Staff from the University of Bolton recently met with British road and race car manufacturer, Ginetta, as part of their exciting collaboration.
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Saturday, February 28, 2015
Bioscience and Industry UK collaboration to significantly reduce HPC energy consumption
The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) and high performance computing (HPC) hardware provider Optalysys Ltd have joined forces to develop and implement a revolutionary optical processing device that will perform large-scale DNA sequence searches for crucial genomic research with energy...
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UK-Vietnam Infectious Diseases Workshop: Expressions of interest
The UK Medical Research Council and the Vietnamese Ministry of Science and Technology will hold a joint call for research proposals in 2015. In preparation for the call, MRC and MOST will hold a workshop from 14 -16 April in Hanoi to explore UK-Vietnamese opportunities for collaboration. Deadline for applicants is 4 March.
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Shibboleth identity provider offers improved access and identity management
20 February 2015 ![]()
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New major release of free open source federated identity solution adds user consent capability and support for Central Authorisation Service protocol.
The research and education community is set to benefit from an upgrade to a free open source software system that will help them better deliver access and identity management services.
The Shibboleth Consortium — a collaborative group of international research and education organisations — has released version three of the Shibboleth identity provider, its free open source software that enables secure web single sign-on. Institutions are able to use the software to enable learners and researchers to safely access library resources, databases and collaboration tools using only one log-in, doing away with the need to set up new accounts as they move between locations.
Developed following extensive consultation with the community, the new release offers significant functional and security enhancements, including user consent and on-demand metadata lookup. It also supports the Central Authentication Service (CAS), the internationally-recognised single sign-on protocol used by many universities and research organisations.
Shibboleth is among the world’s most widely deployed federated identity solutions, providing single sign-on capabilities and individual access to protected online resources, in a privacy-preserving manner.
The Shibboleth Consortium funds the ongoing development, support and maintenance of the software, keeping every component of the Shibboleth system free to use. The two principal members are Internet2 in the US and Jisc in the UK. Jisc also acts as consortium operator, managing the day-to-day running of the group.
Shelton Waggener, senior vice president at Internet2 and chair of the consortium board, said:
“This new release comes with many new features requested by the broad international community that uses Shibboleth to make informed access decisions and protect their online resources. We are grateful for the tremendous collaboration in developing this important new release.”
Josh Howlett, head of trust and identity at Jisc, said:
“Seamless and secure access to systems and services is paramount to the continued health of the education and research sector, which makes Shibboleth a vital tool in delivering effective access and identity management services.
The latest release has been developed for the community, by the community, listening to their feedback to ensure the software truly meets their needs, both now and in the future. We will continue to work with the consortium to ensure this remains to be the case.”
The new features and functionality include:
- User notification, including the ability to present an individual with a list of the attributes the service is requesting that allows them to confirm that they wish to proceed. Permissions can be granted directly through the browser, so there is no need to set up and manage a database. Such mechanisms can also help organisations to meet regulations, for example, requirements for user notification under EU law
- Support for CAS protocol, enabling organisations to use just one identity provider software package for transactions with both on-campus CAS, and on- and off-campus Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) protected services
- Ability to support multiple algorithms for signing and encryption simultaneously, allowing organisations to increase the security of their transactions without compromising compatibility with older systems
- Built-in next generation federation features such as the emerging Metadata Query Protocol, which is replacing the need to compile ever-larger metadata aggregates through on-demand metadata lookup
- Support for internationalising user interface and error messages
Originally released in 2003, the growth of cloud services has led to an increase in the deployment of Shibboleth worldwide as a core component of campus identity and access management.
Shibboleth version 3 will come to replace previous versions. The consortium urges deployers to plan their upgrade now to take advantage of the security and functional improvements and ensure they are fully compliant before the discontinuation of support for Version 2.4, expected later this year.
For more information on Shibboleth visit www.shibboleth.net or contact Justin Knight, Sibboleth Consortium manager at Jisc justin.knight@jisc.ac.uk.
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GlassWorks: #EarBox returns to Studio 3 Gallery
The #EarBox series of events returns to Studio 3 Gallery on Thursday 26 Feb at 4pm, with ‘GlassWorks,’ a recital of piano music by American minimalist, Philip Glass, performed by Daniel Harding. Continuing the collaboration between the School of Art’s gallery and the Music Department, set amidst the gallery’s current ‘Palindrome’ exhibition, ‘GlassWorks’ will include […]
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College Helps Local People to ‘Connect’ With Jobs
The ‘Connect Community Trust’ has worked closely with Glasgow Kelvin College to deliver employability skills to local north east residents, preparing them for potential interviews with the new Marks & Spencers at the expanding Glasgow Fort shopping mall. Through partnership collaboration, the Connect Community Trust brought local candidates into Wellhouse Hub and The Connie in […]
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New research partnership to inform policing policy and practice
A new programme of research and knowledge sharing is to play a key role in informing future policing policy, following funding for a major new collaboration in the north of England.
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New Research Partnership to inform policing policy and practice
A new programme of research and knowledge sharing is to play a key role in informing future policing policy, following funding for a major new research collaboration in the North of England.
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FutureEverything 2015 - 20th Anniversary Festival
One of the world’s leading festivals of ideas - founded and organised by Dr Drew Hemment, an academic from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (DJCAD) - celebrates its 20th anniversary in Manchester this week.
Dr Hemment’s research explores various dimensions of the emerging digital culture, from open data to data art, and also innovation, creativity and research methods. He develops highly collaborative and interdisciplinary forms for research, in which building communities of interest is integral.
In this outward-facing role, he developed the FutureEverything festival as a highly effective, research-led interface between higher education and the creative and digital economy. It has been described by The Guardian as one of the top ten ideas festivals in the world.
The FutureEverything festival in Manchester from February 25th to 28th brings together artists, makers, designers, theorists, policy makers and musicians to share insight on our future society and culture, and to put new ideas to the test through art and design experiments.
The FutureEverything Conference returns to the neo-gothic splendour of Manchester Town Hall on 26th and 27th February. FutureEverything 2015’s conference theme explores the unimaginable ways our lives have been transformed by the digital turn over the last twenty years, and what we can expect in the decades to come.
The Festival Lab features a week-long programme of research prototypes and experiments spanning data art, digital identity and connected mobility turning the city into a space for play and experimentation, with people from across the world participating in the new Global FUTR Lab.
The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) is the Hub for the Art, Live and Filmprogrammes, as the two organisations continue a long-term artistic partnership with a co-curated programme of installations, performances, screenings and new commissions.
The Opening Gala presents a double-bill, commissioned and produced by FutureEverything (in collaboration with British Council and RNCM), featuring new work by three of the most exciting and compelling electronic artists working today - Memo Akten: Simple Harmonic Motion for 16 Percussionists (new commission, world première) and Koreless & Emmanuel Biard: The Well (new commission, UK première).
The inaugural FutureEverything Film programme presents a selection of shorts and
feature-length documentaries that explore the impact of digital culture on our current age.
Dr Hemment said, “FutureEverything and University of Dundee work closely together to develop programmes and interventions that feed in and out of the festival. FutureEverything engages many thousands of people in festivals, art projects, and innovation labs that span data art, service design and smart cities. The academic community at Dundee play an integral role in several FutureEverything programmes, and both the research and these programmes are enhanced by the collaboration.”
On this year’s festival theme he said, “FutureEverything has championed digital art and culture for 20 years. The last eighteen months have brought with them a strong sense of the end of a narrative, as centralisation, inequality, electronic waste, and loss of privacy at an unprecedented scale have challenged our assumptions about the universally positive effects of digital innovation. This year the festival and conference ask what now for some of the foundational values and narratives of digital culture.”
Dr Hemment is an artist, curator and academic researcher. Over 20 years, his work in digital culture and innovation has been covered by New York Times, BBC and NBC and recognised by awards from the arts, technology and business sectors, including Lever Prize 2010 (Winner) and Prix Ars Electronica 2008 (Honorary Mention). Projects include the emoto data visualisation of the London 2012 Olympics and Open Data Cities / DataGM, the Greater Manchester Datastore. Drew is a member of the Editorial Board of the Leonardo journal of art, science and technology. In 1999, awarded a PhD at Lancaster University, in 2009 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (UK), and in 2010 an Eyebeam resident (USA).
For further details visit: http://futureeverything.org/history/
Roddy Isles Head of Press TEL: 01382 384910 MOBILE: 07800 581902 E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk
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Worldwide co-design centres & software development for exascale
The European Exascale Software Initiative is a consortium of 29 organisations and around 100 individuals who are working towards providing key recommendations on European policy with a particular focus on how software can be developed and techniques further improved to help meet the challenges that exascale computing might bring.
The first version of this project, EESI-1, highlighted a number of key areas for further investigation and consideration. The EESI-2 project, which has been running since 2013, has built upon this and focused its attention on these areas.
EPCC has been working on one of the tasks of EESI-2, which is to identify the state of the art of worldwide co-design centres and come up with some concrete recommendations about how the current approach might be adopted and/or modified to assist with software development in a future exascale era.
Co-design itself involves multiple stakeholders, from different backgrounds, working together to produce an overall solution. The concept has actually been around for some forty years in other industries and it is believed that this methodology, where people with a wide variety of skills work together in a team to produce the end product, is likely to be a key enabler in the next generation of scientific discovery. EPCC was ideally placed to carry out this work as we are leading efforts in using co-design for exascale projects.
Whilst there is much literature out there about numerous co-design centres and the models that they have adopted, there is no substitute for talking to people in the community. In order to understanding how people view co-design, when they have used it, benefits or disadvantages of the approach and suggestions of how this might be best harnessed in the future, we initially developed a questionnaire. It was publicised in a variety of different manners such as at conferences, on email lists and also a previous blog post. We got a great response to this and, based upon the answers and themes identified, then targeted specific individuals to conduct in-depth one-to-one interviews with them.
There were many interesting points raised by our investigations; such as a wide variety of definitions about what co-design actually is and the importance of managing the staffing when it comes to different skill sets required by a project at different times. One of the recurring comments was that it can be difficult with people from different backgrounds to ensure that communication is effective and how to drive the entire team to a “common good” rather than people focussing on their own individual goals. The point was also made that education is a key enabler and even elementary courses and workshops in a specific field can be very helpful to those with expertise in different areas. Many mentioned that building effective co-design teams is all about breaking down barriers to collaboration. It was evident that there is some confusion between a Centre of Excellence (CoE) and co-design centres, everyone agreed that these terms are used to describe very similar approaches but some considered them to be exactly the same, whilst others highlighted some subtle differences.
A number of existing organisations and projects have adopted co-design as a way of working. One of the more visible efforts have been the three US Department of Energy (DoE) centres which address the hardware, software, numerical methods, algorithms, and applications in a specific area that is seen as a grand challenge for the DoE. These have been very successful and since they were set up have produced significant science.
Co-design has not only been adopted in the US - a number of European projects have used this methodology too. One recent example of this is CRESTA which, led by EPCC, brought together leading supercomputing centres, equipment vendors, programming tools providers and six application and problem owners to explore how the exascale challenge could be met. It was very much application focused with a major aim being that their work would enable new science, which was previously unattainable, to be performed. The six applications that CRESTA focused on were known as co-design vehicles, and individuals with a wide variety of expertise have worked on them together to advance them towards the exascale future.
Recommendations
Based upon our own investigations, analysing existing co-design implementations and projects we have come up with a number of recommendations. These are available in more detail in the white paper and I just highlight a few here.
There are European calls for CoEs and co-design centres. Based upon this, workshops should be funded to bring communities together and support them in applying for funding. This is similar to how the US DoE set up ExaMath, a new co-design centre for applied mathematics. In order to reach exascale, and support science that takes full advantage of these future resources, the EU should expect to increase the budgets allocated to funding co-design centres. It should be appreciated that this is a worldwide effort, and the co-design activities in Europe should be organised in such a way that complements those which are currently happening in the US.
You can view the full deliverable, along with the detailed investigations and recommendations, on the EESI-2 website.
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New Research Partnership to inform policing policy and practice
A new programme of research and knowledge sharing, involving The University of Manchester, is to play a key role in informing future policing policy, following funding for a major new research collaboration in the North of England.
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Research Associate Grade 7 Nucleoside/Nucleotide Chemistry (SS2996)
Type: Education & Research | Department: Pharmacy & Pharmacology | Location: Bath | Closing Date: 29 Mar 2015 |
Applications are invited for a Post-doctoral Research Associate to work with Professor B V L Potter in Medicinal Chemistry, Department of Pharmacy & Pharmacology at the University of Bath. The position is funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of an Investigator Award, and will involve the synthesis of small molecule nucleotide-based tools to investigate cellular signalling.
The successful candidate will have a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry/chemical biology and ideally have experience in nucleotide/carbohydrate/phosphorus chemistry, being versed or interested in applying synthetic nucleoside and nucleotide chemistry to projects in drug discovery and cell signalling. Some experience of synthesising probes for biological systems is desirable, an enthusiasm for working at the chemistry-biology interface and ideally a track-record of first-author publications in internationally recognised peer-reviewed journals.
Applications are however also welcomed from candidates who have just finished their PhD and appropriate training will be given. The post is available for 12 months in the first instance and it is envisaged that the position will commence in mid-2015.
More information on the Potter group can be found on the website http://www.bath.ac.uk/pharmacy/contacts/academics/barry_potter/ and informal enquiries (with a CV) can be made to Professor Potter b.v.l.potter@bath.ac.uk. You will still be required to apply for the role by clicking on the apply box below.
The post will be based in the Medicinal Chemistry Group at the University of Bath and interdisciplinary liaison and collaboration with biologists at Oxford University and elsewhere will be an important feature. Applications for this vacancy are to be made online. For further details, including the job description and selection criteria, please click on the links below.
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Keele and Stoke on Trent College in progression agreement
Keele University and Stoke on Trent College have joined together in a new initiative to encourage students from non-traditional routes, such as Access, BTEC and other vocational courses, to go on to Higher Education.
The progression agreement has been developed by Keele to support students at the College to make an informed decision about their future and higher education.
Specifically both parties to the agreement will actively seek to:
• Widen access and raise aspirations to higher education within Stoke on Trent College• Increase the numbers of students progressing to, and participating in, Higher Education• Provide support and commitment to develop further collaboration between Keele University and Stoke on Trent College• Provide a conduit to enable the flow of information available on Higher Education to all prospective students, their parents/carers and advisors• Encourage collaboration between University representatives and school/college staff• Measure success and celebrate it• Support participating students complete their Partnership Goals
Professor Nick Foskett, Vice-Chancellor of Keele University, said: "This progression agreement marks Keele University's continuing commitment to the City of Stoke on Trent and the wider region of North Staffordshire. Progression agreements with Further Education colleges are a really helpful way of encouraging bright, highly motivated students from non-traditional routes, such as Access, BTEC and vocational courses, to continue onto university, as they can clearly see where their current studies can take them. We hope through the success of this new partnership we will be able to raise the aspirations of Stoke on Trent College students and take a positive step forward in achieving successful progression to Higher Education for many more local people."
Kevin Smith, Principal of Stoke on Trent College, said: "The progression agreement with Keele University will help ensure students at Stoke on Trent College have the opportunity to study locally, helping home-grown talent and skills remain within the local area. This partnership will also support the aspirations of young people who can now seriously consider such a highly regarded university as Keele as a viable future option, thanks to the support they now offer to those studying at Stoke on Trent College.Everyone at the College is immensely pleased and feels it is fantastic to be so closely associated to a university that has an excellent national and international reputation.”
Keele will:
• Guarantee an offer or automatic interview to any Stoke on Trent College student meeting an undergraduate course entry criteria, who applies by 15 January (excluding Medicine, Nursing, Midwifery, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy and Social Work)• Provide all the ‘need to know’ information Stoke on Trent College students and their parents and carers need regarding Higher Education, student life and student finance, through a programme of activity developed in conjunction with Stoke-on-Trent College• Support participants throughout the UCAS application process• Make explicit the support arrangements in place at Keele for students who may have particular needs, for example, those with disabilities or care leavers• Provide up-to-date information sessions to prospective students’ tutors/advisors• Provide a range of opportunities for subject specific events, for instance, Faculty or subject led taster sessions and student ambassadors• Nominate a member of staff to act as the Progression Agreement Co-ordinator
Stoke on Trent College will:
• Promote the guarantee the offer scheme to all level 3 students• Display appropriate information about Keele University for the benefit of students, staff and visitors to indicate Keele University’s support for the College• Enable students to access impartial advice and guidance (including financial guidance) for progression to higher education.• Encourage students to take part in a number of ‘preparation for Higher Education’ activities, for example, attendance at an Open Days, a talk about Higher Education or a taster event• Encourage students to attend appropriate Higher Education subject specific events• Provide opportunities for Keele staff and/or students to meet with prospective and actual applicants as appropriate• Provide written details to the Admissions Manager at Keele of applicants with extenuating circumstances which they feel may affect a student’s academic performance and which they would like Keele University to take into account either at initial offer stage or at confirmation of results as appropriate• Nominate a member of staff to act as the Progression Agreement link person.
Keele and Stoke on Trent College have agreed to work together to ensure that participating students meet their Partnerships Goals.
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The progression agreement has been developed by Keele to support students at the College to make an informed decision about their future and higher education.
Specifically both parties to the agreement will actively seek to:
• Widen access and raise aspirations to higher education within Stoke on Trent College• Increase the numbers of students progressing to, and participating in, Higher Education• Provide support and commitment to develop further collaboration between Keele University and Stoke on Trent College• Provide a conduit to enable the flow of information available on Higher Education to all prospective students, their parents/carers and advisors• Encourage collaboration between University representatives and school/college staff• Measure success and celebrate it• Support participating students complete their Partnership Goals
Professor Nick Foskett, Vice-Chancellor of Keele University, said: "This progression agreement marks Keele University's continuing commitment to the City of Stoke on Trent and the wider region of North Staffordshire. Progression agreements with Further Education colleges are a really helpful way of encouraging bright, highly motivated students from non-traditional routes, such as Access, BTEC and vocational courses, to continue onto university, as they can clearly see where their current studies can take them. We hope through the success of this new partnership we will be able to raise the aspirations of Stoke on Trent College students and take a positive step forward in achieving successful progression to Higher Education for many more local people."
Kevin Smith, Principal of Stoke on Trent College, said: "The progression agreement with Keele University will help ensure students at Stoke on Trent College have the opportunity to study locally, helping home-grown talent and skills remain within the local area. This partnership will also support the aspirations of young people who can now seriously consider such a highly regarded university as Keele as a viable future option, thanks to the support they now offer to those studying at Stoke on Trent College.Everyone at the College is immensely pleased and feels it is fantastic to be so closely associated to a university that has an excellent national and international reputation.”
Keele will:
• Guarantee an offer or automatic interview to any Stoke on Trent College student meeting an undergraduate course entry criteria, who applies by 15 January (excluding Medicine, Nursing, Midwifery, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy and Social Work)• Provide all the ‘need to know’ information Stoke on Trent College students and their parents and carers need regarding Higher Education, student life and student finance, through a programme of activity developed in conjunction with Stoke-on-Trent College• Support participants throughout the UCAS application process• Make explicit the support arrangements in place at Keele for students who may have particular needs, for example, those with disabilities or care leavers• Provide up-to-date information sessions to prospective students’ tutors/advisors• Provide a range of opportunities for subject specific events, for instance, Faculty or subject led taster sessions and student ambassadors• Nominate a member of staff to act as the Progression Agreement Co-ordinator
Stoke on Trent College will:
• Promote the guarantee the offer scheme to all level 3 students• Display appropriate information about Keele University for the benefit of students, staff and visitors to indicate Keele University’s support for the College• Enable students to access impartial advice and guidance (including financial guidance) for progression to higher education.• Encourage students to take part in a number of ‘preparation for Higher Education’ activities, for example, attendance at an Open Days, a talk about Higher Education or a taster event• Encourage students to attend appropriate Higher Education subject specific events• Provide opportunities for Keele staff and/or students to meet with prospective and actual applicants as appropriate• Provide written details to the Admissions Manager at Keele of applicants with extenuating circumstances which they feel may affect a student’s academic performance and which they would like Keele University to take into account either at initial offer stage or at confirmation of results as appropriate• Nominate a member of staff to act as the Progression Agreement link person.
Keele and Stoke on Trent College have agreed to work together to ensure that participating students meet their Partnerships Goals.
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Storing and sharing research data after the ‘Space Race’
The emerging demands of modern, data-intensive, collaborative research has seen swathes of researchers adopting services for data storage and preservation beyond their institutional offer.
At the storage stage, a lot of researchers in the UK have been benefiting from the extra data storage space offered by DropBox as a part of its ‘Space Race’ promotion. By convincing colleagues and students to sign up it was possible for individuals to gain access to significantly enhanced storage space, all synchronised from local machines in the usual DropBox way.The final frontierHowever, as with all promotions, the ‘space race’ is coming to an end. From 4 March, these additional allocations will be removed and accounts will revert to their initial state, often with substantially less storage. Data above the account allocation will still be stored and accessible to download, but it won’t be synchronised with local files.For those expecting changes in regularly updated data to be reflected in the cloud – for example by sharing live datasets with collaborators via Dropbox – this could be an unwelcome surprise.What comes nextIt is possible – and DropBox is encouraging users – to sign up for additional space with a paid monthly subscription.But there are other considerations at force. In the UK the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and other funding councils have policies that the research data they fund must be managed and stored in the European Economic Area (EEA), and that “effective data curation is provided throughout the full data lifecycle”. UK Data Protection regulations also mean that some personal and other human data will also be stored within the same area.A DropBox-type service is clearly beneficial to researchers in the managing active data stage, as it is accessible from the researcher’s personal computer, can be changed easily and opened up for collaboration. Research managers would therefore be advised to consider how they can implement a similar solution at an institutional level, and choose one that is fit for purpose –particularly as the growing number of individual paid accounts within an organisation could result in that institution approaching its procurement threshold.Pick your serviceThere are a range of cloud storage solutions available for researchers that comply with funding council and data protection regulations. These cover managing, sharing and collaborating on research data at different stages in the research data lifecycle.For example with the ‘File Sync and Share’ service Jisc offers, we have worked with commercial providers to deliver a catalogue of file syncing and sharing products that are capable of meeting the requirements of institutions and their researchers, depending on their needs. We are even working with DropBox in this area.For those who need additional file sharing capabilities at low cost, Jisc has negotiated an agreement with Microsoft for the Office365 suite. This offers EEA-based file syncing and sharing capabilities through the OneDrive application and has the added bonus that it connects through the Janet network, providing enhanced security by avoiding the public internet. Alternatively if the active research data is very large, or if it needs to be next to cloud computing capabilities, a solution such as the one we have with amazon web services might be more apt, providing EEA-based storage and being peered to the Janet network for faster data transfer.Publishing outputsOnce a research project has concluded what happens with the final data outputs?In some cases file storage services are also being used in the ‘manage, store and preserve’ and ‘share and publish’ stages of the research lifecycle, as it is seen as an easy way to backup research data in the cloud. They may also be used to informally publish and share finished datasets using peer to peer communication methods such as emailing links to datasets hosted on the service.This can be seen as bad practice, as this data is not openly available to all, carries little or no metadata to enable discovery or re-use and is outside the scholarly communications infrastructure. The researcher may also be missing out on gaining credit for some of their most valuable digital research outputs.A home for dataThe first home for this type of data should be a suitable disciplinary repository, (an extensive listing can be found on re3data) or the institution’s own data repository.If these options are either not available or suitable, or researchers would like to informally publish their data, then they would be advised to use the free specialist cloud publication services, Figshare and Zenodo. Both offer researchers the space to publish final, citeable, datasets and other digital research objects as best practice dictates.Data published on these services are also given a DataCite Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which is permanently resolvable and integrates with scholarly communications systems by exposing the dataset metadata. This enables the final stages of the research data lifecycle, by providing routes for data discovery, re-use and citation.The futureManaging the research data lifecycle is clearly a challenge. At Jisc, we are working with people who are affected by the changing landscape, to make sure that we are best supporting their needs. We would love to hear your examples or ideas for how to better manage this data - please get in touch with me.» more
Inaugural Lecture: Professor Bob Young
Information Revolution - Transforming Manufacture through Shared Understanding
Professor Bob Young
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
IT tools for the manufacturing industry have advanced dramatically in recent years with a range of tools to support manufacturing decision-making. However many software tools are still yet to work in collaboration. In this lecture, Professor Young will use examples from recent research to illustrate the progress that has been made, discussing the problems and likely solutions to transform the industry in the next phase of the information revolution.
For more information and to book your place, please visit our website.
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Supercollaboration from our Super Heroes!
Our Fashion students joined league with our Photography and NC Employability students this week to create an exciting photo-shoot with students dressed as their favourite Super Heroes or Supernaturals. The effect was spectacular and it was a splendid example of cross-college collaboration – well done to the staff and students involved! Look out for the […]
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Cabinet Minster visits KeeleSU volunteer department
Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, has visited the KeeleSU Volunteering department to learn more about their experiences of being the only university with Volunteer Centre branch status.
KeeleSU’s partnership with Support Staffordshire (a service for voluntary and community organisations in Staffordshire) has enabled Keele to become the first university in the country to have Volunteer Centre status, which has been held for the last two years. This has not only increased opportunities for students to engage in volunteering, but it has also improved the recording practices of the department.
During the visit, Francis Maude spoke to students from various societies and student led services, including Street Team and Nightline, to find out about their experiences of volunteering at Keele and how the Volunteering department has helped them. One international student volunteer, Phat Nguyen, explained how much he valued his volunteering experience and how it helped him to find friends.
Francis was also interviewed by Concourse, the student newspaper at Keele, about a range of Volunteering questions and possible issues. When asked by Natalie Ilsley, Editor of Concourse, about why students should volunteer, Mr Maude explained that “it makes you a better person”. He went on to suggest that starting volunteering when you’re young helps to build a stronger society with an understanding that we need to do more for each other. “People are happier, older volunteers are healthier and more independent, it’s fun, what’s not to like?” The Concourse Editor also asked how Mr Maude planned to get more institutions involved in National Student Volunteer Week, and whilst he didn’t have a plan, he did explain that it was a “good idea and a good challenge”.
KeeleSU Volunteering has achieved fantastic results in short period of time, such as:
• A 600% increase in the amount of students getting involved in the Volunteer Awards Scheme in the last 18 months. This has resulted in more students having a more detailed Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR), which reflects personal and academic development which could improve students’ employability and prospects after Keele• Over 800 students on the Volunteer mailing list with around 600 registered with the department• If you translate the number of hours that student volunteers have done in and around the local community in 2013-14, based on minimum wage, it equates to at least £50,000 being put back into the economy, and also helps to tackle typical student stereotypes• Collaboration with community stakeholders to engage in student social action and making a noticeable difference in the local community
Sarah Amphlett, Volunteer Manager, says: “We are so very pleased that the KeeleSU Volunteering department has been visited by such a prominent member of the government. We may only be a small team, but we're dedicated and very active in the local community. This will put us on the map as being the first University with Volunteer Centre status, something we are extremely proud of!”
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KeeleSU’s partnership with Support Staffordshire (a service for voluntary and community organisations in Staffordshire) has enabled Keele to become the first university in the country to have Volunteer Centre status, which has been held for the last two years. This has not only increased opportunities for students to engage in volunteering, but it has also improved the recording practices of the department.
During the visit, Francis Maude spoke to students from various societies and student led services, including Street Team and Nightline, to find out about their experiences of volunteering at Keele and how the Volunteering department has helped them. One international student volunteer, Phat Nguyen, explained how much he valued his volunteering experience and how it helped him to find friends.
Francis was also interviewed by Concourse, the student newspaper at Keele, about a range of Volunteering questions and possible issues. When asked by Natalie Ilsley, Editor of Concourse, about why students should volunteer, Mr Maude explained that “it makes you a better person”. He went on to suggest that starting volunteering when you’re young helps to build a stronger society with an understanding that we need to do more for each other. “People are happier, older volunteers are healthier and more independent, it’s fun, what’s not to like?” The Concourse Editor also asked how Mr Maude planned to get more institutions involved in National Student Volunteer Week, and whilst he didn’t have a plan, he did explain that it was a “good idea and a good challenge”.
KeeleSU Volunteering has achieved fantastic results in short period of time, such as:
• A 600% increase in the amount of students getting involved in the Volunteer Awards Scheme in the last 18 months. This has resulted in more students having a more detailed Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR), which reflects personal and academic development which could improve students’ employability and prospects after Keele• Over 800 students on the Volunteer mailing list with around 600 registered with the department• If you translate the number of hours that student volunteers have done in and around the local community in 2013-14, based on minimum wage, it equates to at least £50,000 being put back into the economy, and also helps to tackle typical student stereotypes• Collaboration with community stakeholders to engage in student social action and making a noticeable difference in the local community
Sarah Amphlett, Volunteer Manager, says: “We are so very pleased that the KeeleSU Volunteering department has been visited by such a prominent member of the government. We may only be a small team, but we're dedicated and very active in the local community. This will put us on the map as being the first University with Volunteer Centre status, something we are extremely proud of!”
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Collaborations Workshop lives up to its name
By Robin Wilson, Researcher, University of Southampton.
As a Fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute in 2013, I attended the Collaborations Workshop 2013. To be honest, I did so rather reluctantly: I was in a very busy stage of my PhD at the time, and although it was seemed like a reasonable way to spend a few days, I felt that it was unlikely to produce anything of direct benefit to me. I couldn't have been more wrong.
In the first session at that year's workshop I met someone from the IT as a Utility Network+ and showed off a proof of concept instrument that I'd been developing during my PhD (in all honesty, I'd brought it with me so that if the conference was boring I could slip back to my room and test the instrument!). He was fascinated by it, and strongly suggested that we apply for a IT as a Utility Network+ pilot project to get some funding to continue development. We did so, and won £50,000 of funding – which was enough to employ a post-doc for six months and develop a full prototype instrument. The Collaborations Workshop was living up to its name: within an hour of the start of the conference I'd developed a collaboration which led to significant funding!
Community
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Media Collaboration benefits charity
Media Collaboration benefits charity This month we saw the first in a series of new collaborations between students at Penwith College and St Ives School. Over the course of 3 days, over 45 year 10 GCSE Media studies students attended Penwith College and were mentored by year 2 BTEC Extended Diploma Students. The school students […]
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College helps local people to ‘Connect’ with jobs
The ‘Connect Community Trust’ has worked closely with Glasgow Kelvin College to deliver employability skills to local north east residents, preparing them for potential interviews with the new Marks & Spencers at the expanding Glasgow Fort shopping mall. Local partnership for local participants Through partnership collaboration, the ConnectCommunityTrust brought local candidates into Wellhouse Hub and […]
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Friday, February 27, 2015
Collaboration paves the way to success for students
Staff from the University of Bolton recently met with British road and race car manufacturer, Ginetta, as part of their exciting collaboration.
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Bioscience and Industry UK collaboration to significantly reduce HPC energy consumption
The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) and high performance computing (HPC) hardware provider Optalysys Ltd have joined forces to develop and implement a revolutionary optical processing device that will perform large-scale DNA sequence searches for crucial genomic research with energy...
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UK-Vietnam Infectious Diseases Workshop: Expressions of interest
The UK Medical Research Council and the Vietnamese Ministry of Science and Technology will hold a joint call for research proposals in 2015. In preparation for the call, MRC and MOST will hold a workshop from 14 -16 April in Hanoi to explore UK-Vietnamese opportunities for collaboration. Deadline for applicants is 4 March.
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Shibboleth identity provider offers improved access and identity management
20 February 2015 ![]()
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New major release of free open source federated identity solution adds user consent capability and support for Central Authorisation Service protocol.
The research and education community is set to benefit from an upgrade to a free open source software system that will help them better deliver access and identity management services.
The Shibboleth Consortium — a collaborative group of international research and education organisations — has released version three of the Shibboleth identity provider, its free open source software that enables secure web single sign-on. Institutions are able to use the software to enable learners and researchers to safely access library resources, databases and collaboration tools using only one log-in, doing away with the need to set up new accounts as they move between locations.
Developed following extensive consultation with the community, the new release offers significant functional and security enhancements, including user consent and on-demand metadata lookup. It also supports the Central Authentication Service (CAS), the internationally-recognised single sign-on protocol used by many universities and research organisations.
Shibboleth is among the world’s most widely deployed federated identity solutions, providing single sign-on capabilities and individual access to protected online resources, in a privacy-preserving manner.
The Shibboleth Consortium funds the ongoing development, support and maintenance of the software, keeping every component of the Shibboleth system free to use. The two principal members are Internet2 in the US and Jisc in the UK. Jisc also acts as consortium operator, managing the day-to-day running of the group.
Shelton Waggener, senior vice president at Internet2 and chair of the consortium board, said:
“This new release comes with many new features requested by the broad international community that uses Shibboleth to make informed access decisions and protect their online resources. We are grateful for the tremendous collaboration in developing this important new release.”
Josh Howlett, head of trust and identity at Jisc, said:
“Seamless and secure access to systems and services is paramount to the continued health of the education and research sector, which makes Shibboleth a vital tool in delivering effective access and identity management services.
The latest release has been developed for the community, by the community, listening to their feedback to ensure the software truly meets their needs, both now and in the future. We will continue to work with the consortium to ensure this remains to be the case.”
The new features and functionality include:
- User notification, including the ability to present an individual with a list of the attributes the service is requesting that allows them to confirm that they wish to proceed. Permissions can be granted directly through the browser, so there is no need to set up and manage a database. Such mechanisms can also help organisations to meet regulations, for example, requirements for user notification under EU law
- Support for CAS protocol, enabling organisations to use just one identity provider software package for transactions with both on-campus CAS, and on- and off-campus Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) protected services
- Ability to support multiple algorithms for signing and encryption simultaneously, allowing organisations to increase the security of their transactions without compromising compatibility with older systems
- Built-in next generation federation features such as the emerging Metadata Query Protocol, which is replacing the need to compile ever-larger metadata aggregates through on-demand metadata lookup
- Support for internationalising user interface and error messages
Originally released in 2003, the growth of cloud services has led to an increase in the deployment of Shibboleth worldwide as a core component of campus identity and access management.
Shibboleth version 3 will come to replace previous versions. The consortium urges deployers to plan their upgrade now to take advantage of the security and functional improvements and ensure they are fully compliant before the discontinuation of support for Version 2.4, expected later this year.
For more information on Shibboleth visit www.shibboleth.net or contact Justin Knight, Sibboleth Consortium manager at Jisc justin.knight@jisc.ac.uk.
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GlassWorks: #EarBox returns to Studio 3 Gallery
The #EarBox series of events returns to Studio 3 Gallery on Thursday 26 Feb at 4pm, with ‘GlassWorks,’ a recital of piano music by American minimalist, Philip Glass, performed by Daniel Harding. Continuing the collaboration between the School of Art’s gallery and the Music Department, set amidst the gallery’s current ‘Palindrome’ exhibition, ‘GlassWorks’ will include […]
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College Helps Local People to ‘Connect’ With Jobs
The ‘Connect Community Trust’ has worked closely with Glasgow Kelvin College to deliver employability skills to local north east residents, preparing them for potential interviews with the new Marks & Spencers at the expanding Glasgow Fort shopping mall. Through partnership collaboration, the Connect Community Trust brought local candidates into Wellhouse Hub and The Connie in […]
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New research partnership to inform policing policy and practice
A new programme of research and knowledge sharing is to play a key role in informing future policing policy, following funding for a major new collaboration in the north of England.
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New Research Partnership to inform policing policy and practice
A new programme of research and knowledge sharing is to play a key role in informing future policing policy, following funding for a major new research collaboration in the North of England.
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FutureEverything 2015 - 20th Anniversary Festival
One of the world’s leading festivals of ideas - founded and organised by Dr Drew Hemment, an academic from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (DJCAD) - celebrates its 20th anniversary in Manchester this week.
Dr Hemment’s research explores various dimensions of the emerging digital culture, from open data to data art, and also innovation, creativity and research methods. He develops highly collaborative and interdisciplinary forms for research, in which building communities of interest is integral.
In this outward-facing role, he developed the FutureEverything festival as a highly effective, research-led interface between higher education and the creative and digital economy. It has been described by The Guardian as one of the top ten ideas festivals in the world.
The FutureEverything festival in Manchester from February 25th to 28th brings together artists, makers, designers, theorists, policy makers and musicians to share insight on our future society and culture, and to put new ideas to the test through art and design experiments.
The FutureEverything Conference returns to the neo-gothic splendour of Manchester Town Hall on 26th and 27th February. FutureEverything 2015’s conference theme explores the unimaginable ways our lives have been transformed by the digital turn over the last twenty years, and what we can expect in the decades to come.
The Festival Lab features a week-long programme of research prototypes and experiments spanning data art, digital identity and connected mobility turning the city into a space for play and experimentation, with people from across the world participating in the new Global FUTR Lab.
The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) is the Hub for the Art, Live and Filmprogrammes, as the two organisations continue a long-term artistic partnership with a co-curated programme of installations, performances, screenings and new commissions.
The Opening Gala presents a double-bill, commissioned and produced by FutureEverything (in collaboration with British Council and RNCM), featuring new work by three of the most exciting and compelling electronic artists working today - Memo Akten: Simple Harmonic Motion for 16 Percussionists (new commission, world première) and Koreless & Emmanuel Biard: The Well (new commission, UK première).
The inaugural FutureEverything Film programme presents a selection of shorts and
feature-length documentaries that explore the impact of digital culture on our current age.
Dr Hemment said, “FutureEverything and University of Dundee work closely together to develop programmes and interventions that feed in and out of the festival. FutureEverything engages many thousands of people in festivals, art projects, and innovation labs that span data art, service design and smart cities. The academic community at Dundee play an integral role in several FutureEverything programmes, and both the research and these programmes are enhanced by the collaboration.”
On this year’s festival theme he said, “FutureEverything has championed digital art and culture for 20 years. The last eighteen months have brought with them a strong sense of the end of a narrative, as centralisation, inequality, electronic waste, and loss of privacy at an unprecedented scale have challenged our assumptions about the universally positive effects of digital innovation. This year the festival and conference ask what now for some of the foundational values and narratives of digital culture.”
Dr Hemment is an artist, curator and academic researcher. Over 20 years, his work in digital culture and innovation has been covered by New York Times, BBC and NBC and recognised by awards from the arts, technology and business sectors, including Lever Prize 2010 (Winner) and Prix Ars Electronica 2008 (Honorary Mention). Projects include the emoto data visualisation of the London 2012 Olympics and Open Data Cities / DataGM, the Greater Manchester Datastore. Drew is a member of the Editorial Board of the Leonardo journal of art, science and technology. In 1999, awarded a PhD at Lancaster University, in 2009 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (UK), and in 2010 an Eyebeam resident (USA).
For further details visit: http://futureeverything.org/history/
Roddy Isles Head of Press TEL: 01382 384910 MOBILE: 07800 581902 E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk
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Worldwide co-design centres & software development for exascale
The European Exascale Software Initiative is a consortium of 29 organisations and around 100 individuals who are working towards providing key recommendations on European policy with a particular focus on how software can be developed and techniques further improved to help meet the challenges that exascale computing might bring.
The first version of this project, EESI-1, highlighted a number of key areas for further investigation and consideration. The EESI-2 project, which has been running since 2013, has built upon this and focused its attention on these areas.
EPCC has been working on one of the tasks of EESI-2, which is to identify the state of the art of worldwide co-design centres and come up with some concrete recommendations about how the current approach might be adopted and/or modified to assist with software development in a future exascale era.
Co-design itself involves multiple stakeholders, from different backgrounds, working together to produce an overall solution. The concept has actually been around for some forty years in other industries and it is believed that this methodology, where people with a wide variety of skills work together in a team to produce the end product, is likely to be a key enabler in the next generation of scientific discovery. EPCC was ideally placed to carry out this work as we are leading efforts in using co-design for exascale projects.
Whilst there is much literature out there about numerous co-design centres and the models that they have adopted, there is no substitute for talking to people in the community. In order to understanding how people view co-design, when they have used it, benefits or disadvantages of the approach and suggestions of how this might be best harnessed in the future, we initially developed a questionnaire. It was publicised in a variety of different manners such as at conferences, on email lists and also a previous blog post. We got a great response to this and, based upon the answers and themes identified, then targeted specific individuals to conduct in-depth one-to-one interviews with them.
There were many interesting points raised by our investigations; such as a wide variety of definitions about what co-design actually is and the importance of managing the staffing when it comes to different skill sets required by a project at different times. One of the recurring comments was that it can be difficult with people from different backgrounds to ensure that communication is effective and how to drive the entire team to a “common good” rather than people focussing on their own individual goals. The point was also made that education is a key enabler and even elementary courses and workshops in a specific field can be very helpful to those with expertise in different areas. Many mentioned that building effective co-design teams is all about breaking down barriers to collaboration. It was evident that there is some confusion between a Centre of Excellence (CoE) and co-design centres, everyone agreed that these terms are used to describe very similar approaches but some considered them to be exactly the same, whilst others highlighted some subtle differences.
A number of existing organisations and projects have adopted co-design as a way of working. One of the more visible efforts have been the three US Department of Energy (DoE) centres which address the hardware, software, numerical methods, algorithms, and applications in a specific area that is seen as a grand challenge for the DoE. These have been very successful and since they were set up have produced significant science.
Co-design has not only been adopted in the US - a number of European projects have used this methodology too. One recent example of this is CRESTA which, led by EPCC, brought together leading supercomputing centres, equipment vendors, programming tools providers and six application and problem owners to explore how the exascale challenge could be met. It was very much application focused with a major aim being that their work would enable new science, which was previously unattainable, to be performed. The six applications that CRESTA focused on were known as co-design vehicles, and individuals with a wide variety of expertise have worked on them together to advance them towards the exascale future.
Recommendations
Based upon our own investigations, analysing existing co-design implementations and projects we have come up with a number of recommendations. These are available in more detail in the white paper and I just highlight a few here.
There are European calls for CoEs and co-design centres. Based upon this, workshops should be funded to bring communities together and support them in applying for funding. This is similar to how the US DoE set up ExaMath, a new co-design centre for applied mathematics. In order to reach exascale, and support science that takes full advantage of these future resources, the EU should expect to increase the budgets allocated to funding co-design centres. It should be appreciated that this is a worldwide effort, and the co-design activities in Europe should be organised in such a way that complements those which are currently happening in the US.
You can view the full deliverable, along with the detailed investigations and recommendations, on the EESI-2 website.
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New Research Partnership to inform policing policy and practice
A new programme of research and knowledge sharing, involving The University of Manchester, is to play a key role in informing future policing policy, following funding for a major new research collaboration in the North of England.
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Research Associate Grade 7 Nucleoside/Nucleotide Chemistry (SS2996)
Type: Education & Research | Department: Pharmacy & Pharmacology | Location: Bath | Closing Date: 29 Mar 2015 |
Applications are invited for a Post-doctoral Research Associate to work with Professor B V L Potter in Medicinal Chemistry, Department of Pharmacy & Pharmacology at the University of Bath. The position is funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of an Investigator Award, and will involve the synthesis of small molecule nucleotide-based tools to investigate cellular signalling.
The successful candidate will have a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry/chemical biology and ideally have experience in nucleotide/carbohydrate/phosphorus chemistry, being versed or interested in applying synthetic nucleoside and nucleotide chemistry to projects in drug discovery and cell signalling. Some experience of synthesising probes for biological systems is desirable, an enthusiasm for working at the chemistry-biology interface and ideally a track-record of first-author publications in internationally recognised peer-reviewed journals.
Applications are however also welcomed from candidates who have just finished their PhD and appropriate training will be given. The post is available for 12 months in the first instance and it is envisaged that the position will commence in mid-2015.
More information on the Potter group can be found on the website http://www.bath.ac.uk/pharmacy/contacts/academics/barry_potter/ and informal enquiries (with a CV) can be made to Professor Potter b.v.l.potter@bath.ac.uk. You will still be required to apply for the role by clicking on the apply box below.
The post will be based in the Medicinal Chemistry Group at the University of Bath and interdisciplinary liaison and collaboration with biologists at Oxford University and elsewhere will be an important feature. Applications for this vacancy are to be made online. For further details, including the job description and selection criteria, please click on the links below.
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Keele and Stoke on Trent College in progression agreement
Keele University and Stoke on Trent College have joined together in a new initiative to encourage students from non-traditional routes, such as Access, BTEC and other vocational courses, to go on to Higher Education.
The progression agreement has been developed by Keele to support students at the College to make an informed decision about their future and higher education.
Specifically both parties to the agreement will actively seek to:
• Widen access and raise aspirations to higher education within Stoke on Trent College• Increase the numbers of students progressing to, and participating in, Higher Education• Provide support and commitment to develop further collaboration between Keele University and Stoke on Trent College• Provide a conduit to enable the flow of information available on Higher Education to all prospective students, their parents/carers and advisors• Encourage collaboration between University representatives and school/college staff• Measure success and celebrate it• Support participating students complete their Partnership Goals
Professor Nick Foskett, Vice-Chancellor of Keele University, said: "This progression agreement marks Keele University's continuing commitment to the City of Stoke on Trent and the wider region of North Staffordshire. Progression agreements with Further Education colleges are a really helpful way of encouraging bright, highly motivated students from non-traditional routes, such as Access, BTEC and vocational courses, to continue onto university, as they can clearly see where their current studies can take them. We hope through the success of this new partnership we will be able to raise the aspirations of Stoke on Trent College students and take a positive step forward in achieving successful progression to Higher Education for many more local people."
Kevin Smith, Principal of Stoke on Trent College, said: "The progression agreement with Keele University will help ensure students at Stoke on Trent College have the opportunity to study locally, helping home-grown talent and skills remain within the local area. This partnership will also support the aspirations of young people who can now seriously consider such a highly regarded university as Keele as a viable future option, thanks to the support they now offer to those studying at Stoke on Trent College.Everyone at the College is immensely pleased and feels it is fantastic to be so closely associated to a university that has an excellent national and international reputation.”
Keele will:
• Guarantee an offer or automatic interview to any Stoke on Trent College student meeting an undergraduate course entry criteria, who applies by 15 January (excluding Medicine, Nursing, Midwifery, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy and Social Work)• Provide all the ‘need to know’ information Stoke on Trent College students and their parents and carers need regarding Higher Education, student life and student finance, through a programme of activity developed in conjunction with Stoke-on-Trent College• Support participants throughout the UCAS application process• Make explicit the support arrangements in place at Keele for students who may have particular needs, for example, those with disabilities or care leavers• Provide up-to-date information sessions to prospective students’ tutors/advisors• Provide a range of opportunities for subject specific events, for instance, Faculty or subject led taster sessions and student ambassadors• Nominate a member of staff to act as the Progression Agreement Co-ordinator
Stoke on Trent College will:
• Promote the guarantee the offer scheme to all level 3 students• Display appropriate information about Keele University for the benefit of students, staff and visitors to indicate Keele University’s support for the College• Enable students to access impartial advice and guidance (including financial guidance) for progression to higher education.• Encourage students to take part in a number of ‘preparation for Higher Education’ activities, for example, attendance at an Open Days, a talk about Higher Education or a taster event• Encourage students to attend appropriate Higher Education subject specific events• Provide opportunities for Keele staff and/or students to meet with prospective and actual applicants as appropriate• Provide written details to the Admissions Manager at Keele of applicants with extenuating circumstances which they feel may affect a student’s academic performance and which they would like Keele University to take into account either at initial offer stage or at confirmation of results as appropriate• Nominate a member of staff to act as the Progression Agreement link person.
Keele and Stoke on Trent College have agreed to work together to ensure that participating students meet their Partnerships Goals.
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The progression agreement has been developed by Keele to support students at the College to make an informed decision about their future and higher education.
Specifically both parties to the agreement will actively seek to:
• Widen access and raise aspirations to higher education within Stoke on Trent College• Increase the numbers of students progressing to, and participating in, Higher Education• Provide support and commitment to develop further collaboration between Keele University and Stoke on Trent College• Provide a conduit to enable the flow of information available on Higher Education to all prospective students, their parents/carers and advisors• Encourage collaboration between University representatives and school/college staff• Measure success and celebrate it• Support participating students complete their Partnership Goals
Professor Nick Foskett, Vice-Chancellor of Keele University, said: "This progression agreement marks Keele University's continuing commitment to the City of Stoke on Trent and the wider region of North Staffordshire. Progression agreements with Further Education colleges are a really helpful way of encouraging bright, highly motivated students from non-traditional routes, such as Access, BTEC and vocational courses, to continue onto university, as they can clearly see where their current studies can take them. We hope through the success of this new partnership we will be able to raise the aspirations of Stoke on Trent College students and take a positive step forward in achieving successful progression to Higher Education for many more local people."
Kevin Smith, Principal of Stoke on Trent College, said: "The progression agreement with Keele University will help ensure students at Stoke on Trent College have the opportunity to study locally, helping home-grown talent and skills remain within the local area. This partnership will also support the aspirations of young people who can now seriously consider such a highly regarded university as Keele as a viable future option, thanks to the support they now offer to those studying at Stoke on Trent College.Everyone at the College is immensely pleased and feels it is fantastic to be so closely associated to a university that has an excellent national and international reputation.”
Keele will:
• Guarantee an offer or automatic interview to any Stoke on Trent College student meeting an undergraduate course entry criteria, who applies by 15 January (excluding Medicine, Nursing, Midwifery, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy and Social Work)• Provide all the ‘need to know’ information Stoke on Trent College students and their parents and carers need regarding Higher Education, student life and student finance, through a programme of activity developed in conjunction with Stoke-on-Trent College• Support participants throughout the UCAS application process• Make explicit the support arrangements in place at Keele for students who may have particular needs, for example, those with disabilities or care leavers• Provide up-to-date information sessions to prospective students’ tutors/advisors• Provide a range of opportunities for subject specific events, for instance, Faculty or subject led taster sessions and student ambassadors• Nominate a member of staff to act as the Progression Agreement Co-ordinator
Stoke on Trent College will:
• Promote the guarantee the offer scheme to all level 3 students• Display appropriate information about Keele University for the benefit of students, staff and visitors to indicate Keele University’s support for the College• Enable students to access impartial advice and guidance (including financial guidance) for progression to higher education.• Encourage students to take part in a number of ‘preparation for Higher Education’ activities, for example, attendance at an Open Days, a talk about Higher Education or a taster event• Encourage students to attend appropriate Higher Education subject specific events• Provide opportunities for Keele staff and/or students to meet with prospective and actual applicants as appropriate• Provide written details to the Admissions Manager at Keele of applicants with extenuating circumstances which they feel may affect a student’s academic performance and which they would like Keele University to take into account either at initial offer stage or at confirmation of results as appropriate• Nominate a member of staff to act as the Progression Agreement link person.
Keele and Stoke on Trent College have agreed to work together to ensure that participating students meet their Partnerships Goals.
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Storing and sharing research data after the ‘Space Race’
The emerging demands of modern, data-intensive, collaborative research has seen swathes of researchers adopting services for data storage and preservation beyond their institutional offer.
At the storage stage, a lot of researchers in the UK have been benefiting from the extra data storage space offered by DropBox as a part of its ‘Space Race’ promotion. By convincing colleagues and students to sign up it was possible for individuals to gain access to significantly enhanced storage space, all synchronised from local machines in the usual DropBox way.The final frontierHowever, as with all promotions, the ‘space race’ is coming to an end. From 4 March, these additional allocations will be removed and accounts will revert to their initial state, often with substantially less storage. Data above the account allocation will still be stored and accessible to download, but it won’t be synchronised with local files.For those expecting changes in regularly updated data to be reflected in the cloud – for example by sharing live datasets with collaborators via Dropbox – this could be an unwelcome surprise.What comes nextIt is possible – and DropBox is encouraging users – to sign up for additional space with a paid monthly subscription.But there are other considerations at force. In the UK the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and other funding councils have policies that the research data they fund must be managed and stored in the European Economic Area (EEA), and that “effective data curation is provided throughout the full data lifecycle”. UK Data Protection regulations also mean that some personal and other human data will also be stored within the same area.A DropBox-type service is clearly beneficial to researchers in the managing active data stage, as it is accessible from the researcher’s personal computer, can be changed easily and opened up for collaboration. Research managers would therefore be advised to consider how they can implement a similar solution at an institutional level, and choose one that is fit for purpose –particularly as the growing number of individual paid accounts within an organisation could result in that institution approaching its procurement threshold.Pick your serviceThere are a range of cloud storage solutions available for researchers that comply with funding council and data protection regulations. These cover managing, sharing and collaborating on research data at different stages in the research data lifecycle.For example with the ‘File Sync and Share’ service Jisc offers, we have worked with commercial providers to deliver a catalogue of file syncing and sharing products that are capable of meeting the requirements of institutions and their researchers, depending on their needs. We are even working with DropBox in this area.For those who need additional file sharing capabilities at low cost, Jisc has negotiated an agreement with Microsoft for the Office365 suite. This offers EEA-based file syncing and sharing capabilities through the OneDrive application and has the added bonus that it connects through the Janet network, providing enhanced security by avoiding the public internet. Alternatively if the active research data is very large, or if it needs to be next to cloud computing capabilities, a solution such as the one we have with amazon web services might be more apt, providing EEA-based storage and being peered to the Janet network for faster data transfer.Publishing outputsOnce a research project has concluded what happens with the final data outputs?In some cases file storage services are also being used in the ‘manage, store and preserve’ and ‘share and publish’ stages of the research lifecycle, as it is seen as an easy way to backup research data in the cloud. They may also be used to informally publish and share finished datasets using peer to peer communication methods such as emailing links to datasets hosted on the service.This can be seen as bad practice, as this data is not openly available to all, carries little or no metadata to enable discovery or re-use and is outside the scholarly communications infrastructure. The researcher may also be missing out on gaining credit for some of their most valuable digital research outputs.A home for dataThe first home for this type of data should be a suitable disciplinary repository, (an extensive listing can be found on re3data) or the institution’s own data repository.If these options are either not available or suitable, or researchers would like to informally publish their data, then they would be advised to use the free specialist cloud publication services, Figshare and Zenodo. Both offer researchers the space to publish final, citeable, datasets and other digital research objects as best practice dictates.Data published on these services are also given a DataCite Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which is permanently resolvable and integrates with scholarly communications systems by exposing the dataset metadata. This enables the final stages of the research data lifecycle, by providing routes for data discovery, re-use and citation.The futureManaging the research data lifecycle is clearly a challenge. At Jisc, we are working with people who are affected by the changing landscape, to make sure that we are best supporting their needs. We would love to hear your examples or ideas for how to better manage this data - please get in touch with me.» more
Inaugural Lecture: Professor Bob Young
Information Revolution - Transforming Manufacture through Shared Understanding
Professor Bob Young
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
IT tools for the manufacturing industry have advanced dramatically in recent years with a range of tools to support manufacturing decision-making. However many software tools are still yet to work in collaboration. In this lecture, Professor Young will use examples from recent research to illustrate the progress that has been made, discussing the problems and likely solutions to transform the industry in the next phase of the information revolution.
For more information and to book your place, please visit our website.
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Supercollaboration from our Super Heroes!
Our Fashion students joined league with our Photography and NC Employability students this week to create an exciting photo-shoot with students dressed as their favourite Super Heroes or Supernaturals. The effect was spectacular and it was a splendid example of cross-college collaboration – well done to the staff and students involved! Look out for the […]
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Cabinet Minster visits KeeleSU volunteer department
Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, has visited the KeeleSU Volunteering department to learn more about their experiences of being the only university with Volunteer Centre branch status.
KeeleSU’s partnership with Support Staffordshire (a service for voluntary and community organisations in Staffordshire) has enabled Keele to become the first university in the country to have Volunteer Centre status, which has been held for the last two years. This has not only increased opportunities for students to engage in volunteering, but it has also improved the recording practices of the department.
During the visit, Francis Maude spoke to students from various societies and student led services, including Street Team and Nightline, to find out about their experiences of volunteering at Keele and how the Volunteering department has helped them. One international student volunteer, Phat Nguyen, explained how much he valued his volunteering experience and how it helped him to find friends.
Francis was also interviewed by Concourse, the student newspaper at Keele, about a range of Volunteering questions and possible issues. When asked by Natalie Ilsley, Editor of Concourse, about why students should volunteer, Mr Maude explained that “it makes you a better person”. He went on to suggest that starting volunteering when you’re young helps to build a stronger society with an understanding that we need to do more for each other. “People are happier, older volunteers are healthier and more independent, it’s fun, what’s not to like?” The Concourse Editor also asked how Mr Maude planned to get more institutions involved in National Student Volunteer Week, and whilst he didn’t have a plan, he did explain that it was a “good idea and a good challenge”.
KeeleSU Volunteering has achieved fantastic results in short period of time, such as:
• A 600% increase in the amount of students getting involved in the Volunteer Awards Scheme in the last 18 months. This has resulted in more students having a more detailed Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR), which reflects personal and academic development which could improve students’ employability and prospects after Keele• Over 800 students on the Volunteer mailing list with around 600 registered with the department• If you translate the number of hours that student volunteers have done in and around the local community in 2013-14, based on minimum wage, it equates to at least £50,000 being put back into the economy, and also helps to tackle typical student stereotypes• Collaboration with community stakeholders to engage in student social action and making a noticeable difference in the local community
Sarah Amphlett, Volunteer Manager, says: “We are so very pleased that the KeeleSU Volunteering department has been visited by such a prominent member of the government. We may only be a small team, but we're dedicated and very active in the local community. This will put us on the map as being the first University with Volunteer Centre status, something we are extremely proud of!”
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KeeleSU’s partnership with Support Staffordshire (a service for voluntary and community organisations in Staffordshire) has enabled Keele to become the first university in the country to have Volunteer Centre status, which has been held for the last two years. This has not only increased opportunities for students to engage in volunteering, but it has also improved the recording practices of the department.
During the visit, Francis Maude spoke to students from various societies and student led services, including Street Team and Nightline, to find out about their experiences of volunteering at Keele and how the Volunteering department has helped them. One international student volunteer, Phat Nguyen, explained how much he valued his volunteering experience and how it helped him to find friends.
Francis was also interviewed by Concourse, the student newspaper at Keele, about a range of Volunteering questions and possible issues. When asked by Natalie Ilsley, Editor of Concourse, about why students should volunteer, Mr Maude explained that “it makes you a better person”. He went on to suggest that starting volunteering when you’re young helps to build a stronger society with an understanding that we need to do more for each other. “People are happier, older volunteers are healthier and more independent, it’s fun, what’s not to like?” The Concourse Editor also asked how Mr Maude planned to get more institutions involved in National Student Volunteer Week, and whilst he didn’t have a plan, he did explain that it was a “good idea and a good challenge”.
KeeleSU Volunteering has achieved fantastic results in short period of time, such as:
• A 600% increase in the amount of students getting involved in the Volunteer Awards Scheme in the last 18 months. This has resulted in more students having a more detailed Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR), which reflects personal and academic development which could improve students’ employability and prospects after Keele• Over 800 students on the Volunteer mailing list with around 600 registered with the department• If you translate the number of hours that student volunteers have done in and around the local community in 2013-14, based on minimum wage, it equates to at least £50,000 being put back into the economy, and also helps to tackle typical student stereotypes• Collaboration with community stakeholders to engage in student social action and making a noticeable difference in the local community
Sarah Amphlett, Volunteer Manager, says: “We are so very pleased that the KeeleSU Volunteering department has been visited by such a prominent member of the government. We may only be a small team, but we're dedicated and very active in the local community. This will put us on the map as being the first University with Volunteer Centre status, something we are extremely proud of!”
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Collaborations Workshop lives up to its name
By Robin Wilson, Researcher, University of Southampton.
As a Fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute in 2013, I attended the Collaborations Workshop 2013. To be honest, I did so rather reluctantly: I was in a very busy stage of my PhD at the time, and although it was seemed like a reasonable way to spend a few days, I felt that it was unlikely to produce anything of direct benefit to me. I couldn't have been more wrong.
In the first session at that year's workshop I met someone from the IT as a Utility Network+ and showed off a proof of concept instrument that I'd been developing during my PhD (in all honesty, I'd brought it with me so that if the conference was boring I could slip back to my room and test the instrument!). He was fascinated by it, and strongly suggested that we apply for a IT as a Utility Network+ pilot project to get some funding to continue development. We did so, and won £50,000 of funding – which was enough to employ a post-doc for six months and develop a full prototype instrument. The Collaborations Workshop was living up to its name: within an hour of the start of the conference I'd developed a collaboration which led to significant funding!
Community
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Media Collaboration benefits charity
Media Collaboration benefits charity This month we saw the first in a series of new collaborations between students at Penwith College and St Ives School. Over the course of 3 days, over 45 year 10 GCSE Media studies students attended Penwith College and were mentored by year 2 BTEC Extended Diploma Students. The school students […]
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College helps local people to ‘Connect’ with jobs
The ‘Connect Community Trust’ has worked closely with Glasgow Kelvin College to deliver employability skills to local north east residents, preparing them for potential interviews with the new Marks & Spencers at the expanding Glasgow Fort shopping mall. Local partnership for local participants Through partnership collaboration, the ConnectCommunityTrust brought local candidates into Wellhouse Hub and […]
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Thursday, February 26, 2015
CHSS welcomes artist in residence
In January, artist Leah Thorn began a ten month residency at the University supported by a Leverhulme Trust Artist in Residence Award. Leah will be working with CHSS Professor of Primary Care Patricia Wilson in collaboration with Canterbury Christ Church University. Leah is a feminist and poet. The residency will support her in completing a […]
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Tides stir up deep Atlantic Heat in the Arctic Ocean
Jisc a ‘valuable resource’ to meeting FELTAG recommendations
17 February 2015 ![]()
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A Department of Business, Innovation and Skills ( BIS ) update on the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group (FELTAG) report has recognised Jisc’s efforts in helping providers in the further education ( FE ) and skills sector to meet the recommendations.
The report claims Jisc is a ‘valuable resource’ for learning providers. Nick Boles MP, the minister of state for skills and equality, claimed that along with the Education and Training Foundation, the charity has ‘stepped up to the mark’ in their support for the sector.
Jisc is praised for extending access to internet and digital services and resources to support the learning experience. This includes increasing the internet resilience of almost 100 further education ( FE ) colleges by providing new connections to the Janet network, and doubling the take-up of eduroam, the secure single sign-on system, to 86 colleges. The organisation was also recognised for its work with the Education and Training Foundation and other national bodies to support the adoption of technology across FE .
An example of where Jisc is helping organisations is promoting the use of technology to improve OFSTED ratings. Where a need for improvement is identified Jisc will work with the provider to address any weaknesses where technology can help, as it did with South Worcestershire College to improve from a Grade 4 to Grade 2.
Nigel Ecclesfield, head of change implementation support programmes – further education and skills, Jisc, said:
“As education and research’s digital champion, Jisc rightly sees itself as responsible for helping customers in delivering the FELTAG recommendations. We are delighted to note the acknowledgement from UK government of the benefits of our work to customers and for supporting and enabling collaboration between organisations.”
As the FELTAG agenda affects a number of agencies and sector bodies, Jisc is now working in collaboration with peer organisations through its FELTAG coalition. The group works to directly engage with stakeholders in the FE sector, from learners and teachers to senior leaders, governors and employers to identify ways forward with digital technologies.
Nigel added:
“There has already been significant progress made across the sector – but we know there is more to be done. By collaborating with other sector bodies we will continue to work on new projects that help to extend the use of technology to improve learning and teaching and meet the needs of learners, employers and their communities.”
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President of Malta meets with TCCR to discuss approaches to helping couples
The Chief Executive and other senior members of staff from TCCR were delighted to meet today with Her Excellency the President of Malta. The President, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, has recently set up a National Centre for Family Research which forms part of the President's Foundation for Social Well-being. It was with great pleasure therefore that we were able to discuss with her the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships' experience of devising and providing relational approaches to helping parental couples.
One such approach is the Parents as Partners programme, which TCCR is currently running in six London boroughs and Manchester. This programme, a group work intervention for parental couples, is itself derived from interventions designed in the U.S. by Professors Phil and Carolyn Cowan. More than 30 years evaluation of these U.S. programmes has found the relationship quality of couples who attend the groups is maintained, while emotional and behavioural problems in their children are reduced. Psychologists from Malta have recently been trained at TCCR in this approach.
Chief Executive of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, Susanna Abse, commented on the visit: "We were very pleased to be invited to meet with the President of Malta today. We see her invitation to us as a demonstration that word is spreading about the innovative and effective approaches which TCCR is developing to support people's couple relationships. We hope that the meeting will lead to further collaboration in future".
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Keele’s legal outreach initiative goes national to tackle Legal Aid cuts
A legal outreach initiative to help combat Legal Aid cuts has now been launched nationwide by Keele University. The Community Legal Outreach Collaboration, Keele (CLOCK) programme provides unrepresented litigants with practical assistance through the legal process.
The national roll-out of the scheme follows the success of the initiative which began in Staffordshire in 2012. A key foundation for CLOCK’s national launch is its innovative IT referral system, an easily accessible pathway that can direct those needing legal help towards solicitors.
To date, CLOCK has assisted more than 1,500 court users and currently refers an average of 12 cases per week for Legal Aid applications and affordable legal services.
Dr Jane Krishnadas, director of legal outreach at Keele University School of Law, says: “Since the cuts to Legal Aid there have been a number of people unable to access the legal help they need. This is why we started CLOCK. CLOCK was set up to draw together the academic, legal, charitable and court sectors, to assist access to services and monitor and identify where individuals have not been able to access fair representation, creating a pathway for the reform of Legal Aid.
“We believe it’s important that people in need have the necessary backing to get the legal representation required to result in a fair judicial outcome. It’s particularly appropriate that the national roll-out of the initiative coincides with the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. It reminds us of the principles our justice system was founded on and our civil right to assistance and duty to assist.”
At CLOCK’s national launch high-profile speakers from the legal world, including Lord Justice Ryder, Professor Richard Susskind and members of the Law Society, gave their support.
Richard Miller, Law Society head of Legal Aid, says: “As expected, we are seeing growing numbers of people struggling to navigate the family courts without legal assistance.
"The problem for many separating and divorcing couples is knowing what support might be realistically available to them. CLOCK will help them understand their options, including pointing them to solicitors’ services, where these are a viable option.
“But we must still stress that for many people the support of worthwhile initiatives like this will not be enough. There are still many families who need more legal assistance than is available to achieve the best result for their children.”
The CLOCK partnership provides comprehensive training to law students to qualify as ‘Community Legal Companions’, to provide a free service to support their local community to access Legal Aid and affordable legal services and to assist litigants-in-person, with McKenzie friend* principles. CLOCK offers the Community Legal Companion Service at court desks to provide a valuable source of support for many court users facing difficult issues.
Keele University is currently rolling out the CLOCK service with Staffordshire, Wolverhampton and Birmingham City University Law Schools to deliver the Community Legal Companion Service in Staffordshire and the West Midlands. CLOCK is training Liverpool John Moores, Salford and Essex Law Schools to deliver the Community Legal Companion service in their respective courts.
For more information go to: http://www.keele.ac.uk/law/legaloutreachcollaboration/
Testimonials
"The day provided:• A comprehensive review of the questions relating to litigants in person, by those who have a genuine passion for the resolution of the problems that frequently arise.• A strong inter-disciplinary approach to problem solving and support.• An impressive use of modern technology and the skills and expertise of academic lawyers and students to provide the structure within which community legal companions can work.An impressive achievement and a very worthwhile day."Rt Hon. Lord Justice Ernest Ryder, Lord Justice of Appeal (commenting on the CLOCK national launch event)
“The legal world is in a state of unprecedented flux. Cost pressures, liberalization, and new technology are combining to drive great change. In this shifting landscape, it is inspiring to find an initiative like CLOCK – driven from the academic world, directly engaging young aspiring lawyers, collaborating effectively with relevant stakeholders, and embracing a variety of information technologies. It was a pleasure to be involved in CLOCK’s launch and to witness at first hand an appetite and enthusiasm for delivering legal services differently.”Professor Richard Susskind OBE, author, Tomorrow’s Lawyers
“Due to the cut back in Legal Aid, Southall Black Sisters (SBS) is witness to an unprecedented rise in the numbers of abused women having to represent themselves in legal matters, and to the growth of discriminatory religious forums for dispute resolution in minority communities. Both these developments have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable in our society. Initiatives like CLOCK are vital because they can help to ensure that the most vulnerable can access justice and assert their human rights.”Pragna Patel, director, Southall Black Sisters.
"I was recently helped by CLOCK and would just like to say how grateful I was to the service! I have been through the worst 12-18 months of my life and at first I had no help whatsoever. I could not afford a solicitor and there were massive safeguarding issues regarding my ex-partner, who was fighting in court for unsupervised contact.
“CLOCK was really helpful - told me how great I had done so far, helped to make me feel calm and got me in touch with a solicitor. The solicitor tried her hardest to get me the help of Legal Aid, and even offered group therapies to help myself come to terms with things, but unfortunately Legal Aid was denied. CLOCK never gave up and still persisted in getting me the help I needed, and along came the Community Legal Companion.
“Without an organisation like CLOCK and a willing student taking her own time to help, I would have drowned in all the jargon of massive legal words and the overwhelming time I spent in a courtroom!” -CLOCK service user.
Notes to Editors:
*An individual who assists an unrepresented litigant in presenting their own case in court. The person does not need to be legally qualified and does not act as advocate for the litigant.
The Community Legal Outreach Collaboration, Keele, ‘CLOCK’, was developed in 2012 to assist those facing court unrepresented with housing, welfare, family relations and community safety issues in cases where lawyers would have resolved the issues before recent Government changes to civil and family Legal Aid.
The CLOCK service is currently administered by the Keele University Law School, and operates within the Stoke-on-Trent Combined Court Centre, local law firms and charitable organisations assisting housing, welfare, family relations and community safety issues.
CLOCK is a mechanism for Higher Education Institutions to deliver innovative legal education, assist litigants-in-person access legal services, and collate data for social and legal policy research on access to justice.
The CLOCK IT Referral system was developed under the "Higher Education Academy Social Sciences Strategic Project: Supporting the future of legal education"
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The national roll-out of the scheme follows the success of the initiative which began in Staffordshire in 2012. A key foundation for CLOCK’s national launch is its innovative IT referral system, an easily accessible pathway that can direct those needing legal help towards solicitors.
To date, CLOCK has assisted more than 1,500 court users and currently refers an average of 12 cases per week for Legal Aid applications and affordable legal services.
Dr Jane Krishnadas, director of legal outreach at Keele University School of Law, says: “Since the cuts to Legal Aid there have been a number of people unable to access the legal help they need. This is why we started CLOCK. CLOCK was set up to draw together the academic, legal, charitable and court sectors, to assist access to services and monitor and identify where individuals have not been able to access fair representation, creating a pathway for the reform of Legal Aid.
“We believe it’s important that people in need have the necessary backing to get the legal representation required to result in a fair judicial outcome. It’s particularly appropriate that the national roll-out of the initiative coincides with the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. It reminds us of the principles our justice system was founded on and our civil right to assistance and duty to assist.”
At CLOCK’s national launch high-profile speakers from the legal world, including Lord Justice Ryder, Professor Richard Susskind and members of the Law Society, gave their support.
Richard Miller, Law Society head of Legal Aid, says: “As expected, we are seeing growing numbers of people struggling to navigate the family courts without legal assistance.
"The problem for many separating and divorcing couples is knowing what support might be realistically available to them. CLOCK will help them understand their options, including pointing them to solicitors’ services, where these are a viable option.
“But we must still stress that for many people the support of worthwhile initiatives like this will not be enough. There are still many families who need more legal assistance than is available to achieve the best result for their children.”
The CLOCK partnership provides comprehensive training to law students to qualify as ‘Community Legal Companions’, to provide a free service to support their local community to access Legal Aid and affordable legal services and to assist litigants-in-person, with McKenzie friend* principles. CLOCK offers the Community Legal Companion Service at court desks to provide a valuable source of support for many court users facing difficult issues.
Keele University is currently rolling out the CLOCK service with Staffordshire, Wolverhampton and Birmingham City University Law Schools to deliver the Community Legal Companion Service in Staffordshire and the West Midlands. CLOCK is training Liverpool John Moores, Salford and Essex Law Schools to deliver the Community Legal Companion service in their respective courts.
For more information go to: http://www.keele.ac.uk/law/legaloutreachcollaboration/
Testimonials
"The day provided:• A comprehensive review of the questions relating to litigants in person, by those who have a genuine passion for the resolution of the problems that frequently arise.• A strong inter-disciplinary approach to problem solving and support.• An impressive use of modern technology and the skills and expertise of academic lawyers and students to provide the structure within which community legal companions can work.An impressive achievement and a very worthwhile day."Rt Hon. Lord Justice Ernest Ryder, Lord Justice of Appeal (commenting on the CLOCK national launch event)
“The legal world is in a state of unprecedented flux. Cost pressures, liberalization, and new technology are combining to drive great change. In this shifting landscape, it is inspiring to find an initiative like CLOCK – driven from the academic world, directly engaging young aspiring lawyers, collaborating effectively with relevant stakeholders, and embracing a variety of information technologies. It was a pleasure to be involved in CLOCK’s launch and to witness at first hand an appetite and enthusiasm for delivering legal services differently.”Professor Richard Susskind OBE, author, Tomorrow’s Lawyers
“Due to the cut back in Legal Aid, Southall Black Sisters (SBS) is witness to an unprecedented rise in the numbers of abused women having to represent themselves in legal matters, and to the growth of discriminatory religious forums for dispute resolution in minority communities. Both these developments have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable in our society. Initiatives like CLOCK are vital because they can help to ensure that the most vulnerable can access justice and assert their human rights.”Pragna Patel, director, Southall Black Sisters.
"I was recently helped by CLOCK and would just like to say how grateful I was to the service! I have been through the worst 12-18 months of my life and at first I had no help whatsoever. I could not afford a solicitor and there were massive safeguarding issues regarding my ex-partner, who was fighting in court for unsupervised contact.
“CLOCK was really helpful - told me how great I had done so far, helped to make me feel calm and got me in touch with a solicitor. The solicitor tried her hardest to get me the help of Legal Aid, and even offered group therapies to help myself come to terms with things, but unfortunately Legal Aid was denied. CLOCK never gave up and still persisted in getting me the help I needed, and along came the Community Legal Companion.
“Without an organisation like CLOCK and a willing student taking her own time to help, I would have drowned in all the jargon of massive legal words and the overwhelming time I spent in a courtroom!” -CLOCK service user.
Notes to Editors:
*An individual who assists an unrepresented litigant in presenting their own case in court. The person does not need to be legally qualified and does not act as advocate for the litigant.
The Community Legal Outreach Collaboration, Keele, ‘CLOCK’, was developed in 2012 to assist those facing court unrepresented with housing, welfare, family relations and community safety issues in cases where lawyers would have resolved the issues before recent Government changes to civil and family Legal Aid.
The CLOCK service is currently administered by the Keele University Law School, and operates within the Stoke-on-Trent Combined Court Centre, local law firms and charitable organisations assisting housing, welfare, family relations and community safety issues.
CLOCK is a mechanism for Higher Education Institutions to deliver innovative legal education, assist litigants-in-person access legal services, and collate data for social and legal policy research on access to justice.
The CLOCK IT Referral system was developed under the "Higher Education Academy Social Sciences Strategic Project: Supporting the future of legal education"
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