PopFest 2012

This CFP for next year’s PopFest may be of interest to some.

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Call for papers – PopFest 2012, Loughborough University – 21st-23rd June 2012

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/gy/popfest/index.html

PopFest is an annual population studies conference for postgraduate students organised by fellow postgraduates. To celebrate the 20th annual PopFest, the conference in 2012 will reflect on the past 20 years of population studies and look forward to the challenges facing population studies in the next 20 years. PopFest welcomes representatives from various disciplines such as Social Sciences, Demography, Human Geography, Social Anthropology, Social Statistics, Health, Development, Social Policy, Energy and other related fields. All research projects, completed or in progress, relating to population studies will be welcomed.
Professor John Stillwell from the University of Leeds will be the keynote speaker for the event reflecting on increasing ethnic diversity of the UK population over the last 20 years. Professor John Stillwell’s research interests include internal and international population migration, geographical information systems (GIS), and regional development and planning.
Potential themes are as follows:

* Migration/mobility and integration
* Population policies
* Social participation and active citizenship

§ Fertility, contraception, sexual and reproductive behaviour and rights

§ Childhood and youth

* Data uses and methodological approaches in population studies (Inc. innovative methods)
* Demography
* Historical population studies
* The future of population studies
* Future challenges to populations and population studies
There will also be a poster session during the conference to allow researchers to present their work in this format. PopFest also gives postgraduates the opportunity to chair sessions, if you are interested in chairing a session please contact us and we can try to find the best session for you to chair.
Abstracts (500 words max) and proposals for poster presentations should be submitted to Popfest2012@lboro.ac.uk by 20th March 2012.

www.mindovermatterproject.co.uk

Mind Over Matter
12–23 October 2011
Shoreditch Town Hall, 380 Old Street,
London EC1V 9LT
A revolutionary photography exhibition featuring portraits of brain donors, whose identities are revealed for the first time, will go on display in Shoreditch Town Hall this autumn. By demystifying what happens behind the doors of brain bank laboratories, Mind Over Matter draws back the veil of secrecy surrounding the practice of organ donation in celebration of those who elect to donate their brains after death for the purposes of neuroscientific research.
Supported by a Wellcome Trust People Award, Mind Over Matter is a science-art collaboration about dementia and the contribution that a unique cadre of twelve brain donors, aged between 84 and over a 100, will make towards finding a cure for this devastating disease in the 21st century.

AIDS @ 30: Three Decades of Responding to HIV/AIDS

See below for news of an exciting series of lectures on HIV/AIDS at KCL:

The series, ‘AIDS @ 30: Three Decades of Responding to HIV/AIDS’, will offer an opportunity for activists, health workers, and historians who have been involved in the history of the epidemic to reflect on their experiences. Some questions that speakers will address include:

• What new perspective(s) can three decades of history offer on the epidemic?
• What role have history and historians played in public discussions about HIV/AIDS?
• What continuities and discontinuities characterise the epidemic’s history?
• How have questions surrounding the epidemic’s origins evolved since 1981?
• What problems, trends, or silences deserve renewed attention from historians?

All events will be held at 18.15 on Thursdays in Room K2.31, King’s Building, Strand Campus, except 27 October (Room S-3.20) and 3 November (Room K6.29). A 45-minute presentation for a general audience will be followed by a question & answer session and refreshments. Members of the public are welcome. Seating is limited to 90 spaces, so attendees are invited to arrive in good time.

For full details visit: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/history/events/aids@30.aspx

Research Assistant, – Ref:1205655

UCL MEDICAL SCHOOL

Research Assistant, – Ref:1205655

UCL Department / Division: Epidemiology and Public Health

Specific unit / Sub department: Health and Social Surveys Research Group

Grade: 6

Hours: Full Time

Salary (inclusive of London allowance):£27,907-£29,435 per annum

Duties and Responsibilities

The postholder will join the Health and Social Surveys working with Dr Nicola Shelton on a project funded by the BMA / Overweight & Heart Disease Research Trust (OHRT). This post will involve statistical analysis to estimate the calorie intake from alcohol consumption using data from the Health Survey for England from several years, considering the relationship between alcohol, overweight and obesity and hypertension, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Funding for this post is available full time for 3 months, however, working on a part-time basis could be considered for a minimum of 14.6 hours per week. If the appointment is made on a part-time basis, the funding period will be extended accordingly to the FTE.

Key Requirements

Background in epidemiology, statistics or related quantitative social or clinical sciences subject and experience of analysing and interpreting data from large datasets using STATA and/or SPSS and regression analysis in STATA and/or SPS are essential.

Further Details

Interested candidates are invited to contact Dr Nicola Shelton for informal discussion about this post: email: n.shelton@ucl.ac.uk telephone: 020 7679 5648. A job description and person specification can be accessed at the following link. To apply for the vacancy please click on the ‘Apply Now’ button at the following link:

https://atsv7.wcn.co.uk/search_engine/jobs.cgi?owner=5041178&ownertype=fair&jcode=1205655

If you have any queries regarding the application process please contact Floriana Bortolotti (020 7679 1681, f.bortolotti@ucl.ac.uk ).

UCL Taking Action for Equality

Closing Date: 20 Sep 2011

This appointment is subject to UCL Terms and Conditions of Service for Research and Support Staff.
Please use these links to find out more about the UCL Terms and Conditions related to this job, employee benefits that we offer and further information about UCL.

CFP: IGU Commission ‘Health and Environment’

Call for Papers

International Geographical Congress 2012

Cologne, 26th – 30th August 2012

IGU Commission ‘Health and Environment’

Organisers: Christina Ergler (The University of Auckland) and Robin Kearns (The University of Auckland)

‘Ground truths: Advancing children’s healthy development through including children as environmental researchers’

In the 1990s a range of researchers highlighted the fact that children are experts about their own lives and experiences of places. Informed by feminist and postmodern thought most of these studies promoted work with children instead of on their behalf. Children became participants and co-researchers and some studies explored the potential of children as researchers to overcome the (unintentional) objectification of children through the choice of methodology. Consequently, qualitative, child-centred methods (e.g. use of in-depth interviews, elicited drawings) have been developed, refined and further explored. However, despite many fine attempts to integrate children into the research process Kellet et al.’s (2004, p. 329) statement that “participatory research is generally adult-led, adult-designed and conceived from an adult perspective” is still the norm. While children have been reconstructed as ‘participant’ rather than ‘research object’ or ‘respondent’, researchers invariably remain in control of the research design and process, which often leaves no adjustment or time for participants’ own interests.

Children are not only literally closer to the ground, but they are also closer to their environment. They are able to reveal a genuine child-perspective on the world to address, for example, environmental and health issues. So how might we respond methodologically to work with children on the major environmental and health problems we are facing?

This session asks whether cooperation with children might act as a key imperative for the environmental and health challenges of our time. Contributors will draw upon recent theoretical approaches to, or case studies about, researching children’s environments. In sum, through incorporating research that has collaborated with children, the session will seek directions towards more healthy, sustainable and child-friendly cities and regions. Through thinking about children’s environments at a very broad level, this session will open up a space within which we might push our understandings and conceptions of healthy environments closer to the ground than our current approaches permit. We invite theoretical and empirically-focused papers which promote or use methodologies that reveal children’s environments, and ultimately speak to the recognition that a child-friendly world is a world that is healthy for all.

We particularly encourage the submission of papers from diverse socio-cultural contexts and perspectives which explore the following themes:

· Beyond passive participation:

§ innovative approaches collaborating with children on the design of a research project

§ innovative approaches to integrate children in the research process or data analysis

§ Pushing theoretical and methodological boundaries

· Ground truth: child centred case study knowledge

§ addressing environmental health issues: climate change, environmental degradation (air or water quality, sun exposure, …), urban sprawl and activity (physical activity, play, independent mobility, active travel, …), disasters, everyday practices and sustainability,

§ addressing health issues: injuries, communicable and non-communicable diseases (e.g. malaria, dengue, obesity, HIV/Aids, …), risks, disabilities, dietary behavior, mental health, well-being

· Healthy, sustainable and child-friendly cities and regions: children’s input in

§ policies, planning, architectural design, communities, schools

Abstracts should be submitted to the submission system of the IGC (www.igc2012.org<http://www.igc2012.org>) by December 15, 2011.

Landscape and Health: Effects, Potential and Strategies

Colleagues, see below for details of a forthcoming conference that should be of interest to many of us.

Dear Sir or Madame,

We are pleased to announce that the second international conference “landscape and health” will take place in Birmensdorf (Switzerland). Your participation would please us very much. Please don’t hesitate to contact us for any questions and suggestions.

Yours sincerely, Andreas Bernasconi

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Second international Conference on Landscape & Health

From January 24th to January 25th 2012, the second international conference “Landscape and health: Effects, Potential and Strategies” will be held in Birmensdorf, Switzerland. From the perspective of practitioners as well as researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds we will discuss new results and solutions and future strategies in connection with Landscape & Health.

Contact and information: Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Event-Organisation, Zürcherstr. 111, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzlerland For organisational questions: events@wsl.ch<mailto:events@wsl.ch> +41 (0)44 739 24 75; For other questions: landschaft.gesundheit@wsl.ch<mailto:landschaft.gesundheit@wsl.ch>.

Registration will be possible from the 1st of August at our conference website: http://www.wsl.ch/landscapeandhealth. The deadline for conference registration is December 15, 2011.

Health Care and Change: the US, China and Postcommunist Europe in a Reconfiguring World

A CRASSH conference convened by Dr Peggy Watson (Sociology, University of Cambridge) with the support of CRASSH, the British Academy and the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness.

Friday 24 June – Saturday 25 June 2011

Location: CRASSH, University of Cambridge, 17 Mill Lane

The health care changes originally proposed by Barack Obama were hailed as potentially the most significant advance in US social legislation since the New Deal. At the same time, the level of contention which the proposals provoked took many by surprise. At a fundamental level, it was noted, the disagreements involved competing views regarding the kind of country the US should be. Health care now promises to be on the political agenda for some time to come. However, the US is not the only country where controversial health reforms are being faced. The postsocialist countries have also seen dramatic and frequently problematic health care change – in Europe, the streets of Vilnius, Riga and Sophia saw violent protests early last year following social spending cuts. China’s health care has also been radically redefined as the country pursues a place among the rich nations of the world. The present conference initiative brings the US, China and postcommunist Europe together within a single study frame. The aim is to gain insight into the quite different processes of change that are involved when countries with these radically different starting points move towards a globally shared health care framework. The conference has been constructed with a view to bringing together detailed ethnographic description, theoretical analysis, as well as issues of economic power and institutional design. It will explore the degree to which concepts developed within one research setting might have analytical purchase elsewhere. It will confront the interpretations and experiences of patients, professionals, and politicians of health care transformation in practice, and ask what the implications of the changes are for varying forms/ understandings of citizenship in a post-Cold War world.

This academic meeting on the globalisation of health care will facilitate new intellectual exchange on hitherto rather distinct areas of research. It will bring together speakers with diverse backgrounds, including anthropology, area studies, sociology, geography as well as public health.

For online registration and programme, please follow the link: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1406

 

Jacques May Thesis Prize

Dear all,

The Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers is now accepting applications for the Jacques May Thesis Prize. If you advise or work with graduate students on health-related research, please encourage them to submit their work for consideration. Since 1985, the prize has been awarded to master’s and doctoral theses addressing themes in medical geography broadly defined, as judged by a panel of readers.

Theses are judged on their contribution to the field, their methodological approach, organization, and written composition. PhD dissertation winners receive an official certificate and a cash award of $300, and Master’s thesis winners receive the certificate and a cash award of $200. The winner of last year’s PhD thesis prize was: Dr Jamie Fagg, ‘Neighbourhood deprivation and self-esteem: is there equalisation in early adolescence?’ (Queen Mary, University of London)

To apply: application details can be found at the MGSG website.  The submission deadline is: 15 July 2011.

Health and Environment Research Methods Postgraduate Workshops

12.30-4.30pm, Sunday 10th July, Durham University

The complex inter-relationships between the ‘natural’ environment and health are currently at the forefront of health research and health geographers have played a crucial role in advancing methodological approaches that further understanding.
The GHRG, in partnership with the Centre for Research on Environment Society and Health (University of Edinburgh/University of Glasgow) and the School of Health and Medicine (Lancaster University), has organised two workshops that seek to enhance understanding of the methods used in this area of research activity.

 

For further details follow the link: Health and Environment Research Methods Postgraduate Workshops

BHF funded PhD studentships at UCL

BHF funded PhD studentships for research into cariovascular disease and health at UCL for more info please see
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slms/courses/research-degrees/ucl-bhf