Social Science Space

Concerns that free speech is being on university campuses, at least in the United Kingdom, are overblown, with the biggest threat originating not on campuses but from the government and its Prevent program. That’s a key takeaway in a new paper from Britain’s Higher Education Policy Institute, Free Speech and Censorship on Campus.

While ”corporate social responsibility’ is a staple of conversations in the business world, CSR isn’t necessarily on the lips of those outside the boardroom. That guided Janis Teruggi Page and Lawrence J. Parnell as they wrote the new intro to strategic public relations textbook. That message must have resonated, since the TAA honored the book with one of its Most Promising New Textbook Awards.

“Writing a textbook,” says Tom Heinzen, “is a foolish idea.” It’s an enormous undertaking and the rewards a few. But there are some rewards, and Heinzen and Wind Goodfriend, the authors of the new intro textbook ‘Social Psychology,’ are reaping one of them: their book received a Most Promising New Textbook Award from the Textbook & Academic Authors Association, or TAA.

SAGE Publishing, the parent of Social Science Space, has released a report on measuring the impact of social science. Two issues undergird the report – that traditional “literature-based” measurements of impact are insufficient for modern demands to show value for money, and that new technologies make new ways of measuring impact possible.

The National Park Foundation – the congressionally chartered nonprofit partner of the U.S. National Park Service – has announced a fellowship seeking “innovative scientific research that can inform park management.”

Ian Ross is a development economist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where his studies and work as a research degree student focuses on the financing of water, sanitation and hygiene, or WASH, services. His PhD topic, and doctoral studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council, looks at cost-effectiveness of sanitation in Maputo, Mozambique, and one aspect on this is also the subject of this co-winning essay from the ESRC Better Lives Writing Competition. The competition asked PhD students who have received money from the ESRC write short essays about how their research leads too better lives.

Rosie Cowan ticked numerous beats in her journalism career: politics for the Press Association, business for The Belfast Telegraph, and Ireland and later crime for the Guardian. Now a postgraduate research student in the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast, she displays both her subject-matter expertise and writing skills in this co-winning essay from the ESRC Better Lives Writing Competition. The competition asked PhD students who have received money from the ESRC write short essays about how their research leads too better lives.

Celia Robbins, a PhD student at the University of Exeter, spent 25 years working in environment and sustainability. In this shortlisted essay from the ESRC Better Lives Writing Competition, she examines how wind energy has been playing out in Cornwall, and what that means for renewables beyond that bucolic county.

Social anthropologist Chloë Place, a research student at the University of Sussex, had both worked for the National Health Service working with older people with dementia and spent a lot of time living in Andalusia when she became interested in studying approaches to aging in the Andalusian context. In this shortlisted essay from the ESRC Better Lives Writing Competition, in which PhD students who have received money from the ESRC write short essays about how their research leads too better lives, she describes how her ethnographic look at kinship care in a rural Spanish setting influences her perspectives on care elsewhere.

Sociologist Lauren O’Connell, a postgraduate research student at the University of Essex, holds a scholarship from the Economic and Social Research Council for her doctoral research exploring how clinical diagnosis and treatment shapes the experience of anorexia nervosa. In this shortlisted essay from the ESRC Better Lives Writing Competition, in which PhD students who have received money from the ESRC write short essays about how their research leads too better lives, she details how her own experiences influenced her work.

Niall McLoughlin is a PhD candidate in psychology and arts scholar at the University of Bath, as well as an associate with Climate Outreach. In this shortlisted essay from the ESRC Better Lives Writing Competition, in which PhD students who have received money from the ESRC write short essays about how their research leads too better lives, McLoughlin discusses the psychological catastrophe that accompanied the natural disaster of the 2015 Cumbrian floods and what that might teach us for addressing climate change.

Alessandro Massazza, a PhD student in the Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, at University College London has received money from the Economic and Social Research Council to research the psychiatric consequences of complex emergencies. In this shortlisted essay from the ESRC Better Lives Writing Competition, in which PhD students who have received money from the ESRC write short essays about how their research leads too better lives, he explores how the double-edged sword of memory affects us after a traumatic event.