High Impact Research: Our national profile

Dr Jo Woodiwiss gave a key note lecture to the British False Memory Society Annual Conference, London, April 2011, titled Why do women identify themselves as victims of childhood sexual Abuse? She also presented a paper at the British Sociological Association Annual Conference, Glasgow (April 2011) titled From the public to the private – multiple identities in a changing landscape. In April 2010 she presented a paper at the British Sociological Association Annual Conference: Childhood sexual abuse: a contemporary story.

‘Leaders of the Opposition from Churchill to Cameron’ conference

Dr Richard Hayton presented a paper at this timely conference, held at the University of Leeds on the 9th July 2010. The paper, titled 'Leadership without authority: Iain Duncan Smith as leader of the Conservative Party' analysed the tenure of Iain Duncan Smith as leader of the Conservative Party in opposition between September 2001 and October 2003. It argued that his leadership was fatally undermined by a lack of authority within his own party. This problem was derived in part from the manner of his election, during which he received the explicit endorsement of less than a third of his parliamentary colleagues, but flowed more fundamentally from his limitations as a political leader. The proceedings of this conference are to be published by Palgrave Macmillan as a book on Leaders of the Opposition since 1945 edited by Tim Heppell (University of Leeds). Richard also presented the following paper 'Teaching politics through inquiry: the international student voice' (with Ian Bache), a paper presented to the 3rd Political Studies Association Teaching and Learning Group Conference, De Montfort University, Leicester, 14-15 September 2010. This paper looked at the relationship between inquiry-based learning (IBL) and international students, which is of rising importance in the UK in the context of a growing focus on the connection between research and teaching and the increasing number of overseas students.

T. H. Marshall Lecture

In February 2010 Professor Jeff Hearn gave the 26th T. H. Marshall Lecture in the prestigious annual series hosted by Sociology and Social Policy, Department of Social Sciences, University of Southampton. The lecture series commemorates Marshall’s pioneering work on citizenship, and previous presenters of the Marshall Lecture include Zygmunt Bauman, Antony Giddens, and Sylvia Walby. Jeff’s subject was ‘Genders, Gendering and Citizenship: Challenges and Possibilities’: This was a development of his plenary lecture on ‘Gender, Citizenship and Equality: What Challenges? What’s Problematic? What’s Possible?’ given last year at the European Sociological Association Conference, held in Lisbon, Portugal.

Addressing Childhood Sexual Abuse

Jo Woodiwiss presented a paper titled ‘Childhood sexual abuse: a contemporary story’ at the British Sociological Association (BSA) Conference, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, April 2010. The paper was based on a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) which looked at women’s engagement with the self-help literature aimed at female victims of childhood sexual abuse. The paper explored how women, often starting from a position where they have no knowledge or memories of having been abused, engage with discourses around sexual abuse, healing and recovery, in the ongoing process of understanding their life course and relationships, both with themselves and others. (Re)writing their life stories and sense of self in this way enabled women to not only make sense of their past and their present, but also to plan for their future. The paper was featured in a BSA press release, and the research project was covered by the national press.

Developing Learning Resources

Graham Gibbs presented findings from a large project about Open Education Resources (OER) at the C-SAP e-learning Forum in July 2010. From May 2009 to May 2010, the C-SAP along with collaborators from 8 UK universities was engaged in a Jisc funded project to make available to other interested academics 360 credits worth of educational resources in the social sciences. Along with the collection, preparation and deposition of the 360 credits of materials, one of the key things that the project promised was to investigate the tacit understandings embedded in lecturer’s selection and use of teaching materials. To this end, an evaluation was carried out to examine the understandings and models held by the six partners in the project – social science lecturers at six different UK universities – whose task was to produce the materials that would be made available in the Forum open archive. The general aim was to establish partners’ experiences of opening up their educational resources and to examine to what extent other academics could do the same with their material (with or without project support).