De Montfort University Research Articles

Artificial intelligence: how have Learning Developers engaged?

The ALDinHE Artificial Intelligence (AI) Community of Practice (CoP) was established in the summer of 2023. It has an international membership of over 200 Learning Developers. The CoP meets monthly to discuss an AI-related topic. Since its inception, topics have included organisational approaches to AI, AI in assessment, maths and statistics, and the use of AI in Learning Development tutorials. The group is keen to create an opportunity to share current projects, approaches, and thinking. This wildcard session replicated a world café-style event on a smaller scale. It required a large room. Tables were hosted by colleagues from Abertay University, Bournemouth University, De Montfort University, the University of Manchester, the University of Northampton, and Spurgeon’s College. Each host led a 15-minute session, sharing their AI-related project with delegates seated around the table, which included a short presentation followed by an opportunity for delegates to share their views and exchange ideas. After 15 minutes, the delegates moved to another table. Within the hour, the delegates rotated around three tables. It was hoped that delegates would attend the session to expand their understanding of AI. Delegates who use AI in their day-to-day work had an opportunity to share their experiences, while delegates who were less experienced could expand their understanding and discuss with their peers the challenges and opportunities that AI brings to Learning Development.

Ensuring Student Mental Wellbeing whilst introducing Block Mode Intensive Learning and Teaching

As De Montfort University, a UK-based University, introduced block delivery across the undergraduate portfolio the University sought to maintain a continued focus on, and commitment to, an institution-wide approach to embedding mental wellbeing. With mental wellbeing relevant to the whole university community and recognising the power of transformational change to impact wellbeing, the university cross-examined student feedback to understand and ensure mental wellbeing. An intensive block model was introduced at De Montfort University (DMU) from the start of the academic session 2022-23. Undergraduate student experiences and learning from the initial months, focused on those in the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Media, are presented alongside an examination of the methods and impact of embedding mental wellbeing in this new intensive mode; ensuring the continued institutional approach to embedding mental wellbeing in the curriculum, providing inclusive support for all learners. The learning and impact identified from initial experiences indicate areas of strength and areas for development, enhancement and growth. This article presents educational practice implications for other providers exploring and implementing block delivery in intensive learning and teaching modes. The University’s HealthyDMU philosophy recognises mental wellbeing is relevant to all, informed by a social model of wellbeing, in which a student’s experience of mental wellbeing is directly related to their environment and experiences, based on the five ways to wellbeing (Aked, Marks, Cordon & Thompson, 2008). Embedding this throughout the curriculum reduces wellbeing barriers to facilitate student success, establishing pro-active approaches to mental wellbeing and a health promoting environment. This article provides a unique focus on student experience from the position of mental wellbeing embedded in curriculum design and delivery. This paper presents an exploration of student responses to the introduction of intensive delivery at undergraduate level within a UK university, positioned around support for mental wellbeing.

Decolonisation and contemporary dance

ABSTRACT Thinking about decolonisation and solidarity within the context of contemporary dance, if we consider decolonising and self-authoring as a process of self-actualisation, what role can peer and institutional allyship play? This is a short provocation that was prepared for the roundtable discussion on ‘Decolonisation and Solidarity’ as part of the conference, Borderlines IX: Seeking Solidarity and Wonder Through Performance, which took place at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, on 30 June and 1 July 2022.

Reclaiming the margins: collective resistance and feminist artistic practices in Putin’s Russia

ABSTRACT In this provocation, I grapple with questions concerning the legacy and impact of radical feminist performance in Russia’s repressive political climate and the possibility of collective resistance through performance. I address the devastating effects of the increasingly totalitarian regime on the work of radical feminist performers such as Pussy Riot, Darya Apakhonchich, and Katrin Nenasheva. The likelihood of surviving as a politically engaged performer-activist – as an outsider inside Russia – has been completely obliterated by the Kremlin but solidarity and collective resistance within and across national borders generate the sites of possibility to dream, imagine, and create together which, as Sara Ahmed (2014 [2004]: 181) reminds us, ‘energises the hope of transformation.’ In tracing the trajectory of precarity and hope in Russia’s current feminist artistic practices rooted in collective resistance, I employ the politics of relation as a framework that places the bodies of performers in relation to ‘others to whom [they] belong as inseparable, not separate’ thus creating ‘affective ties’ with others (Aimee Carrillo Rowe 2005, 27). This is an expanded version of a provocation prepared for the ‘Collective Resistance’ roundtable at the Borderlines IX: Seeking Solidarity and Wonder Through Performance conference at De Montfort University in 2022.

Collective resistance roundtable discussion

ABSTRACT Indu Jain, Julia Listengarten, Stefanie Gabriele Sachsenmaier, and Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva were invited to participate in a roundtable discussion on ‘Collective Resistance’, chaired by Jason Benson, as part of the conference, Borderlines IX: Seeking Solidarity and Wonder Through Performance, which took place at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, on 30 June and 1 July 2022. The speakers were asked to provide a 5-minute provocation stemming from their own research perspective, and then engaged in conversation stemming from themes, concerns and ideas resulting from those provocations. The provocations precede this article. What follows is the text of the discussion between participants, which was edited by Alissa Clarke and Julia Listengarten with Harriet Curtis. The roundtable discussion considers collective resistance in relation to: ‘making strange’; a process-centred approach; making the invisible visible; sharing the space with others; forging solidarity with the audience; amplifying the individual voice within the collective; articulating alternative aggressive forms of solidarity.

Physical solidarity as feeling the feeling

ABSTRACT This provocation reflects on the experience of taking a class in contemporary African dance in Senegal, arguing that it represents a physicalisation of solidarity. The class included dance students from Europe and the African continent who came together through moving rhythmically despite having no common verbal language. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s proposals about solidarity and Judith Butler’s theory of performative assembly, this intervention argues that the aesthetic underlying these students’ dancing was one that challenged dominant aesthetic values and the power relations underling them to generate solidarity as feeling the feeling of this challenge. This is a short provocation that was prepared for the roundtable discussion on ‘Decolonisation and Solidarity’ as part of the conference, Borderlines IX: Seeking Solidarity and Wonder Through Performance, which took place at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, on 30 June and 1 July 2022.

‘Therapy with My Exotic Self’

ABSTRACT This is the text of a short provocation that was prepared for the roundtable discussion on ‘Decolonisation and Solidarity’ as part of the conference, Borderlines IX: Seeking Solidarity and Wonder Through Performance, which took place at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, on 30 June and 1 July 2022. The online publication of this text in Studies in Theatre and Performance 44.1 (2024) is accompanied by a video work by the artist titled ‘Therapy with My Exotic Self’.

Decolonisation and solidarity roundtable discussion

ABSTRACT ‘Funmi Adewole Elliott, Alethia Antonia, Ramsay Burt, Tobi Poster-Su, Thea Stanton, and Negar Tahsili were invited to participate in a roundtable discussion on ‘Decolonisation and Solidarity’, chaired by Víctor Ladrón de Guevara, as part of the conference, Borderlines IX: Seeking Solidarity and Wonder Through Performance, which took place at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, on 30 June and 1 July 2022. The provocations precede this article, and the video provocation can be accessed via STP online. What follows is the text of the discussion between participants, which was edited by Alissa Clarke with Harriet Curtis. The roundtable discussion considers decolonisation and solidarity in relation to topics including: the importance of self-reflexivity; contemplating new ideas, discourses and ways of being that sit outside existing dominant discourses and understandings; reductive representations; responsibilities, expectations and empty acts of decolonisation imposed by institutions; self-care; decolonisation as a process; undergroundness and the undercommons; creating and imagining new entry points for others; and challenging fetishization.

Choreographing immersion: encountering borders, difference, and power

ABSTRACT This is the abstract of a short provocation that was prepared for the roundtable discussion on ‘Decolonisation and Solidarity’ as part of the conference, Borderlines IX: Seeking Solidarity and Wonder Through Performance, which took place at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, on 30 June and 1 July 2022.

Act(ion)s of solidarity: possibilities of hope and change through art

ABSTRACT Ukrainian artist Maria Kulikovska was invited as a keynote speaker for the Borderlines IX: Seeking Solidarity and Wonder Through Performance conference, which took place at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, on 30 June and 1 July 2022. What follows is the text of Kulikovska’s keynote presentation, with introduction and contextual framing of Kulikovska’s work by conference organiser and chair, Alissa Clarke. During this artist keynote, Kulikovska explores her deep commitment to solidarity by reflecting on her complex geographical roots, family relations, experiences in Ukraine and as a twice-displaced artist, and examples of her multidisciplinary artworks, including: sculptures (Homo Bulla (2012); Soap Figure with Flowers (2019; a collaboration with Vinnichenko), solo activist performance/performance actions (Action (2014)/Act of Solidarity (2022); Body and Borders (2014–2017); War and Pea€e (2016); Raft CrimeA (2016); and feminist platforms (Flowers of Democracy [2015]). Through these reflections, Kulikovska traces: a longing for solidarity as a meaningful, sincere state of connectedness with others; striking acts of agentive and loving solidarity by family members; politically motivated false impressions of solidarity; acts of solidarity against russian violence and territorialism and patriarchal oppression; hopeful actions and offerings supporting queer solidarity and displaced peoples.

Hunkering down in the theatre of war: reflections on the interpersonal politics of collective resistance

ABSTRACT In this time of war – and it is always a time of war – I have found myself thinking a great deal about the relationship between activist theatre collectives and themselves – the experience of a certain kind of theatre-making, perceived from within by its makers, being perhaps more significant than the audience’s witness of the performances and other activities the group makes and shares. In what measure is this kind of theatre about the audience it seeks to serve, and in what measure does it constitute an alternative mode of being in the world, a form of semi-separatist cell or sect, in which the ‘audience’ of makers bears witness to and draws nurturance from their own extra-theatrical performance of resistance? My desire in this short provocation – I hesitate to call it an essay, it is closer to thinking aloud in print – is to tease at a response to that question by reflecting upon three sources: a history, a personal experience, and a shared testimony. This is an expanded version of a provocation prepared for the ‘Collective Resistance’ roundtable at the Borderlines IX: Seeking Solidarity and Wonder Through Performance conference at De Montfort University in 2022.

Authentic Assessment Through Professional Conversations: An AI friendly assessment method?

Professional Conversations were introduced as an assessment method for the PGCAP at De Montfort University in 2019, allowing students to prepare for the end point assessment of the L7 Academic Professional Apprenticeship (APA). This format evolved to be one of the key successes of the programme, with overwhelmingly positive feedback being received from External Examiners, End-Point Assessors and Students alike. This paper reflects on the steps taken to ensure that both students and assessors were fully prepared to engage in high quality conversations regarding their approach to teaching, learning and CPD. An overview of the approaches to teaching, learning and student support is provided, alongside recommendations on how to assure the quality of the experience and the overall fairness of the outcome awarded. The paper also considers how Professional Conversations could be used more frequently as an assessment method in Higher Education moving forward. The paper concludes with a projection of how assessed conversations could be used to maintain academic integrity in modern higher education (HE), whilst also highlighting key barriers that academics may experience, especially when faced with large student numbers and ever-increasing time constraints.

Decolonising DMU: Reflections on Changes, Challenges and Impact with an Eye toward the Future

Based at De Montfort University, Decolonising DMU is a strategic initiative working to create an anti-racist institution where all can achieve. Growing from DMU’s Freedom to Achieve project Decolonising DMU extends anti-racist work across the structure and composition of the institution, moving away from a sole focus on the curriculum. The Library has played a core role within both of these projects working with staff and students to gain better representation in library collections, facilitating library work experience to enhance staff and professional diversity, working with academics to decolonise reading lists, enabling changes in pedagogical practice and to raise awareness of issues and the lived experience of people of colour. This ultimately leads to changes in practice to enable a better sense of belonging and visibility for students of colour which in turn leads to more successful engagement and student retention. The article provides examples of actions, challenges and ways forward, with specific reference to Library and Learning Services. Reflections on the complex and evolving nature of this work are made alongside the implications for the student and staff experience plus service and collection development. This work reinforces the critical importance and impact of the decolonising H E movement on academic libraries and student success.

On the problem of communication in a diverse society

Abstract At present, beyond occasional guidelines for international meetings such as those of the GSMERH (Global Society for Migration Ethnicity Race & Health) and debates between academics, there is very little international debate about the issue of terminology and diversity. This may stem from the apparent hegemony of English and a lack of capacity to debate terms across or between languages. In general, there is a tendency to shy away from discussing how language can be discriminatory, distressing or damaging. There is more commonly, at least in political life, a discussion about “woke” or “politically correct” language, as if this represented an unacceptable brake on the use of terms that the proponents of such arguments would espouse. Alternatively, it is argued that these are the “scientific or appropriate technical terms” as if there were no room for debate or development in the use of language. And yet lists or directories such as the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the United States MESH terms are recognised as essential tools in communication between professionals. And the Disability movements have certainly been active in arguing for non-stigmatising use of terms such as “blind” and “deaf”, “handicapped”, and the like, while there is a lively debate around the labelling and categorisation of gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity. These, however, have barely touched the consciousness, we argue, of the health scientific community and public health. This workshop with Bernadette Kumar, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Mark Johnson, De Montfort University Leicester and Raj Bhopal, University of Edinburgh seeks to raise the level of debate and start the process of movement towards a more informed and useful conversation that will facilitate and improve communication and respect between the “describers” and the “described”, as well as in scientific usage.

A Review of Christina Weis, Surrogacy in Russia: An Ethnography of Reproductive Labour, Stratification and Migration. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021, 192 pp.

A monograph by medical anthropologist Christina Weis, researcher at the Center for Reproductive Research at De Montfort University (United Kingdom), published in the Emerald Studies In Reproduction, Culture and Society series, is devoted to commercial surrogacy in contemporary Russia. This ethnographic study, based on extensive and diverse fieldwork, includes the author’s reflections, methodological decisions, emotions, and difficulties that accompanied her in the process of data collection. The author shows that surrogacy relationships in Russia are constructed as purely economic, in which social hierarchies are reproduced. Surrogacy is associated with physical and emotional work performed by women and putting their lives at risk.

The Role of Educators in Supporting the Mental Well-being of Postgraduate Pharmacist Distance Learners

Frontline health care professionals have experienced rapid changes to workloads and work-related pressures during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in anxiety, depression, and mental health stressors. For working professionals engaged in postgraduate pharmacy distance learning, access to educators was seen as a means to relay some of these stories and offload the stress caused by these unprecedented circumstances. The postgraduate pharmacy education team at De Montfort University felt a moral responsibility to provide extra support and extended their roles toward offering greater well-being support. In this commentary, we detail the emergence of this new role and offer insights into how this was fashioned and its significance for catering to the mental health needs of pharmacists. This role has largely gone undetected, and research is needed to investigate the acceptability and feasibility of such a model and its plausibility and sustainability in the long-term.

Embedding sustainability in university work experience placements: a De Montfort University model

PurposeThe paper looks at the feasibility of university placements supporting small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) to operate in a sustainable manner. Due to size and resource constraints, many SMEs may regard sustainability more as a burden than a value-adding commercial strategy.Design/methodology/approachA two-year study was conducted on the sustainability-themed placements of 101 students of De Montfort University, United Kingdom, in SMEs. The placements were designed with the purpose of acting as a traditional work experience scheme while also equipping students with learning, skills and orientation with which to act as sustainability champions within companies. The study combined the use of students' reflections (via tools such as monthly logbooks) with interviews and questionnaire surveys of both employers and students, in order to evaluate the outcomes of the placements.FindingsStudents engaged with the sustainability aspect of their placements mainly by obtaining information on the sustainability performance of SMEs, with significant engagement also occurring in the areas of sustainability advocacy (e.g. proposing socio-environmental plans to companies) and initiatives/action.Practical implicationsPlacements can potentially serve as a means of knowledge generation for universities while providing SMEs with cost-effective staff and innovation sustainability resources.Originality/valueA circular approach to university placement programmes is proposed whereby the knowledge gained from previous placements about SMEs' sustainability performance is used to prepare later cohorts of placement students with a pragmatic understanding of challenges and opportunities related to the implementation of sustainability by SMEs.

The British Society of Sports History, c.1982–2022: some reflections

ABSTRACT We reflect here on the history of the British Society of Sports History (BSSH) from its inception in 1982 through to its fortieth anniversary in 2022. The origins of the Society are contextualised with reference to a burgeoning interest in the history of sport and physical education in the 1970s and early 1980s. The BSSH’s development is then considered with reference to its annual conferences, its membership, its publications and its recent initiatives seeking to promote sports history more widely. The contribution of women to the work of the Society is an underlying theme throughout, especially where it relates to gender inequity issues. This account draws extensively on the Society’s archive, as yet uncatalogued, most significantly papers deposited by Dr Richard William Cox, which will eventually be available for consultation at the Kimberlin Library, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

Repurposing the Archive: Unmade Films,Vampirellaand Adaptation

The Hammer Script Archive is held at De Montfort University in Leicester and was opened to researchers in 2012. Primary materials held in the Archive include screenplays, treatments, financial documentation, correspondence, posters, production stills and press books. This article will utilise specifically the material held in the Archive that relates to Hammer’s unmade films. The archive currently holds files on exactly 100 unmade television and film projects, with 185 separate pieces of ephemera directly related to these unmade works.This article examines how archival materials on unmade or unreleased films not only provide valuable evidence for revisionist film histories but can also be repurposed as events and media that imaginatively reconstitute unrealised projects. While archives are valued by film historians for the contextual evidence that they provide, and are often the only sources of information about films that are lost, when it comes to films that never were, they hold potential beyond the circumstantial.Unmade films have also been used to frustrate and complicate existing methodologies. But here, papers on unmade films in the Hammer Script Archive provide the point of departure for an examination of the unproduced project Vampirella, which was developed in the mid-1970s, and its subsequent adaptation as a script read live in 2019. As such, documentation in the Archive will be used to provide the production contexts for the original unmade film from which the script was adapted, and then studied to see how these primary materials were repurposed in the subsequent publicly read script. By examining this public event and two other live readings of scripts adapted from unmade Hammer projects, this article will explore the appeal and cultural function of this phenomenon. In doing so it will pose questions about the scripts’ status as adaptations (part-augmentations, part-simulacra?) and fan response (nostalgia for that which never was). What can the film historian recover from such creative plundering of the archive that might be useful methodologically?

Designing a Reflective Assessment with Universal Design for Learning Principles: Insights from a Speech and Language Therapy Programme

Reflection is a requirement of the regulatory bodies for trainee and practicing Allied Health Professionals, making authentic reflection on practice a typical form of assessment in Higher Education professional programmes. The pessimism of reflective assessments from authors, working in HE motivated the scoping and design of an evidence-based assessment for reflection on the BSc Speech and Language Therapy Programme at De Montfort University. This paper presents a tripartite of challenges relating to the assessment discourse for professional programmes within a neoliberal University. First, the tension between professional and academic education is highlighted, addressing key themes from the debate around whether reflection can be assessed and how. Second, this is contextualised by the Higher Education Institutional national and local measures and the implementation of ‘assessment of’ and ‘assessment for learning.’ Third, the challenges of social mobility are presented given the high-stake responsibility for equitable learning and assessment. The principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) are therefore explored in the context of widening participation. In response to the literature, practitioner reflections have influenced the design of an assessment which is pedagogically sound but inviting for students. This assessment is presented to demonstrate how reflective assignments may allow for creativity, individuality, and real-life value, whilst also providing a holistic judgement of students’ skills. UDL is implicit to the project and rightly aims to reduce barriers in the curriculum and the learning environment to promote inclusivity and support all students to achieve.