Inspiration and Co 2014

Sorcha MacLeod, School of Law, University of Sheffield is a member of the Sheffield Centre for International and European Law and the Centre for the Study of Law in Society. This talk was given on Monday 24th March 2014. Sorcha teaches mostly in the areas in which she researches i.e. international law and international human rights law and she enjoy challenging traditional perspectives in these fields. Sorcha takes a critical, holistic and contextual approach to international law, taking account of history, philosophy, politics, culture etc and is very focused on the place of the individual in international law as well as the role of business actors in relation to human rights. She especially enjoys integrating her current research into undergraduate and postgraduate teaching by offering students insights into the latest developments in the business and human rights/corporate social responsibility sphere which I am able to do at both undergraduate and postgraduate level in various modules. For many years Sorcha coached Sheffield law students who were participating in national and international mooting competitions with great success and brought a lot of that experience into her day to day teaching. She often use moots and debates in her classes to encourage students to formulate persuasive arguments and to think on their feet. Sorcha also encourages students to employ theoretical views in a practical way for example by setting assessments which require the rewriting of cases from a critical international legal perspective e.g. feminism. Link to the Human Rights Forum which Sorcha set up: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/law/research/clusters/sciel/human

Dan Goodley is a Professor at the School of Education, University of Sheffield. This talk was given on Tuesday 18th March 2014. Dan teaches on the MA in Psychology and Education and the BA Education, Culture and Childhood. He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate psychology, sociology and education in a number of Universities and was an A Level teacher for several years in the 1990s. Dan is interested in theorising and challenging the conditions of disablism (the social, political, cultural and psycho-emotional exclusion of people with physical, sensory and/or cognitive impairments) and ableism (the contemporary ideals on which the able, autonomous, productive citizen is based). Dan is interested in engaging with poststructuralist, postconventionalist, social psychoanalytic and narrative accounts of exclusion and political resistance. He also hopes to engage with the expertise of non-normative children and their families to expose different ways of ‘being human’. This has extended his interest in critical disability studies to include ideas from queer theory, critical race, postcolonialism and feminism. Inspiration & Co interview: https://soundcloud.com/inspirationandco/dan-goodley-what-it-means-to

Allan is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield School of Medicine and Biomedical Science. This talk was given on Monday 17th March 2014. This talk centres on Alan's work as Head of Andrology for Sheffield Teaching Hospitals where he directs the Andrology Service overseeing diagnostic semen analysis and the sperm banking facility. His research interests are in fertility issues with specific emphasis on male fertility. This includes work in the lab to understand sperm biology, but other recent projects have included psychological and sociological aspects of male fertility. Allan is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield School of Medicine and Biomedical Science and the Head of Andrology for Sheffield Teaching Hospitals where he directs the Andrology Service overseeing diagnostic semen analysis and the sperm banking facility. His research interests are in fertility issues with specific emphasis on male fertility. This includes work in the lab to understand sperm biology, but other recent projects have included psychological and sociological aspects of male fertility. In addition to Science and Clinical Work, Allan is an accomplished broadcaster and regularly appears on the Today programme and Woman’s Hour. Recent television programmes include Britain’s Secret Code Breaker (2011), Donor Unknown (2011), The Great Sperm Race (2009), The Truth About Food (2007), Make me a Baby (2007) and Lab Rats (2004). Follow Dr Pacey’s musings about science, sperm, male fertility and the life of an academic on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/allanpacey. His University of Sheffield webpage is here: http://www.shef.ac.uk/humanmetabolism/people/pacey Inspiration & Co Interview: https://soundcloud.com/inspirationandco/part-1

Penny Dick is a Professor in Organizational Psychology at University of Sheffield Management School. This talk was given on Wednesday 19th March 2014. "Lots of unpleasant experiences at work are difficult to make sense of and even more difficult to explain to other people. But what happens if you think you might be the victim of, say, bullying or sexual harassment but you are not really sure if you are such a victim and whether anyone (with power) will believe you? This talk explores the problems around the interpretation and reporting of social experiences like sexual harassment and how these problems are not adequately dealt with at the policy level." Penny She obtained her PH.D. from Sheffield University which, with her research being in social construction of gender in police work. She worked as an Occupational Psychologist in both public and private sector before taking up an academic post at the University of Teeside in 1993. Her areas of professional expertise include critical incident stress debriefing, stress counselling, stress management, assessment and selection, management development, and training. Penny’s research interests are all in the area of critical management, which means that she looks at the politics of work and work experiences and exposes how taken-for-granted ideas influence what happens in organizations, particularly in relation to inequalities and the distribution of power and resources.

Professor Milton Wainwright is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, University of Sheffield. This talk was given on 27th March 2014. This talk will explore Milton's work as a British microbiologist who became world famous for his claims to have found extra-terrestrial life in the stratosphere. His research interests are in Astrobiology and History of Science. He claimed that the idea of natural selection is not original to Darwin or Wallace theory. Also, he has claimed that the Red rain in Kerala is a biological entity. Wainwright has also written widely about the history of the discovery penicillin (including that Hitler’s life was saved by the drug) and streptomycin and on the theory that bacteria and other non-virus microbes cause cancer. Milton Wainwright is a British microbiologist who became world famous for his claims to have found extra-terrestrial life in the stratosphere. His research interests are in Astrobiology and History of Science. He claimed that the idea of natural selection is not original to Darwin or Wallace theory. Also, he has claimed that the Red rain in Kerala is a biological entity. Wainwright has also written widely about the history of the discovery penicillin (including that Hitler’s life was saved by the drug) and streptomycin and on the theory that bacteria and other non-virus microbes cause cancer. Milton graduated from the University of Nottingham in the field of Botany. He obtained a PhD from the same university in the field of Mycology. Afterwards he went to the National Research Council of Canada as postdoctoral fellow, where he obtained a qualification in Environmental Microbiology. After his postdoctoral fellowship, he went to work at the University of Sheffield.

Professor Siva-Jothy is a lecturer in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield. This talk was given on Thursday 20th March 2014. "The males of many species harm the female during mating. In this talk I will examine these traits and explain their function and outcome. On first sight this type of behaviour seems evolutionarily intractable - why would a male be selected to harm his mate, the individual that will produce offspring? The answer lies in understanding that male and female organisms have different interests. I will look at examples from gonochorists (species with separate sexes) as well as hermaphrodites - where individuals carry both genders’ interests - to illustrate the variety of bizarre mating forms and how they are easily accommodated by current evolutionary theory." Professor Siva-Jothy’s research focuses on understanding the causal mechanisms underpinning sexually selected and life history traits. There are currently two major strands to the research in his laboratory. First, the determination of patterns of life-history investment in immune function, and the coordination of immune effector systems to provide immune function. Second, understanding the nature of sexual conflict in the bed bug Cimex lectularius. Inspiration & Co interview: https://soundcloud.com/inspirationandco/pokemon-sumo-wrestling-and This talk was given on Thursday 20th March 2014.

Jairo Lugo-Ocando, Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield. Jairo's talk explores ideas around Media, Inequality and Social Change. This talk was given on Tuesday 25th March 2014. Jairo Lugo-Ocando has worked as a reporter, staff-writer and chief sub-editor for several newspapers in Venezuela. He has also been correspondent for newspapers, magazines and radio stations in Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico and the United States. He sits on the advisory board of the Asylum Positive Image Project run by OXFAM-GB. He has been invited to lecture at the Universidad Catolica Andres Bellos (Venezuela), IQRA University (Pakistan) and the University of Columbia (USA) among other institutions. His research interests include media and democratisation in South America and digital technologies in the developing world.

Prof Elena M Rodriguez-Falcon of Enterprise & Engineering Education, University of Sheffield. This talk was given on Wednesday 26th March 2014. Elena’s general research interest lies in teaching and learning as the main umbrella for her scholarship. From this she has developed more specific interests in enterprise education, project based learning, internationalisation and various others. This has resulted in numerous conference papers and guest speaker presentations in both the UK and internationally. Elena joined the Department in 2001 having previously worked in industry for seven years in project management, product development, quality control and business planning. Elena, in addition to being a mechanical engineer, has MBAs in Industrial Relations and Industrial Management, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education. In the last eleven years Elena has developed three degrees which aim at embedding enterprise and management in engineering. She is also the founder of the Ibberson Centre for Enterprise, better known as the E-lab, which has become the first enterprise satellite for the White Rose Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Enterprise (WRCETLE), now known as University of Sheffield Enterprise (USE). Until 2008, Elena was also Director of Learning and Teaching Development for one of the four Institutional Learning Priorities of the University: Inclusive Learning and Teaching. In 2011, Elena became the University of Sheffield’s Director of Enterprise Education and also the Faculty of Engineering’s Director of Women in Engineering. Inspiration & Co interview: https://soundcloud.com/inspirationandco/poetry-gender-and-tv-repair

David Forrest is a lecturer of Film Studies in the School of English. This talk was given on 27th March 2014. This talk showcases the work of Barry Hines, a Barnsley writer whose archive is held in the University's Special Collections. Hines is perhaps most famous for the the film Kes (Ken Loach, 1969), but his output is richly diverse and spans 30 years. He is an underrated and under-explored documenter of post-war British working-class history, and I want to show that Hines's South Yorkshire stories of the 1960s, 70s and 80s matter today. David came to Sheffield in 2002 to study as an undergraduate, then going on to doing an MA in International Cinema and a PhD in British social realism. With an interest in the functions of space, place and landscape in realist films, he has published work on British television drama, the British New Wave and contemporary British cinema. What’s more, David contributes to the creation of realist filmmaking; in developing the ‘Sheffield Film Studies and Sheffield Studies Film’ project, local school children have had the opportunity to record their lives within the city. ‘Storying Sheffield’ is another project that David co-leads with Brendan Stone, a second year module that documents the inspiring lives of volunteers, factory workers, and independent business owners to name a few, successfully combining theory and practice. With his further links to The Showroom’s ‘Subversive Britannia’ season, it is fair to say that David Forrest is committed to community and is an all-round steel city lover. He is also rumoured to enjoy Keeping up with the Kardashians and yoga after seminars. Inspiration & Co interview: https://soundcloud.com/inspirationandco/david-forrest-interview

Fabienne Collignon is lecturer in Contemporary Literature, School of English, University of Sheffield. Her talk explores ideas around 'The Technology of Body Building'. Intrigued? You should be... This talk was given on Wednesday 26th March 2014. Fabienne Collignon is a feminist, sci-fi lover and lecturer in the School of English. After finishing a PhD at University of Glasgow and a postdoctoral position at University of Edinburgh, she came to Sheffield in 2012. Fabienne’s research focuses on American techno-culture: the use of weapons systems, radioactive substances, Ronald Reagan, and the poetics of space. Her first book, Rocket States: Atomic Weaponry and the Cultural Imagination, focuses on the Cold War and its technological unconscious, and is to be published by Bloomsbury later this year. In the past, Fabienne has been known to play My Chemical Romance and wear a Darth Vader mask in lectures. Inspiration & Co interview: https://soundcloud.com/inspirationandco/fabienne-collignon-interview

Joan Upson is Senior University Lecturer in the School of Law, University of Sheffield. This talk was given on Wednesday, 26 March 2014. Having initially worked in Local Government departments, Joan embarked upon a career in academia at a variety of institutions, most recently settling at Sheffield where she has worked on a part-time and full time basis for almost 10 years. Joan’s research interests concern my principal teaching areas of Contract and Tort, but during much of her academic career the focus was on Environmental and European issues. Since arriving at Sheffield Joan has gained experience teaching across the ‘core’ legal subjects and currently works in the areas of Contract, Tort, Land Law and Employment Law. Joan in her own words: “I enjoy teaching and aim to adopt an interactive style both in seminars and large scale lectures. I try to remember what worked for me as a student, but know that there are always other ways of doing things and so am keen to hear feedback from students and remain open to change.”

Dr. Abdel Razzaq Takriti is Lecturer in International History. This talk was given on 17th March 2014. He received his DPhil from St Antony’s College, Oxford and was a Junior Research Fellow at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. His doctoral dissertation won the MESA Malcolm Kerr Award and the BRISMES Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize. He is the author of Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman, 1965-1976 (2013) and is currently co-authoring a book with Karma Nabulsi on the history of the Palestinian revolution. His opinion pieces on contemporary Arab affairs have appeared in a range of English and Arabic publications including The Guardian, Aljazeera English, Al-Ahram Weekly, and al-Quds al-Arabi. Inspiration & Co interview: https://soundcloud.com/inspirationandco/abdel-razzaq-takriti-interview