Keele University Students’ Union’s Independent Advice Unit has received high praise in a recent Community Legal Service Quality Mark audit. 

The IAU has been offering a full range of advice services to Keele students for the last 17 years, including advice on housing, debt, immigration and academic and personal issues.   The Unit’s three trained advisors offer professional, free, independent advice that’s confidential and non-judgmental.    

The IAU is a member of the Community Legal Service, which awards the Quality Mark.  The Quality Mark itself ensures that organisations who provide legal services to members of the public have achieved quality assurance standards that assure the quality of information and advice provided. 

While the unit has held the full award for the past 7 years, the post-award monitoring audit highlighted its ‘very good strategic planning process’ and its exemplary documentation process.  The auditor said, “Congratulations to everyone involved in maintaining a high level of compliance…this is a credit to your organisation.”

A Keele University student is in the running to be crowned Miss Ghana UK at a gala pageant on Saturday (NOVEMBER 7).

Melissa Obosi

Melissa Obosi, who is studying for a master’s degree in International Relations, is among nine finalists in the competition, which aims to highlight Ghana’s rich heritage and bring together UK-based Ghanaians in a celebration of their culture.

The 22-year-old, who comes from North London, is a keen charity worker and plans to work with people in Ghana to raise awareness of the dangers of cancer if she is crowned the winner. Her ambition is to work on overseas development and humanitarian campaigns.

She said: “Miss Ghana UK is a prestigious role and the winner is seen as a role model for Ghanaians around the world. I am a little nervous and have been working hard to prepare for the pageant, but it will all be worth it on the night.

“Being an international relations student I have a keen interest in humanitarian campaigns and am keen to promote education, empowerment and self-reliance. I have lost a few people to cancer, but I have also seen people who have overcome it. That’s why I want to help people in Ghana learn that there are simple procedures that can save their lives.”

Two scientists from Keele University have contributed podcasts to an interactive look at the periodic table.

Professor Pat Bailey and Dr Katherine Haxton appear in Chemistry World’s Chemistry In Its Element series, in which a leading scientist or author takes a look at the story behind an element.

Professor Bailey compares Boron to a “boring, middle-aged accountant […] with an unexpected side to him in his spare time”, while Dr Haxton’s look at Platinum takes in blonde hair, expensive jewellery, a new generation of catalysts, anti cancer drugs and the Spanish conquistadors.

Professor Bailey, dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Keele University, said: “It was a challenge to write a three minute description of my chemical element in an unusual and engaging way, and good fun to have to deliver it in a recording studio – the closest most academics will get to recording a pop song, I guess!”

Chemistry World is the publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The interactive periodic table can be found at http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/podcast/element.asp

Keele University’s Faculty of Health has announced two key appointments.

Professor Gordon Ferns has been appointed to the combined post of Director of the Research Institute for Science and Technology in Medicine in Keele’s Faculty of Health and Director of R&D at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire and Professor Val Wass has been named as Head of the Keele University Medical School and Professor of Medical Education.

Professor Ferns was Dean of Medicine at the University of Surrey and Clinical Director of the NIHR Surrey & Sussex Comprehensive Local Research Network. Professor Ferns qualified in Medicine from St Barts, University of London then undertook specialty training in Chemical Pathology at the hospital where he worked on the molecular genetics of diabetes and atherosclerosis supported by a Wellcome Clinical Fellowship. Following his MD, Professor Ferns spent three years in Seattle, Washington as American Heart Association-British Heart Foundation Fellow developing models of accelerated atherosclerosis. He returned to the UK in 1991 to the post of Senior Scientist in the William Harvey Research Institute. He was appointed to a Senior Lectureship in Chemical Pathology at the University of Leicester (1993-1995), before his appointment to the Chair of Metabolic and Molecular Medicine at the University of Surrey where he has been for the past 14 years. In 2007 he was appointed Dean of Medicine at the University and Clinical Director of the NIHR Surrey & Sussex Comprehensive Local Research Network.

Professor Wass graduated from Guys, University of London then worked at the hospital for ten years in Paediatrics and Nephrology before an interest in holistic patient care led her to train in Primary Care. She practiced for 11 years as a GP in Kent before moving back into academic medicine at Guy’s, Kings and St Thomas’s Medical School as a Senior Lecturer in Primary Care. In 2003 she was appointed as Professor of Community Based Medical Education at Manchester Medical School and is currently responsible for the community programme and for leading academic and international development of the course.

Students from Keele and Staffordshire Universities are working with local organisation LOVEstoke to make a difference for people in need across North Staffordshire as part of CSV Make a Difference Day, the UK’s single biggest day of volunteering.

Student volunteers will be at the LOVEstoke When… distribution centre in Fenton on Saturday (October 31) to sort items that have been donated from companies such as Ethel Austin. Once sorted these items are distributed to people in need across the City such as single parents, children’s centres and women’s refuges.

Keele and Staffordshire University students regularly give up their time to volunteer with a variety of organisations in Stoke and across Staffordshire, while LOVEstoke works with people and projects across the City to improve communities.

The CSV (Community Service Volunteers) Make a Difference campaign encourages and celebrates people who take action to make their community a better place. Together with LOVEstoke, Keele and Staffordshire University students are only too glad to take part in community action that ensures Stoke is a great place to live, work and play.

Becky Wardell, of VE@Keele, Keele’s volunteering society, said: “Our volunteers are really passionate about helping others.  It’s often the small volunteering projects which can make a real difference and a big contribution to improving our whole community.  That is why we are supporting LoveStoke at the When… distribution centre, because it’s something that anyone can be involved in and it benefits local people in the community.”

Keele’s new School of Pharmacy building was officially opened yesterday (Tues) by Professor Sir Alasdair Breckenridge CBE with a ceremony attended by over 200 invited guests, students past and present, and university staff.

The Hornbeam Building has been completely transformed in a £2.2 million project which has seen the original main entrance being demolished and rebuilt together with raising of the existing staircase up another floor to improve fire safety; creation of new cellular and open plan office space and creation of additional seminar rooms on the ground floor and upgrades to the existing lecture theatres. Externally extensive landscaping, new cycle shelters and bench seating areas have also been provided.

Head of the School Professor Stephen Chapman said: “The School’s heritage, embedded in medicines management, has allowed us to develop a close partnership with the NHS, providing advice on pharmacy and prescribing to Primary Care Trusts in the West Midlands. This experience uniquely contributes to learning the modern roles of future pharmacists.”

As Mark Brennan (Director of Undergraduate Studies) explained, “patients are at the centre of everything we do” in the undergraduate course. Patients are involved throughout, from “real” local patients who come to the School, to the “Virtual Patient”, an award winning computer based learning format, which responds to questions and advice from the student before giving feedback on the consultation. This innovative programme recently helped the University to secure a £750,000 grant to create a “cave” futuristic teaching environment in the new School of Pharmacy building. “The cave can be transformed into a pharmacy or doctor’s surgery”, said School IT Director Luke Bracegirdle.

Keele’s postgraduate pharmacy programmes have been at the forefront of professional developments for over 15 years, and the latest is in Advanced Practice Development. This, explained Dr Patricia Black, Director of Postgraduate Studies, “is the first of its type in the country and prepares qualified pharmacists to take on new advanced roles in health care, linking practice skills with an academic framework”. The audience also heard about the thriving researchers in the School, working on topics ranging from treatments for ovarian cancer to the quality and safety of prescribing by pharmacists and nurses.

Integrating the practice and science of pharmacy seamlessly, with both research and current practice informing the undergraduate programme, the School is well positioned to face the future.

Professor Sir Alasdair said: “I would like to thank Keele for giving me the opportunity to open this magnificent building.”

To mark the occasion the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Janet Finch, presented Professor Breckenridge with a 1746 edition of Pharmacopoeia Collegi Regalis Medicorum Londinensis.

Policymakers are relying too heavily on predictions of the impacts of climate change, a new study says.

As a result, they are claiming they need more research and more predictions before they can take action – and when policies are made, too little action follows.

Research by Dr Mark Charlesworth of Keele University and Dr Chuks Okereke of the Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment also warns that decision-makers are assuming impacts will take effect gradually without sufficient evidence.

The study, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, urges governments and others to rely less on cost-benefit analyses in determining policies because they may not be appropriate.

Dr Charlesworth said: “Our research sets the scene for more effective climate and environmental policy as it demonstrates that the near universal promotion of consumerism by national governments promotes a specific, unsustainable and probably undemocratic vision of what a ‘good life’ should be. In a situation of unpredictable abrupt climate change, doing what we know is in the global common good makes more sense than consuming as if there were no consequences.”

ENDS

The journal reference is: Charlesworth, M, Okereke, C, Policy responses to rapid climate change: An epistemological critique of dominant approaches. Global Environmental Change (2009), doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.09.001

Oxford’s Smith School has prepared a podcast about the research which can be accessed via the following link: http://oxforddigital.tv/mp3/podcast.html

Keele University’s School of Life Sciences has been awarded the prestigious silver Athena SWAN award for excellence in recruiting and progressing women in science, engineering and technology (SET).

The awards recognise university schools that look to attract and promote women in SET careers. Universities subscribing to the Athena Swan Charter – supported by the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology and the Equality Challenge Unit – are eligible for the SWAN awards, which assess UK universities in their role as science employers.

Dr Anne Loweth, Head of the School of Life Sciences, said: “The School put an enormous amount of work into this application, which has been recognised by a silver award. “

The judges congratulated the School on “an impressive submission” and were pleased to see the efforts to attract female students, including those from non-traditional backgrounds, by the use of female role models.

Professor Karen Hunt, History at Keele University, will give the latest lecture in the University’s programme of Inaugural Lectures for 2009/2010, on Tuesday, 10 November. The title of the lecture is “Telling the many stories of Dora Montefiore (1851-1933): history and lifewriting”.

This lecture explores some of the issues that face the historian-biographer: not only how historical understanding can be enhanced through biography but also how the insights of the historian expand the possibilities of lifewriting. The curious relationship between history and lifewriting will be explored by examining one life, that of Dora Montefiore, and how we might tell the many stories of her life.

Who was Dora Montefiore? In many ways she was an extraordinary woman. She was an early political woman – a socialist, a suffragist and a communist. Yet she did not begin her political journey until she was forty and seemed to become more radical as she aged – imprisoned in Holloway as a suffragette in her fifties and ‘on the run’ as a communist in her seventies. For her politics came to mean joining, forming and sustaining organisations; attending conferences in Britain and abroad; public speaking on street corners and meeting halls; and journalism in progressive presses across the world. However, it was just as much about writing poetry and corresponding, travelling extensively and always networking. All was undertaken with considerable energy and optimism, despite often occupying a marginal position within the many movements she was devoted to: as a woman on the largely male Left and a socialist in the women’s movement. Yet she always persisted, insisting on her right to be heard, to question and to be ‘difficult’ even when there was a price to pay for such tenacity.

And yet, few remember Dora Montefiore. This lecture not only rescues her from relative obscurity but in considering how to tell the many stories of Dora Montefiore, raises broader questions for history and lifewriting.

Karen Hunt was appointed Professor of Modern British History at Keele University in 2006. She has published widely on the gendering of politics, including Equivocal Feminists: the Social Democratic Federation and the Woman Question (1996), based on her prize-winning PhD, and Socialist Women. Britain 1880s to 1920s (2002), with June Hannam. Her most recent work is on women’s activism around the politics of food in First World War Britain, on political tourism and on transnational networks of radicals across the British Empire. Many of these interests have emerged from her biographical work on Dora Montefiore. Fascination with Montefiore has prompted journeys into many historiographies (suffrage history, communist history, and the role of scandal in politics) as well as physical journeys following in Montefiore’s footsteps in Australia, South Africa and Scandinavia. Having written a range of essays making sense of aspects of her life, she is now working on a full-scale biography of Montefiore. Since arriving at Keele she has set up a successful interdisciplinary seminar series on Reading and Writing Lives which draws together scholars from within and outside Keele.

Professor Hunt studied Politics at the University of Kent, followed by an MA and PhD at Manchester University. After working to promote educational opportunities for women in Manchester, she became a WEA tutor-organiser for Women’s Education, before being appointed Senior Lecturer in Economic History at Manchester Metropolitan University. At MMU she was one of the founders of the Women’s Studies programme. Over many years she has worked to promote women’s history: locally through Manchester Women’s History Group; nationally through the Women’s History Network; and internationally as a board member of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History.

Keele’s programme of Inaugural Lectures are given by newly established professors within the University and aim to give an illuminating account of the speaker’s own subject specialism. The lectures, which start at 6 pm in the Westminster Theatre, are chaired by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Janet Finch. Admission is free; no ticket is required.

The other lectures in the series are:

Tuesday, 8 December 2009, Professor David Hoole, Biology, “From fish to chips: understanding fish diseases”; Tuesday, 16 February 2010, Professor David Maxwell, History, “Researching the Luba Soul: The Production of Colonial Knowledge in Belgian Congo”; Tuesday, 30 March 2010, Professor Coel Hellier, Astrophysics, “Discovering new planets”; Wednesday, 12 May 2010 Professor David Shepherd, “The Theory of Culture and the Culture of Theory”.

A Keele University psychologist will discuss his research into swearing as a response to pain at a public lecture next month.

Dr Richard Stephens and his colleagues John Atkins and Andrew Kingston found that swearing can increase pain tolerance. Sixty-four undergraduate volunteers were asked to submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice; they were then asked to repeat the experiment, this time using a more commonplace word that they would use to describe a table.

The researchers found that the volunteers were able to keep their hands submerged in the ice water for a longer period of time when repeating the swear word, establishing a link between swearing and an increase in pain tolerance.

The research, published in the journal Neuroreport, generated international media attention and was covered in major outlets worldwide including: CBS television news, ABC television, CNN, New York Times, Scientific American, and Time Magazine. Dr Stephens gave live radio interviews across the world including BBC Radio 4’s The Today Programme. The paper remains the most viewed and most e-mailed article on the NeuroReport website.

Dr Stephens said: “Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon. It taps into emotional brain centres and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain. Our research shows one potential reason why swearing developed and why it persists.”

This event is part of a series of public lectures is organised by the School of Psychology to increase public understanding of the relevance of psychology in the modern world.

The lecture will take place at 4.30pm on Wednesday, November 11, in Lecture Theatre 1 (DH0.21) in the Dorothy Hodgkin Building at Keele University. There will be a reception after the lecture. Admission is free.

For further information please contact 01782 733736 or psyenquiries@psy.keele.ac.uk