Research and Innovation Day
Thursday 8 June 2023, West Downs Centre
Research and Innovation Day 2023
9.00 Registration: West Downs Centre Auditorium
Opening remarks: Professor Emile Bojesen, Director of R&I
9.30
Research and Innovation Day celebrates the accomplishments and ambitions of staff at the University of Winchester. In addition to showcasing success in research impact, external funding capture, and knowledge exchange, the sessions will offer opportunities for all colleagues to learn how to develop their skills in these areas. The day will also provide an opportunity for colleagues to get to know our significantly enhanced Research & Innovation team, network with colleagues across disciplines, and contribute to a discussion on strategy. The day will conclude with a session on the University’s fruitful new partnership with Winchester Books Festival, involving both staff and students. We look forward to seeing you!
West Downs Centre Auditorium
Meet the Team: An introduction to the R&I Team
9.40
Location: West Downs Centre Auditorium
An opportunity to find out who’s who, and how we can help
REFRESHMENT BREAK
10.10
Location: Outside West Downs Centre Auditorium
PLENARY Strategy Symposium
10.40
Location: West Downs Centre Auditorium
An opportunity to discuss/inform R&I strategy with Professor Emile Bojesen, Director of R&I
11.40 COMFORT BREAK
PLENARY
Externally Funded Projects
Location: Room WDC404
11.55
Jude Davies (BA/Leverhulme)
The Letters of Grace Brown
Christina Welch (AHRC/NERC)
St Vincent Botanic Garden Project
KE CLINIC
12.00 to 3.00
Location: Room WDC403
Do you have a good idea for a project, but you’re unsure where to start? Do you need some specific advice? Or perhaps you want to know more about Knowledge Exchange. Please feel free to drop in and have an informal chat with us. We will be based here.
1.00 LUNCH
Location: West Downs Dining Hall
PLENARY
REF Impact Case Studies
Location: Room WDC 402
2.00
Emma Nottingham and Caroline Stockman
The Right to Object: Supporting Children and Schools in the Digital Learning Environment
Mark Owen, Anna King and Luke Abbs
Enhancing Understanding and Impact of Religion and Peacebuilding Through Theoretical and Methodological Innovations
overleaf… 1
Continued
3.00
PLENARY
Panel Discussion of Research and Knowledge Exchange Projects
Location: Room WDC404
Paul Everill
The Amphora Project - Exploring the Health and Wellbeing Benefits of Participation in Archaeology and Heritage-related Activities
Wing Yee Cheung and Wayne Veck
Improving refugees’ access to mental health services
Richard Gunton
The Pluralistic Evaluation Framework
James Faulkner
HELP Hampshire - Working in collaboration with the NHS and private sector for community benefit
REFRESHMENT BREAK
4.00
Location: Outside Room WDC 403
An opportunity for informal networking
NETWORKING EVENT
Location: West Downs Centre, Bar Area
4.30 to
6.30
The inaugural Winchester Books Festival took place between the 21 and 23 April 2023. With the dust now settled, co-founder Sian Searles will share why she believes the Festival is the perfect example of a fully integrated Community Interest Company and how the support of the University enabled the first Festival to be such a successful celebration of authors, writers and writing. For further details of this event, please contact Natasha Montagu
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Externally Funded Projects
Jude Davies
Jude Davies is Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Winchester. He is author or joint author of six books and has published over twenty academic articles and book chapters, on subjects ranging from the depictions of motherhood in US sitcoms and masculinity in US films, to the interplay between socioeconomic class and American literary naturalism. He is General Editor of the Theodore Dreiser Edition, which produces scholarly editions of Dreiser’s work from archival sources. Initially trained in literary research, (DPhil in American Literature, University of York), he researches and teaches at the intersection of Cultural Studies, Literature, and American Studies.
The Letters of Grace Brown
Grace Brown was a twenty-year old ‘farm girl’ and factory worker who was killed in 1906 in upstate New York. During the murder trial of Brown’s lover Chester Gillette, twenty letters written by Brown to Gillette came to light, and have subsequently passed through judicial, journalistic, literary, and cultural contexts, and still speak powerfully to readers over a century later. Initially used in court to help establish Gillette’s legal guilt and moral culpability, the letters were hailed immediately as articulating the authentic voice of working-class rural womanhood, and as doing so in ways that were especially poignant, not only because of Brown’s status as tragic victim, but also due to their simple but poetic style. Initially reprinted in newspaper accounts of the trial and in pirated editions, selected letters have been anthologised in collections of the ‘best American letters’, and reproduced in ‘true crime’ writing. They also helped inspire – and were quoted verbatim in – the canonical American novel An American Tragedy (1925) by Theodore Dreiser, reappearing with slightly altered dynamics in multiple adaptations of the novel for the theatre, the cinema, and as an opera. The letters were used again in Jennifer Donnelly’s multiple award-winning 2003 YA novel A Gathering Light, where they form part of a historical narrative with clear contemporary implications about rural poverty, gender, and romance.
Thus these originally intensely private writings have achieved a prominence that is rare for women of Brown’s class and historical moment, but one in which her agency as a working-class woman writer is often hard to discern. My research project therefore intervenes to present Brown not simply as a source, but as an author, and traces how successive iterations of the letters intersected with changing understandings of gender and class over the course of a century. To do so, I draw upon my expertise in documentary and textual editing, to construct a website presenting Brown’s ‘originals’ and tracking and analysing their historical dissemination. This will draw attention back to the archival letters themselves as material objects, making them available as directly as possible to readers. At the same time, I will chart their reiteration, citation, and adaptation in successive historical and ideological contexts, via annotated texts and a set of historical commentaries. This will form the basis of a more concise, linear academic essay.
This project has both professional and personal resonance for me. In a 2003 essay I was critical of the depiction of characters based on Brown and Gillette in the 1951 film A Place in the Sun, and this interest became even more personal when I participated in a conference marking the 100th anniversary of the Brown/Gillette case in 2006, during which I visited the site of Brown’s drowning on Big Moose Lake. In the paper I presented then, I spoke about being ‘haunted’ by Grace Brown and the need to memorialise her properly. I still feel the same way.
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Christina Welch
Christina (Tina) is a Reader in Religious Studies. She is a neurodivergent inter-disciplinary scholar with research specialisms in the intersection of religions and material/visual culture, and in the study of death, especially as it relates to material/visual culture. She recently led a collaborative multi-disciplinary AHRC/NERC grant exploring the hidden history of indigenous and enslaved African knowledge systems at the St. Vincent Botanical Garden (1785-1811); the project teams included the Botanic Garden in St Vincent, the Linnean Society of London, Kew Botanical Gardens, the Natural History Museum, Museum Detox (interpretation group), and the Antonio Carlucccio Foundation. Tina enjoys the bringing together people from multiple disciplines and much of her recent work has been collaborative.
St Vincent Botanic Garden Project
“But you’re not a botanist, or a historian!” – how I ended up leading an AHRC/NERC grant working on a historic Botanic Garden in the Caribbean, and other hopefully useful stuff about applying for UKRI grants.
In this talk, which is in 3 sections, I will provide an overview of the project I led under the AHRC/NERC Hidden Histories of Environmental Science call which explored a historic botanical garden in St Vincent, despite my not being an environmental scientist nor a historian. Luckily, this didn’t bother the grant awarding committee, and even if it wasn’t necessarily obvious, I did have the right background and was able to demonstrate this.
I will secondly talk through how I went about drafting the bid, and as such managed to figure out what they were looking for; including, pruning my ideal project to something actually fundable. The project I led was highly collaborative and as such pretty time consuming on my part, but the teamwork element paid off and as a group, we are proud of what we have achieved – a pop-up educative exhibition. The exhibition will have on-going impact and the writing up should provide a range of solid academic out-puts.
Finally, I will pass on what I have learnt from the process of applying for this bid and highlight some of problems I have encountered. Please note, this was not the first grant I applied for and have had more applications turned down than I care to remember; it was sheer luck that I could develop a great project with a great team at a time when the UKRI funding bodies were deliberately looking for something a little out of the ordinary.
For more information, please visit www.winchester.ac.uk/andersonbotanicgarden
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Impact Case Studies
Emma Nottingham and Caroline Stockman Children’s Rights in the Digital Learning Environment
Dr Emma Nottingham is a Reader in the Department of Law. Emma has a particular interest in bioethics and the rights of children in healthcare. She is a member of the Institute of Medical Ethics Research Committee and sits on the Clinical Ethics Committee at University Hospitals Southampton. Emma also has expertise in the intersection of law, ethics and digital technologies, particularly in relation to the impact of the digital world on children. She has published research on the rights of children who are subjected to media exposure.
As co-convenor of the Centre for Information Rights, she has extensive experience in data protection issues. She also has a wealth of experience in engaging with public media to maximise impact, giving expert commentary on a range of local and national television and radio interviews including BBC Breakfast, BBC News, BBC 5Live, BBC Radio 2 and Radio 4, ITV Meridian News and LBC radio. She was Co-Investigator for the ‘Opt Out’ Project (20202021) – funded by Human-Data Interaction, an EPSRC network.
Dr Caroline Stockman is a Senior Fellow in Learning and Teaching in the Department of Education and Childhood Studies. She has over a decade of experience in schooling as well as the industry of educational technology, where she started as e-learning trainer, and became product manager. This required a comprehensive skillset in managing teams, budgets, timelines, outcomes, and product portfolios. She became a JISC Leader in 2019, and is also Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, both of which indicate a recognised status of leadership in the fields of education, and educational technology. Her research centres on the human-technology relationship, with a cultural-political focus, using both qualitative and quantitative methods (for example in her Routledge monograph Decoding Technology Acceptance in Education: A Cultural Studies Contribution), and she has presented her work at institutions such as MIT (Boston, MA) as well as BCS – The Chartered Institute of IT (London, UK). She is also a Re-search Fellow at the University of Leuven, Department of Digital Cultural studies. She was Principal In-vestigator for the ‘Opt Out’ Project (2020-2021)
– funded by Human-Data Interaction, an EPSRC network (further explained below).
The influx of digital technologies in the modern-day school environment has led to vast amounts of data being collected about children through the process of learning. These technologies span a range of teaching and learning activities: Virtual Learning Environments, games, grading tools, etc. To make these modern technologies available to schools, digital education is often underpinned by a business model that relies on consumer data collection and data processing, to the financial advantage of not only the product supplier but also third-party companies.
Dwindling school budgets often necessitate reliance on ‘free’ technologies, while school hierarchies can mandate teachers or students to use a particular technology. The national lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated this need to rely on this, sometimes without due diligence in data protection. This digital dependency also meant that there was no alternative option to learning through digital platforms that were collecting and harvesting the data of its users: children under the age of eighteen, but with legal rights to object to their data being collected for noneducational purposes.
Developments in law and policy, both in the UK and internationally, are seeking to improve the safety of children online including the government’s recent announcement to reform the UK data protection policy over the next few years. The schooling context poses a complex set of social and educational problems that have not been addressed in recent proposals for reform, nor in published scholarship on this topic. The research therefore places a spotlight on these issues and makes a number of recommendations for reform which include methods for practical support for schools in order to help navigate the data protection rights of students and foster them as active agents of these rights.
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Mark Owen, Anna King and Luke Abbs
Enhancing
Understanding and Impact of Religion and Peacebuilding Through Theoretical and Methodological Innovations
Professor Mark Owen is the Director of the Winchester Centre of Religions for Reconciliation and Peace (WCRRP), University of Winchester. Mark’s research interests include the role of religion in conflict prevention, transformation and peacebuilding processes; conflict assessment and analysis; and religion and migration. Mark has carried out extensive fieldwork throughout South Asia, as well as working in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Professor Owen is currently Secretary General of the European Council of Religious Leaders, and Religions for Peace Europe.
Anna King is Professor of Religious Studies and Social Anthropology. She has carried out fieldwork in India, Nepal and the USA and continues to publish in the fields of contemporary Hindu and Buddhist ethics. She spent four years before lockdown carrying out research in conflict areas in Myanmar and contributing to multireligious peacebuilding projects with international and regional partners.
Her research interests include nonviolent action and resistance and the intersections of religion, violence, and peace. Anna is the founder editor of the international journal RoSA (Religions of South Asia). Her latest article, “Myanmar’s Coup d’état and the Struggle for Federal Democracy and Inclusive Goverent”, Religions 13, no. 7: 594, can be accessed at. Religions | Free Full-Text | Myanmar’s Coup d’état and the Struggle for Federal Democracy and Inclusive Government (mdpi.com)
Dr. Luke Abbs is a Senior Research Fellow at the Winchester Centre of Religions for Reconciliation and Peace (WCRRP). His research is focused on three bodies of study. First, evaluating the impact of religious peacebuilding on communal violence and civil war peace processes. Secondly, understanding how nonviolent action aids the peaceful transformation of civil war. Thirdly, assessing the influence of third-party actors, namely armed militias and UN peacekeepers, on the dynamics of civil wars. Luke has expertise in quantitative and mixed-method methodologies, with his work being published in outlets such as the Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution and the Journal of Global Security Studies. He has also engaged in various consultancies for the United Nations Operations Crisis Center (UNOCC), Conciliation Resources, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) and the United States Institute for Peace (USIP), and more recently with UNICEF with colleagues at the WCRRP.
Our developing REF study builds on the success of the 2021 REF submission, and its theoretical and practical insights into effective peacebuilding. From 2016-2020 we acted as consultants to Religions for Peace’s multireligious project in Myanmar which worked with religious and civic leaders in three areas of conflict, areas with the highest risk of violence, mass displacement, poverty, violent extremism and gender inequality. Our role enabled us to reflect upon the development of the project, assess its impact in terms of reach and significance and analyse the potentialities and limitations of multi- or interreligious peacebuilding. Our critical evaluations supported an inclusive multi -perspectival peace process, a robust political and justice agenda and raised questions in relation to broader issues of peacebuilding. The planned ICS represents a development on our last REF submission. While existing literature has made huge contributions in developing our understanding of the contributions religious actors have made to building peace, existing studies have lacked methodological rigour, with no systematic attempt to analyse factors that aid or constrain religious peacebuilding. Drawing on past case studies, existing academic literature on religion and peacebuilding, the project builds on this distinct methodological limitation, providing the first attempt to systematically assess whether (a) religious actors are successful in peacebuilding initiatives, and (b) identify potential factors that aid or undermine the effectiveness of these peace interventions. To do so, our project deploys a novel mixed-method approach, combining quantitative methodology with qualitative approaches.
In the statistical analysis we will be exploring a range of peace interventions by religious actors in two types of conflict (civil war and communal conflicts) and within two stages of conflict (active and post-conflict). In our qualitative work, we will select cases based on the most-different-systems design, where we explore cases across three different continents that are very different from one another, but which have similar outcomes.
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Panel Discussion
Paul Everill
The Amphora Project - Exploring the Health and Wellbeing Benefits of Participation in Archaeolgy and Heritage-related Activities
Dr Paul Everill is Reader in Archaeology at the University of Winchester. As well as conducting research on developer-led archaeology and the impact on those employed in that sector, he has been co-director of the Anglo-Georgian Expedition to Nokalakevi since 2002. Alongside over 40 peer-reviewed publications on a variety of topics he is author of The Invisible Diggers (2009; 2nd Edition 2012), editor of Nokalakevi-T sikhegoji-Archaeopolis: Archaeological Excavations 2001–2010 (2014), and co-editor of Rescue Archaeology: Foundations for the Future (2015) and Archaeology, Heritage and Wellbeing (2022). Paul started working in the area of archaeology and wellbeing in 2015; establishing the archaeological fee-waiver studentships for veterans at Winchester in 2016; and hosting UK, Georgian and Ukrainian veterans on a wellbeing programme, as part of excavations at Nokalakevi, from 2017.
Taking part in heritage projects, including archaeological fieldwork, has become an increasingly popular way to improve mental health and wellbeing. But there can be times when projects might not have the right infrastructure to make sure that both the participants and the historic remains are well looked after.
In 2020 a team of researchers, including Paul Everill from the University of Winchester, and with the support of Historic England, carried out a study that brought together a panel of 44 stakeholders in a Delphi consultation. The research informed a set of best practice guidelines to help make sure that both the historic environment and participants are looked after when they join ‘therapeutic’ heritage-based projects, and that the best possible results can be achieved safely.
In 2022 the AMPHORA guidelines were developed into a series of toolkits with internal KE funding. The toolkits are intended to help service providers better understand and address their responsibilities; social prescribers/ link workers to gauge the quality of support that should be offered to individuals they might be considering referring to heritage-based therapeutic services; and to give potential participants a better understanding of what they might expect in terms of support.
This paper will briefly present the background to the AMPHORA guidelines, the process by which they were determined through stakeholder consultation, key aspects of guidance – including the importance of working collaboratively with mental health experts and the involvement of those with lived experience. For further information, please visit www.winchester.ac.uk/amphora
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Wing Yee Cheung and Wayne Veck
Improving refugees’ access to mental health services
Dr Wing Yee (Verbon) Cheung is Senior Lecturer in Psychology. She is a social psychologist and her key research interests focus on emotional and motivational drivers to a range of behaviours (e.g., pro-environmental, prosocial, political behaviours). The research questions she considers concern the type of emotions and ways that people feel motivated to engage in actions that are bigger than the self. She is also interested in applied research to address issues such as social and health inequality, mental health, and wellbeing.
Wayne Veck started his teaching career as a teacher of English to students from Afghanistan and Iraq seeking refuge in the UK. He is now Professor of Education at the University of Winchester, having been Faculty Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange from 2015 to 2018. He has given keynote addresses at the universities of Bergamo, Vienna, and Winchester, Lillehammer University College, and at the Polish Disability Forum’s conference, in Warsaw. He has published in leading education journals, including the Oxford Review of Education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Cambridge Journal of Education, and the International Journal of Inclusive Education.
Our presentation reports on our engagement with the Winchester City of Sanctuary, the Trauma Support Network for Winchester City of Sanctuary (e.g., Solent Mind, the Olive Branch), and the Hampshire County Council. This work revealed a need in the community concerning the mental health conditions of individuals seeking sanctuary. Open-ing with an account of why trauma support is vital for persons uprooted from their homes, we go on to outline our research process. With the support of the University of Winchester, we initiated participatory research and recruited 8 Ukrainians with lived experiences of seeking sanctuary as our com-munity researchers. These researchers conducted interviews with members from their community to find out the key concerns among the community, factors that facilitate and hinder access to health and mental health services, understand the culture of the community, and gather suggestions for service providers. In the research workshops, the community researchers co-produced recommendations for mental health services providers, GP, and the council. In our presentation, we will discuss findings from the project, the participatory research process, and how the research process built a broader collaboration network.
Dr Richard Gunton
The Pluralistic Evaluation Framework
Dr Richard Gunton is a sustainability scientist whose interests include biodiversity, environmental ethics and philosophy. He has undertaken ecological research in South Africa, Australia, France and the U.K., followed by more conceptual work in Leeds, London and Winchester. At the University of Winchester he is Senior Lecturer in Statistics, where he also teaches econometrics, data science and value studies.
The Pluralistic Evaluation Framework (PEF) is a tool for assessing policies and projects, including all kinds of impacts and how these are perceived by a wide range of stakeholders. It provides a means to articulate the multi-dimensionality of human experience that lies at the centre of the choices we make, and the possible implications and consequences those choices may have. The PEF does all this by identifying three pillars concerning stakeholders, system processes and values, wrapped around 15 dimensions of reality. Described at www.pluralisticevaluation.org and in an open-access journal article (Ecological Economics 196:107420), it offers a comprehensive set of values-based categories to help structure an evaluation and explore our relational connections to places, spaces and systems that may be influenced and transformed by a suite of policy interventions, for example.
By making space for kinds of value often overlooked or marginalised, as well as through its participatory set-up, it can facilitate transformative dialogue and discovery in all kinds of contexts. It especially bridges the gap between scientific expertise and stakeholder experience in the negotiation of complex systems and competing interests.
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James Faulkner
Collaborations with HHFT
HELP Hampshire – working in collaboration with the NHS and private sector for community benefit
I am a Professor in Exercise Physiology at the University of Winchester and an RCCP (Registration Council of Clinical Physiologists) registered Clinical Exercise Physiologist. My research explores the associations between physical activity, physical inactivity and sedentary (lifestyle) behaviours with cardiovascular, metabolic and respiratory health, in a range of clinical and non-clinical populations. I have extensive experience in laboratorybased cardiometabolic, respiratory and clinical functional measurement, including non-invasive measurement of vascular (e.g., pulse wave analysis, pulse wave velocity, ultrasound imaging) and respiratory function and blood biomarkers.
Current and previous research has spanned the lifespan, from pre-pubertal children to the elderly, and has involved working with people with the following health conditions: cardiovascular disease, stroke, transient ischaemic attack (TIA), type II diabetes mellitus, spinal cord injury (SCI), Crohn’s Disease, obesity, Coronavirus 2019 (Covid-19) and postCovid-19 syndrome. I am passionate about health behaviour change and translating basic and applied science into public health outcomes. My most impactful research has primarily focused on the benefits of physical activity as a means of primary and secondary prevention care for individuals living with long-term conditions, especially people with cardiovascular and/or cerebrovascular disease (Stroke, Transient Ischaemic Attack [TIA]). This research work has led to the creation of a number of community-based exercise clinics. This has included the creation of New Zealand’s first secondary prevention, exercise and education clinic for patients with mi-nor stroke, TIA and peripheral arterial disease (Vascular Rehabilitation Clinic, New Zealand, 2014-2018), and more recently, underpinned a collaborative project with the UK National Health Service (NHS) with regards to a community-based exercise and education clinic for patients living with stroke and TIA (HELP Hampshire Stroke Clinic, UK; www.helphampshire.co.uk).
HELP (Health Enhancing Lifestyle Programme) Hampshire was created in 2019 following Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF), and is a community-based exercise and education programme for people liv-ing with stroke. It is a collaborative programme between the University of Winchester (Department Sport, Exercise and Health), Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Hobbs Rehabilitation, an in-dependent provider of neurorehabilitation. We receive referrals from stroke consultants, physiothera-pists and occupational therapists from the Royal Hampshire County Hospital (Winchester), and GPs. After completing an online screening appointment, patients can engage in face-toface and/or online exercise classes, led by experienced neurophysiotherapists and personal trainers. To date, we have received >250 referrals, and continued to run the clinic at height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The clinic was ultimately designed to demonstrate community benefit by providing stroke patients with the opportunity to im-prove their physical and psycho-social health, however we support learning and teaching activities (physiotherapist and sport and exercise placements; voluntary opportunities to students) and research (Healthcare | Free Full-Text | Understanding the Experiences of People Living with Stroke Engaging in a Community-Based Physical-Activity Programme (mdpi. com)). We have developed an Impact Case Study for the Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) and are looking to extend the programme to other NHS trusts in Hampshire and Wessex.first secondary prevention, exercise and education clinic for patients with mi-nor stroke, TIA and peripheral arterial disease (Vascular Rehabilitation Clinic, New Zealand, 2014-2018), and more recently, underpinned a collaborative project with the UK National Health Service (NHS) with regards to a community-based exercise and education clinic for patients living with stroke and TIA (HELP Hampshire Stroke Clinic, UK; www.helphampshire.co.uk).com)). We have developed an Impact Case Study for the Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) and are looking to extend the programme to other NHS trusts in Hampshire and Wessex.
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