Past Events, Seminars and Symposiums
Friday 3 December 2010
FEDUA RESEARCH INSTITUTES' LAUNCH
The Faculty of Education and Arts will be officially Launch the three Research Institute
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Research Institute for Social Inclusion and Wellbeing (RISIW)
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Humanities Research Institute
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Educational Research Institute Newcastle (ERIN)
WHAT Research Institutes' Launch
WHEN Friday 3 December 2010 10:30am - 3:30pm
WHERE Crowne Plaza, Cnr Merewether St & Wharf Rd, Newcastle
RSVP By Friday 26 November to Kristy Rocavert ext.15341
Please visit FEDUA Research Events for more details
Wednesday 26th May 2010
'Barriers to Social Inclusion: Divisions in Education'
Presented by PhD Students, Marketa Bacakova and Kevin Lowe
Wednesday 26th May 2010
10:30am-1:00pm
University Club
Isabella's Fuction Room
‘Tearing Down Barriers in Access to Education of Refugee Children in the Czech Republic’
Presented by Marketa Bacakova
The Czech Republic declares equal access to primary education to all children on its territory regardless their nationality and legal status. Based on enlarged dimensions of the term “access to education” than its solely physical, economic and non discriminatory meaning, and on the results from a qualitative research conducted in autumn 2009, which identified eight major obstacles to equal access to education of refugee children, I will argue that refugee students do not have the effective possibility to fully participate in and benefit from education in the Czech Republic.
‘Are we on the same page? A Critique of school and Aboriginal partnerships and their likelihood of success in effecting change to the delivery of schooling to Aboriginal students’
Presented by Kevin Lowe
The paper considers the neoliberal social policies informing governments in Australia and the constraint such policies place on measures taken to develop socially and educationally effective, and culturally appropriate partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents and their communities established to address their children’s lower-than-acceptable levels of educational engagement and attainment. I challenge the basic thinking behind current school–community partnerships.
Tuesday 13th April 2010
'Understanding the nature of Change in Complex Social Systems: Thinking about effects in relation to complex social interventions'
Presented by Professor David Byrne, Durham University, UK
Tuesday 13 April 2010
10:30am - 12noon
University Club, Isabella's Function Room
The interesting and important thing to understand about complex systems is their trajectory. In other words we need to be able to describe what systems are like across time – how they stay the same AND how they change. The important thing about change in complex systems is that the changes that matter are not incremental changes of degree but qualitative changes of kind. In this way of thinking an effect is either the maintenance of stability – not absolute equilibrium but continued existence in much the same state, or change and if change then change into what new kind of state. Underpinning the argument that we should pay attention to the nature of effects in complex systems are two propositions, Read More
View Professor David Byrne's profile: http://www.dur.ac.uk/sass/staff/profile/?id=645
Wednesday 24th February 2010
"Producing Social Work and Social Care Research: The Capacity Fix"
Presented by Visiting Scholar, Dr Elaine Sharland
Wednesday 24th February, 2010
10:00am, Treehouse, Shortland Union
This paper reports on some findings from a recent enquiry, undertaken for the UK Economic and Social Research Council, to examine how capacity to generate excellent social work (and social care) research can best be built. In particular it focuses on some of the most contested questions: What kinds of research can best contribute to the knowledge economy for social work and social care, and who should be producing it? What kinds, if any, of hierarchies of evidence or methodology should hold sway? What are the benefits and threats of disciplinarity or interdisciplinarity in this field? And in tough economic times, how best can we use the resources we have and generate more, to maximise the potential for sustainable social work research growth, quality and impact in future?
Monday 22nd February 2010
"Whose knowledge is it anyway?
Building disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in social work and social care research"
Presented by Visiting Scholar, Dr Elaine Sharland
Monday 22nd February, 2010
10:00am, University Club, Isabella’s Function Room
This paper draws on Dr Sharland’s work as UK Strategic Adviser for Social Work and Social Care Research, charged with developing recommendations to leading stakeholders for improving capacity for high quality, high impact research generation. Here political, intellectual and professional tensions around disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity have been thrown into sharp relief. Social work is an emerging research discipline in the UK, with institutional recognition and ‘pockets of excellence’. It is well embedded in practice (the essence of its claim to distinctiveness), but much less rooted in social science, and has long-standing capacity deficits. Social care, by contrast, is a research field and a field of policy and practice, but has no disciplinary status nor distinctive discipline identity. It is a field with which cognate disciplines, among them social policy, psychology, health economics, and sociology, might engage, contributing social science rigour and their respective insights across disciplinary divides. They might, but in the main they do not engage - social care questions are too messy and answers messier still, the prestige of the research field is too flimsy and the funding base flimsier still. On all sides, it seems, interdisciplinary opportunities are compromised by disciplinary threats. For social work to take its rightful place at the interdisciplinary table, the discipline itself needs to grow in capability, confidence and critical mass. For cognate disciplines, the incentives to engage in social care research must be writ large if their contributions are to flourish while their own disciplines flourish too. How can we make a start?
Friday 12th June, 2009
'Social Inclusion, Community Development and Women's Empowerment'
‘Building sustainable livelihoods through women empowerment’
Presented by Visiting Scholar Professor Antoinette Lombard
'Crisis, what Crisis? the role of Community Development in British life'
Presented by Visiting Scholar Professor Keith Popple
Monday 27 April, 2009
‘Critical Realist Action Research as a Means of Promoting Social Wellbeing’
Presented by Visiting Scholar Stan Houston
8TH August, 2008
Symposium on Women, Islam and Social Inclusion
The symposium will centre on the Australian findings of a cross-cultural ARC Discovery Grant that focussed on the issue of Islam and Australian Muslim women. It will also disseminate the findings from its partner study in Bangladesh and will take the opportunity to explore a range of updated research related to Islam and to Australian Islam in particular.