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James Derounian
James Derounian is a key team member of the University of Gloucestershire’s HEA/National Teaching Fellowship funded projects: Learner Empowerment through Active Public-Student Engagement (LEAPSE). LEAPSE is a £198,000 project that seeks to understand and promote examples of student learning in community settings, student volunteering, and public engagement for example related to pursuit of sustainability. In the process we are auditing relevant activity within and without the university. We are also commissioning students to film, photograph, record, podcast and write news stories to clearly convey the range, diversity and enjoyment of student learning in community settings.
By end July 2011 we will draw this together and stage an International Showcase. The project evaluates existing models of public engagement to build capacity in both Universities and communities to gain greater benefit for both. Graduate employment is a tough area just now and there is evidence that students derive benefits when their programmes include opportunities for authentic engagement with real-world problems. LEAPSE also fits with the UK Government’s plans to build the BigSociety and promote localis. We are working closely with the National Coordination Centre for Public Engagement to ensure transferability of project outcomes and to promote outputs from the project such as reports, resources and guides.
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Lidia Ochoa Canigueral
Lidia’s research is a formative evaluation of a community project on science education and education for sustainable development in Girona, Spain. It is entitled ‘Girona, seed city for science’ and aims to stimulate and support science teaching and learning in primary schools by promoting hands-on and inquiry-based science education. The project involves present and future teachers in a sustainable framework for science education through a child-centered approach starting in school and extending to the whole city.
The study will identify what barriers and dilemmas teachers must overcome to introduce experimental and inquiry-based activities in their lessons. It will also explore what teacher competences should be developed in order to promote this change of pedagogy as a means of fostering education for sustainable development.
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Mona Zoghbi
Mona's research focuses on the human dimensions of climate change. In particular, her research explores university students engagement with climate change and well-being. She is conducting her study in the Netherlands and South Africa which will also explore the implications of this research for national and international policy-makers.
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Sandrina Pereira
Sandrina Pereira is a PhD Student researching knowledge transfer among Forest Landowner Organisations in small-scale private forests. Her research focusing on North western Portugal and the Galician region of the Iberian Peninsula, investigates and analyses the role of Forest Landowner Organisations (FLO) as key intermediaries in the process of knowledge transfer between scientific forestry research and forest management practitioners.
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Janet Rose
Janet Rose has a particular interest in researching sustainability within early years education. Given that many of the most fundamental values of tomorrow’s society are being formed in early childhood contexts today, her research focuses attention on ways in which early years practice promotes Education for Sustainable Development. She is currently involved in a PRSI funded project that is exploring sustainable learning environments drawing on the experiences of practitioners in Sweden and is contributing to a book on Schooling for Sustainable Development which is a European collaborative venture. She is also participating in the Marie Curie Research Project based at IRIS.
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Glenn Strachan
Glenn Strachan has carried out research in education for sustainability in schools, further education and higher education. In his role as Senior Research Fellow at IRIS he is conducting research into the influence of the Health4Schools Futures project as a means of implementing sustainability in schools. The Health4Schools Futures project is supported by Kraft, GCC and the Gloucestershire NHS Trust and currently involves around 30 schools in Gloucestershire. The research will investigate changes towards sustainability in curriculum, management practices and ethos within the schools in line with the DCSF Sustainable Schools Framework.
Glenn is also involved in research which seeks to understand the influence of the sustainable design of education buildings on institutional change towards sustainability in schools colleges and universities. He is investigating how education buildings can be a pedagogical resource for teaching and learning and also a management resource for leaders in institutions wishing to bring about change for sustainability. He has presented his initial findings at the Greening of the Campus biennial conference in Indianapolis in 2009 and he is on the organising committee for a national seminar series on “School Design Futures”. |
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Martin Bennett
Martin Bennett is a chartered accountant researching into the potential for links between accounting and sustainability in business. In partnership with a German university he is currently engaged in a research project for the ICAEW to study the development of sustainability-related information flows in a selected sample of companies in the UK and Germany and the potential role of accountants in supporting this.
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Janet Dwyer
Janet is working on major EC-funded research programme called 'RuDI', or Rural Development Impacts, which began in 2008. The study involves ten research institutes across the EU and investigates the effectiveness of current Rural Development Programmes (RDPs) in promoting sustainable economic, environmental and social development in the rural areas of Europe across 27 EU Member States.
The approach seeks to unravel the policy design, implementation and follow-up processes in each case and then to use these insights to help us to understand more fully how these facets influence performance. The final study report will contain recommendations for how these goals can be more effectively achieved, in the new policy and programmes that will govern the 2013-2020 period. More information and outputs from the study can be found on www.rudi-europe.net
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Adam Hart
Dr Adam Hart is a biologist with a wide range of research interests, but primarily he is an entomologist. A Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and associate editor of the journal Ecological Entomology, he is also the Scientific Director of the Global Bee Project, a new bee conservation initiative based in Stroud. Adam's current entomology focus is on honeybees and the lesser known solitary bees. Adam and the Global Bee Project are installing solitary bee houses on University campuses and schools (the latter in a project funded by the Royal Society) both to increase bee populations and to provide a resource for Adam's planned research into these insects. Adam, together with the Global Bee Project, is running a Royal Society funded project to develop and test the perfect solitary bee house as part of a conservation programme for these important pollinators. Students from Stroud High School's science club will be carrying out much of the research.
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Brodie McAllister
Brodie McAllister leads the EcoMinds research grant bid which funds research into a live project that uses landscape and art to explore certain aspects of mental health. This is connected to sustainability in that it deals with the social interaction with environment as well as mental conceptions of the world.
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Frank Chambers
Frank Chambers is Head of the Centre for Environmental Change and Quaternary Research. He has published extensively on the magnitude, rate and direction of climatic change, especially the generation and interpretation of ‘proxy’-records of past climate from mires; the nature of vegetation history, as reconstructed from mire and lake-sediment archives; and assessment of human impact on the landscape, including implications for landscape conservation. He is an Associate Editor of two international journals: Biodiversity and Conservation, and The Holocene. Frank also has an interest in public-policy responses to climate change, currently focussing on innovative zero-carbon light-rail transport for medium-sized cities and towns, to reduce overall carbon emisssions and to combat transport congestion.
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Arran Stibbe
Arran Stibbe has published widely in the area of ecolingusitics, with a particular focus on communication strategies for sustainability. His research analyses discourses such as those of consumerism and intensive farming industries which potentially contribute to ecologically damaging practices, and searches for alternative discourses which can encourage more sustainable practices. He also has research interests in the application of human ecology frameworks to Education for Sustainability
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Russell Goodwin
Russell Goodwin's research involves a longitudinal study into the attitudes, values and aspirations of undergraduate students, investigating if and how these are affected during their time at the University of Gloucestershire. Drawing on the University's sustainability vision of ‘shifting mindsets’ as well as ‘changing unsustainable practice', the study hopes to develop a greater understanding of the factors of the HE experience most likely to influence the adoption of sustainable behaviours and actions. The research forms part of the work supported by the University's Centre for Active Learning (CeAL).
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Ingrid Mula
Ingrid's research looks into how and where social learning for sustainability takes place within higher education. She is developing indicators which can assist in identifying the extent to which learning for sustainability occurs outside of the formal curriculum in Universities. Ingrid is in the earlier stages of her thesis and is exploring narrative approaches to ESD research. |
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Chris Short
Chris is currently conducting research for the Welsh Assembly Government’s Department of Rural Affairs (DRA) that will contribute to the evidence base required for the full-scale review of all the agri-environment schemes (AES) that is currently being undertaken in Wales. In particular it will help DRA to develop a greater understanding what motivates farmers to join and leave AES, thus assisting in the promoting and targeting of new and continuing schemes.
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Professor Lindsey McEwen
Professor Lindsey McEwen is leading a new project that integrates sustainability science with public engagement. The project is focused in the River Lugg catchment, Herefordshire, part of the River Wye SSSI/European Special Area of Conservation (SAC), The research will help plan remedial activity that will improve the sedimentation issues in the catchment, promote sustainable farming practices among farmers and to raise wider community awareness of the agri-environment issues. The project has secured £100K from Environment Agency Wales, Ove Arup, Bulmer Foundation and Natural England |
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