Research
Pushing forward the boundaries of social science
Professor Miriam Glucksmann of the Department of Sociology is one
of just a handful of social scientists to have been awarded more than
£350,000 under a unique new scheme to encourage the boundaries of social
science research to be pushed forward.
The Professorial Fellowship scheme has been set up by the Economic and
Social Research Council (ESRC) to allow the UK's top social scientists to
research unconstrained by administration and teaching. Professor
Glucksmann is just one of 9 UK Professors to have been awarded the
Fellowship which includes funding for a PhD student and a research
assistant.
Professor Glucksmann's research will focus on 'Transformations of work:
new frontiers, shifting boundaries, changing temporalities.' Her research
will address major changes in the nature of work and its place in
contemporary societies at a time of increasing globalisation and
transformation of standard modes of employment. The principal aim is to
develop an empirically informed theoretical framework capable of
explaining the changing interconnectedness of work activities across the
shifting frontiers between paid and unpaid work, formal and informal, and
voluntary work.
Deploying a variety of research methods and sources, Professor
Glucksmann will explore the shifting location of work activities in food
provisioning; work in upstream and downstream of call centres; comparative
analysis in modes of care provisions in four European countries; a new
field of consumption work. She will also be conducting comparative
research in India and Australia.
Speaking about her new Professorial Fellowship, Professor Glucksmann
said: 'This is a once in lifetime opportunity. The scheme will enable me
to pull all the different strands of my research together -unconstrained.'
Study examines how Essex teenagers perceive risk –
especially in relation to drugs and alcohol
Professor Nigel South of the Department of Health and Human Sciences
has been awarded a grant of more than £59,000 by the Home Office’s
Regional Crime Reduction Unit to carry out research into an understanding
of how young people perceive risk.
The project’s Senior Research Officer, Dr Jenny McWhirter, explains
that risk is an assessment based on perceptions of the probability of the
event and the severity of the outcome. Consequently, most people
underestimate the risk in familiar hazards, such as driving to work,
because they underestimate the probability of an accident. But for
unfamiliar hazards, such as air travel, people overestimate the risk by
focusing on the severity of the outcome and do not recognise the low
probability of an accident.
‘But what is less well known’, Dr McWhirter continues, ‘is how we
develop our understanding of risk - what does risk mean to a 10 year old
boy, cycling to visit his friend after school, or to a teenager faced with
the offer of an ecstasy pill by someone they meet at a party? To what
extent is their behaviour based on the severity and probability of harm
from the hazards they encounter?’
Professor South pointed out that the project is a good example of
inter-disciplinary research, cutting across the fields of sociology,
psychology, health and education. The county wide survey will consider how
variables such as gender, socio-economic circumstances, cultural and
family background, and locality, influence the perceptions of 11-18 year
olds, with the research findings being shared regionally and nationally to
develop teaching resources that help teachers explore the concept of risk
with young people and help them apply what they have learned to real life
situations.
Also in the printed October edition of Wyvern:
- Conscious robots
- Bookshelf
- Extension of Geo-Data Projects
