Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Here are some of the ways students in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences can share and publish their research.

Presenting at a department conference

The annual English and Modern Languages department undergraduate symposium gives students an opportunity to get a taste of academic life, improve their CVs, gain valuable feedback on their work, and publicise their research to a wider audience. Students give oral presentations to fellow students and staff on research projects from dissertations, independent study projects and other modules (including creative projects), and answer questions about their work. Panels are chaired by MA students. The English and Modern Languages symposium is an extra-curricula event run by Dr Niall Munro. If you're a student in this department, look out for emails from Niall in December and January!


Writing a research-informed blog

In the Communication, Media and Culture course module Citizen Journalism and Civic Engagement (CMC6001), students develop individual blogs on an issue important to their sense of citizenship. The module introduces students to theories and practice of news production in digital contexts while challenging them to engage as citizens in local and wider communities. Students are encouraged to consider themselves as citizens of a range of communities, and to reflect ways in which they engage with global and local matters. As a part of their assessment they produce blogs on an issue important to them. Topics include: EU membership; generational political differences; religious identity; the politics of high heels; sexist cultures in local student nightlife; and student funding and the need for financial education in schools. Some students engaged more directly with local communities in Oxford as they researched their stories, venturing onto the city’s estates and talking to residents to offer a refreshingly positive view of less-visited parts of the city.

Students on the MA in Education: Artist Teacher Practice course are encouraged to publish their MA work on a number of online platforms including posting artworks on Instagram, using blogs as reflective journals, and presenting public artist teacher profiles on websites. For example, Sarah Hughes, alumna (2012-2015) created a blog at https://artistresearcherteacher28.wordpress.com/, using it as a tool for research and reflection, documenting field notes on her lived experience as an artist teacher which she then coded and analysed focusing on performativity, identity and disciplinary power. Zoe Crockford has created a reflective blog on her artist teacher practice at https://zoecrockford.home.blog/ which she has turned into an annual reflection on her experiences as a student on the MA programme for the National Society of Education in Art and Design’s (NSEAD) publication AD Magazine. Her first printed instalment can be found here: Crockford, Z (2019) A diary of an Artist Teacher Masters, AD Magazine, Summer 2019, Issue 25, p.32.

Students taking the module The Culture of Modernity (ENGL5004) as part of the English Literature degree programme write research-informed blogs on topics such as heroes/antiheroes/heroines/antiheroines or capitalism and consumerism in the 19th and 20th century texts they have been studying.

Contributing to a collaborative research-informed blog

In the Anthropology module Culture and Care (ANTH6010), undergraduate students contribute to a collaborative blog on the role of care in the emergence of modern human development and society, its practice and experience across different cultural contexts, and the impact of care in our everyday lives: https://cultureandcare.wordpress.com/. While 21st century technological and social transformations introduce new questions about the way humans care for each other, in many ways, we are still concerned with the same issues that have inspired anthropology since its beginnings. How do people get along and cooperate with one another? Why is there conflict, and how is it resolved? What happens to dependent members of a group? As a final project, each student writes a post for this blog. Each year group contributes more posts, drawing on inspiration from those who came before. The blog's aim is to amass a diverse body of work that demonstrates how care impacts real world issues from infertility to climate change, migration to end of life care.

Canopy is an in-house publication with contributions from staff, students and visiting speakers at Oxford Brookes University about their primatology research. The aim of Canopy is to provide the wider primatology and conservation community with a representation of selected current and past works undertaken by UG and MSc students and acts as a medium for communication between past and present students, those working in primatology, and those with a general interest in the topics covered in these issues.

Presenting alongside academics at a course conference

The Decoding Visual Cultures across Disciplines conference was run by Dr Hannah Yelin on 13 November 2019 to celebrate the end of the module Critical Media Literacies (CMC5003) on the Communication, Media and Culture degree programme. Guest academic speakers from a range of disciplines were invited to share their research alongside students. Guest academics were given a similar brief to that given to students for their final assignment, to analyse an element of visual culture of their choice using a theoretical framework of their choice. The aims of the event were to give students the confidence to see their work in parallel to that produced by academics in the field, to see themselves as researchers worthy of a shared platform, and to be inspired ahead of their assignments by the senior academics expertise and approaches.

Prof. Arlene Oak, Professor of Human Ecology at the University of Alberta, Canada examined the meanings of material culture in Prince’s Purple Rain. Dr Laura Clancy, Lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University analysed representations of power in imagery of the Queen around the time of the Scottish referendum. Leader Reeves, Senior Lecturer in Publishing at OBU interrogated the hyperreal through the TV show Westworld. Students presented on the construction of authenticity in Love Island, genre and cultural anxieties in Get Out, and identity and consumerism in Marmite advertising.

Exhibiting

Twenty seven artist teacher students and alumni and two artist teacher tutors on the MA in Education: Artist Teacher Practice course exhibited arts practice as research in Beyond Surface at The Glass Tank gallery, Oxford Brookes University in 2017. An overview of the project can be found on the exhibition blog https://beyondsurfaceblog.wordpress.com/about/ and a tour of the exhibition can be found here: https://youtu.be/tZeUkezNCDA

In the Spring of 2018 six artist teachers collaboratively exhibited at Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot. Their exhibition Visual Conversations formed part of the assessment for the module Action Research (EDUC7008). The students documented the exhibition from installation to private view via a bespoke Instagram account @visual_conversations_exhibit, and the exhibition is summarised here: https://www.cornerstone-arts.org/gallery/oxford-brookes-university-visual-conversations

Presenting research at a course Student Research Conference

Students studying the Post-Compulsory PGCE present their research at the Student Research Conference in June, organised by course leader Clare Fenwick.

Presenting research at a reception and poster showcase

Students taking the Advanced Legal Research Methods (LAW7040) module in the LLM Master of Laws postgraduate degree present research at a reception and through a poster showcase, communicating their learning to the undergraduate and postgraduate Law students, teaching teams and guests.

Here are just a few of the HSS students who have presented their research at conferences through this project while studying at Oxford Brookes University.

Copy of Szczupider.pdf

Monica Szczupider studies Primate Conservation in the Department of Social Sciences. She presented her research 'One Nest, One Ape? Counting Nests to Monitor Great Ape Population Trends' at the GetPublished! Oxford Brookes University poster conference 2019 and won the prize for 'Highly Commended' Postgraduate Taught Poster.

Copy of Get published 2018 - Katharine Reardon.pdf

Katharine Reardon studied Geography in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. She presented her research 'Location, location, location: A comparative analysis of UK, Malaysian and Singaporean consumer views of palm oil' at the GetPublished! Oxford Brookes University poster conference 2018 and won the prize for 'Highly Commended' Undergraduate Poster.

HSS students have presented at National Conferences too:

Posters in Parliament (PIP)

  • Briony Farmer (2019) - Prefab: A Potential UK Housing Solution?

  • Max Jones (2018) - Barriers to, and Recommendations for, Sustainable Water Usage: The Case of the Malta Tourism Policy (2015-2020)

  • Hanna Rose (2018) - Why is there a gender imbalance in the number of engineering professionals and how could policies be implemented to resolve this?

  • Olena Zyelyentsova (2017) - What is the Role of the West in the Development of the Ukraine Crisis?


British Conference for Undergraduate Research (BCUR)

  • Alexandre Lopez (2019) - China in Africa: What are the implications of China's growing security role in Africa

  • Jason Perera (2019) - The Human Rights Act

  • Amy Pollard (2019) - Is Fanfiction Legitimate Literature?

  • Sarah Andree (2018)- Refusers and gratifications: The motives and practices of university students who do not participate on Facebook

  • Trang Dang (2018) - Deconstructing Anthropocentrism in Animal Literature

  • Louise Foulger (2017) - A study into how stakeholders value geodiversity within Malta’s coastal environment

  • Inigo Purcell (2017) - How Does John Taylor the Water-Poet Break the mould of 17th century poetry

  • Georgia Shortman (2017) - Women’s Gendered Experiences in the Wine Trade