Archive for March 30, 2016

Sharp suits, lunchtime cocktails and Lucky Strike cigarettes will come under the spotlight of academic rigour when University of Salford media experts organise an international conference on Mad Men.

The University’s Dr Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Media and Performance, and Dr Michael Goddard, Reader in Film and Media, are co-organising the conference, at which internationally renowned academics as well as television and film critics will come together to discuss the hit US TV show, centred on Don Draper’s adventures in the seedy world of 1960s advertising.

They are co-convening the conference, to be held in May at Middle Tennessee State University in Nashville, one of the School of Arts and Media’s key international partners, along with Professor David Lavery and Dr Jane Marcellus from the US university.

The conference will feature keynote speeches from Matt Zoller Seitz, editor in chief of Rogerebert.com, film critic for the New York Times and author of last year’s Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion, along with the media historian Professor Gary Edgerton from Butler University, Indiana, and Professor Mimi White of Northwestern University in Chicago.

The three day event will also include a themed cocktail party in which attendees can come dressed as their favourite Mad Men characters, a DJ set featuring music which appeared throughout the seven season show, along with talks by academics from 40 universities across 10 countries and 15 US states.

Dr Fairclough-Isaacs, with Dr Goddard and Dr Anthony S

The University launched a video last year highlighting the excellent research taking place here at Salford and this is now available online.

Presented by BBC North West weather presenter and meteorologist Clare Nasir, the two-and-a-half minute package provides an overview of the world-leading research at the University and how it impacts the world around us.

Professor Nigel Mellors, PVC Research & Enterprise, said: “At the University of Salford, we excel in many diverse areas of research from computing, health sciences, aeronautics and biomedicine, to acoustics, media, disaster management and robotics.

“Linked to our Research Strategy, the aim of this video is to raise the profile of research at the University of Salford.”

The video covers a number of areas of research that are currently taking place at the University.

Dr Steve Atkins has recently joined the School of Health Sciences as Director of Sport, Exercise and Physiotherapy.

A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), Steve’s former post was as Principal Lecturer in Sport Science at UCLan. He held earlier teaching posts at Liverpool Hope University and Newcastle College and in his early career acted as a medic in the Royal Air Force, most notably in the area of Search and Rescue.

Steve is particularly interested in research-informed teaching in sport and exercise physiology, training and conditioning, research methods, advanced sciences, health-related fitness, ethics and policy. As well as leading the Directorate, Steve will also continue his work as an external examiner in Medicine at Swansea University and in Sports Science at St. Mary’s University.

Steve regularly supervises PhD students and has also published extensively. Outside of work, he is a Sports Science Advisor to Wigan Warriors RLFC and organised the 2013 British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences Annual Conference.

Steve said of his new role: “The Directorate encompasses a diverse range of academic and professional disciplines, including physiotherapy, sport and exercise science, sports rehabilitation, strength and conditioning, trauma and orthopaedics, and physical activity and health and its teaching is underpinned by internationally-recognised research, allied to staff with many years of professional practice expertise. This means it offers an excellent, applied, student experience, and an ability to meet t

Under the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) Open Access Policy, all peer reviewed journal articles and conference papers, accepted for publication from 1 April 2016, must meet open access requirements to be eligible for the next REF.

The University has developed an internal support approach which will minimise additional work for staff and postgraduate research students. When a paper is accepted for publication, the author must deposit the accepted manuscript into USIR as soon as possible. Colleagues in the Library will then either make sure that all other requirements under the HEFCE Policy are met, or, contact the author to advise on next steps.

A group of Malaysian delegates representing various government and public organisations visited Salford on a week’s (21^st to 28^th February 2016) programme, as part of the CLIMATISE (http://climatise.net/) research project funded by the British Council Institutional Links programme.
One-day seminar was held on 24th February at the University of Salford, MediaCityUK campus to share the good practices to manage extreme weather event and their impacts. The seminar consisted of presentations and panel discussions made by UK and Malaysia speakers who represented organisations such as Salford City Council, Hospital Raja Perempuan Zainab in Malaysia, Malaysian Public Works Department and National Disaster Management Agency (Malaysia). As well as, UK Environmental Agency, Broughton Trust, Extremis Technology Ltd., AGMA Civil Contingencies, Resilience Unit: Greater Manchester Police Headquarters, Grantham Institute of the London School of Economics, and PEERS Consult Malaysia.

Gossip at work can damage morale and make workers more cynical, possibly lowering productivity in around a sixth of all workers, research from Salford has suggested.

Gossip is a well-known phenomenon in workplaces across the world, with ‘water cooler’ moments occurring in most office or factory environments. It is often defined as an informal, casual conversation about others not involved in the conversation, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true.

Previous studies have found that up to two thirds of work chats are about people who are not involved in the conversation, in other words gossip, but the impact of this has not previously been studied in depth. Many may see it as benign, or even helping to bond teams together. But this new research brings that into question and the results may make worrying reading for managers.

In a paper published in the peer review journal International Journal of Human Resource Management, a team from the University has found that job-related gossip leads to negative implications in many workplaces.

For the study the team analysed survey data from 362 employees from 26 businesses across a range of industries. The team identified two types of gossip, one not work related actually was found to cause no harm to productivity, whereas gossip about work-related matters caused increases in cynicism. They found that more than 52 per cent of the employees engaged with job related gossip, while 45 per cent engaged with none job related gossip. So negative gossip that could impact on productivity is more prevalent in the workplace.

About 33

‘Universities must rethink how to keep students safe’ explain University of Salford academics – Andrew Wootton, Dr Caroline Davey and Dr Melissa Marselle in their latest article

Students may be more at risk of crime and mental ill-health at some universities than others because of differences in the way institutions consider the safety and well-being of their students. Last year, 2.3m students started university in the UK, representing 4% of the population. These students are at greater risk of crime than other people in Britain. Figures from the Office of National Statistics show that 19% of full-time students were victims of crime in 2014-15, compared to 16% of all adults in the general population.