Durham University Research Articles

Professor Dame Rosemary Jean Cramp, DBE FSA FBA HonFSAScot

Rosemary Cramp was the grande dame of British archaeology, a cheerful, friendly person, adored by her students and supportive of them in return. In 1971 she was appointed the first woman professor at Durham University. From 2001 to 2004 she served as President of the Society of Antiquaries of London, the most northerly based person at that time to have held the post. Her academic achievements were recognised by the state through the award of CBE in 1987 and then by her elevation to Dame in 2021, and by the academic world through the award of honorary degrees from Bradford, Cambridge, Cork, Dublin, Durham and Leicester, as well as two Festschriften.

Does Mining Fuel Bubbles? An Experimental Study on Cryptocurrency Markets

We investigate how key features associated with the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism of Bitcoin (commonly referred to as mining) affect pricing. In a controlled laboratory experiment, we observe that price bubble formation can be attributed to mining. Moreover, overpricing is more pronounced if the mining capacity is centralized to a small group of individuals. The order book data reveal that miners seem to play a crucial role in bubble formation. Further probing the mechanism in a second study, we find that both mining costs and decisions jointly with the sluggish rate of supply of the asset contribute to the bubble formation. Our results demonstrate that erratic pricing is an inherent feature of cryptocurrencies based on a mining protocol, thus seriously limiting any prospects for such assets becoming a medium of exchange. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: The funding provided by the University of Heidelberg, Hanken Foundation [Grant 271-6250], and Durham University is gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.01238 .

Un especialista en realismo político clásico y en la obra de Hans Kelsen: entrevista a Robert Schuett

Robert Schuett, a former career civil servant (2011-2022), is currently a non-resident professor in international relations at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, a visiting fellow at the Department of Political Science at the University of Salzburg, as well as an honorary member of the School of Governance and International Affairs at the University of Durham, England. Robert Schuett was awarded a master’s degree by research in 2005 and a PhD in 2009, both in Political Science from the School of Governance and International Affairs at Durham University; the supervisor of his doctoral thesis was John C. Williams (Durham University), and his external evaluators were Chris J. Brown (London School of Economics) and Richard Little (University of Bristol). In 2007, he completed a doctoral research stay at LUISS University in Rome and, in 2010, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, USA. He currently lives and works in Vienna. Robert Schuett’s main areas of interest are political philosophy, international relations, and political methodology. He is particularly interested in the classical approach to political and legal theory, economics and society, ethics, and justice. Professor Robert Schuett has authored and edited numerous works, including Hans Kelsen’s Political Realism (2021), The Edinburgh Companion to Political Realism (2018), The Concept of the State in International Relations: Philosophy, Sovereignty, Cosmopolitanism (2015), and Political Realism, Freud, and Human Nature in International Relations: The Resurrection of the Realism Man (2010).

Editorial- Launching Enhancing Learning & Teaching in Higher Education (ELTHE): a place to publish and share your own scholarly work and teaching innovations.

Editorial- Launching Enhancing Learning & Teaching in Higher Education (ELTHE): a place to publish and share your own scholarly work and teaching innovations.

Towards sustainable assessment formats in language teaching: testing integrated skills with portfolio-based tasks

In this paper, we share our experience of using portfolio-based tasks to assess integrated skills in German and Spanish language modules at level C1. The modules, delivered during the academic year 2022-23, are part of the institution-wide language provision at Durham University, which means that students come from various disciplines different from Modern Languages.
 The assessment system we have used is based on the principles of flexibility and choice. Throughout the year, students build up a body of work where they record and reflect on the experiences of a person living in a country where the target language is spoken. The portfolio contains both formative and summative submissions, so that students can benefit from the feedback received for formative tasks to fine-tune their summative work. In this regard, the system involves a combination of assessment for learning and assessment as learning. Every submission integrates different language skills, as well as transferable skills such as decision-making, autonomy, creativity, critical thinking and intercultural knowledge. Besides adding authenticity to the assessment tasks, the development of these skills is aligned with the principles of education for sustainable development (AdvanceHE, 2021).
 At the end of the paper, we explain what we have learned from the use of this assessment system, as well as the aspects that we would like to enhance and those that we would need to improve in future editions.

Cognitive Economy and Product Categorization

In mediated markets, the categorization of products by mediators is critical to efficient interaction between producers and consumers. As organizational research tends to focus on the consequences of categorization rather than its antecedents, however, we know relatively little about why mediators assign one category label or another to a product. In this study, we argue that two informational properties of labels, specificity and distinctiveness, determine the outcomes of mediators’ categorization decisions. Our analysis of product categorization decisions made by members of an online music community, 2000–2020, supports this argument. We find that a label’s odds of being assigned to a product increase (a) if this label encodes information that is neither too similar nor too different from that which is encoded by a superordinate label, that is, it has moderate specificity; and (b) if it encodes information that differs as much as possible from that which is encoded by horizontally related labels, that is, it has maximal distinctiveness. These findings persist after controlling for other possible determinants of mediators’ categorization decisions, including producers’ claims to labels, products’ typicality, and mediators’ expertise. Funding: M. Piazzai received funding from the Community of Madrid [EPUC3M12, VPRICIT] and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [RYC2021-032325-I]. M. Liu received funding from Durham University Business School. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.15751 .

River(s) Wear: Water in the Expanded Field

This article elaborates on an artist-in-residence project funded by the Leverhulme Trust in the Geography Department at Durham University in 2015–16. The project confronted artistic and scientific perspectives to investigate how people in the North-East of England perceive and value their river environments and to recognize potential contributions to catchment management. The project identified a variety of disconnexions and hierarchies in the River Wear catchment and formulated artistic interventions for nonhuman audiences. This article reflects on water holistically and explores transdisciplinary views to propose water in its expanded field. Water in the Expanded Field is plural, complex, and aims at decentering the human importance. It promotes water multiple perspectives, including the more-than-human world and acknowledging water’s ontological importance, developed by the speculative artistic practice of producing works of art for nonhuman audiences and then transposed to water debates. The article converges distinct evidence pointing to the importance of composting existing knowledge and dualistic reasoning to promote pluriversal ontologies of water.

Greening an Anthropology Field Course Programme: Assessing the Comparative Importance of Net Zero Agendas and Covid-19

Carbon emissions from academic air travel (AAT) are of concern to all in higher education, but the focus to date has primarily been on research (e.g. flying to professional conferences) rather than teaching and learning. This article describes the development and delivery of Durham University's undergraduate field course programme in anthropology before, during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. While the University provided helpful leverage towards greening the programme's travel arrangements, continuing restrictions on long-distance international air travel post-pandemic and reducing the length of field courses proved more effective drivers towards Net Zero than concerns about carbon emissions.

Foreword from Chair of 2023 ACM SIGMETRICS Doctoral Dissertation Award Committee

The ACM SIGMETRICS Doctoral Dissertation Award recognizes outstanding thesis research by doctoral candidates in the field of performance evaluation analysis of computer systems. Nominations for the 2023 award were sought from all faculty with graduating Ph.D. students working in performance evaluation, broadly understood. The award winners were determined by a review committee composed by researchers working in different sub-fields of performance evaluation: Urtzi Ayesta (CNRS & Ikerbasque, chair), Giuliano Casale (Imperial College London), Kristy Gardner (Amherst College), Daniel Sadoc Menasche (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), Neil Walton (Durham University) and Weina Wang (Carnegie Mellon University).

Food Security, Affordable Housing, and Poverty: An Islamic Finance Perspective

Ahmet Suayb Gundogdu, Food Security, Affordable Housing, and Poverty: An Islamic Finance Perspective. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, XX + 190 pp. ISBN 978-3-031-27688-0, Price EUR 109.99.
 Ahmet Suayb Gundogdu is a practitioner and an academic on the subject of Islamic finance. Since first joining the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in 2008, he has worked his way up to the position of senior professional at the bank. He obtained his doctorate in Islamic finance from Durham University (UK), and besides being a finance practitioner, he also holds the esteemed position of associate professor at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University in Turkey. His professional background places him in an ideal position to discuss Islamic finance.

A Translational Approach to Digital Learning Innovation: Enabling Digital Innovation at Durham University

In this paper we explore how we adopted a translational approach to educational development, which incorporates educational and digital innovation, staff development and student support into a single department. Through exploring three case studies of innovative work, we highlight the key enablers that a translational approach provides such as the agility to undertake research work which can quickly feed into teaching and learning practice. By rethinking the traditional role of learning technologists and by embedding students as partners, we believe such as approach can reap dividends on allowing for meaningful digital innovation in learning and teaching.

A Review of Multi-vehicle Cooperative Control System in Intelligent Transportation

Review A Review of Multi-vehicle Cooperative Control System in Intelligent Transportation Songtao Xie 1, Zhenhong Li 1, Farshad Arvin 2, and Zhengtao Ding 1,* 1 Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK 2 Swarm & Computational Intelligence Laboratory (SwaCIL), Department of Computer Science, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE, UK * Correspondence: zhengtao.ding@manchester.ac.uk Received: 25 April 2023 Accepted: 19 September 2023 Published: 25 September 2023 Abstract: Multi-vehicle cooperative control (MVCC) system has the potential to improve traffic flow, reduce congestion, and increase safety. This paper reviews the progress achieved by researchers worldwide regarding different aspects of MVCC systems. Research works of MVCC system architectures and strategies are reviewed, which explain how this system works. Several control methodologies utilized in the MVCC system and their related issues are discussed and compared, and research achievements about string stability and system degradation caused by unreliable communication are also reviewed. Applications of the MVCC system are demonstrated with detailed literature, which draws an overall landscape of the MVCC system and points out current opportunities and challenges. Finally, future research directions for the MVCC system are proposed based on the latest social and technological developments.

How open access boosts the societal impact of humanities and social sciences research

In this poster, we’ll share findings from our open access partnerships in different countries (including the Nordics), showing measurable benefits such as facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration to help solve the world’s most pressing issues. We’re also keen to work with the research community on other innovative ways to accelerate the transition to OA and boost research impact for institutions in Europe. We’ll also present a few case studies of how research influences policy and improves lives, such as: Addressing socio-economic challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic Investigating the socio-cultural impact of UK gendered school sport uniform The article ‘The Impact of long COVID on the UK workforce’ (Reuschke & Houston 2022) was published OA by the University of Southampton through the Jisc Agreement UK in July 2022. It provides evidence of the profound impact of Long COVID on national labour supply. The article has been cited by at least one policy document, published jointly by the think tank Demos and The Physiological Society (Dawson & Phillips 2022). The article ‘Practical, professional or patriarchal? An investigation into the socio-cultural impacts of gendered school sports uniform and the role uniform plays in shaping female experiences of school sport’ (Howard 2023) was published OA by Durham University through the Jisc Agreement on 6 April 2023. It explores how school sport uniform directly impacts female sporting experiences and participation in physical activity, and how uniform policy could be changed to promote greater female sport participation. By 26 April, less than three weeks after publication, the article had already been mentioned in 17 news stories. Although it's too early to measure citations in research and policy documents, the research has already led to new inclusive kit regulations in domestic hockey. We’ll use a collection of datasets as evidence to support our argument that publishing open access increases the visibility and impact of research. It encourages innovation and collaboration and boosts public engagement. As the largest humanities and social sciences publisher in the world, Taylor & Francis is committed to supporting sustainable routes to OA for HSS research communities, who typically have less funding for OA publishing than their peers in STEM.

The Origin of Humanity and Evolution: Science and Scripture in Conversation

The Origin of Humanity and Evolution: Science and Scripture in Conversation

The impact of teaching on salaries

Peter Tymms, Emeritus Professor at Durham University, discusses a report looking at the economic benefits of high-quality early years teaching for children later in life which he co-authored with the Department for Education, entitled The economic benefits of effective reception classes in England, published earlier this year.

Pandemic ethics and beyond: Creating space for virtues in the social professions.

During the pandemic, social and health care professionals operated in 'crisis conditions'. Some existing rules/protocols were not operational, many services were closed/curtailed, and new 'blanket' rules often seemed inappropriate or unfair. These experiences provide fertile ground for exploring the role of virtues in professional life and considering lessons for professional ethics in the future. This article draws on an international qualitative survey conducted online in May 2020, which aimed to explore the ethical challenges experienced by social workers during Covid-19. 607 social workers responded from 54 countries, giving written online responses. This article first summarises previously published findings from the survey regarding the range of ethical challenges experienced, then develops a new analysis of social workers' accounts of ethically challenging situations from a virtue ethics perspective. This analysis took a narrative ethics approach, treating respondents' accounts as stories featuring the tellers as moral agents, with implicit or explicit implications for their professional ethical identity and character. The article is illustrated with accounts from the 41 UK respondents, drawing particularly on two case examples. Ethical approval was gained from Durham University and anonymity was ensured for participants. This article explores the nature of the ethical space created during the pandemic showing how practitioners were able to draw more on 'inner resources' and professional discretion than usual, displaying virtues such as professional wisdom, care, respectfulness and courage as they took account of the specific contexts of their work, rather than simply adhering to blanket rules. Exploring practice through a virtue ethical lens provides valuable lessons for 'building back better' in social and health care professions.

Elizabeth Sandis. Early Modern Drama at the Universities: Institutions, Intertexts, Individuals

Journal Article Elizabeth Sandis. Early Modern Drama at the Universities: Institutions, Intertexts, Individuals Get access Elizabeth Sandis. Early Modern Drama at the Universities: Institutions, Intertexts, Individuals. Pp. 288. Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2022. Hardback, £70. Daniel Blank Daniel Blank Durham University, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, hgad062, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgad062 Published: 19 June 2023 Article history Received: 09 May 2023 Editorial decision: 08 June 2023 Accepted: 13 June 2023 Corrected and typeset: 19 June 2023 Published: 19 June 2023

History and Salvation in Medieval Ireland. By Elizabeth Boyle

Journal Article History and Salvation in Medieval Ireland. By Elizabeth Boyle Get access History and Salvation in Medieval Ireland. By Elizabeth Boyle. Pp. 218. (Studies in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland.) London and New York: Routledge, 2021. isbn978 1 1386 1048 4, 0 3676 8429 7, and 0 4294 6576 5. Hardback £130; paper £38.99; e-book £29.24. Clare Stancliffe Clare Stancliffe Durham University, UK c.e.stancliffe@durham.ac.uk https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7533-7971 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Journal of Theological Studies, flad018, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flad018 Published: 05 June 2023

Editorial Presentation: Critical perspectives in social innovation, social enterprise and/or the social solidarity economy

Editorial Presentation: Critical perspectives in social innovation, social enterprise and/or the social solidarity economy

Protecting the Ballot: How first‐wave democracies ended electoral corruption. By IsabelaMares, Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 2022. pp. 246. $35.00 (paper)

GovernanceEarly View BOOK REVIEW Protecting the Ballot: How first-wave democracies ended electoral corruption. By Isabela Mares, Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 2022. pp. 246. $35.00 (paper) Patrick M. Kuhn, Corresponding Author Patrick M. Kuhn [email protected] Durham University, Durham, EnglandSearch for more papers by this author Patrick M. Kuhn, Corresponding Author Patrick M. Kuhn [email protected] Durham University, Durham, EnglandSearch for more papers by this author First published: 23 April 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12788Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation