Research
Caribbean research at Essex
The University has always been committed to the study of America and now
researchers from Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies are planning to
further this with research on the middle part of this continent which is
often overlooked - the Caribbean.
The Department's Professor Peter Hulme explains: 'We are looking at the
'American Tropics', an extended Caribbean which includes the southern USA
and northern South America. European colonial powers fought intensively
here against indigenous populations, and against each other, for control
of land and resources. The vast majority of African slaves were shipped
here, endowing the region with a cultural inheritance that all the nations
involved are still trying to comprehend. The imaginative space of the
American Tropics offers a differently-centred literary history from those
conventionally produced as US, Caribbean, or Latin American literature.'
'This project approaches literary history via literary geography, as it
focuses on a number of key places which have been nodal points for the
production of writing, taking these as case studies, such as Oriente
(Cuba), New Orleans, the Haiti-Dominican Republic border, and Colón
(Panama). Each place is a zone of encounter, bringing together sets of
writing in different languages and styles, from different literary and
cultural backgrounds, all of which have in common that attention to the
same place.'
The project, which involves four researchers and two PhD students from
the University, will require archival research, extensive reading and the
discussion of preliminary ideas informally, then through conferences.
These will initially be local Essex seminars and then national
conferences, like the Society for Caribbean Studies, in 2007 and 2010. In
2008 researchers will attend a two-day national colloquium that brings
together other British-based scholars working on similar projects and
there is a three day international conference in 2009 to further explore
the project’s themes and broaden its geographical remit.
The benefits of sustainable agriculture
Scientists at the University have shown that sustainable
agriculture can preserve environmental services as well as improve crop
yields in a report published this month.
Resource-Conserving Agriculture Increases Yields in Developing
Countries by Professor Jules Pretty and colleagues in the Department
of Biological Sciences, is possibly the largest-ever analysis of
sustainable agriculture in developing countries.
Sustainable methods being used by a
farmer in Cambodia
Published in Environmental Science and Technology journal, the
report concludes that sustainable techniques improves farmers’ lives by
increasing crop yields and preserving the local environment. The authors
prove that techniques such as crop rotation, organic farming and
genetically modified seeds can increase yields by an average of 79 per
cent.
The research team examined 286 completed and ongoing farming projects
in 57 different countries. Using questionnaires and published reports,
they analysed 218 projects and then revisited 68 of them after four years.
Using such techniques, farmers have reduced pesticide use and increased
the efficiency of water use and carbon sequestration. The authors state
that 'whilst it is uncertain whether these approaches can meet future food
need, there are grounds for cautious optimism, particularly as poor farm
households benefit more from their adoption.'
For the benefit of the tape
While police investigate crime, a PhD student from
Sociology has been doing her own investigations into police interviews, by
undertaking research on the interaction between police and suspects at
this time.
Elisabeth Carter has been using conversation analysis to examine this
relatively unexplored area. Her research has looked at the use of certain
phenomenon on the part of both the suspect and the office in an interview,
like latching and overlapping speech.
Elisabeth explains: 'Latching is when the end of one person's speech
coincides with the beginning of another's but without an overlap or gap.
In a police interview, for example, this means the suspect’s answer is
produced so quickly that it is latched onto the officer’s question. My
research showed that latching is used to quicken the pace of an interview
to ease stress (by the suspect) or to increase stress (by the officer) and
if it isn’t successful then overlaps start to occur.'
'Overlapping is the same as an interruption except both speakers
continue to talk over each other. This is particularly interesting in a
police interview, as research shows both suspect and officer display
overlapping speech although it's usually assumed, due to power relations,
that a suspect wouldn’t talk over an officer.'
Elisabeth's research shows that common sense understandings of the
police interview, drawn by the public from police shows and the media,
have lead to the idea that latching and overlap would not occur in a
police interview. However, her investigation found that all participants
used these devices on multiple occasions whilst being interviewed.
Also in the printed February edition of Wyvern:
- Shakespeare down under
- Titian lecture at the National Gallery
- Bookshelf: New books by Essex academics
- Funding for Colne Esturary research
- Engineers organise world conference
