• Rethinking Teamwork Assessment to Cultivate Effective Teamworking Skills in Higher Education

    Bryan Tang To meet the demands of the modern workforce, educational institutions recognise the importance of equipping graduates with subject knowledge and essential soft skills, including effective teamwork and communication. Incorporating team-based collaborative assignments throughout the curriculum is a common approach to building students’ teamwork skills. These assignments involve students working in teams on various […]

  • What did those Edge Hill women do?

    Professor Alyson Brown There is much current emphasis on the need for universities to prove themselves by focusing on students obtaining graduate level employment on completion of their studies. This is one way of assessing what universities achieve, but it is a perspective that fails to recognise the importance of context, longevity and wider considerations […]

  • Homelessness Ireland: Risk, Emotions and Post-COVID Futures

    Dr Lisa Moran & Liam O’Farrell Ireland is in the grip of a housing and homelessness crisis. Recent studies suggest that the number of homeless families in the Republic of Ireland increased by 232% from 2014 to 2020 (O’Leary and Simcock, 2020). Statistics by the Government of Ireland also showed substantial increases in homelessness throughout […]

  • Transparency as a route to social responsibility in research

    Liam Bullingham & Matthew Greenhalgh Making your research process ‘transparent’ or ‘reproducible’ means using open practices wherever possible. Here, people making use of the research (policy makers, practitioners, members of the public) can scrutinise your work or ‘look under the hood’ to learn more about it. However, making research transparent is easier said than done.  […]

  • Activism, Advocacy and Rebellion: Power Struggle in Africa’s third largest country

    Dr Shereen Shaw News about a conflict in Sudan and the need for emergency flights for hundreds of people leaves us bewildered about the cause of such conflict in the region. The dispute goes back to before the 2019 uprising within parts of the Arab world. At this time there was a power struggle between […]

  • In Defence of Teachers

    Dr Clare Woolhouse I feel compelled to write this blog as the news dissects the WhatsApp messages shared during the covid pandemic between the Government ministers Gavin Williamson and Matt Hancock. These messages apparently criticised teachers and their unions for not wanting to work (The Guardian 1.3.23). Alongside these revelations, many teachers are continuing to […]

  • ArtActivistBarbie Celebrates International Women’s Day with ISR

    ArtActivistBarbie is making her second appearance at Edge Hill to celebrate International Women’s Day with us. The renowned Twitter star [@BarbieReports] made her ISR debut last August at our Feminist Imaginaries Research Conference where, true to her mischievous and equality-seeking form, she pointed out that the overwhelming majority of artworks on our campus sculpture trail […]

  • The Cost of Living Crisis: Universities as Creative Spaces for Epistemological Innovation

    Dr Katy Goldstraw Building on ISR’s critically acclaimed Coronavirus Blog Series, this is the first in a new ISR blog series tackling the Cost of Living. The Blog Series will be entitled ‘Creative Ideas and Innovative Solutions to the Cost of Living Crisis’, and follows on from the ISR External Advisory Group Meeting, which hosted a […]

  • Switch the lights out as you go

    Paula Keaveney We are now closer to the next General election than the last one.  No more looking back. We are on the way to polling day, which has to be in January 2025 at the latest. The approaching date with destiny is focusing the minds of MPs.  Do they want to return to the […]

  • A Dyslexic’s Introduction to Lexism

    Doctor Craig Collinson My doctoral research was, in simple terms, a reply to a seminal article which applied the social model of disability to dyslexia. It was not just an academic exercise – it was a process by which my self-identity changed; from being ‘someone with dyslexia’ to a dyslexic who experiences Lexism. Initially I […]

  • Research on Public Perceptions of Dangerous Dogs

    Professor Claire Parkinson Over thirty years ago, following sensationalised reporting in the popular press and mounting public concern about dog attacks, the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 (DDA 1991) was introduced. The legislation identified four breeds or types of dog as a particular danger to the public: pit bull terrier; Japanese Tosa; Dogo Argentino; and, Fila […]

  • Athlete voice in promoting athlete welfare in Lithuania

    Dr Laura Purdy and Dr Mel Lang 2022 has been a big year for sport, with fans glued to the women’s Euros, the Winter Olympics, Paralympics, the Commonwealth Games, and the men’s and women’s Cricket World Cups. Yet it’s also been a big year in sport for a different reason: it’s the year when the […]

  • Order of the Jungle?

    Paula Keaveney You can almost sense the frustration. Once upon a time former health secretary, Matt Hancock was guaranteed attention in the Commons, and a podium place at a nightly televised pandemic press conferences.  Contrast this with his appearance in the Commons in December 2021 where he sat in an emptying Commons Chamber waiting to […]

  • Including children’s perspectives: The missing link in ‘safe sport’

    Dr Melanie Lang British Gymnastics has had a bruising few years: a series of high-profile media disclosures from athletes detailing emotional and physical abuse, followed by an independent review into mistreatment and how the sport handled safeguarding complaints. Anne Whyte QC, who led the review, released her highly critical report over summer. It catalogued harrowing […]

  • Trying Times

    Paula Keaveney Politics is awash with sports metaphors.  As Boris Johnson once said, parrying an enquiry about leadership ambitions, “if the ball comes loose from the back of the scrum” he might have a go.  You can plan and hope for years, but what makes the difference in politics is opportunity.  If the ball breaks […]

  • The End of the 20th Century?

    Professor Jo Crotty Following the death of her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth, and former General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, just a week before, it feels as if the 20th century has finally come to an end. Like me, people may have been prompted by the former to watch (or in my case […]