Date of workshop: to be confirmed

Workshop Leader: Professor Mike Robinson

Heritage is a cumulative category which is expanding rapidly. Not only is the World Heritage List fast approaching 1,000 sites, more recent categories relating to the World Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage and the ‘Memory of the World’ are also attracting ever increasing numbers of candidates. Away from the transnational heritage ‘lists’, countries in both the developed and developing world are generating an increasing amount of heritage. Reasons for this expansion are multi-layered and complex and relate to the establishment / re-establishment / re-discovery and projection of geographical, ethnic and cultural identities, but also to more pragmatic socio-economic matters where heritage is harnessed as a resource for development, regeneration and diversification.

But the rapid growth of formalised heritages, designated in some way and embedded in matters of policy, planning and governance, is causing problems. To maintain, manage and market heritage is increasingly expensive and in many countries heritage sites are increasingly neglected, poorly managed and wholly abandoned. Museums are under threat of closure, world heritage sites are challenged by new development. On the surface there appears to have been an over-production of heritage and now, in the context of a global economic crisis, heritage is portrayed as being ‘under threat’. This position is frequently characterised as some form of crisis and yet it challenges us to re-think what we value as heritage, how we value it and critically, what it means to us.

With global mobilities, the compression of time and space through technologies and what John Tomlinson refers to as the ‘culture of immediacy’, what was straightforwardly designated as heritage some thirty years ago, is now subject to more complex and nuanced readings by societies. Certainly, a dominant paradigm of Euro-centric, Christian heritage is being challenged by an unprecedented cultural diversity, as are the Western, neo-romantic aesthetic sensibilities which have been so instrumental in the designation of such heritage.

At the same time, and particularly within the context of normative generational replacement, new heritages are being designated. Not through formal mechanisms, nor within the powerful frameworks of ‘tradition’, but through more organic and sporadic means. Attachments to places have both loosened and strengthened. Personal heritages have emerged as important, as witnessed by the growth of genealogical tourism. The icons of a more recent past have gained an importance and nostalgia has been harnessed as a powerful instrument of identity-making. The 1990s are now ‘heritage’. 

And yet governments, policy makers and heritage professionals have been slow to react. Some deny the changes and challenges and the shift away from ‘traditional’ heritage. Others feel powerless to adapt, but it appears as if a majority remain largely unaware of the implications of the social and cultural changes which will impact upon the heritage category. The sorts of issues which require deeper interrogation include: the ways in which the heritage sector responds to multi-culturalism; the role of the heritage expert in the designation and management of ‘new’ heritage; the relevance of extant curatorial policies in the face of changing meanings of the past; populist inscriptions of heritage through practice and; the implications for policy at national and international levels.

Workshop aims:

Through a workshop format, drawing upon an array of experts based in disciplines engaged with heritage – art historians, archaeologists, geographers, sociologists, architects, anthropologists etc. – the aim is to challenge the category of heritage as is presently understood. We will ask our contributors to each deliver a vision of how they see Heritage developing in the future, and to offer their own Manifesto for how we should respond to the changing contexts in which Heritage exists, and to changes in the nature of Heritage itself. After the workshop there could be the first IAS Publication - a Manifesto for the Heritage of the Future. This can then be distributed and launched to  agencies and invited audience.

Date of workshop: to be confirmed

Workshop Leaders: Professor Kathy Armour and Professor Jon Glasby

The University of Birmingham has a long and proud tradition of providing professional training in fields ranging from social work and education to nursing, medicine and physiotherapy, to sports coaching and health management. For example, the University was the first in the country to offer a social work degree programme, and has been training future practitioners since 1908. The University’s long running teacher training programme has consistently been recognised as ‘outstanding’ by OFSTED. This activity has recently taken a new turn with the successful proposal to create a University secondary school. Both nurse and physiotherapy training are well established, although there are ongoing debates about the links between academic programmes, professional training and local hospital trusts. The Health Services Management Centre teaches the national Management Training Scheme for future NHS leaders, which consistently features at or near the top of national graduate scheme league tables.

The history of and commitment to professional training at the University of Birmingham are not in question, and it is clear that some of the provision is of very high quality. Yet, ongoing changes in higher education mean that current approaches to professional training may need to evolve, particularly in research-intensive universities such as those in the Russell Group. The issues to be confronted are not entirely new, but they have been brought into sharp relief by the recent increases in tuition fees and the threats to professional bursaries and other educational funding streams, particularly for those in the public sector. Moreover, a growing emphasis on employability and meeting the specific needs of the workplace is raising age-old questions about the relative value of ‘academic learning’ and ‘practice application’ (albeit placing them in a false dichotomy). Finally, for academic staff working in research-intensive universities, the challenges of delivering high quality (and time-intensive) professional education while developing research of international quality can be particularly challenging. Yet, if research-intensive universities cannot offer research-based professional education, questions will be raised about their role in the whole endeavour.

It is clear that concerns about the place of professional training in research-intensive universities will intensify as financial pressures increase. Against this background, a one-day IAS workshop is proposed for Spring 2013 to address the question: ‘What is the future for professional training in research-intensive universities?’ 

The aim of the workshop  is to bring together academic colleagues involved in professional training across and beyond the University of Birmingham, including two colleagues from the University of Illinois UC, to identify new ways forward for both teaching and research. The first part of the workshop will focus on identifying shared challenges with a comparative keynote from Prof. Bill Stewart (Dean of the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences and a colleague, UCUC). The second part of the workshop will begin with a keynote presentation on inter-professional education by Prof. Hugh Barr, Emeritus Professor of Inter-professional Education, Honorary Fellow at the University of Westminster and President of the Centre for the Advancement of Inter-professional Education (CAIPE) (tbc). This will be followed by inter-professional action groups that will explore opportunities to develop a new model of research-led inter-professional education at the University of Birmingham in collaboration with colleagues from  UIUC if feasible.   Sources for further funding will be identified.

Proposed invitees: a workshop for up to 25 participants covering the range of professional education courses offered at the University of Birmingham including: Sue White and Gary Hickman, Institute of Applied Social Studies; Alison Rushton plus a colleague, Physiotherapy; Paul Stewart, John Skelton plus a colleague, Medicine; Yvonne Sawbridge and Robin Miller, Health Services Management Centre; Hwyel Thomas, School of Education; Kyriaki Makopoulou, SportEx.

Date of workshop: to be confirmed

Workshop Leader: Professor Alexander Milner

As the evidence for human induced climate change becomes clearer, so too does the realization that its effects will have significant implications for physical and ecological systems. Some regions are more vulnerable than others, both to the expected changes and to the consequences they will have for ways of life. Arctic and Alpine regions are some of the most sensitive and vulnerable environments to this change. Arctic areas in particular, and alpine areas to a lesser extent, also have potential positive feedbacks to climate change due to their large storage of carbon, thereby enhancing these effects. Evidences of glacial retreat, permafrost reduction and changes in snowfall regimes have already been observed in many Arctic and Alpine regions, which will have many significant implications. For example, snowmelt is already occurring earlier in mountain areas, with potential reductions in glacial runoff, will influence agriculture, water resources, forestry, power generation and tourism. These effects then have significant implications for associated mountain and native communities including services like transport infrastructure, construction, water supply and food resources. An interdisciplinary and integrated examination of present and future effects is necessary to mitigate impacts to ecosystems and society in these sensitive environments.

Within the University and across a number of Schools, there are various staff who work or have interests in these regions but have never communicated or had interdisciplinary discussions. 

The aim of the workshop would be to provide a forum to examine common interests and develop possible strategies for funding calls related to these environments. Although there are universities in the UK (e.g. Sheffield) that have interests in the Arctic areas, there is no one group combining both these environments and working across a variety of disciplines as occurs in the US (e.g. INSTAAR – Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research). This would be a unique opportunity to see if Birmingham can fulfil such a role within the UK academic environment and is truly interdisciplinary. This would link to International agendas in Arctic and Alpine environments, which are generating a large degree of interest both within funding activities (NERC, EU – recent USA/UK workshop on Arctic collaboration in Cambridge) but also strategy approaches to mitigating potential effects and addressing inter-disciplinary research (e.g. the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) and associated Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.

Internal attendees

David Hannah, Martin Widmann, Ian Fairchild, Chris Bradley, Nicholas Ketteridge, Stefan Krause, Bill Bloss (GEES), Scott Hayward, Roland Brandsetter, and Jeff Bale (BioSciences), David Haughton and Stuart Eggington (Physiology), John Bridgeman, Cynthia Carliell Marquet, David Chapman and Chris Rogers (Civil Engineering) and Chris Baker (Transport). Socio-economic interests would also hopefully be addressed by interested parties within UoB and Allan and Hill (external attendees).

External attendees:

Cyan Ellis-Evans – Head of the Arctic programme for BAS , Martyn Tranter (University of Bristol), Philip Wookey and Andy Hodson (University of Sheffield) Tristam Irivine-Flynn (University of Aberystwyth), Andrew Allan (University of Dundee), Margo Hill (University of Geneva).

Date of workshop: to be confirmed

Workshop Leader: Dr Michael Grey

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is a misnomer and has been dubbed ‘the silent epidemic’, annually affecting millions of people in the EU, with close to one million people in the UK alone. Up to 50% of mild TBI (mTBI) patients fail to return to normal function or even minor disability after one year. At present, very little specialist advice is available for mTBI patients. This creates a particular problem for individuals who are exposed to mTBI though occupational or recreational activities. In fact, it has been shown that two mTBI episodes occurring in short succession can have catastrophic consequences including permanent disability. Our dearth of knowledge makes decisions about 'return-to-work' and 'return-to-play' very difficult for the responsible clinician, and potential very dangerous for the injured person.

The aims of the workshop are to:

Bring together expertise from across UoB and UHB to discuss current knowledge in the pathophysiology, assessment and treatment of mTBI with a special focus on the return to work/play decisions.

Internal attendees:

Dr Francesco Falciani - Biosciences

Prof Chris Miall, Prof Alan Wing, Prof Zoe Kourtzi, Dr Amanda Wood - Psychology

Dr Michael Grey, Prof Joan Duda, Dr Jenn Cummings, Dr Raymond Reynold - Sport and Exercise Sciences

Prof Ann Logan, Mr Tony Belli, Dr Zsuzsanna Nagy - Clinical and Experimental Medicine

Dr Jill Ramsay - Health and Population Sciences

Dr Theo Arvanitis - EECE

Prof Sir Keith Porter, Dr Leon Creane - University Hospital Birmingham

Surg Cmdr Alasdair Walker - Royal Centre for Defence Medicine  

Date of workshop: to be confirmed

Workshop Leaders: Dr Rosa Freedman, Dr Nicolas Lemay-Hébert and Dr Jenny Phillimore

In an era of globalisation, superdiversity and transnationality the traditional mono-disciplinary, Western-centric, approaches to understanding power, social structures and institutions have been questioned and calls been made for new approaches to be developed to help increase understanding of various fields, ranging from peace-building, sovereignty and state recognition to human rights paradigms. Building on the success of the past IAS workshop on Territorial and Non-Territorial Autonomies, this workshop will develop this time an innovative research agenda around theories of hybridity, which are being increasingly discussed at the academic level. The workshop will bridge the theoretical gap that divides the different disciplines by bringing together scholars and practitioners from political sciences, sociology, development studies, philosophy, international law, and archaeology, in order to focus on hybridity and its potential impact and challenges over the coming years. The workshop will provide an interdisciplinary forum for discussions that will fuse the theory and practice of hybridity during this embryonic phase. We will explore precisely but not exclusively issues of contested sovereignty and supervised independence, human rights paradigms and other law traditions, and peace-building and local resistance.

The workshop will further contribute to develop and consolidate the research agenda of the ICCS cluster “civil wars, intervention and statebuilding” (co-led by Dr. Lemay-Hébert and Dr. Newman), while increasing the collaboration between the IASS, IRiS and the ICCS.

Internal attendees:

Danielle Beswick (IDD, School of Government and Society)

Paul Jackson (IDD, School of Government and Society)

Phillip Myers (Archeology)

Oliver Walton (IDD, School of Government and Society / GSDRC)

Nicholas Wheeler (Polsis, School of Government and Society / ICCS)

Stefan Wolff (Polsis, School of Government and Society)

Heather Widdows (Philosophy / Centre for Global Ethics)

External attendees:

Nina Caspersen, York

Stefanie Kappler, Liverpool Hope

Chandra Lekha Sriram, UCL

Jeni Mitchell, King’s College

Gareth Stansfield, Exeter