Bradley Allsop, Postgraduate Research Student, School of Social & Political Science

Youth political engagement with traditional political institutions has been in decline in the UK for a number years, with a potential buck in this trend witnessed in more recent years. This presentation seeks to provide a framework for studying how macro-economic and other public policy can lead to changes in the political engagement of citizens, with a specific focus on neoliberalism. A clear working definition of neoliberalism (often a vague and contentious term) is given, and then a number of policy impacts pertinent to political engagement (and particularly affecting young people) are explored: marketisation; responsibilisation narratives; increased inequality; the changing character of the state through privatisation and deregulation; the tendency toward ‘expert rule’; and labour repression.

Underpinning these impacts, it will be argued, are declines in political efficacy and increasing individualism – primary research by the researcher (in the form of online surveys with young people in the UK) that assesses the relationship between these factors and types of political engagement will then be presented.

Impact of the Companion During Stressful Situations

Claire Ricci-Bonot, Postgraduate Research Student, School of Life Sciences

Reasons for study: Social buffering is the capacity of a conspecific to reduce the stress of another in a variety of ways. The horse as a highly social species that is often kept in isolation, is a good model for researching social buffering effects.

Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the impact of a horse companion on the reaction and recovery time of horses to an unusual event (opening of umbrella, or appearance of a large ball). In addition, we wanted to see if the personality of the horse or its relationship with the potential buffer had an effect on this.

Methods: 32 ponies (16 subjects and 16 companions) living 2 or 3 per stable were used. Each subject performed 4 tests: Novel Stimulus Test (ball) - alone and with companion; Sudden Stimulus Test (umbrella) - alone and with companion. Physiological parameters (heart rate, heart rate variability, surface temperature measured using thermography) and behavioural parameters (reactivity score, locomotor activity) were recorded. A questionnaire was used to assess the personality of the subjects and the relationship between individuals evaluated from behavioural observations in their stable.Results: First results indicate the companion reduces the response (reactivity) in the novel stimuli test but not in the sudden stimuli test. The effect of personality and the relationship is still being analysed.

Conclusions and potential relevance: The effect of the companion depends on the nature of the stressor. Future work will seek to better understand the role and the action of the companion as a social buffer.

Physical Activity Following Pulmonary Rehabilitation in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

Hayley Robinson, Postgraduate Research Student, School of Health & Social Care 

Background: Evidence suggests that physical activity is not maintained following pulmonary rehabilitation for individuals with COPD. Peer social support, feedback about physical progression and recognition of opportunities to stay active following pulmonary rehabilitation have been identified as facilitators to physical activity following pulmonary rehabilitation. The aim of this study is to identify the acceptability of an intervention designed to promote physical activity following pulmonary rehabilitation for individuals with COPD.

Design/methods: This is a mixed-methods study including a feasibility cluster randomised controlled trial and a qualitative process evaluation. Clusters will be pulmonary rehabilitation programmes across Lincolnshire Community Health Services, NHS Trust (n=12), randomly allocated to the Intervention or Control. Following pulmonary rehabilitation, participants in the intervention group will be provided with pedometers and step diaries and added to a WhatsApp group with other graduates of pulmonary rehabilitation for 52 weeks. The control group will receive usual care after pulmonary rehabilitation. The primary outcome is the acceptability of the intervention. Secondary outcomes include: recruitment, consent and attrition rates and proposed clinical measures for a definitive trial (physical activity, sleep levels, functional capacity, psychological well-being and disease specific quality of life). Semi-structured telephone interviews with participants and focus groups with healthcare professionals will assess individuals’ experiences and views of the research procedures and intervention. Intervention fidelity will be assessed throughout the study.

Results/conclusions: The results from the feasibility study will inform the design of a definitive trial, including whether the specific intervention has the potential to promote physical activity.

Self Defence in Miranda July's 'First Bad Man' (As part of a wider interrogation of affect & performance in Twenty First Century texts)

Holly Parker, Postgraduate Research Student, School of English & Journalism

Focusing on Miranda July’s debut novel, ‘The First Bad Man’, this presentation will explore the protagonists’ use of self-defence role-play to achieve affective responses in the forms of pleasure, disgust, shame and emotional connection to her housemate. This presentation will argue that the protagonist, Cheryl, requires a sanctioned self-defence script and demarcated performance space to allow her to experience affective freedom, and explore to what end this phenomenon is occurring. The discussion of this text will feed into a broader interrogation of the use of affect and performance in twenty-first century film and television. Within these twenty-first century texts, non-professional performers are using methods of performance to achieve affective responses they are unable to in real-life. Does this phenomenon speak to difficulties in twenty-first century methods of communication and personal relationships? To what end are characters turning to performance to experience affective responses?

The Early Stages of the Researchers Journey: Ageing, exercise & cardiac rehabilitation from a sociological perspective

Joanna Blackwell, Postgraduate Research Student, School of Sport and Exercise Science

There is a plethora of strong evidence on the benefits of Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR) in reducing risk, improving quality of life and reducing mortality (Clark et al., 2005; Aragam et al., 2015), in addition CR is deemed safe with minimal harms noted (Clark et al., 2013). Despite this, uptake and adherence are poor globally (King et al., 2009; Bjarnason-Wehrens et al., 2010; Lu et al., 2017).

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the most recent data indicate that only half of those who are eligible actually take part (BHF, 2017), whilst others fail to adhere and attend only a proportion of the sessions offered (Bjarnason-Wehrens et al., 2010). The contextualised and embodied responses to illness are complex and this may be one of reasons that there is a dearth of research looking at CR uptake and specifically from a socio-cultural perspective. This research will explore socio-cultural influences on uptake and adherence to the exercise element of a UK based Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR) programme.

The research will be explored using a Bourdieusian theoretical framework and utilise an ethnographic approach conducting participant observations and semi-structured interviews. As the researcher is a first year PhD student, this presentation will explore the early stages of the researchers’ journey, focusing on the topic choice, why it is important and timely, the gaps identified in the literature and the formulation of methodology and methods.

Improving flood risk assessment in the Trent, Witham, and Yorkshire Ouse rivers using documentary and floodplain sedimentary archives

Josephine Westlake: Postgraduate Research Student, School of Geography

Flooding is the costliest and most damaging natural hazard in the UK. Interest in predicting UK flood events continues to grow following an increase in both frequency and magnitude over the last 20 years. However, current flood risk analysis methods based on statistical extrapolation of short (53-year average) gauged flow records are based on incomplete datasets and incorrect assumptions of stationarity.

Studies examining historical sources and sedimentary records confirm much larger floods occurred before modern flow measurements began in the 20th century and extreme events in the last 20 years are not ‘unprecedented’.
This study addresses these problems by reconstructing multi-centennial length flood histories and undertaking long term flood frequency analysis on three UK river systems: the Witham, Trent and Yorkshire Ouse. It will extend the flood series by incorporating historical and palaeoflood (sedimentary archive) data into a single flood series. It will include assessment of non-stationarity (statistical changes in the flood series) arising from variations in climate, land-use and channel capacity which is under researched within UK flood series.

Autism: The need for specialised training programs

Kathryn Gibbs, Postgraduate Research Student, School of Psychology

Following the recent focus on autism in the media, areas of public interest include; autistic children being excluded from public schools, the call for training for service providers on autism. However there is still a lack of knowledge about what autism actually is, with ideas from the 1950s still prevalent in healthcare services like the idea that autism arises from cold parents, or vaccines. There is a call for a line of communication between researchers with the most recent research information and those who will use the findings.

The aim of this research is to ask autistic people in universities what they think people need to know about autism, and to ask lecturers what they would like to know about autism and how to best help someone with it. From this a tailored training programme can be created and tested to help people better understand what autism is, what it isn't, and how to best help someone who is autistic.

Improving the Legal Framework for Administrative Decentralization in Vietnam  

The relationship of gender and leadership is observed not only in the sphere of education, but also in other occupations. Literature often sees cultures, organisations, and leadership as traditionally infused with concepts of gender that benefit mostly men. At the same time, women are marginalised directly or indirectly (Blackmore, 2010). Leadership and gender equity can be viewed from different perspectives, including social, cultural, and organisational factors. Furthermore, the factor of and gender is one of the key cultural dimensions considered in the Hofstede framework (Fuller, 2013). Research Aim and Objectives

• To identify the most prominent cultural barriers that women face in achieving leadership positions in higher education in Saudi Arabia;
• To identify the most prominent personal barriers that women face in achieving leadership positions in higher education in Saudi Arabia;
• To identify the most prominent organisational barriers that women face in achieving leadership positions in higher education in Saudi Arabia.
• To explore how women are able to enact their leadership role.

Research Methodology and Methods:
Methods: Mixed methods
Sample: Saudi Arabian university staff

Data collection:

•  Survey
•  Interviews

Data Analysis:

• Statistical analysis of survey data
• Thematic analysis of interview data

Literature gap:

• Current literature does not talk about the policies that help women overcome self imposed/ internal barriers to accession to leadership in Saudi Arabia.
• Despite being the primary sector of employment for Saudi women current literature does not talk enough about the cultural barriers that affect Saudi women’s accession to leadership in education sector.

Understanding sickness absence in the ambulance service

Methods: An independent measures, cross-sectional design was used. An opportunity sampling method was utilised to recruit full-time employees from an ambulance service in the United Kingdom. Data were analysed using a chi-squared test of association.

Results: A total of 95 participants completed an online questionnaire which consisted of clinical and management employees. Ages ranged from 24 to 62 years (M = 45.13, SD = 10.14 years). There was no association between sickness absence and job stress (X2 (1) = .014, p = .906), daily stress (X2 (1) = 2.44, p = .118), overtime hours (X2 (2) = 2.10, p = .349) or time in service (X2 (5) = 5.39, p = .370). Sickness absence was associated with the presence of a health condition (X2 (1) = 10.71, p = .001).

Conclusions: We found that sickness absence was associated with the presence of a health condition but not with other study variables. These findings question the role of job stress in sickness absence. However, this study cannot establish whether the pre-existing health conditions were a result of experiencing occupational stress which contributed to illness vulnerability or whether they were present prior to commencing their current job.

SPARC: An Innovation in Pre-Custody Care

Results from research using mixed methods indicated that people entering prison custody from Court have a high and diverse level of need across learning, language, physical health, mental health, and substance misuse. Men who had received the SPARC intervention displayed significantly higher levels of wellbeing than those who had not received the intervention. SPARC had an immediate and long term positive impact. SPARC is an effective, sustainable way in which the specific needs of prisoners entering prison custody are assessed and addressed. This lends itself to better engagement in sentence plans, improved functioning in prison, improved opportunity to address offending behaviour, and hopefully improved reintegration into the community.

Application and Synthesis of Alpha-keto Amides

Luke Williams, Postgraduate Research Student, School of Chemistry

Formation of alpha-keto amide compounds is of vital importance in organic chemistry. These unusual molecules are useful starting materials to form a wide range of useful compounds and pharmaceuticals. The applications are extremely diverse. In this talk, I will discuss my development of a new synthetic strategy to rapidly and selectively access these compounds from readily available aryl methyl ketone precursors in high yield as part of my PhD thesis.

Working class culture and AS Level education

Mary Brown, Postgraduate Research Student, School of Social & Political Science

There is a call to establish whether class culture still shapes life chances in young people’s education. Contemporary studies focus on a range of identities in underachievement, largely key stage three, GCSEs and H.E. My research aims to explore the role of working class culture, in failure to achieve at AS level, the stepping stone to H.E. 12 years of teaching AS level students has highlighted unequal outcomes, particularly challenging to succeed are those with working class cultural traits.

This comes in a contemporary context of increased competitiveness for young people, closely linked to neoliberal education reforms. The focus of my research is to explore the cultural characteristics of students, the extent to which this takes the form of working class resistance to formal academic expectations. Using an ethnographic framework similar to Paul Wills (1977), interviews and observation I have been talking to students about academic input, long term goals, use of time, leisure activities and family background, cultural attitudes and input into their education. This highlights social networks affecting identity and choices they make in education.

To explore this openly, my sample have a range of achievements against target grades at AS level. I use an open and semi-structured approach to questioning enabling natural responses. Working class cultural characteristics are evident as a part of a range of individualised responses. With all facing an increasingly competitive context in which to progress with AS levels and beyond, their attitudes to current studies takes the form in some cases, of resistance.

Effect of Biofilm on antibiotic susceptibility

May Omoigberale, Postgraduate Research Student, School of Life Sciences   

Clostridium perfringens is an anaerobic pathogenic bacterium that causes diseases in humans and animals. Antibiotic resistance has been linked to the ability of bacteria to grow in a biofilm; biofilm is a collection of microorganisms that attach to a surface and proliferate on that surface.

The aim of this study was to determine the biofilm forming ability of Clostridium perfringens and to compare the antibiotic susceptibility pattern of Clostridium perfringens growing in a biofilm and as planktonic or single cells. 55 isolates of Clostridium perfringens were tested for biofilm formation using the microtiter plate assay and antibiotic susceptibility testing was assessed using broth microdilution method. Results showed that all 55 tested C. perfringens isolates produced biofilm. 7(13%) showed strong biofilm formation, 31 (56%) produced moderate biofilm and 17(31%) were weak biofilm producers. Clostridium perfringens growing in biofilm showed higher tolerance to antibiotics than when growing as single cells.

The fold difference in minimum inhibitory concentration of tested antibiotics on Clostridium perfringens single and biofilm cells ranged between 2 and 128 for penicillin, 2 and 256 for bacitracin, 2 and 128 for gentamicin and 4 and 128 for tetracycline. This study showed that Clostridium perfringens have the potential of growing in biofilms and biofilm can reduce antibiotic susceptibility. To prevent and control biofilm related infections, there is the need for alternative therapeutic strategies.

Testing the effectiveness of cognitive training programme for women with high body concerns

Nadia Maalin, Postgraduate Research Student, School of Psychology

Body image (BI) can influence large parts of our livelihood including, mental health, emotional wellbeing, psychopathology, self-esteem and social interactions. This highlights the importance of developing interventions specifically targeting BI. Previous research has found that bodies can be judged in a categorical way e.g. attractive or unattractive; healthy or unhealthy.

It was found that these categorical judgements could be extended to judgements of body size i.e. ‘thin’ and ‘fat’. Based on these categorical judgements of body size, a cognitive training program was developed based on an existing face training program. This works by modifying the perception of ambiguous body sizes using inflationary feedback, based on the participants own categorical judgements. The program was found to modify categorical judgements for up to two weeks in a clinical and non-clinical sample and there were also improvements in psychological self-report measures.

The aim of this current research is to investigate the effectiveness of the cognitive training program in a sample of healthy females. The program is ran on 6 different sessions across a 30-day period. The training phase is ran on 4 consecutive days using a computer task. Psychological measures are taken on days 1, 4, 14 and 30 to assess the impact of the training on psychological concerns.
Preliminary analysis suggests that the program does modify categorical judgements and these changes last for up to 30 days. The development and impact of this intervention will be evaluated, and preliminary findings will be discussed.

Migration, aspiration and cleaning work

Nicola Chanamuto, Postgraduate Research Student, School of Social & Political Science

This presentation gives an overview of current doctoral research exploring the lived experiences of women migrants who clean in the city of Lincoln. In particular, the research questions the role that aspiration plays in women migrants’ decision to undertake cleaning work, and the potential cleaning work has for empowerment.
Globally, domestic work is a key employer of women, and migrants make up a significant proportion of domestic workers; this is increasing in the UK.

However, cleaning work, a unique and fascinating sector of the UK labour market, remains under-researched. In particular, little is known about migrants engaged in paid cleaning work in Lincoln, and this knowledge gap is of concern to practitioners and policy makers alike. This research aims to contribute to the wider body of knowledge surrounding gender, migration and work.
Through semi-structured interviews with migrant cleaners, the research aims to create space for women migrants’ voices to be heard. Taking a participatory approach, the study also involves working closely with local practitioners to ensure that the research achieves maximum impact in the local area.

This research aims to highlight the challenges faced by women migrants who clean, as well as the opportunities presented by this type of work. In doing so, it is hoped that policy interventions concerning migrant communities can be increasingly effective and even transformative. As data collection for the study is currently in progress, this presentation reflects on themes emerging from the analysis to date.

Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice as a means to improve PGR wellbeing and student experience

Rebecca Park, Postgraduate Research Student, School of Psychology

There is growing concern that PGR students are at significant risk of developing mental health disorders throughout the course of their studies (Levecque et al, 2017). Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice (MBSP, Niemiec, 2014) is an 8-week programme which integrates the practice of mindfulness with character strength education.

MBSP was offered to doctoral students as an opportunity to learn stress and problem management techniques, and improve both strengths use and mindfulness. 3 small groups of MBSP (N = 18) were run to explore the effect MBSP on PGR wellbeing in comparison to control participants (N = 12). All participants completed measures pre-intervention, post-intervention and 6-weeks post-intervention as well as giving qualitative programme feedback.

Quantitative results indicated significant improvements in strengths use, mindfulness and self-efficacy as well as promising trends in other outcome measures. Qualitative data indicated that MBSP participants benefitted from increases in strengths awareness, the positive experience of the group format and the positive impact of the programme on everyday life. This research demonstrates the positive impact of MBSP on PGR wellbeing and implications for a wider application of MBSP will be discussed.

A Systematic Literature Review of Sustainability within Alternative Food Networks

Rosario Michel-Villarreal, Postgraduate Research Student, Lincoln International Business School

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to individuals organising themselves and managing food systems in an ‘alternative’ way. Such emerging food initiatives are most commonly known as ‘Alternative food networks’ (AFNs) in academic literature. The phenomena have been linked to broader concepts such as locality, quality, spatiality, embeddedness and sustainability.

Farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture, box schemes, cooperatives, farm shops and other initiatives have been grouped under the AFNs umbrella. It has been suggested that the importance of these initiatives lies in the fact that we will not be able to meet our food sustainability challenges without them. However, there is an ongoing debate concerning the extent to which AFNs are able to facilitate social, economic and environmental change.

There are criticisms of the overall sustainability promise of AFNs related to sufficiency of impact, possible countereffects and relevance of impacts. Because often empirical studies only focus on specific sustainability issues or AFNs, it has been difficult to develop more robust theories about the relation between diverse AFNs arrangements and sustainability. This lack of clarity may limit the opportunities for constructive change that AFNs may facilitate. Thus, the aim of this paper is to contribute towards reducing this knowledge gap through a systematic literature review on AFNs. In this paper, we will aim to provide some clarification regarding the sustainability issues and AFNs arrangements reviewed within the AFNs literature. Lastly, the research designs adopted within empirical AFNs studies will also be reviewed.

Conclusions and potential relevance: The effect of the companion depends on the nature of the stressor. Future work will seek to better understand the role and the action of the companion as a social buffer.

Investigation of Subsurface Agricultural Field Drainage of Lincolnshire & Impact on Sediment Loading in Lincolnshire Watercourses