Institute for Social Sciences Research (ISSR) newsletter - May 15 2020

ISSR Seminar Series

A reminder you can still register for next weeks panel on Wednesday 20 May at 2pm, led by Nick Bibby, Director Scottish Policy and Research Exchange.

Researchers have an opportunity to influence the world of government policy in a number of ways but often it seems as if doing so is restricted to a select few.

This session will scotch a few myths and offer a few suggestions on how to get you research noticed by policymakers. The discussion will be led by Nick Bibby, director of the Scottish Policy & Research Exchange.

View our recent panels in Stream

If you have a suggestion for speakers, please send in your recommendations by COMMS channel, email or DM.

Research and Impact

There are several really exciting pieces of work coming out across our member schools to help researchers across disciplines to better engage stakeholders in the research process.

The benefits of film in care: mobilising inter-disciplinary research to improve the lives of care home residents

Dr Jenna Breckenridge (School of Health Sciences) and Dr Ana Salzberg (School of Humanities) are collaborating on a programme of interdisciplinary work on the impact of film screenings for older people living in care homes. Their original research, funded by the Carnegie Trust, was published this month in Ageing and Society.

Their study challenges common misconceptions about film viewing being a ‘passive’ activity, combining occupational therapy and film studies perspectives to reframe film as an active, emotional, sensory and relational experience. For a quick, accessible summary of the paper check out Jenna’s video on “@AHP2mintalks”; a virtual knowledge sharing forum she founded last year.

Over the past 6 months, Jenna and Ana have been working with the Care Inspectorate to translate their research into a practical resource. They have combined their original research with the local knowledge of four care homes, who have co-created and refined the final resource in a series of quality improvement projects. The resource is set to be rolled out for all care homes in Scotland later in the year via the Care Inspectorate Hub.

The Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science is delighted to announce that it has been re-affiliated with UNESCO until 2026.

These past few months has seen website re-launch, as well as a Twitter handle and new blog.

For World Water Day, the Centre’s blog featured a new post every day discussing this year’s World Water Day theme of Water and Climate Change and how the two are inextricably linked. Posts were written by Centre Director Andrew Allan, Simon Cook, Chris Spray, Cathy Smith, Volker Roeben and Rafael Macatangay on topics such as agriculture, ice, and flooding. We are grateful to those who have so far agreed to become Centre Associates and we will be reaching out to other members of staff shortly. We are always looking for new contributions to our blog, if you would be interested in writing a post, please contact us.

Our newsletter will also be launching later this month. If you would like to sign-up, please email water@dundee.ac.uk.

ISSR Engagement

ISSR Channel on Teams

Join the ISSR community on MS Teams where you will have access to information on your research related activities.

To join, simply click on 'create or join team' and enter the code e2wv1jf

There is a drop in session on Tuesday 19 May 2-4pm. We can help support, facilitate and arrange online events. Please contact Donna on Teams for a chat and find out how ISSR can support you.

SPRE are launching a KE Network

The Brokerage is a network of academic and administrative staff at Scottish HEIs who have an interest in policy engagement.

Calling knowledge brokers at Scottish universities & research centres. Its aims to respond to urgent requests from policymakers and equip researchers to work with the policy community.

More information on this can be found on the Scottish Policy and Research Exchange website.

Publishing News

New paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology

By Benjamin Vincent, Psychology and colleagues on 'Waiting in intertemporal choice tasks affects discounting and subjective time perception'.

A protocol for co-creating research project lay summaries with stakeholders: guideline development for Canada’s AGE-WELL network

A recent paper published co-authored by Professor Judith Sixsmith, Dr Mei Fang (School of Health Sciences) with Canadian colleagues focusing on developing a lay-summary co-creation protocol to provide researchers with the basic steps for writing a good lay summary with community stakeholders.

It helps researchers to answer questions such as: How to identify the target readership? How to identify which stakeholders to work with? How to recruit stakeholders to work on a lay summary? How to prepare for co-creation workshop sessions? And, how to run interactive co-creation sessions when co-writing lay summaries?

Alongside this paper, Fang, Sixsmith and Canadian colleagues from AGE-WELL NCE have written a book, due to come out in July, called Knowledge, Innovation, and Impact A Guide for the Engaged Health Researcher.

This book provides researchers with a straightforward and accessible guide for carrying out research that will help them to deliver good science that will generate real-world impact. These two pieces of useful resources are only some of the exciting and useful outputs from the School of Health Sciences.

Newly Announced

PhD candidate shortlisted and commended in SGSSS Competition

Congratulations to Vicky Armstrong, PhD candidate, Psychology who was shortlisted and commended in the SGSSS Research Impact and Knowledge Exchange Competition.

Vicky’s submission for the Research Impact and Knowledge Exchange Competition explores the impact of her research, including the responses from families participating in her project.

The People, Health and Communities Research Group

Seminar 19 May 12-1pm

Perspectives of population and ecological approaches to reducing alcohol consumption and improving prisoner health By Dr. Andrea Mohan who will speak briefly about her past and current work on population-level interventions to reduce alcohol consumption and drink-driving in the UK, and using a socio-ecological approach to promoting prisoner health and wellbeing.

PhD e-seminar 13-14th July 2020

Architecture and Urban Planning

If you are a PhD candidate in the field of spatial planning, join the e-seminar and participate in discussions with other PhD's and mentors. Share your research and get constructive feedback from experienced academics. Free to attend but places are limited.

ESW Peripheries Research Seminars 2020

Wed 27 May 1- 2.30pm

Ableism – New Ways of Thinking about human difference, New methodologies, New Insights

Please contact Professor Fiona Campbell for more details on the Peripheries research programme.

We are always happy to share and promote information from our research community so don't hesitate to contact ISSR if you think we can help. Send your content by 4pm on Thursdays or upload in the ISSR Comms channel.