Bush House Research Articles

Minutes of the Annual Business Meeting of the Members of the Behavior Genetics Association. June 29, 2024, 11.50-13:00, Venue 'Bush House' London (United Kingdom).

Minutes of the Annual Business Meeting of the Members of the Behavior Genetics Association. June 29, 2024, 11.50-13:00, Venue 'Bush House' London (United Kingdom).

‘Digital Diasporas: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ AHRC Open World Research Initiative ‘Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community’ Fyvie Hall and Bush House (London), 6–7 June 2019

‘Digital Diasporas: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ AHRC Open World Research Initiative ‘Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community’ Fyvie Hall and Bush House (London), 6–7 June 2019

An introduction to communicating science

It is becoming increasingly recognised that students in Higher Education must acquire the skills necessary for professional and personal development, as well as for academic progress. The media have recently focused on the issue of declining public interest in the sciences and the lack of accurate reporting of science. We have developed a new programme, which endeavours to address both issues involving a three day intensive course covering writing, TV and radio. In addition to the targeted activities of learning the skills of science communication, the programme encourages partnerships, and exploits the resources and expertise available from various institutions. The undertaking of this type of programme is not limited to the acquisition of time slots in a studio such as Bush House. Most university campuses are now home to their own recording studios and even have television facilities. However, the programme requires only a video camera and audio recording equipment. The success of this science communication module and oftwo others run by MOAC and CBC (Team Development and Decision-making and Leadership) has encouraged us to develop a complete postgraduate certificate in transferable skills. We anticipate the certificate will be a valuable vehicle for consolidating and enhancing the training discussed in this article.

Infectious Canine Hepatitis in Free-Ranging Red Foxes (Vulpes vulpes)

INFECTIOUS CANINE HEPATITIS IN FREE-RANGING RED FOXES (VULPES VULPES) A.W. Philbey* and H. Thompsony *Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh, Easter Bush, Edinburgh and yMill House, Camis Eskan, Helensburgh, Scotland, UK Introduction: Infectious canine hepatitis (ICH), caused by canine adenovirus type 1 (CAV-1), has been reported mostly in dogs, farmed foxes and other captive carnivores. Initially called ‘epizootic fox encephalitis’, ICH was first identified in domesticated (‘tamed’) silver foxes, a colour variant of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes). ICH was diagnosed in a free-ranging grey fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) in Georgia, USA, in 2005. There is serological evidence of exposure to CAV-1 in free-ranging red foxes in North America, Germany, Australia and the UK, as well as in free-ranging grey foxes in North America. Materials and Methods: Sick free-ranging red foxes were presented to wildlife rehabilitation centres in the UK, where they died naturally. Tissues were submitted for virus isolation and histopathology. Results: ICH was diagnosed in three red foxes found depressed or collapsed in the wild. Grossly, the foxes were jaundiced and had congested livers with accentuation of the lobular pattern. Histologically, there was generalized necrosis and dissociation of hepatocytes, with intranuclear inclusion bodies in hepatocytes, renal glomeruli, proximal convoluted renal tubular epithelial cells and vascular endothelial cells. CAV-1 was isolated from all three foxes. Conclusions: Free-ranging red foxes are considered to be a reservoir of CAV-1 in the UK and are a potential source of infection for domestic dogs. HEALTH STATUS OF BROWN HARES (LEPUS EUROPAEUS) IN EASTERN AUSTRIA A. Posautz, A. K€ ubber-Heiss, F. Knauer, Z.S. Kelemen, F. Suchentrunk and C. Walzer Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria Introduction: The brown hare (Lepus europaeus) population has been declining throughout its range in the past decades. As the brown hare is on the national Red List in Austria, a thorough health screening project was conducted in eastern Austria in the years 2010 and 2011. Materials and Methods: A total of 188 hares underwent thorough pathological screening. Parasitological testing was performed in all hares, bacteriology and virology only on indication. As tularemia is endemic in eastern Austria, all hares were screened for Francisella tularensis. Serological screening for Treponema spp. was undertaken in 119 animals and for European brown hare syndrome (EBHS) in 49. Results: Parasites found were Trichostrongylus spp., Trichuris spp. and Eimeria spp. The infestation rate varied markedly. Three percent of the hares were culture positive for tularemia, 93% were seropositive for EBHS and 58% were seropositive for Treponema spp. Conclusions: The overall health status of the East Austrian brown hare population is good. The occurrence of tularemia is important regarding human health, but does not seem to play a major role in the general health status. The high seroprevalence for Treponema spp. and EBHS shows that the animals have contact with these entities, but seem to cope well. For EBHS this might in part be due to a less virulent strain. Generally, it can be stated that the decline cannot be blamed on diseases circling in this population.

Farewell My Lovely Bush House

Farewell My Lovely Bush House

Bush House in Images

Bush House in Images

Bush House In Words

Bush House In Words

Tea at Bush House

Tea at Bush House

Bush House In Words

Bush House In Words

Bush House

Bush House

Excerpt from The Party Wall

Annabel Dilke is a novelist, journalist and screenwriter who worked at Bush House as a scriptwriter (in the Central Talks and Features Department) from l972 until l986. She has published seven nove...

Bush House in Words

Bush House in Words

Letters to and from Bush House

Listener letters were the main source of information about responses to overseas programmes until formal audience research methods were put in place after World War Two. They arrived in their thous...

Bush House in Words

Bush House in Words

British Radical Screens Symposium, Bush House, Bristol, 3 September 2010

On 3 September 2010 the first ‘Radical British Screens’ symposium was held at Bush House in Bristol. The event was organised by Dr Estella Tincknell, Reader in Media and Cultural Studies, and Dr Charlotte Crofts, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and Video Production, both of the Film Studies Research Group at the University of the West of England, in collaboration with the Screen Studies South West network. The day focused on the diverse ways in which the term ‘radical’ has been deployed in film-making and television, how ‘radical’ has been interpreted within various media traditions, and how it has been adapted to the changing contexts of production and exhibition. Eleven papers were delivered by a mixture of film-makers, experienced academics and PhD researchers from the UK and overseas, reflecting a renewed interest in this area extending beyond the UK’s shores. A central theme focused on how the actual term ‘radical’ resonates in a variety of contexts, from contents and aesthetics to intentions and interventions. This diversity was reflected in the range of papers on offer. Some speakers asked what it means to be ‘radical’ and if this term can be used in considering mainstream products. Others considered whether feminist theory is inherently radical and how aesthetic experimentation can relate to politics. The symposium also considered the relationship between British audio-visual culture and the ‘radical’. Can a ‘radical tradition’ be said even to exist when ‘tradition’ implies continuity and ‘radical’ suggests rupture? How has this ‘radical tradition’, however problematic, impacted upon British film-making practices? And in what ways have institutions such as Channel 4 and the BBC had a role in developing this tradition, influencing subject matter and regulating what can be shown?

Transcultural journalism and the politics of translation: Interrogating the BBC World Service

When George Orwell worked for the BBC Eastern Services during the Second World War, he regarded it as ‘an organ of colonial discourse propagating the word and world view of the metropolitan centre to its peripheral subject people’ (Kerr, 2002: 473–90). Orwell’s misgivings about his own journalistic practice and the BBC Eastern Service’s suspected ideological functions may pose an enduring dilemma for some journalists, but many are delighted to endure the processes of recruitment, induction, training and enculturation into the BBC’s hegemonic, globally diffused brand of impartial journalism. This is called, with some self-irony, ‘being BBCed’ by journalists working in, or for, Bush House. The BBC’s overseas services (now the World Service) have long relied on an army of diasporic translators and ‘the right kind of voice’ to disseminate news across the globe. The long-standing reputation of the BBC World Service (BBCWS) among the world’s pre-eminent broadcasters and its credibility have depended on the largely undocumented and unexplored everyday transcultural encounters and translation practices that have taken place in the diasporic and cosmopolitan contact zones of Bush House. This special issue draws on a collaborative empirical research project on the BBC World Service to examine wider issues of the politics, ethics and practices of transcultural journalism and the politics of translation.

Ethnic entanglements: The BBC Tamil and Sinhala services amidst the civil war in Sri Lanka

The BBC has a major presence within the Sri Lankan media landscape and is a critical commentator on its long-standing ethnic conflict. In this article, the BBC’s two regional language services in Sri Lanka, BBC Tamil and BBC Sinhala, are examined. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in BBC Tamil and Sinhala Services at Bush House in London, and archival research at the BBC’s Written Archives Centre (WAC) in Caversham, UK, the article suggests that the BBC, far from being a global dispassionate observer, is imbricated in Sri Lanka’s fractured ethnic landscape. It argues that the two services became both ethnicized and also ethnicizing ‘love objects’. The two audiences, and the exchange of confidences between diasporic journalists and audiences, are analysed as constituting separate ‘knowable communities’, in Raymond Williams’ terms. Through an analysis of a mutual mirroring — or the ways in which BBC journalists imagine Sri Lanka, and how Sri Lanka’s ethnically segmented audiences imagine the BBC — I explore how the BBC World Service both mediates and is structured by local cultural and ethnic identities.

Audience research at the BBC External Services during the Cold War: A view from the inside

The author worked in BBC External Services/World Service during the last three decades of the Cold War, latterly as Head of Audience Research. In the article he outlines the difficulties and the solutions to obtaining reliable information about audiences in communist parts of Europe during that period and in the previous years before he was responsible. He shows how the internal political outlook and atmosphere at Bush House coloured the approaches that were taken. He shows how audience research for all the BBC's external broadcasting was developed from the early days and what was done after the Second World War when Soviet control over large areas of Central and Eastern Europe effectively closed many target area countries to any internal research. There was heavy reliance on anecdotal evidence, the few listeners' letters that were received and interviews with refugees leaving communist countries. But then new methods were developed, principally by the US government funded broadcasters, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe. They developed an extensive approach which contacted travellers from communist countries when they were travelling outside the communist areas and these produced a wealth of information about listening to western broadcasters. There was close cooperation between the audience research department at the BBC and the respective departments at RL and RFE. When the Berlin Wall came down and communist rule ended in all of Europe, research inside the country became possible. Some was actually possible and conducted even earlier in Poland and Yugoslavia. The surveys in country at the end of communism showed that earlier estimates based on interviewing travellers had been remarkably accurate.

Tuning In: Diasporas at the BBC World Service

This article looks at diaspora through the transformations of an established public service broadcaster, the BBC World Service in a fast changing landscape of global broadcasting, by considering some of the findings of the AHRC-funded Tuning In: Contact Zones at the BBC World Service, which is part of the Diasporas, Migration and Identities program. Tuning In has six themes, each of which focuses upon the role of the BBC WS: The Politics of Translation, Diasporic Nationhood, Religious Transnationalism, Sport across Diasporas, Migrating Music and Drama for Development

Bangladesh, 1971, and the BBC South Asian language services: perceptions of a conflict

This article examines how broadcasters in the BBC South Asian language services recall and interpret the reporting of the events that led to the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent state in 1971 by the BBC’s Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and English services. It is based primarily on oral testimonies recorded at a ‘witness seminar’ which reunited 15 former BBC colleagues and associates from that time, as well as further interviews with individuals who witnessed the events directly. The witness seminar provided the framework for the participants to reflect individually and collectively on the challenges they faced in reporting the events of 1971; on how Bush House operated as an institution, its technologies, its hierarchies and the relationships between diasporic South Asian colleagues and their peers at Bush House; and on their perceptions of their audiences. The article seeks to illuminate the transnational and transcultural relationships that have been a distinctive feature of the BBC World Service (BBCWS). It argues that relations between the broadcasters from the different language services, who came from both wings of Pakistan and from India and Britain, were at times very tense but professional ethics, especially about the primary significance accorded to standards of impartiality, took priority over personal or political sympathies. The witness seminar testimonies differed in significant respects but converged on how a remarkable spirit of cosmopolitan collegiality reigned despite the often intense personal pressures that broadcasters faced.