Campus News
Dream role at BBC
June 7th, 2013
What do you get if you mix a University computer scientist with the creative and technical power of the most famous broadcaster in the world, the BBC?
The answer is a unique collaboration that gives academic research a direct line into real-world creative industries.
Steve Benford, Professor of Computer Science at the University’s Horizon Digital Economy Research Hub, is the first academic to take part in Dream Fellowship, a venture sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Steve’s Dream Fellowship at the BBC’s MediaCityUK campus in Salford is the first in a three-year programme of secondments he’s undertaking which aims to close the gap between research and industry.
Steve focused on the design of multiscreen experiences that connect televisions, personal computers, phones and tablets. “This has emerged as one of the most exciting and deeply provoking ideas to confront the television industry in recent years,” he said, “combining the need to understand and accommodate the complex ways in which viewers appropriate multiple screens for themselves, with the possibility of creating new forms of pervasive television experience.”
Prototypes Steve worked on at the BBC include Jigsaw, a tablet app that allows a child to capture a screen image and turn it into a jigsaw puzzle, and an Antiques Roadshow app for viewers to guess the values of antiques.
Steve’s next secondment is with Microsoft Research in Cambridge, where he will explore digital platforms to help amateur musicians, bands and film-makers enhance their public profile.
Read Steve’s blog about his experiences at http://tiny.cc/Benford
Pro-Vice Chancellor for External Engagement, Professor Chris Rudd, said: “Steve Benford’s Dream Fellowship at the BBC is an excellent example of how the University’s cutting edge research can have an impact on the real world. His EPSRC Visiting Professorship is a significant accolade for his outstanding research in the field of the digital creative economy. This scheme will go a long way towards closing the gap between original academic research and commercial/public sector research and development.”
Tags: BBC, Dream Fellowship, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Horizon Digital Economy Research Hub, MediaCityUK, Professor Chris Rudd, Professor of Computer Science, Steve Benford
Posted in Research | Comments Off on Dream role at BBC
May 10th, 2013
The Suitcase Story and The Rock
Moko Dance
Date: Sunday 12 and Monday 13 May
Time: Sunday 3.30pm,
Monday 10.30am and 1.30pm
Venue: Djanogly Theatre, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: £6.50
Indian Takeway
with Hardeep Singh Kohli
Date: Thursday 16 May
Time: 8pm
Venue: Djanogly Theatre, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: £15, £12 concessions,
£9.50 restricted view
Wanted: Rabbit
Mass Theatre and Dance
Date: Monday 27 and Tuesday 28 May
Time: Monday 1.30pm and 3.30pm, Tuesday 11am, 1.30pm, 3.30pm
Venue: Djanogly Theatre, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: £7
George Saunders
In Conversation with Jon McGregor
Date: Tuesday 28 May
Time: 8pm
Venue: Djanogly Theatre, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: £10, £7 concessions
Paperbelle
Frozen Charlotte
Date: Wednesday 29 and Thursday
30 May
Time: Wednesday 11am, 1.30pm, 3.30pm, Thursday 11am
Venue: Djanogly Theatre, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: £7
The Man Who Planted Trees
Puppet State Theatre
Date: Friday 31 May
Time: 1.30pm
Venue: Djanogly Theatre, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: £7
Cloud Man
Ailie Cohen Puppet Maker
Date: Saturday and Sunday 1 and 2 June
Time: Saturday 3.30pm, Sunday
1.30pm and 3.30pm
Venue: Djanogly Theatre, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: £7
Posted in Theatre and Dance | Comments Off on
May 10th, 2013
The Bad Plus
Jazz
Date: Wednesday 15 May
Time: 8pm
Venue: Djanogly Theatre, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: £16, £13 concessions,
£10 restricted view
Dervish
Folk
Date: Thursday 23 May
Time: 8pm
Venue: Djanogly Theatre, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: £15, £12 concessions,
£9 restricted view
Summer Symphony in the Park
Classical
Date: Sunday 16 June
Time: 3pm
Venue: Jubilee Avenue Meadow
(near Trent Building), University Park
Admission: Free
Summer Dances
University Wind Orchestra and Moonlighters Big Band
Date: Thursday 20 June
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Great Hall, Trent Building,
University Park
Admission: £8, £5 concessions,
£4 University students
Posted in Music | Comments Off on
May 10th, 2013
Water! The University’s Water Archives
Date: Until Sunday 19 May
Venue: Weston Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: Free
Callum Kirkwood
Date: Until Sunday 19 May
Venue: Wallner Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: Free
The First Cut: Paper at the Cutting Edge
Date: Until Sunday 9 June
Venue: Djanogly Art Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: Free
A right load of old stuff and nonsense
An exhibition of puppets and machines built by Marc Parrett
Date: Saturday 25 May until Sunday 7 July
Venue: Wallner Art Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: Free
Posted in Exhibitions | Comments Off on
May 10th, 2013
The First Cut
Illustrated lecture on the artists and works in the exhibition by co-curator Natasha Howells, Manchester Art Gallery
Date: Tuesday 7 May
Time: 6.30pm to 7.30pm
Venue: Djanogly Art Gallery lecture theatre, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park
Admission: Free
Understanding Proxy Wars
Dr Andrew Mumford and Vladimir Rauta Centre for Conflict, Security and Terrorism (CST)
Date: Wednesday 8 May
Time: 4pm
Venue: Highfield House, University Park
Admission: Free
How do viruses cause disease? Lessons from our feathered friends and other animals
Associate Professor Steve Dunham
Date: Thursday 16 May
Time: 6pm
Venue: Room B1, Physics Building, University Park
Admission: Free
Loretta Lees: Art-led regeneration in Margate: learning from Moonbow Jakes
Date: Wednesday 15 May
Time: 4.15pm
Venue: Room A31, Sir Clive Granger Building, University Park
Admission: Free
Posted in Public Lectures, What's On | Comments Off on
Fun and learning
May 10th, 2013
Playing simple games using words and pictures can help people to learn a new language, say researchers.
Their study, published by the scientific journal PLOS ONE, revealed that using fun, informal ways of learning not only helped complete novices to acquire a new language but also made more traditional methods of learning more effective.
PhD student Marie-Josée Bisson, of the School of Psychology, who led the study along with Drs Walter van Heuven, Kathy Conklin and Richard Tunney, said: “The results of this study show that informal exposure can play an important role in foreign language word learning. Through informal exposure, learning can occur without intention, in a more effortless manner. Anyone attempting to learn another language would benefit from activities such as simple games using foreign language words and pictures, or foreign language films with subtitles where they can enjoy the activity without focusing on trying to learn the words.”
The Nottingham study used spoken and written foreign language words along with pictures depicting their meaning to measure foreign vocabulary learning in complete novices.
In the first phase, English speakers viewed Welsh words and were asked to indicate whether a particular letter appeared in each word. They also heard the word being spoken and saw a simple picture showing its meaning. Importantly, the pictures and spoken words were irrelevant to their task and they had not been asked to ‘learn’ the Welsh words.
In the second phase of the study, English speakers were explicitly asked to learn the correct translations of Welsh words. They were presented with pairs of written English words and spoken Welsh words and had to indicate whether the English word was the correct translation of the Welsh. Importantly, half of the Welsh words had been presented in the first phase of the study.
Participants performed better on the Welsh words they had previously been exposed to, indicating that during their informal exposure they had started to learn the meaning of the Welsh words.
Better performance in the explicit learning task was found immediately after the informal exposure as well as the next day. The researchers found that participants retained knowledge unintentionally learnt during the informal phase even as much as a week later following further explicit learning of the Welsh words.
Read the full study at: http://tiny.cc/PlosOnestudy
Tags: Dr Kathy Conklin, Dr Richard Tunney, Dr Walter van Heuven, Marie-Josée Bisson, PLOS ONE, School of Psychology
Posted in Research | Comments Off on Fun and learning
Lawrence’s beauty blast
May 10th, 2013
An unpublished manuscript by DH Lawrence attacking a particularly abhorrent form of 1920s’ sexism has been discovered in an archive in New Zealand.
Dr Andrew Harrison, Lecturer in English Literature at the University, found the manuscript among the papers of John Middleton Murry, which were recently acquired by the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington.
The 185-word piece is a response to a short article — The Ugliness of Women — which appeared in the April 1924 edition of the Adelphi, a monthly journal edited by Murry, to which Lawrence was a major contributor.
In The Ugliness of Women, ‘JHR’ (thought to be an electrical engineer named John Hall Rider) describes the horrified recoil he has always felt from beautiful women. He explains his strong response by arguing that “in every woman born there is a seed of terrible, unmentionable evil: evil such as man — a simple creature for all his passions and lusts — could never dream of in the most horrible of nightmares, could never conceive in imagination.” He asserts that the evil to which he refers in his article is “so subtle in expression that only a beautiful face can transmit it”.
JHR invited readers of the Adelphi to offer a better explanation for his revulsion from beautiful women. In his response, Lawrence suggests that JHR’s disgust at women is created by his horror at the ‘slightly obscene desires’ they arouse in him, comparing JHR’s reaction to beautiful women to that of a coyote howling when it smells fresh meat.
Lawrence notes that “The hideousness he [JHR] sees is the reflection of himself, and of the automatic meat-lust with which he approaches another individual,” and he ends his riposte on an extraordinarily enlightened and forward-thinking note: “Even the most ‘beautiful’ woman is still a human creature. If he [JHR] approached her as such, as a being instead of as a piece of lurid meat, he would have no horrors afterwards.”
The response was never published, probably because it was felt to libel JHR, but Murry may also have thought that it was too crude or savage for the Adelphi.
The piece (published for the first time in an article by Dr Harrison in the Times Literary Supplement, 29 March 2013) is thought to have been written in London between 12 December 1923 and 5 March 1924, during Lawrence’s brief return to Europe from Mexico.
“This is an important and timely discovery,” said Dr Harrison. “I hope that the short piece will cause people to question what they think they know about Lawrence’s attitude to women. It reveals Lawrence’s enlightened attitude to gender issues, and his acuteness in detecting and exposing sexist attitudes.”
Tags: Adelphi, DH Lawrence, Dr Andrew Harrison, The Ugliness of Women
Posted in Research | Comments Off on Lawrence’s beauty blast
Picturing Politics
May 10th, 2013
The School of Politics and International Relations has launched a new series of blog posts, underlining its commitment to using social media to share research and further a wider understanding of politics.
Picturing Politics will use video and audio clips to examine and comment on significant political images.
It follows a highly successful blog, Ballots & Bullets. The School also has a YouTube channel, Politics in 60 Seconds, where academics explain political concepts or ideas in less than a minute.
Picturing Politics is being launched this month and will cover a diverse range of images including Thomas More’s Map of the Island of Utopia, The Polling by William Hogarth and the works of Cézanne. Other topics covered will include 9/11, far-right extremism and the Mexican Revolution.
PhD student Chris Burgess, who curated an exhibition of political posters at the People’s History Museum, will be discussing the various ways in which voters have been depicted in election campaign posters.
It is hoped the project will offer an invaluable insight into how politics has been imagined throughout history, and also the ways in which images have been used to influence understanding of politics.
Professor of Political History Steven Fielding said: “Picturing Politics builds on our past innovations in the use of social media so as to promote a better understanding of political issues. It will confirm our staff as amongst the most innovative and engaging of British academics.”
Visit http://nott.ac.uk/politics where Picturing Politics is being launched and Ballots & Bullets and Politics in 60 Seconds can also be viewed.
Tags: Ballots & Bullets, Chris Burgess, Map of the Island of Utopia, People’s History Museum, Picturing Politics, Politics in 60 Seconds, Professor of Political History, School of Politics and International Relations, Steven Fielding
Posted in News | Comments Off on Picturing Politics