Alasdair Jones to speak at the RCA
Alasdair Jones will be speaking at the final conference of the EU Marie Curie research project ‘TRADERS: Training Art and Design Researchers for Participation in Public Space.’ The conference – entitled MEDIATIONS: Art & Design Agency and Participation in Public Space – will be taking place at the Royal College of Art, London (21-22 November 2016). At the conference Alasdair will be speaking about the curation of public space on London’s South Bank. If you are interested in attending the conference you can register for it here. October 2016.
Alasdair Jones to speak at UC Berkeley Symposium
Assistant Professor Alasdair Jones is to speak at an upcoming UC Berkeley Symposium, Innovations in Ethnographic Methodology, on Friday 4 March 2016.
Alasdair will deliver a talk titled Revisiting Bott to Connect the Dots: Using Participant Observation as a Means to Collect Data Amenable to Social Network Analysis. Details about the event can be found on the UC Berkeley CER website and the event Facebook page.
If voting were mandatory, the U.S. would shift to the left. Discuss.
This article by Dr Dominik Hangartner appeared in The Washington Post. 10 December 2015.
Dr Flora Cornish speaks at keynote debate
Dr Flora Cornish, Department of Methodology, spoke in a keynote debate on measurement at the Development Studies Association of Ireland annual conference in Dublin on Thursday 19 November. She argued that the evidence paradigm is producing misuses of social scientific research in the service of policy and donor interests, drawing on her recent paper on systematic reviews, published in Anthropology & Medicine. November 2015.
The power of the passport - Should governments make it easier for migrants to take up citizenship? There are tangible benefits, says Dr Dominik Hangartner of the Department of Methodology, whose research finds that naturalisation acts as a catalyst for social and political integration.
In September 2015, the European Union (EU) agreed a quota system to distribute the 120,000 refugees currently located in Italy, Greece and Hungary; with large numbers of refugees continuing to cross the Mediterranean from Africa and the Middle East in search of a new life, mass migration looks set to be one of the defining issues of European politics this decade. But how can governments support their new residents to assimilate quickly? A new study by Dr Dominik Hangartner suggests that citizenship might be the answer, finding that naturalisation increases integration, thereby offering a route for policymakers to strengthen migrants’ social and political bonds with their adopted nations. Read more... November 2015.
Department of Methodology researcher awarded Philip Leverhulme prize
Dr Dominik Hangartner has been awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2015. The £100,000 prize, awarded to outstanding young scholars of high potential, is to be spent on activities to promote the winners’ future research.
Dominik said: "I feel very humbled and privileged to have been awarded this prize and to join past and present recipients who I have long admired and respected. The very generous prize sum will catalyse my recent research projects focusing on the effects of asylum policies on long-term integration of refugees.” Read more... November 2015.
LSE Methodology paper published in 20th Anniversary Special Issue of 'Evaluation'
The Department of Methodology's Alasdair Jones has had a paper published in the 20th Anniversary Special Issue of the journal 'Evaluation: The International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice.' Please see the Thinking Methods blog post for further details. October 2015.
Communicating Chronic Pain in the media
Jen Tarr spoke about the Communicating Chronic Pain project in the BBC Radio 4 programme The Problem of Pain - A Slow Motion Catastrophe. In the broadcast of 15 July 2015, she offers insight into the importance of community on pain management. Available to listen here. July 2015.
Department of Methodology research in the news
Can text mining help handle the data deluge in public policy analysis?
Governments are lagging behind when it comes to exploiting the advantages of text mining to handle and analyze the large quantities of text that result from large-scale e-consultations. In their paper “Coping with the Cornucopia: Can Text Mining Help Handle the Data Deluge in Public Policy Analysis?” Aude Bicquelet (LSE Methodology) and Albert Weale (UCL) analyze a public consultation on end-of-life medicines to evaluate the benefits of text mining for the analysis of online public consultations, weighing the benefits of increased automation against the potential risks.
Department of Methodology research in the news
Is diversity good or bad for community cohesion?
The effect of ethnic diversity on communities has become a hot topic. Many academics and policy makers believe that ethnically diverse communities are characterised by distrust and low levels of social cohesion, while numerous studies show an apparent negative link between the ethnic diversity of local communities and the extent to which residents express trust in, and a sense of cohesion with, one another. A new article 'Ethnic diversity, segregation and the social cohesion of neighbourhoods in London' by Patrick Sturgis (NCRM, Univ. Southampton), Ian Brunton-Smith (University of Surrey), Jouni Kuha (LSE) and Jonathan Jackson (LSE), published in Ethnic and Racial Studies journal, shows a different and more complex picture.