Previous Events - 2011
Young people's wellbeing¦ Nanotechnology ¦ Towards the Big Environmental Society ¦ Fashion EXPOsed ¦ Researching Food Sustainability ¦ The Story of Bernie
Just sustainabilities: Re-imagining (e)quality, living within environmental limits
Friday June 10th 12.00 - 13.30, BRASS Meeting Room, 55 Park Place
Julian Agyeman Ph.D. FRSA, Professor and Chair, Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University
Professor Julian Agyeman is an environmental social scientist whose expertise and current research interests are in four broad areas, each of which critically explores some aspect(s) of the complex and embedded relations between humans and the environment, whether mediated by institutions or social movement organizations, and the effects of this on public policy and planning processes and outcomes, particularly in relation to notions of justice and equity.
He has written the foreword for the BRASS book 'Researching Sustainability' (Earthscan) - the book's editors, Dr Alex Franklin and Professor Paul Blyton (both BRASS Associates at Cardiff University) introduced and closed the seminar.
Enhancing children's and young people's wellbeing,
June 7th 11.00 - 12.30, Room -1.63 Glamorgan Building Cardiff University.
This seminar explored the importance of citizenship & personal engagement as well as the role of business and government to promote bottom-up projects to enhance children's wellbeing.
Speakers included:
- Florencia Ripani (Director of Information and Communication Technology at the Ministry of Education in Argentina & formerly of the BBC) who will discuss two projects illustrating how institutional sustainability challenges - such as socially ingrained child vulnerability - requires a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches.
- Dr Diego vazquez (BRASS) will discuss a major international project that assessed social vulnerability and environmental threats posed by economic activities
- Dr Julie Newton (BRASS) and Cerys Ponting (BRASS) will present information on a recently completed piece of research that was funded by the Office of national Statistics on Young People's wellbeing in Wales.
For copies of the presentations (PDF), please click here
Four Scenarios for the Next Decade of Nanotechnologies in the UK
WEBINAR - Hosted by Nanotechnology KTN 12th April at 15:00pm
Speaker: Dr Chris Groves, ESRC Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS), Cardiff University (in partnership with the Nanotechnologies KTN)
Summary:
* How might the commercial and regulatory environment for nanotechnologies in the UK look in 2020?
* How visible might nanotechnology be in society?
* What could be the wider social impacts of developments in energy, medicine and other key applications?
This webinar offered an overview of a recent Delphi study conducted by the ESRC Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) at Cardiff University. Benefiting from input given by a range of stakeholders, the study explores these and other issues. Four future scenarios developed in the study will be presented in the webinar, followed by opportunities for discussion on the directions in which policy, innovation and research should move to meet future technical, commercial and regualtory challenges, and enhance the social value of nanotechnologies.
British-German workshop on landscape governance - Towards “The Big Environmental Society”? – a trans-disciplinary Symposium
Thursday 14 April and Friday 15 April 2011, Cardiff University
This symposium was jointly organised by the Research Group CIVILand (Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, Germany) and the Cardiff School of City and Regional Planning, BRASS Research Centre and the new Sustainable Places Research Institute.
This Symposium is a rare event that brings together researchers, practitioners and policy-makers from Wales, other parts of the UK and Germany to discuss the future of nature conservation and ecosystem services management. The cross-sector and cross-country composition of participants will create a unique opportunity for mutual learning and will allow to consider the role of cultural and political contexts. The symposium aims to encourage critical debate on governance models in nature conservation and ecosystem service management, their underlying modes of legitimacy, distribution of power, and likely problem-solving. The debate is meant to contribute to answering the question how the ‘Big Environmental Society’ could look like, whether it will be an improvement, and what the alternatives are. This workshop is a transdisciplinary milestone event of the CIVILand research project. It contributes to the theme “Adaptive Governance” of the Sustainable Places Research Institute and to the themes “Towards Sustainable Agri-Food” and “Sustainable Lifestyles and Communities” of the ESRC Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS).
Presenters included
Kevin Morgan (Professor of Governance and Development, Cardiff School of City and Regional Planning, UK)
Ken Peattie (Professor of Marketing and Strategy, Director of BRASS, UK)
Susan Baker (Professor, Cardiff School of Social Sciences)
Morgan Parry (Countryside Council of Wales, UK)
Rupert Graf Strachwitz (Maecenata Management, Germany)
Jon Cracknell (Environmental Funders Network, UK)
Paul Morling (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, UK)
Andy Tickle (Campaign to Protect Rural England, UK)
Tilmann Heuser (Friends of the Earth, Germany)
Christiane von Finckenstein-Wang (Volkswagen, Germany)
Monika Griefahn (former Minister of Environment, Lower Saxony, Germany)
Kilian Bizer (Chair of Economic Policy and SME research, Germany)
Bettina Matzdorf (CIVILand, Germany)
This symposium provides a unique opportunity for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers from Wales, other parts of the UK and Germany to come together to share their experiences and debate future developments in the field.
For further information, please visit http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/cplan/newsandevents/events/civiland.html or www.civiland-zalf.org/en or email Kristin Nicolaus at civiland@cardiff.ac.uk
Fashion EXPOsed: Ethical Fashion Show at the National Museum Wales
Click HERE for our dedicated page for this event
Researching Food Sustainability: reflections, challenges and the future agenda
Tuesday 8th & Wednesday 9th February 2011, Committee Rooms, Glamorgan Building, Cardiff University, CF10 3WA
The conference brought together researchers, policymakers and practitioners in the field to review developments over the past decade and assess future challenges.
The first day of the event reflected on the evolution of food sustainability research and discussed the implications for future research. The speakers included Professor Terry Marsden, Director of the Sustainable Places Research Institute, Professor Kevin Morgan of the School of City & Regional Planning, and Professor Alan Malcolm, Director of the Oxford International Biomedical Centre. Themes ranged from food regulation and governance, to public procurement, sustainable supply chains, biosecurity and agricultural restructuring.
Day two of the conference assessed current knowledge gaps and considered the need to develop more strategic approaches to sustainable food policy and research. Wynfford James, Head of Food & Market Development Division of the Welsh Assembly Government, reflected on over a decade of agri-food policy making in Wales. Futurologist Hardin Tibbs, Associate Fellow at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University, followed by outlining a series of future scenarios for the food sector, and led a discussion on future research priorities.
BRASS will publish proposals for a research agenda for social science related food sustainability research based on proceedings from the event.
Click HERE for full details of the event and PDFs of the presentations
The Story of Bernie
Cost-Effective Public Service Delivery Through Social Marketing
Monday 24th January 2011 12pm - 3.30pm, Committee Rooms, Glamorgan Building, Cardiff University, CF10 3WA
Social Marketing is a well-established approach to behaviour change which applies the same systematic techniques used by commercial marketers to understand peoples’ behaviour and to create persuasive interventions that motivate them to engage in socially desirable behaviours. Until recently, Social Marketing campaigns were almost entirely health orientated – but a partnership which included Dr Sue Peattie from BRASS at Cardiff University, and South Wales Fire and Rescue Service (SWFRS) has developed a unique and successful campaign to reduce deliberate fire setting behaviour in the South Wales Valleys.
The event took attendees through each stage of Project Bernie with speakers from both SWFRS and BRASS. Bernie’s story demonstrates the potential of Social Marketing to develop innovative approaches to previously intractable problems and to promote cost-effective public service delivery even in services which have never previously applied it.
Download the flyer with a picture of BERNIE here!
Click HERE for a list of outputs from the project, and for the PDF of the event presentations
