launch a new book co-edited by Andrew Sixsmith, Judith Sixsmith, Mei Lan Fang and Alex Mihailidis, overviewing the book's key messages and presenting case studies.

The book guides researchers through the process of research-driven innovation and how to combine good science with real-world impact. The editors will share take-home messages and talk about their own experiences with commercializing and mobilizing the outcomes of research.

Webinar attendees will also have a chance to win one of two hardcover copies of Knowledge, Innovation, and Impact: A Guide for the Engaged Health Researcher. Published by Springer, the book includes contributions from many AGE-WELL members and is a major output of our network. There's also a chance to win a copy of the book.

If interested, please register.

Social Futures Research Group Seminar Series (Geography and Environmental Sciences)

Tuesday 23 March at 3pm, online

Guest speaker Prof Tanta Wyatt, Northumbria University will present 'Using non-custodial interventions for animal-related offences in Scotland'

Non-custodial interventions as punishments for crimes have become more common with studies showing these approaches can reduce reoffending, provide redress for the victims, and repair relationships to the community. The vast majority of these and the related studies, however, focus on inter-human crimes and have not explored the use or effectiveness of non-custodial approaches for animal welfare and wildlife offences. The seminar shares the findings of a Scottish Government funded research looking at this under-researched area. Through an evidence review, 20 semi-structured interviews, and a collaborative workshop, we explore the effectiveness of, practicality of and barriers for using non-custodial interventions, such as restorative justice and empathy training, for people who have committed animal welfare and wildlife offences in Scotland. We found that whilst these approaches are likely to prove effective, careful consideration needs to be given as to who could and should ‘speak’ for the animals, and the barriers surrounding non-custodial interventions such as how to overcome attitudinal bias towards what are often regarded as ‘soft’ or ‘weak’ responses to crimes triggering significant emotional responses.

Dr Tanya Wyatt is a Professor of Criminology at Northumbria University in Newcastle. She is a green criminologist specialising in wildlife crime and trafficking, and non-human animal abuse as well as the intersections with organised crime, corporate crime, and corruption. Her latest books are Is CITES Protecting Wildlife? and Wildlife Trafficking: a deconstruction of the crime, the victims and the offenders, Second edition.

To attend the seminar, join Teams direct on Tuesday 23 March at 3pm

Graduate community

Opportunity for PhD representative

ISSR are seeking a PhD student to join its Executive Group, to represent the research postgraduate community across the four Schools of Business, Education & Social Work, Health Sciences, and Social Sciences. The role would involve attending 4 meetings over the course of the academic year, asking fellow students about what activities and events they would like, and helping to promote ISSR events to the postgraduate community. If you are interested in taking on this role, please email Donna Hendry

Graduate Community Events - March 2021

The Graduate Community of Social and Health Sciences is holding three online events in March. The events are open to all research postgraduates in the Schools of Business, Education & Social Work, Health Sciences, and Social Sciences. You will receive an email from your School PhD office highlighting these events and you can also find links to join the events here.

It would be great if you could join the events. Any questions, please contact Ed Hall (Co-ordinator, Graduate Community).

  • Thursday 4 March, 10:00 am
    - Catch-up to see how everyone is doing; sharing tips for maintaining research momentum in the current situation.
  • Thursday 11 March, 10:00 am
    - Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in research postgraduate studies; Sarah Halliday (School of Social Sciences, ED&I lead) and Rosslyn Kerr (PhD rep, ED&I) will do a short presentation on this important issue, followed by questions and discussion.
  • Thursday 25 March, 10:00 am
    - Training opportunities and skills; a short presentation and discussion about identifying training needs during the PhD, what opportunities there are at Dundee and beyond, and sharing experiences of training.

Share your research

We would like to hear your news so if you would to be featured in the ISSR newsletter please send items to me. This could be any staff/RPG articles of funding successes with a social science interest, COVID-19 research, awards & recognition, progress on existing work. All news welcome.

(100-250 words will be fine – excluding links, one line intro about yourself, title and image by no later than 11am Friday). *Do not include hyperlinks. Heading/text in full and separate full link in your content please.

Access support and facilitation from ISSR. I am available on Teams on Tuesday afternoons from 2-4pm.

Please get in touch if you would like to chat in general or to discuss an idea or project that you would like support with. I can assist in promoting and facilitating.

Next issue Friday 12 March. Please send your content by no later than 10 March if you would like to be featured in the newsletter.

Enquiries

Donna Hendry

Research and Knowledge Exchange Officer

+44 (0)1382 388173

D.C.Hendry@dundee.ac.uk
Story category Public interest