• 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 […]

  • Imagining Gender Justice

    In the summer of 2022, ISR sponsored the research conference, The Feminist Imaginary: Creative Pedagogies and Methods for Gender Justice and Change. The conference brought together adult education scholars in universities and community practitioners with scholars and practitioners working in women’s museums and libraries across the globe. The aim of the conference was to share […]

  • Democracy on the Ballot: The U.S. Mid-Term Elections, 2022.

    The November elections are important for any number of reasons. All 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives are up for re-election and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate. With the overturn of Roe V Wade early in the year – the supreme court decision legalising abortion – the Democrats saw a […]

  • COP27 – Something’s got to change

    It’s that time of the year again for the annual COP (Conference of the Parties) climate summit. This time we are in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for COP27. Last year the UK hosted COP26 in Glasgow. The COP process is the political decision-making arm of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Intergovernmental […]

  • 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 […]

  • The Power of Music to Change Lives?

    Dr Anna Mariguddi On Saturday 25th June 2022, the much anticipated (second) National Plan for Music Education (NPME) was published entitled; ‘The power of music to change lives’. The (non-statutory) document represents political ideology (as does the Model Music Curriculum and Ofsted Research review series: music). Despite leaning towards traditional Western Art values, the NPME’s […]

  • So what Happens Now? Another Suitcase?

    Paula Keaveney The ambitious Conservative MP with leadership ambitions (and most do have these whatever they say) has to take a series of decisions quickly. Are they ready to fight a leadership contest? Can they get enough support to stand a chance? Is this the right time for them or are they best waiting for […]

  • Hannah Arendt: War as a Violation of the Human Condition

    Dr Paul Bunyan War represents a violation of the human condition in so many ways. In what many consider to be her magnus opus The Human Condition, the philosophical and political theorist Hannah Arendt stresses the conditioned nature of humanity and contrasts this with totalitarian ideologies wherein all-powerful beings can control the processes of history […]

  • The Right to Play: Are young children free to determine their own actions?

    Dr Jo Albin-Clark I recently saw an art exhibition with Mark Titchener that got me thinking about how far young children are free to determine their own actions. Previously my research interests have been about how teachers observe playful learning (Albin-Clark, 2021, 2022) and develop critical awareness about children as holders of rights (Albin-Clark and […]

  • Double Defeat: is this (finally) the end of Boris Johnson?

    Paula Keaveney In Devon you put the jam on last – scone, then cream, then a big dollop of strawberry.  So last week’s by-election win in Tiverton and Honiton was the jam on top for the Liberal Democrats. The victory in what has been a safe Conservative seat since it was created will send shivers […]

  • ‘Bridges’ and ‘Phonics’, and How to Navigate Both

    Dr Karen Boardman As I respond to yet another message on social media about why I am suddenly ‘crossing bridges’ from early reading advocacy to the teaching of Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP), I am wondering why I feel the need to explain my position yet again. Firstly, it is not either/or – it is both. […]

  • A Snail Carries its Bunker on its Back: Researching Nuclear Anxiety through Creative Writing

    Dr Philippa Holloway Creative Writing often embraces other disciplines. While academic research within this field focuses on research in Creative Writing (the theories and practices of creative expression), essentially writers must also research for their writing. They must learn about and consider psychology, geography, science, history, sociology, geology, ethnography, and philosophy as well as develop […]