Autumn 2011 Issue - University of Central Lancashire

Excellence in Research and Knowledge Transfer at the University of Central Lancashire
Autumn 2011
Breaking News
Features
Conferences
>Book Launches

2
Introduction
Universities are constantly seeking new ways of being more proactive in
the transfer of skills, research, knowledge and innovation into the wider
economy. More now than ever they have to be more commercially
focused, and have a greater understanding of the needs of industry.
UCLan has understood this more than most, and as a university which indirectly
contributes more than £300 million to the local economy it is not surprising that it
frequently receives local and national recognition for its work in the areas of knowledge
transfer and applied research.
With the regional business support network changing, more and more businesses are
seeing the benefits of tapping into the wealth of knowledge and expertise housed
within a university, and UCLan is no exception. Building upon regional business support
schemes UCLan has been facilitating partnerships between industry and the University,
enabling them to perhaps work with UCLan for the first time, but more importantly to
see how research, testing and consultancy support can help their organisation develop.
Bede Mullen
Director of Knowledge Transfer Service
UCLan is regularly cited as an ‘Entrepreneurial University’ and is delighted to announce
that for the second year running has been shorted-listed in the Entrepreneurial
University of the Year category of the Times Higher Education Awards.
Not only has UCLan been continuing to embed enterprise within the curriculum and
help nurture the next generation of business leaders through supporting new student
and graduate start-up businesses, it has also turned its attention to staff, and hosted
one of the Enterprising Academic events. Former Dragons’ Den star Doug Richard
teamed up with the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship to challenge
lecturers, researchers, fellows, managers and research students to understand the
business context and the potential business impact of their academic research. A series
of boot-camps are taking place to help these academics work with industry in a more
entrepreneurial way.
Dr Robert Walsh
University Director of Research
For information on any of the articles, or to discuss how you can work with UCLan on
research and/or industry collaborations please contact the BreakThrough team on 01772
892735. We would be pleased to hear from you.

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Contents
Breaking News 4
Feature Articles
> ‘Thin Black Line(s)’ - Tate Britain 6
> Nursing Children at Home 9
> Introducing the Institute for Nanotechnology
and Bioengineering 12
6
> Unearthing UCLan’s Archaeology Research 14
> Employability in practice:
Tapping into the next generation of business leaders 17
> Truly celebrating the region’s young talent 18
12
Funding, Awards and Recognition
> Professor Jaipaul Singh receives the University’s first DSc 20
> Queen honours UCLan staff 21
> UCLan once again shortlisted in the prestigious
Times Higher Education Awards 22
> Excellence in research development recognised 24
14
Conference Reviews
> History of food and drink on research menu 25
> Professors in Profile:
Learning to Build or Building to Learn? 26
> Sunbeam: 9th to 12th May 2011 28
> Graduate Research School –
Inaugural Research Student Conference June 2011 29
18
Book Launches 30
Editorial team 35
22

4
Breaking News
UCLan to support regional
economic growth
Hailed as a business-friendly university, UCLan
is to receive £2.25 million per year from the
Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF 2011-
15) over four years to help it deliver business
support services into the region.
The maximum given to any university in the
UK from this funding stream is £2.85 million
and UCLan has been awarded one of the
biggest allocations.
HEIF funding has been allocated after a review
of the track record on each university’s work
with businesses, public sector and not-forprofit
organisations.
It has received an increase of 50 per cent from
its previous allocation of £1.5 million and was
awarded on the performance of businesses
and organisations UCLan has helped.
Bede Mullen, Director of UCLan’s Knowledge
Transfer Service, said: “This is a fantastic result
for the University and the Knowledge Transfer
Service. Not only have we received the largest
increase in funding but it places UCLan in the
top quartile of universities in the UK for the
work we do.
This funding enables us to carry on our work
in helping businesses grow or existing
organisations improve their products or
services through innovation.”
The Higher Education Innovation Fund is
designed to support and develop a broad
range of knowledge transfer activities which
result in economic and social benefit to the UK.
It provides incentives for higher education
institutions to work with business, public
sector bodies and third sector organisations,
and to support staff and student
entrepreneurship.
UCLan welcomes Secretary of
State for Business
In a drive to promote manufacturing in the
North West, the Secretary of State for
Business, Rt Hon Dr Vince Cable MP, visited
UCLan’s Advanced Digital Manufacturing
Centre in June.
The tour formed part of a visit to Burnley
College where Dr Cable opened the UK
Manufacturing Dialogue: North West
Summit, hosted by local MP Gordon
Birtwistle, part of a programme of events
seeking to highlight the value of the sector
as a major part of the UK economy.
Dr Cable viewed Advanced Digital
Manufacturing facilities in which UCLan has
invested over £500,000 with further support
from leading private sector companies.
UCLan’s Phil Tranter from the School of
Computing, Engineering and Physical
Sciences explained to Dr Cable that the
focus of the facility is on the collection,
processing and use of data within
manufacturing environments. “The lab is
able to demonstrate technology that is
already being used in other industries that
are not currently being well utilised within
manufacturing,” he explained.
The Advanced Digital Manufacturing Centre,
is now fully operational and being used
extensively by final year degree students in
Manufacturing as well as one PhD student.
Strong link with BAE Systems underpins the
development and a link with Cisco Systems
has enabled UCLan to incorporate the latest
communications technology into the centre.
Finalist in national award for outstanding
knowledge transfer
UCLan has once again been recognised for
its outstanding knowledge transfer aptitude
after being shortlisted as a finalist in the
2011 Times Higher Education Leadership
and Management Award.
UCLan has been praised in the Knowledge
Exchange / Transfer Initiative of the Year
category. The outstanding project that was
identified was in the healthcare sector. The
School of Health at UCLan has worked on
six Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs)
designed to share knowledge and expertise
between the University and the NHS. This
project has helped improve processes within
the NHS North Lancashire and NHS
Blackpool helping the trusts save over
£2.9 million in the past three years.
Dr. Andrew Kenney, Knowledge Transfer
Partnership Adviser for Lancashire
commented, "I am delighted that UCLan's
School of Health has received this
recognition for its outstanding Knowledge
Transfer performance. These Knowledge
Transfer Partnership programs have been
part funded by the Technology Strategy
Board, the Economic and Social Research
Council and others and have made a
significant and tangible improvement to the
NHS in the North West region. It has been a
pleasure to work with such a talented and
committed team.”
This isn’t the first time UCLan has been
recognised in this category with the University
picking up this award in 2010 as part of a
project working alongside Northumbria
University, Manchester Metropolitan
University and The University of Salford.

5
National enterprise tour hosted by UCLan
As one of the top ten incubators in the UK,
The National Consortium of University
Entrepreneurs (NACUE) hosted one of its
research tour sessions at UCLan. The UK-wide
consultation, which is the largest ever of its
kind is supported by Lloyds Banking Group
and the event at UCLan brought together
more than 30 regional key stakeholders.
Delivered in UCLan’s creative facilitation
facility, Sandbox, the session explored how
local communities can develop a coherent
student-centred enterprise and how
universities and the local business community
can best collaborate to achieve these goals.
UCLan was chosen because of its work in
entrepreneurial support, which has helped
160 student businesses start-up in the past
year, far higher than the national university
average of 28. Many of these businesses are
housed at the University’s business
incubators at the Preston, Burnley and
Westlakes campuses, which offer young
entrepreneurs mentoring, advice clinics and
networking opportunities.
Leigh Taylor, Area Director for Lloyds TSB
Commercial in the North West, said:
“Helping more businesses to start up and
grow is fundamental to the UK’s continuing
economic recovery. Key to that is
understanding the needs of entrepreneurs
and the support they require.
"It is hoped that this project will lead to the
improvement of enterprise-focused
education and support at universities to
match budding entrepreneurs’ needs and
that as a result more will progress with their
new business idea and turn it into a reality.”
Findings from this event will be presented at
a major economic policy conference in
London later in 2011.
Knowledge Transfer Partnerships at UCLan
Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) is a
UK-wide programme enabling businesses to
improve competitiveness, productivity and
performance. Forming a partnership
between a business and an academic
institution (such as UCLan) enables a
business to access skills and expertise to help
them develop. Typically lasting for between
one and three years the KTP project should
be of shorter-term tactical or longer–term
strategic importance to the business; require
expertise from the partner university; and
have demonstratable impact.
Part-funded by a Government grant, a small
to medium-sized enterprise (SME) would be
expected to contribute about a third of the
costs involved in the KTP project.
UCLan has been successful in winning a
number of KTP projects supporting a range
of industries including the health sector,
construction and manufacturing. A recently
approved project is with Autism West
Midlands. Due to UCLan’s expertise and
commercial knowledge in the health sector
this two-year KTP led by Dr. Christina Lyons
in the School of Health will develop a
comprehensive communication programme
toolkit for adults with Autism Spectrum
Disorder (ASD) focussing on improving
service delivery and assisting the organisation
to become a market leader.
Academics Alastair Roy and Jez Buffin from
the School of Social Work will lead on a
recently approved three-year KTP with the
charity, Crime Reduction Initiatives. The KTP
project will design, develop, implement and
embed a whole system recovery model of
substance misuse treatment. The project will
also include commissioning and
implementing a realistic evaluation
framework and monitoring system.
Cancer research and teaching at UCLan
A new collaborative research group has
launched at UCLan that is dedicated to
raising awareness and positively affecting the
lives of cancer patients through informed
research and teaching.
Pulling together expertise across a number
of disciplines the research and teaching
group hopes to illuminate the innovative,
internationally excellent research work being
undertaken at the University and the
potential impact this work will have on
patient care and cancer services. By
developing opportunities for collaborative
work between academics, colleagues in the
health care industry and service users, the
group aims to transfer vital knowledge from
the research laboratories to the treatment
facilities in order to benefit patients.
The Cancer research and teaching group
was successfully launched at a conference
held at the University, more than 140 key
stakeholders were in attendance, including
NHS professionals, cancer service users and
students. Keynote speakers included Kathy
Elliott from the National Cancer Action Team
who highlighted the Department of Health’s
main priority to save 5,000 lives from cancer
through promoting cancer awareness and
early detection – which exactly pinpoints the
aspirations of the group. The event was
followed with a poster session highlighting
the range of high quality research
undertaken by students across the University.
Mark Hendrick MP attended the event and
commented; “Thanks to outstanding
research facilities like the one here at UCLan
we are able to improve diagnosis, develop
better treatments, provide effective
screening programmes and increase survival
rates amongst cancer sufferers.”

6 Feature Articles
‘Thin Black Line(s)’ - Tate Britain
An Interview with Lubaina Himid
School of Art, Design & Performance
Professor Mike Holmes, Head of the
Graduate Research School, and Alison
Naylor went to meet with Lubaina Himid to
talk about the forthcoming Tate Britain
exposition – ‘Thin Black Line(s)’.
Mike joined Lubaina in the Centre for
Contemporary Art at 37 St Peters Street,
and began with a key question –
What is it that you do?
What I do is two things, my raison d’être is
to get the cultural contribution of people of
the African diaspora recognised. First, I am
most recognised as a curator. In the early
1980s I curated a number of ground
breaking exhibitions in London at quite
prestigious, but still alternative, galleries that
highlighted the fact that there were black
women making art. It sounds ludicrous now
but in the early 1980s nobody
acknowledged that fact. I make exhibitions
of art works at whose centre is the premise
that people from the African diaspora have
made a significant contribution to the
cultural landscape. In this way I reveal their
hidden histories.
Second, is the work I create myself. My early
work is about Toussaint Louverture, who led
a slave rebellion in Haiti in the 1790s; and
about Yaa Asantewaa who led a rebellion in
Ghana. I make portrait cut-outs or a series of
paintings about particular people that very
few people are writing about. I am not a
historian, but I try to make hidden lives real
by imaging them and by making art works
that can accompany historical accounts.
One of my biggest and most well-known
pieces of work is called ‘Naming the
Money’, which is a series of 100 life-sized
wood cut-out, painted figures. Each figure
was an imaginary slave servant and each
had a poem or series of texts that went with
it. These were displayed in large galleries;
Hatton in Newcastle; the V&A in London
and even here at the Harris. You were able
to walk amongst these figures and read
about their lives as real people rather than
slaves, not numbers, not victims but as
contributors to European cultural activity.
So that is what I do.
The current project for the Tate is a
celebration; a marking of and a relook at the
exhibition I curated in the 1980s. The Tate
wanted to revisit those exhibitions, find out
how they came together, how they
happened, look at the massive amount of
archive material that I have on those shows
and on those artists that were in those
shows, look again at some of the work, and
look at the issues that we didn’t talk about at
the time. For example we didn’t talk about
ourselves as artists although we talked about
ourselves as political activists. I think lots of us
who continued to be artists missed out on
some aspects because we aligned ourselves
with that political activism. However we were
activists and we managed to change a lot of
things. Now there are a lot of younger black
artists who want to know about where we
made this work, and the practicalities of our
art work. We are revisiting this, its political
intent and what we achieved in the last 25
years since the exhibition.
The political aspect is important in your
work and in the work of other black
artists who appeared in the exhibitions
you curated?
Certainly my work as an artist has always
had a political motivation. It is fairly gently
objectified and I was never in the ‘vanguard’
movement of black art, where Eddie
Chambers or Keith Piper were storming the
citadel of the British art world; I am a much
more negotiating person. I placed myself
within artists’ communities, academia and
the museum world so as to broker

Feature Articles
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conversations between these worlds. In the
past 20 years I have formed alliances with art
historians who would write about this work
in a much more useful way than journalists.
I have encouraged curators of museums to
buy the work of the artists of the black
diaspora, making their work part of history.
I have had to encourage the artists to make
their work and to engage the art world in
discourses. So I see myself as a broker
between several worlds.
What do you mean by “revealing
histories”?
I suppose what I am most interested in is
where the people of the African diaspora
who left the continent in the 1600/1700s,
have made an impact of some kind through
their music or visual arts, or just generally.
I am interested in an artist who is interested
in the history of where they have come from
or where their families were taken from.
I am from East Africa, from Tanzania, from
Zanzibar. One of the things I have myself
been doing in last five years is getting people
to understand that there at least 52
countries in the African continent. To have
knowledge of any one of the creative
histories of those countries is a challenge.
That history of creativity has then influenced
generations of artists who have moved
across Europe and the Americas. It is the
influences in which I am interested, traced
backwards and forwards, that are exchanged
with colonialist and with the host countries
which then enriches them: how buildings
change, colours are introduced, and ways of
singing evolve.
When you talk about art you are talking
about art in the most general sense it is
not just painting or sculpture or an
installation but it may well extend into
the literature and singing, music?
Now British Contemporary Art is all of those
things on the one hand and on the other
hand I have come across very few African
American artists or Black British artists who
simply call themselves painters. We do have
this sense that there are many creativities
and have no worries about having poetic
texts alongside our paintings or
acknowledging the influence of music on
installation. My expertise is visual art but
visual art now in both the contemporary art
context in Britain and in terms of what art of
the African diaspora crosses and
interconnects the whole time.
Do you think that art from the African
diaspora has significantly changed the
direction of contemporary art, so that it
has expanded beyond what it might
have been?
What we did in the 1980s, which wasn’t
being done was to show our work wherever
we could in what would nowadays be called
‘pop-up’ galleries or we intervened in places
and spaces that were not set out for
showing art. We changed the arts
engagement with audience. We were much
more interested in audiences than we were
in curators or the contemporary art cannon.
We had shows in community centres or halls
because we wanted to communicate
directly. At that time we were not interested
in the most prestigious places we wanted to
speak directly to our own communities,
relatives, and friends. At the same time
people were protesting in the streets of
Brixton and all over the country. It was seen
to be something that needed to be
contained or engaged with, and so certain
groups of cultural and creative people at the
Greater London Arts Festival and at various
places up and down the country started to
engage with those artists. They said we are
interested in what you are saying and we

8 Feature Articles
like the quality of what you are making and
invited us to be part of their programmes.
So that it is how it came about.
The exhibitions that you curated in the
1980s were about women artists – was
that an area that was being ignored at
the time, whereas perhaps male artists
were being recognised more?
No not really. Artists have a hard time any
way getting shown anywhere. What was
happening was that there was a very
energetic movement led by Eddie Chambers
and Keith Piper in the Midlands and latterly
in London which was incredibly aggressive.
It was visually overwhelming, textually
challenging and by its very nature, alienated
its audience. I felt that there were women
artists that encouraged dialogue. Along with
most white women artists, at the time they
were finding it hard to get into ‘the gallery’,
and finding it hard to set up a
communication. I have learned in the last 30
years just how challenging being an artist is,
whoever you are, however privileged you
are. We live in an age where the press is still
ambivalent towards art and academia.
Artists don’t do themselves any favours
either. To be taken seriously is challenging
and to get that balance between creativity
and politics also has been challenging.
Do you think it has changed in the 30
years; is it easier now and do you think
that the political message has evolved or
is it still the same?
I think that it has evolved incredibly. If you
think of artists like Chris Ofili and Steve
McQueen, both of whom have represented
Britain in Venice Biennale, both of whom
have won the Turner prize. There are now a
few hundred works in the Tate collection by
artists of the Black and Indian diaspora that
were not there in the 1980s. That steady
‘drip, drip’ that myself and colleagues have
been doing has worked. Yinka Shonibare,
myself and Sonia Boyce have MBE’s. Yinka
Shonibare has shown his sculpture as one of
the fourth plinths in Trafalgar Square. I think
things have changed massively and I like to
think that I was part of that. But it took a lot
of work in all sorts of ways. It need that
aggressive in your face work. It needed some
serious writing. It needed academics like
Griselda Pollock or, indeed Alan Rice from
here, to write about the work within
different contexts. It needed historians, and
writers to be including that work in their
discussions and it needed the most
influential curators to allow certain of these
things to happen. A whole lot of activity had
to go on at the same time and we
acknowledge and recognise it all.
Do you think that perhaps we are at a
stage where the art coming from the
black diaspora has been absorbed and
has influenced British art and European
art and that perhaps now black artists
are broadening their view of the
messages that they want to make
through their work?
I think that is absolutely right and, that is
what has happened, I think it’s the right
thing to have happened. That is the point.
We did not want to be separate, we wanted
to belong – we do belong, politically, paying
of taxes, growth of the country we belong.
It was very much about belonging. I think it
is to be applauded; all of those artists have
influenced contemporary art in Europe and
America. However it is still not that easy for
artists coming through. In the 1980s you
could say we are not represented anywhere.
Now there is recognition and young black
artists are on a level playing field but how do
they gain recognition? So I still feel that it is
important to recognise the cultural
contribution that black artists are making.
But being a contemporary artist is still about
breaking rules, about failing, and about
taking risks.
Can I turn now to the exhibition at the
Tate – when does that open?
It opened at the end August and runs until
the middle of February 2012, in one of the
larger spaces in Tate Britain. It will be a series
I am not a historian, but I try to make
hidden lives real by imaging them and
by making art works that can
>accompany historical accounts.
of cases with archive material, some moving
image work on monitors, some of the work
that originally appeared in the shows, quite a
lot of text, some of the things that were said
or the artists said at the time. We are trying
to make it interesting to the scholars of that
period and also engage a younger audience
in terms of the art as well as being history.
We are also trying to give an idea of how
much influence some of those women artists
have had on the British art scheme, and on
creative practice at an audience and
community level
Will it look at some of those women
artists who exhibited back in 1980s will it
look at the evolution of their work and
how far it has come since that time?
Yes for those people that are still making
work now, some of it is in the collection at
Tate, some will be shown on monitors and in
reproductions. For me it is the about the
spread of that influence. For the artists
themselves, I would predict that it is much
more about ‘I am still making art, yes I have
come this far, my work has developed in this
way, it isn’t like it was then’. For the Tate I
suspect their emphasis with this exhibition is
very much archive and research. I think there
will be enough of the living moving strands
to not make it look something that happen
in the 1980s and then just died and we all
went away.
What you must be doing now is the
curating, gathering together the
material and thinking about how it is
exhibited?
Yes that is incredibly demanding, whether to
show the work as mini exhibitions of each
artist or to show it as how artists
interconnect. I am much more interested in
the latter. The curation at the moment is
centred on how to make interesting and
obvious this interconnectivity without
making the most enormous show.
What is after the Tate?
It is hard to know really because every day
different things happen. In the process of
doing this work with Tate, I have also wanted
to make contact with every collection in the
country that has this type of work. Also I
have again made contact with curators I
have worked with before and I am still
working quite a lot with Liverpool and
talking to art historians.

Feature Articles
9
Nursing Children at Home
An Interview with Bernie Carter
School of Health
Professor Mike Holmes, Head of the
Graduate Research School, and Alison
Naylor went to meet with Professor Bernie
Carter, following the recent publication of
Department of Health Report ‘NHS at Home:
Community Children’s Nursing Services’.
Mike joined Bernie in her office in Brook
Building, and began with a key question
– What is your research about?
Broadly my research is to do with children
and their experiences of being ill and in pain.
This involves me researching with (not on)
them, their siblings and their families.
Children’s nursing is family orientated so that
means we always think of the child in the
context of their family. In the last couple of
years, most of my work has been with
children who have complex healthcare needs
such as cancer, congenital disorders and / or
disabilities. All of my work is trying to find
out about their experiences of sickness,
disability, treatment and interventions.
I’m also interested in how healthcare
professionals treat them, the changes that
illness brings to their family and friends
them, and the ways in which they can
become either marginalised by or integrated
into society.
My research with children is mainly
qualitative and I use an arts/activities and
story based approach which is quite
innovative. I use the stories the children tell
me to gain insights into their worlds. I want
to understand their perceptions of
healthcare professionals. I want to improve
services and the way we communicate with
the children about their illness and how we
can support them. A lot of the children that
children’s nurses care for in 2011 would
never have previously survived beyond the
neonatal period or early childhood. Although
many more children survive, many have high
levels of morbidity. Survival is now possible
due to new medications and new
technology which also improves the quality
of survival. For example, back in the late
1970s when I trained as a nurse, a life
support machine (ventilator) used to be the
equivalent size of a couple of filing cabinets
(and sound like a twin tub washing

10 Feature Articles
machine). Advances in technology now
means a ventilator can be strapped to back
of a baby stroller and the child and family is
much more mobile. Children who, in the
past, would have been nursed in hospital for
years can now be cared for at home. That’s
a fantastic advance, as it means children are
not growing up in hospital. The place of care
has been shifted into the family home which
has many advantages for the children but
research needs to be undertaken to ensure
that we are not just sweeping chronically
sick and highly dependent children just out
of sight into homes. We need to know the
impact of caring for children at home on
their families. Much of the research I do
focuses on the notion of care being ‘Better
at Home’.
Sometimes people think that working with
children who are receiving palliative care, or
have life-limiting illnesses or profound
disability would be sad and gloomy and
sometimes it is. However, it is actually some
of the most interesting and stimulating work
that you could do because the children and
their families are brilliant. For example, the
image of a child on life support machine
conjures up an image of a very sick child
who requires the researcher to be very
gentle. In reality interviews can be different
with the child on the ventilator adding to the
challenge of undertaking the interview by
throwing paper aeroplanes around the
room. Children, regardless of whether or not
they are ill, can be mischievous. Undertaking
workshops with children is really fulfilling
and I need my wits about me. Whoever said
children were vulnerable hasn’t met some of
the children I have interviewed!
I see you have an NHS report – is this
something you have been involved
with producing?
Yes, in 2009 a colleague of mine at the
University of West of England and I, were
commissioned by the Department of Health
to examine Community Children’s Nursing
Service provision in England. We ran a series
of arts-based research workshops with
children, families and professionals in Spring
and Autumn 2009. The “NHS at Home”
Community Children’s Nursing Services
report, based on our research, was finally
published in March 2011 and launched at the
Royal College of Nursing on 26th April 2011.
This report is really significant for families as
the government has recognised that if
children are to be nursed at home then
community children’s nurses are the absolute
front line troops to provide and co-ordinate
that care. So it feels like quite a victory to
have the need for skilled support and care by
children’s nurses recognised as well as the
contribution of unqualified carers.
Community Children’s Nurses do a mix of
hands on care in the home as well as
providing education to the child and family
about how to manage the child’s care. They
also train and manage the unqualified carers
who go into the home to provide some
aspects of ongoing care.
So you would have carers who knew
about the things like the ventilators or
other equipment that the children
rely upon?
Yes, at the moment unqualified carers are
trained specifically to meet the needs of
individual children which means that their
skill set matches that child. If the child
deteriorated or they developed another
symptom or disease then they would need
additional specific training.
Do the parents have a certain element of
training to support the children?
Yes, all parents are trained to meet their
child’s care needs including complicated
drug regimes or managing their child’s
ventilation. For children requiring long term
ventilation this will include how to manage
the machine, how to ‘bag the child’ so as to
maintain mechanical respiratory support if
the ventilator stops.
Is it the case that almost every child is
different in terms of needs and support?
Yes, partly because any child’s reaction to
either trauma or illness or injury, or birth
defect is slightly different but also their
families are different and so what might be
possible in one family becomes more
challenging within a different family.
As children grow up their response to their
condition or illness can vary. Some families
find it fairly easy to manage their child’s
severe epilepsy when their child is small,
because they can hold them gently whilst they
are having a ‘fit’. For a bigger child it becomes
more difficult to make them safe. Every child
and every family is different and they need
tailored support from children’s nurses.
The transition from childhood into
adulthood - is that often a difficult
transition?
It is often huge as adult services are so
different to children’s services. Illnesses that
are relatively common are relatively easy to
manage (e.g. children’s diabetes or
children’s asthma) but even then transition
can be challenging. Children will have
grown up with the same professionals in a
setting they know well and understand.
Psychologically and in many other ways
transition can be huge. It’s one of the areas
that I and other colleagues have been
working on for a long time and it’s still not
perfect. The most effective transitions are
ones where there is careful preparation and
when the child and their family have the
opportunity to take time to become
>
Children who, in the past, would have been nursed
in hospital for years can now be cared for at home.
That’s a fantastic advance, as it means children are
not growing up in hospital.

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11
accustomed to the new setting and systems.
It works best where you have joint transition
clinics with adult physicians and nurses
working with children’s nurses,
paediatricians and so on.
One of the themes of this issue of
Breakthrough is on ‘community’ and I
wondered whether these children
themselves had a community?
My hope for the children is that they will be
able to be integrated into their home
community, by which I mean their home,
their school and to join in as many activities
as possible with their friends. Sometimes
integrating the family back into their
community when they have spent a lot of
time in hospital can be pretty difficult. If the
parents are spending a lot of time at home
caring for their child, the parents can miss
out on the normal things that parents do –
even simple things like going and doing
shopping can be really tricky. There are some
voluntary organisations that work with
families. I am working with the Rainbow
Trust at the moment, and the Family Support
Workers they provide spend time playing
with the children and providing transport
and other support so the family can engage
in “normal” activities.
Can you tell me about your work in
Australia and your recent visit?
I have links with a Nursing Practice
Development Unit at the University of
Tasmania, where they have invited me to be
a Visiting Clinical Professor. Out in New
Zealand, I work with the Children’s Research
Centre, Auckland. The plan is to create links
between these centres as we have similar
research interests, and to do some global
collaborative, comparative research focusing
on children with complex needs and the way
care is provided at home. I would like to do
some work with colleagues in Scandinavia
and maybe America as well.
You also work with Alder Hey Hospital?
Yes, and saying that I work at Alder Hey
makes me smile. Alder Hey is now half of
my life. I am seconded over there for 2.5
days per week to develop the research
capacity and capability of research children’s
nurses. I am Director of the Children’s
Nursing Research Unit based at Alder Hey;
it is the only one of its kind in UK. We are
focusing on developing skills on both predoctoral
and post-doctoral nurses with the
intention of developing nursing inspired
research that improves the lives of children
and families.
It must be very rewarding on the one
hand but sometimes it must be quite
distressing to see some of the cases and
the situations?
My clinical background was children’s
intensive care so I’ve seen a lot of difficult
things but I’ve never got used to it. However
tough it is for me it’s tougher for the children
and their families. If I ever got to the point
where things didn’t hurt me I would know
that it was time to stop. In terms of being a
researcher the thing I find most difficult (and
rewarding) is listening to the parents’ and
children’s stories because, as a researcher,
you stand slightly back. You can empathise
and offer support within the interview in a
fairly constrained way but it’s a different type
of engagement to when I was in practice.
Certainly for my students, I spend quite a lot
of time making sure that they are alright
with dealing with the stories that they hear
during their research. We all have different
ways to deal with the stories people share
with us. Rock climbing and cycling are good
antidotes for me.

12 Feature Articles
Introducing the Institute for
Nanotechnology and Bioengineering
An interview with Waqar Ahmed
Head – Institute for Nanotechnology and Bioengineering
Professor Mike Holmes and Emma Hesketh
were talking to Professor Waqar Ahmed,
Head of the Institute of Nanotechnology
and Bioengineering.
Can you tell me about the Institute?
What it is for, and what are its aims?
The Institute is called the Institute of
Nanotechnology and Bioengineering, and it
came about as a result of discussions with
researchers working in the area of
nanotechnology. However, we wanted the
Institute to have much broader themes, so
also included Bioengineering. It began when
I did a feasibility study across the University,
and found that there were a number of
people working on Nanotechnology-related
projects. Subsequently, I collected a number
of research papers from colleagues, and
presented them to the Deputy Vice
Chancellor, with a proposal that a formal
collaboration be recognised between the
Nanotechnology and Bioengineering. This
kind of work is widespread, and is going on
currently in several different Schools. The
School of Computing, Engineering and
Physical Sciences (CEPS) for example features
the work of Andrei Zvelindovsky in
computational modelling of soft matter on a
nanoscale; I myself am working on
nanostructured surfaces and coatings,
and Ian Sherrington is working on nanotribology.
Also, the Centre for Materials
Science in Forensic and Investigative Sciences
lead by Gary Bond, has Tapas Sen who is
working on surface patterning techniques
using nano-structured materials. In addition
to this, we have a very strong research group
in Fire Retardancy, nano-polymers and nanocomposite
materials. Anna Stec and Richard
Hull are investigating the nano-sized toxic
particles generated during burning.
There is also work in Pharmacy where Dr
Abdulbary Elhissi and Tony D’Emanuelle are
working on liposomes, dendremers and
nano-particles as carriers for anti-cancer and
anti-asthma drugs to improve their delivery
and effectiveness. Whilst this is not the
development of new drugs, it is about
improving the delivery systems from the
point of administration to the point at which

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13
the drug becomes active. Andrei
Zvelindovsky, Mike Holmes and Dave Phoenix
are working on peptides, proteins and how
they interact with membranes. Antimicrobial
peptides are small proteins which interact
strongly with biological membranes and can
result in the destruction of the bacterial cell
making them an important group of
functional proteins.
There is also subsidiary work going on, for
example looking at blood flow in blood
vessels joined during plastic surgery, which is
being done with Justin Whitty and a research
student from the Royal Preston Hospital.
I myself am interested in looking at gait
analysis for biometrics in collaboration with
Norway. All of these areas are brought
together under the Bioengineering theme.
Whilst we want to specialise within the
Institute and build on our key strengths,
we also want to be flexible enough to
incorporate other groups and broaden our
core applications.
All these areas have the common themes of
investigating and modelling nano-materials
and nano-carriers or bioengineering.
Where will the Institute be located?
The Institute will be located both here, at
UCLan, and also, in Shenzhen, China. Two
years ago the University made an investment
in China and acquired a facility there in the
prime location of the Virtual University of
Shenzhen. The site provides universities
which are mainly Chinese, to establish offices
and small research facilities close to the
burgeoning Shenzhen Hi-Tech Industrial Park.
UCLan decided to allocate the space to the
Institute, developing research there into the
modelling of soft matter. However, it will also
act as a hub for leading Chinese researchers
and companies to link to UCLan and develop
collaborative projects with us. A call for
proposals was launched at UCLan to work
through the UCLan Virtual University facility
with some of the most prestigious
institutions in China.
What are the aims of the Institute and
how will you know if it is successful?
The aim is to work with the Universities that
are in the World’s top 100, based in China.
Four projects have been funded in China
working with such Universities. For example
there is a project with the University of Fudan,
to use nanomaterials for water treatment.
We are also exploring work with Sichuan
University on drug delivery. Anna Stec and
Richard Hull’s project on nano-toxicity aims to
build a fire testing facility with up to five
researchers, and will provide a commercial
fire testing facility. It will also be used to look
at new nano-composite polymers and their
combustion products and in particular their
effects on the lungs. Whilst it is expected that
high impact academic articles will follow from
these projects, it is also expected that some
of the joint research will lead to products that
can be commercially exploited within the
Shenzhen Hi-Tech Industrial Park. Already,
there is the possibility of securing a number
of patents.
Another key aim of the Institute is to allow
some of the younger, early career researchers
to become involved and responsible for
project management, developing their
research leadership skills. They will be
supported by the lead professors, but the
immediate hands-on management will be
their responsibility.
Can this sort of idea be developed into
other areas of research or to other
countries?
Already the Institute is a good example of
how the various pockets of research
excellence across the University can
collaborate. Too frequently, we become
immersed in the culture and practice of our
own particular subject. Yet the Institute
demonstrates the huge benefit and potential
of interdisciplinary, cross-University research
collaboration, and it would be good to see
more of this developing. We have recently
started what we hope will become a series
of research “dinners”, where the group can
all meet outside of the University and discuss
their research, and ways of developing new
lines, new projects for the future. Clearly,
with the research competition that exists,
particularly from the more established
research universities, it can feel like a
daunting prospect being a lone researcher.
Together, however, as an Institute, the cross
fertilisation of ideas; the shared learning;
the ease of communication; the growth –
creates a dynamic that could place our
research at the forefront in certain areas.
That is our objective. If successful, we will
move this model to other countries such as
India and Indonesia where there are
opportunities for us to expand the
recruitment of high quality researchers.
Already the Institute is a good example of
how the various pockets of research excellence
across the University can collaborate.
Opposite page: The Shenzhen Hi-Tech
Industrial Park
Right: The Shenzhen Virtual University

14 Feature Articles
Unearthing UCLan’s
Archaeology Research
An interview with Vicki Cummings
School of Forensic & Investigative Sciences
Professor Mike Holmes, Head of the
Graduate Research School, and Alison Naylor
went to meet with Vicki Cummings to talk
about the work currently going on in the
Archaeology Research Unit.
Mike joined Vicki in her office in
Maudland Building, and began with a
key question – What specific areas of
Archaeology are being undertaken
in UCLan?
We specialise in different areas, both spatially
and temporally. Before UCLan offered a
degree in archaeology there were already
three archaeologists employed in what is
now the School of Forensic and Investigative
Sciences, teaching skeletal anthropology.
Then Rick Peterson and I were appointed and
we are both Neolithic specialists. We are now
all in the School of Forensic and Investigative
Sciences and another three archaeologists
have joined us – Dave Robinson, Duncan
Sayer and Krish Seetah. We have tried to
have a sense of coherence in who we have
appointed. Our focus is very much on British
archaeology, because we are at a British
Institution, but we also specialise in skeletal
studies. So myself, Rick, Dave and Duncan
specialise in British archaeology, and Krish,
Mick, Tal and Jennie do the skeletal analysis
(Krish does animal bones, Mick, Jennie and
Tal do human bones). Krish and Dave do
international research as well. In addition
there is the taphonomic work that Mick and
Tal do, which has input from other
colleagues in the school. Taphonomic
processes are essentially how things get into
the ground and what happens to them
when they are there. So it is about the
formation of the archaeological record.
I know that there is work going on the
development of communities in various
periods – ‘the enculturing environments’
– looking at finds and trying to establish
how ‘culture’ spreads – can you tell us
about that?
The notion of ‘culture’ is quite an old idea in
archaeology but we don’t really think in
those terms any more. Nevertheless, we are
interested in understanding communities’
lives. For example the work that I do is very
much focussed on 6,000 years old stone
monuments; who were the communities
building them, why were they building them,
what effect did that have on their
communities? So the type of archaeology
that most of us do is focussed in the social
aspects of things, and we are very much
aligned with social and cultural
anthropology. We discover what we can
about past communities.
These sites with the standing stones,
burial mounds, and so on, are very
dramatic evidence of past cultures but
how much do we really know about
them? We always seem to describe them
as ‘ritual sites’ because we don’t
understand their purpose.
That’s a fair comment. There has been a lot
of work recently which demonstrates that in
the distant past that there was no distinction
between ritual and domestic. We have a very
secular society now where we separate

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15
them. The idea that these are ritual sites and
then people are living in domestic sites has
been shown not to be the case. I am just
starting a project on ‘Dolmens’, (large stone
monuments which large impressive
capstones raised up in the air) which require
the lifting and propping up of stones into
almost impossible formations. You cannot
conceive how they got massive stones into
those positions but 6,000 years ago they did
with nothing but rollers, rope, cows and
people. We know quite a lot about some
aspects of these cultures but very little about
others – it depends upon what questions you
are asking.
Do we know their purpose? Obviously it
took a huge amount of effort and
collaboration of a community, probably a
large community (or several communities)
to achieve these structures – so that must
have been something really quite
profound that drove them to do it.
Almost certainly that is correct but what that
motivation was is difficult to identify. We can
interpret the remains that we have got and
make suggestions. I think a lot of recent
work shows that it is the construction
process itself that is significant, the actual
coming together of communities as the
means to an end. There is something
incredibly profound when you visit these
sites. They were amazing feats of
engineering and I think to suggest that they
fulfil a ‘function’, like a church or cathedral
fulfils a function, is missing the point. It is
the process of building, the people coming
together, the preparation involved, all of
these different aspects that actually make
these significant not the end result although
the end result is also pretty impressive.
Is it anything like a ‘barn-raising’ that
they used to do in the States?
Potentially yes! Lots of communities come
together to do these sorts of things. We
know that subsequently dolmens received
deposits – human remains are often found in
them – and they are used for potentially a
long period. Some have deposits over a
2,000 year period, which would be like us
continuingly using a Roman temple. It is an
incredibly long time period and people are
obviously going back. The deposition of
material is different and is reflecting
something slightly different, they do become
burial places but I am not sure that these
things were originally designed exclusively as
burial chambers.
Do they act as some sort of focus for the
community or group of communities,
like a badge or emblem?
Possibly, there was a very influential idea in
the 1970s that they were territorial markers,
however they don’t seem to sit in the middle
of territories. My research has been on their
setting within the landscape. They do seem
to be positioned in places that you could
suggest were places of significance for
people for reasons other than a functional
one, i.e. “this is my land and I don’t want
you on it”. They do seem to have a particular
connection with water and also mountains.
They seem to be set almost between the two
of them. There has been a lot of work
suggesting that mountains were very
significant in this period. So they are drawing
on different aspects of life in the Neolithic
that do not just relate to eating and practical
day to day living.
So these structures may well have had
something to do with their belief systems?
Absolutely.You only have to look at a lot of
ethnographic examples – first nations in
America or Australia etc. Often you get very
powerful mythologies associated with water,
mountains, and outcrops and so on. This is
where monuments were then located; they
were building in already important and
significant places.
Mick Wysocki has done some work
where he has gone to museums and
re-examined and reinterpreted
collections of bones and finds. In a sense
this is another way of doing archaeology,
can you tell us anything about his work?
Mick’s work deals with the same sort of stuff
that I deal with such as chambered tombs but
he comes at it from a different aspect. Much
of the archaeology and digging was done in
the 1940s, 50s and into 60s, when
archaeological techniques were nowhere
near as good as they are today. You could
take a bunch volunteers to one of these
monuments and dig it quite quickly – it
would take us an enormous amount of time
now because of the improvement of
techniques - and they would have interpreted
these remains in simplistic ways. Mick has
been involved in a project where they are
reanalysing materials from chambered tombs,
which are in Wessex. They are larger than the
dolmens I work on and they have chambers
that are designed for the deposition of
human remains. He has reanalysed the
skeletal remains, and since techniques have
improved he can look at ageing, at sex, at
disease, and look for signs of interpersonal
violence which is quite common. The work
was done with colleagues in other universities
using other types of analysis, and they have
produced very robust statistical dating. All
sorts of other types of analysis can now be
done; you can do stabilised isotope analysis
to see what people were eating. The
reanalysis of material is crucial. There is
always a sense that we should be digging
more and more but actually that is not always
the way forward – the way forward is to go
back and look at the stuff we have already
got. It is not always possible in every case.
Even with some of the excavations from the
1950s, 60s and 70s the 6,000 year old
pottery that was found was covered it with
thick adhesives and varnish to preserve them.

16 Feature Articles
So none of the scientific analysis we can now
do on pottery – for example finding out what
is has been used for through lipid analysis –
cannot be done.
So what are the new ideas or new results
come out of that sort of analysis of that
sort of materials?
Mick and his colleagues have shown that
those particular chambered tombs were built
and that human remains went in quite
quickly. We did not know this before. There
was an idea that communities built and used
these things over a long period of time, with
one monument for each community, like a
church, to which had bodies added as people
died. That is clearly not the case at all. What
happened was that they built a monument
and quickly buried a lot of people and then
no more burials went on there. It does
change our understanding of those particular
communities, and radically re-writes the
narratives we have about that period.
impact in this field. I am starting up the
Great Dolmans project; Dave is working in
California and Krish is obviously developing
his Mauritius project. As a group we are
finding ‘synergies’ to work towards. For
example Dave and I have started a project on
the archaeology of nuclear power which is a
real departure for me but it is much more
Dave’s field, which is the archaeology of the
modern world. We are trying to think about
the impact of nuclear power in Lancashire
and Cumbria in particular.
>
There is a move to have much bigger impact
and justification for what it is we are doing.
I think what is exciting is what we have done
with community engagement. It is where
archaeology is going because we don’t have
the links with industry or the aspects of
impact that other subject areas have.
Increasingly we need to justify what we do by
engaging with the public and getting them
excited about archaeology. We are telling
current communities about past communities.
I think that is a really good thing.
Our focus is very much on British
archaeology, because we are at a
British Institution, but we also specialise
in skeletal studies.
So does that mean if they build a
chambered tomb and used it for 50 years
or something, quite a short period, that
the community is that much bigger?
This is one of the questions I think that we
can’t answer from archaeology. There is
always a question of how densely occupied
Britain was in pre-history and the answer is
we don’t know. We’ve got these sudden
blips where people are doing things like
burying lots of people but the reality for the
majority of pre-history is that people weren’t
being buried. They were doing other things
with people whether that was cremation,
leaving them outside or putting them in
rivers. Again Mick is doing some work on
skulls that were found in Preston Dock. There
seems to be a tradition of disposing of
human remains in very different ways and we
are only getting this minimal picture of what
is going on. In terms of population I just don’t
think we can answer that question.
What do you think are the next big
things for you as a group?
We have got a lot of exciting research
projects up and running, and to be able to
see those through is going to be a real
benefit to the university. We are almost all
starting out new research projects. Rick is
doing a new research project in Lancashire
on cave deposits which continues his
research on the use of caves in the Mesolithic
and Neolithic; Duncan is working on an
Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Oakington which is
having and will continue to have a big

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17
Employability in practice: Tapping into the
next generation of business leaders
UCLan has an enviable reputation for employability and enterprise, and is
constantly being recognised as an ‘entrepreneurial university’ not in the least
by being shortlisted in the 2011 Times Higher Education Awards, but also in
the way it interacts with industry. So what does this mean for new students
coming to study at UCLan and also the business community which it serves?
UK Progress is just one of the many ways in which both
students and businesses can benefit from an
entrepreneurial approach to the curriculum. Set up in 2004
by Lancashire Business School and currently facilitated by
Chris Shaw, who joined UCLan after a career in press and
journalism, both in the public and private sector, UK
Progress is based on a successful model of business support
used in the Netherlands. An employer advisory panel was
identified to see how a more hands-on client-focused
module could be developed for final year students, but which also benefited industry.
Businesses such as Plumbs, Age UK and Sunshine Events have all worked with final
year PR students to help support their business aims in terms of PR and
communications. A team of dedicated students, facilitated by Chris, work with a
client for around an eight month period to solve problems, raise profile and address
business communications. As many of these students have returned to UCLan after
their year in industry they provide a fresh approach, new ideas and ways of working
that then can be taken forward by the business once the project ends.
Chris is extremely passionate about this initiative and comments; “The students are all
very committed to UK Progress and run it like you would a commercial PR agency. I
am there to guide and support them through the module but it is the students who
support the businesses and provide them will new techniques to drive their
organisation forward. All the clients we’ve worked with enjoy working with UCLan
students and take it very seriously, as do the students who really value the opportunity
of working with a business on a real live project.”
Fully supported by the Flashbang Science
team Dan and Harry developed new
characters and games aimed at school
children therefore enriching the web
presence and the popularity of Flashbang
Science and have added a fun element to
the learning experience of the pupils who
attend the workshops on its tours of primary
schools and other events.
Claire comments; “I was so impressed with
the whole ease of interaction with UCLan
from the very start. Dan and Harry have
taken on board the passion we have for the
business and it’s just been fantastic. They’ve
been absolutely tremendous students and a
pleasure to work with.”
UCLan has a wealth of expertise and
experience within its academic staff, students
and graduates, it is important that businesses
and organisations tap into this to further
enhance their development. Students and
graduates are able to bring new and
innovative ideas to the fore and truly value
the opportunity to work within an
organisation and to see their ideas come to
fruition. With changes in the business
support offering and dramatic changes
within the higher education sector it is
important that businesses and universities
work together to help grow the economy.
Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are the lifeblood of the region and often have ideas that
they wish to implement to grow the business but don’t have the time or the knowledge to do
this. By tapping into the expertise of a new graduate, or a final year student, can bring an
injection of innovation into an organisation. Games Design students Dan Startin and Harry
Prestidge have been working with Claire Holt from Flashbang Science for a number of months.
Their remit was to develop an eye catching educational game that could take the company to
the next level of interaction with its client base – school children.

18 Feature Articles
Truly celebrating the region’s young talent
Lancashire’s future stars shine bright at the inaugural Young ‘Uns Awards.
More than 250 young entrepreneurs,
young professionals, new businesses and
young achievers from across the region
descended on UCLan’s Westleigh
Conference Centre in June for the
inaugural Young ‘Uns Awards 2011.
Whilst some award events adopt a more
formal approach, the region’s talent were
welcomed by stilt walkers, magicians, a
samba drumming band and a hog roast!
UCLan graduate and one of the presenters
on internet TV channel Lancashire One, Jonny
Nelson compered the evening, which
concluded with a live set from Manchester
band Slydigs.
UCLan collaborated with Lancashire Business
View magazine who for the past three years,
have profiled some of Lancashire’s up and
coming entrepreneurs and business people
and hosted a number of networking events.
Lancashire Business School also included an
additional award in which tutors nominated
outstanding final year students who have
been working on business-related projects.
The awards celebrated the talent of
Lancashire young business people, aged 36
and under, as well as young businesses (three
years old less), as well as inspiring the young
achievers. More than 100 nominations were
received and a panel of independent judges
were sought to ensure a worthy shortlist.
Facilitated by Michael Gregory from Freshfield
Marketing Communications, the judging
panel consisted of Peter Mileham DL,
Lancashire’s newly appointed High Sheriff;
Sarah Booth, Lancashire Chair of the Institute
of Directors (IOD); Nick Hyde, Editor of
Lancashire Business View; UCLan Honorary
Fellow, Ishwer Tailor, MBE, JP, DL and Mark
Collin, Chair of the North West Young
Directors forum (YDF). All were impressed
with the calibre of nominations and the
business successes they had within the early
stages of their career journeys.
All eight awards were sponsored by industry,
including a special ‘Young ‘Un’ Award which
was announced on the night by Lancashire
Business View’s editor, Nick Hyde. All winners
were presented with a trophy and had the
opportunity to say a few words about their
business and what it means to win such a
new and prestigious award.
On behalf of the judging panel, Mark Collin
commented; “The judging panel completely
agreed that we have some outstanding talent
in the region and that we should be
incredibly proud of this; this unique event
recognises all of those who are pushing the
boundary locally. The field was varied and
surprisingly plentiful, ranging from students
with great ideas, one-man incubators just
getting their ideas and businesses off the
ground through to established well known
large corporates looking to recognise their
best and brightest.
“This is the first ‘young un’s’ event and we all
hope that in celebrating our local
entrepreneurs and budding next generation
of business leaders we will be able to
encourage others to aspire to the same
ambitions but also establish this as a
permanent fixture in the calendar.”
Nick Hyde from Lancashire Business View
added; “It was a pleasure to see the future of
Lancashire’s businesses gathered for the
awards. It gives us great hope that this
generation of entrepreneurs will continue
driving the county forward.”
>
“The judging panel completely agreed that we have some
outstanding talent in the region and that we should be
incredibly proud of this; this unique event recognises all of
those who are pushing the boundary locally.”

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19
...and the winners are...
Most Innovative Business Idea
Kenneth Cheung - BEEcycle
Presented by Richard Young,
North West Fund for Venture Capital
Young Business Person Award
Stuart Mitchell
– Mitchell’s Scaffolding Ltd
Presented by Judith Dugdale,
Moore and Smalley
Kenneth Cheung
Stuart Mitchell and the Mitchell’s
Scaffolding Ltd team
Social Enterprise Award
Graham Easterlow
– Bluestreak Arts
Presented by Mark Drage,
Enterprise4All
The One to Watch Award
Rob Scott
– Denwa Communications
Presented by Michael Gregory,
Freshfield
Outstanding Achiever Award
Joe McInerney
– Darwen Aldridge
Community Academy
Presented by Kristen Durose,
Red Star Wealth Management
Mark Drage presents Graham Easterlow
with his award
Michael Gregory, presents Rob Scott
with his award
Northern Lights Outstanding
Business Award
Graham Easterlow
– Bluestreak Arts
Presented by Jeremy
Lefton,Roundhouse Properties and
Peter Rawling, Northern Lights
Lancashire Business School
Outstanding Student
Achievement Award
Emma Newnes
– Best Live Student Project
Presented by Jan Hewitt,
Lancashire Business School
Joe McInerney
Jeremy Lefton and Peter Rawling present
Graham Easterlow with his award
Young ‘Un Award
Esmail Patel – DEAF Education
Advocacy Fellowship
Presented by Nick Hyde,
Lancashire Business View
Emma Newnes
Esmail Patel

20 Funding, Awards and Recognition
Professor Jaipaul Singh receives
the University’s first DSc
Jai is a true scientist
with an immense
enthusiasm for his
subject which he
conveys to his research
students wherever they
are working.
Professor Jaipaul Singh has been awarded
the University’s first Doctor of Science (DSc)
at an award ceremony on 11th July 2011.
This is in recognition of his outstanding
contribution to research in the area of
diabetes and physiology in general. Whilst
many in the audience of the award
ceremony would have probably thought he
was “just another doctorate” walking across
the stage, the award is for a two volume
thesis containing over 180 previously
refereed and published papers from his long
career and an overview summary. The thesis
was examined by two world leading experts
in the fields of exocrine glands and the heart.
Their reports recognised his outstanding
scientific contribution.
Professor Jaipaul Singh gained his BSc degree
from the University of Guyana in 1971. In
1974 he joined the University of St Andrews
in Scotland where he obtained his PhD for a
thesis entitled
‘Evidence for the
involvement of
intracellular cyclic
nucleotides in the
control of myocardial
contractility’. On completion of his PhD he
worked at St Andrews (1978-1980), the
University of Dundee (1980-1981) and the
Liverpool (1981-1984). He joined Preston
Polytechnic (now UCLan) in 1984 and became
Professor in 1993.
His research has concentrated on two main
areas. The first is on exocrine glands and the
mechanism of stimulus-secretion coupling in
the exocrine pancreas, the parotid salivary
gland and the lacrimal glands. The research
has been concerned with neuroendocrine
control and the effect of age on these glands
in normal and pathophysiological conditions
(e.g. diabetes, dry eyes and Sjörgen
Syndrome) and the relationship between
magnesium and calcium signalling in the
control of exocrine secretion. The second
area of his research has focussed on the
heart and the mechanism of excitationcontraction
coupling in the myocardium in
normal and pathophysiological conditions
(eg. diabetes-induced cardiomyopathy and
hypomagnesemia). The work has focussed
upon the sub-cellular roles of calcium and
magnesium in the control of myocardial
contractility. Some work also involves the role
of exercise in the development of the
athlete’s heart and the beneficial use of
exercise in type II diabetic patients.
He has worked with 47 research students and
with many collaborators nationally and
internationally including long standing
collaborations in Spain and the UAE.
The work he has done has
immeasurably
increased our knowledge of exocrine glands
and the heart and the effects of age. Of his
190 published papers he attracts on average
some 45 citations per year.
Jai is a true scientist with an immense
enthusiasm for his subject which he conveys
to his research students wherever they are
working. I have travelled with him to India,
the Middle East and Spain and I have been
impressed by his ability to communicate his
enthusiasm and knowledge. This is to
individual students and to assembled groups
of several hundred including leading
academics in his field. He has also been able
to broaden his research base with work on
the beneficial effects of momordica charantia
(bitter gourd) juice on the pancreas and on
its anti-cancer properties. During his time
here at the University he has been
responsible for the development of an active
research culture first in the Department of
Biological Sciences and more recently in the
schools of Forensic and Investigative Sciences
and Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences. He
has supported many students through their
research degrees and has influenced the
development of research at a University level.
Will he stop now that he has the DSc?
Probably not!
Professor Mike Holmes
Picture: Professor Jaipaul Singh DSc (centre) with
Professor Tony D’Emanuele, Dean of the School
of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences (left) and
Professor Mike Holmes, Head of the Graduate
Research School (right).

Funding, Awards and Recognition
21
Queen honours UCLan staff
Double success for University as Deputy Vice-Chancellor
(International) and midwifery expert receive OBEs
They have joined a growing
list of UCLan academics
who have been rewarded by
her Majesty for their service
and dedication.
Far left: Angela Murphy
Left: Professor Soo Downe.
Two members of staff at the University of Central Lancashire’s have
received prestigious awards in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
Angela Murphy, Deputy Vice-Chancellor
(International), and Soo Downe, Professor of
Midwifery, both received OBEs.
They have joined a growing list of UCLan
academics who have been rewarded by her
Majesty for their service and dedication.
Angela Murphy has been given her award
for her services to Higher Education.
A University spokesperson said: “We are
delighted that Angela has been recognised for
her life time commitment to Higher Education
with such a prestigious, personal honour.
“She has served UCLan for more than 30
years and during this time has played the
major role in working with international
partners. Angela was one of the leading
educationalists who took UK education to
such places as China and Hong Kong, and
who has put in place the foundations at
UCLan that allow over 5,500 international
students to obtain a UK education each year.”
Professor Downe, who is based in the School
of Health, received her OBE for services to
midwifery. She started her clinical career in
1985 working in Derby City Hospital before
progressing into the world of midwifery
research. In 2001 she left the health service
and joined UCLan as an academic.
She said: “It was very surprising and
unexpected to hear I’d been awarded an
OBE but obviously I was delighted. I’ve
known for five weeks but have had to keep
quiet so it’s nice that everyone knows. I’m
now looking forward to a pre-Christmas trip
to Buckingham Palace and the opportunity
to buy a new hat and dress.”

22 Funding, Awards and Recognition
UCLan once again shortlisted in the
prestigious Times Higher Education Awards
UCLan has been nominated for Research
Project of the Year and Entrepreneurial
University of the Year in the seventh year
of the Awards, which celebrates the
achievements of Higher Education
institutions throughout the UK.

Funding, Awards and Recognition
23
For the second year in a row, Dr Charlie
Frowd from UCLan and Professor Peter
Hancock from the University of Stirling have
been shortlisted in the Research Project of the
Year category, this time for their novel
caricature animation technique that enhances
the effectiveness of facial composites.
Dr Frowd, who has recently demonstrated
the technology live on the Crimewatch
Roadshow television programme,
commented: “Facial composites are used by
police forces to enable witnesses and
victims of crimes to create a likeness of the
face of a perpetrator. These images appear
on Crimewatch and in the media generally,
as part of a public appeal for information,
but trying to recognise a composite can be
very difficult, limiting the effectiveness of
police investigations.”
“Our facial composite system has made a
great impact in its field and has led to real
results for the police in quite a few high
profile cases. We are thrilled to be recognised
for this through the nomination.”
It is also the second year in a row that UCLan
has been nominated in the Entrepreneurial
University of the Year category, which
acknowledges the enterprising spirit that is
embedded within the institution.
Commenting on the news, Director of
Knowledge Transfer, Bede Mullen, said:
“UCLan has transformed its culture and
operates as an entrepreneurial University on all
levels with the spirit of enterprise embedded
within its staff, curriculum and systems.
We have established strategic partnerships
with world class organisations such as Sony
Computer Games Europe, Newsquest Ltd
and BAE Systems. Our entrepreneurial
culture is spread right across the University
and can be seen in the increasing number of
start-up student businesses and enterprising
graduates we have."
UCLan is up against five other universities in
each category it has been nominated in.
Winners will be announced at the awards
dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel,
London on Thursday 24 November 2011.
“Our facial composite
system has made a
great impact in its field
and has led to real
results for the police in
quite a few high profile
cases. We are thrilled to
be recognised for this
through the
nomination.”

24 Funding, Awards and Recognition
Excellence in research
development recognised
UCLan receives EU Commission's prestigious badge of distinction
The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan)
has joined a select group of UK universities
to gain the HR Excellence in Research award
from the European Commission.
UCLan was among 15 universities to receive
the honour at the recent Vitae Researcher
Development International Conference in
Manchester. The UK now has 38 of its higher
education institutions recognised in this way.
The award acknowledges UCLan’s alignment
with the principles of the European Charter
for Researchers and Code of Conduct for
their recruitment.
The UK process incorporates both the QAA
Code of Practice for Research Degree
Programmes and the Concordat to support
the career development of researchers to
enable institutions that have published
Concordat implementation plans to gain the
HR Excellence in Research badge.
UCLan’s Emma Sandon Hesketh, Graduate
Research School, prepared the submission in
conjunction with Wilma Butterworth, HR
Staff Development Manager. On accepting
the award on behalf of the University Emma
said: “We’re delighted to have achieved this
award which acknowledges our completion
of a gap analysis of existing policies and
practice against the Concordat, recognises
our efforts to take account of the views of
UCLan researchers, and underlines our
development of a robust action plan for
implementation.
“Currently there are only 38 UK universities
who have reached the standard to obtain
this recognition and we’re very pleased to be
one of them.”
Speaking from Brussels Máire Geoghegan-
Quinn, Commissioner for Research,
Innovation and Science said: "The European
Commission, through its Innovation Union
flagship initiative, is committed to putting
research and innovation at the top of the
political agenda. We want to turn ideas into
growth and jobs. UK universities play an
important part in strengthening the excellent
research base in Europe and ensure that our
researchers have the right skills to maximise
the value of innovation across all sectors."
Professor Sir Ivor Crewe, Chair of the
Concordat Strategy Group added: “I am
“We’re delighted to
have achieved this
award which
acknowledges our
completion of a gap
analysis of existing
policies and practice
against the
Concordat, recognises
our efforts to take
account of the views
of UCLan researchers"
delighted that a further 15 UK institutions
have gained the HR Excellence in Research
award from the European Commission.
These announcements highlight our
commitment in the UK to training and
developing researchers and to continual
improvements in provision as we implement
the Concordat to Support the Career
Development of Researchers.
Ellen Pearce, Director, Vitae, UK representative
on the European Commission HR Strategy
Group: “We are delighted that UK universities
are receiving international recognition for their
work to develop researcher careers. We hope
that many other UK institutions will gain the
recognition from the European Commission
over the coming months.”

Conference Reviews
25
History of food and drink on research menu
Conference attracts international delegates from four continents
Food for thought was on the menu for
delegates from four continents who arrived
at UCLan recently for what was believed to
be the UK’s first interdisciplinary conference
on the history of food and drink.
Food and Drink: Social, Political and Cultural
Histories attracted delegates from the US,
Canada, Australia, India and many EU
countries as well as the UK.
Historical debate ranged from food and drink
in medieval times to the 1980s, from healthrelated
topics to feasting, from Turkish tea to
tripe, and from the movement for Real Ale to
Temperance organisations.
The conference was organised by Dr Billy
Frank and Dr Annemarie McAllister from
UCLan’s History research cluster within the
School of Education and Social Sciences.
Dr Frank said: “Food and drink are essentials
– yet they also represent luxuries. We must
eat to live, sometimes we live to eat, and
alcoholic drink can be seen either as a
blessing which enlivens existence or a curse
which destroys it.
From agrarian production to their
commercial promotion, from the effects of
famine and shortages to the promotion of
healthy eating for national social and
economic benefits, food and drink are key
aspects of social and political history.”
Keynote speakers included: Professor
Stephen Yeo, Visiting Professor at the Centre
for Civil Society at the London School of
Economics and at the University of Warwick,
who delivered: ‘Food for Thought:
'Knowledge is food'’; Professor John
Bohstedt, University of Tennessee, whose
keynote address was entitled: ‘Food Riots,
Moral Economy, and the Politics of Provisions
in World History’ and Dr James Nicholls, Bath
Spa University, who delivered ‘Tall orders:
drink, culture and politics in England’.
Dr McAllister said the conference had
developed from an idea to explore links
between research on food production,
supply and consumption and on
Temperance organisations.
“UCLan holds the internationally important
Livesey Collection of Temperance-related
material and we wanted to combine this with
the historical food-related expertise which
also exists within the University. We received
a huge response to our call for papers and
we brought together scholars from four
continents to not only speak about their own
research but also to explore links and themes
such as food and national identity.
The conference really caught the imagination
of the world’s academic community and we
believe it was the first in the UK to explore
the interdisciplinary nature of the history of
food and drink.”
The conference was supported by the
Co-operative Membership Services, and the
first day featured papers on this aspect of
food supply.
“Food and drink – the
provision, choice, use,
restriction or lack of
them – provided
a fascinating focus for
historical inquiry and
for those who attended
this conference.”

26 Conference Reviews
Professors in Profile:
Learning to Build or Building to Learn?
An Interview With Jack Goulding
School of Built and Natural Environment
Jack Goulding is Professor of Construction
Project Management in the School of Built
and Natural Environment and Director of
the Centre for Sustainable Development at
UCLan. He is a Charted Construction
Manager and sits on several industry panels.
Jack has worked on numerous national and
international projects in the areas of ICT,
Virtual Reality, Strategic Planning,
Organisational Learning, and Open
Manufacturing. He has also developed
several undergraduate and postgraduate
ICT/construction-related programmes, and
helped many construction organisations
with their research and development and
training initiatives.
Following Jack’s Inaugural Professorial
Lecture, which provided an insight into the
myriad of challenges facing construction
professionals and explored issues from a
multi-dimensional learning stakeholder
perspective, Mike Holmes and Emma
Hesketh joined Jack in his office in Harris
Building to find out more.
>
Could you just give us an outline of your
research area?
My research area covers a wide range of
construction-related issues. Chronologically,
my focus has always been to look at
developing a strategic focus for construction
organisations, particularly with respect to
business trajectories and core business
operations. That led me to be involved in
training and development; and more
recently through some of my research
projects, I have been involved in virtual reality
simulation and immersive environments.
Having just finished a major EU research
project that involved 23 partners; part of my
deliverable was to develop a construction
site training simulator for off-site
manufacturing. This opened up a lot of
avenues with both industry and academia,
and is now starting to include such issues as
learning styles, through to logistics
management etc. This will help high level
managers to appreciate the different
concepts and techniques associated with offsite
manufacturing, in contrast to traditional
methods of working in construction. Offsite
manufacturing has been quite prevalent in
places such as Japan, Sweden and the USA,
but is a relatively new concept elsewhere.
So, my research focus is still predominantly
helping construction companies move their
corporate strategies forward; and skill
development [using a construction site
simulator] is an important part of this.
We are currently developing a
Construction Site VR Simulator, in order
to train construction professionals in this
new way of working and thinking.
You have mentioned off-site
manufacturing. Is that where a complete
unit, e.g. a bathroom, is manufactured
off site, shipped in, and placed in the
building?
Absolutely, but things have moved on a little.
Part of supply chain management is that we
now have the capability of being able to use
what are called “smart objects” or
“intelligent components”. These form part
of product catalogues, which are basically
databases of objects. These are able to store
knowledge and intelligence; for example,
behavioural aspects, design characteristics,
life cycle requirements etc. They can also be
integrated into Building Information
Modelling (BIM) systems. From this, you can
select an appropriate ‘object’ to see how it
will perform in a particular environment.
You are also able to see which
manufacturers are available, the time taken
to make, deliver etc. This could be for
example a simple bathroom unit, through to
a complete bathroom, or a full house for
that matter. The only constraint really is on
size. Logistics are important here. If it can fit
within a container, then we can generally
have this manufactured off-site and bring it
directly to site for assembly. This approach
has many benefits, not least improvements
in quality, faster erection times, less wet
trades, reduced waste, improvements in
Health and Safety etc. So, put simply, almost
a “plug and fit” approach. This method
takes away many of the traditional on-site
activities, and replicates these in a controlled
environment (the factory), which also has
the additional benefit of not being affected
by weather conditions etc. However, there is
a cultural mind set change that is needed
within the industry. People are still a little bit
wary of this new approach as opposed to
the traditional brick-block, concrete or steel
frame construction that we are traditionally
used to. This is predominantly a culture
issue, which is slightly different in other
countries. So, this is one of the things that
we need to deal with, as it has a knock-on
effect on all parts of the business, including

Conference Reviews
27
company business models (as they will have
to re-visit things in a different way e.g.
logistics, dealing with supply chain partners;
what happens if a supplier goes out of
business? etc). These issues are important,
as you need to have a critical mass in the
supply chain. For example, if you design
something that has certain constraints and
technical requirements (to fit in with your
design), and that manufacturer goes out of
business, it may not always be that easy to
then procure another alternative from a
different manufacturer.
You were also talking about the use of
virtual reality, so is that about allowing
companies to see how this would fit
together to create a virtual building?
Correct. One of the issues now, is that we
have an industry that is steeped in tradition.
It is somewhat parochial, with deep-rooted
values that are embedded in contracts,
relationships, trust, ethics etc. For people to
step out of that mindset and into new ways
of looking at manufacturing (for example),
new methodologies, new technologies, new
processes etc, then the commercial drivers
and benefits need to be more overt. Some
companies are already doing this with great
success. They are also very good at doing
this, and are now creating competitive
advantage in the marketplace. However, you
need to have commercial tacit knowledge to
take advantage of this; and at this present
moment in time within the industry, there
are only a few companies in the UK that
have this. This is one of the reasons we are
currently developing a Construction Site VR
Simulator, in order to train construction
professionals in this new way of working and
thinking. Saying that, the inertia and
momentum is now gathering pace. For
example, I am a Coordinator of CIB TG74
looking at “New Production and Business
Models in Construction”. CIB is the
International Council for Research and
Innovation in Building and Construction
(www.cibworld.nl). I am also a member of
CIB W119 – “Customised Industrial
Construction”. Work undertaken to date has
identified some significant breakthroughs.
One of the things we are hoping to do next
is to determine a five-year vision for the
industry, which will include key priority areas.
This will also include an international
research strategy that addresses both theory
and practice - highlighting barriers and
opportunities (cognisant of stakeholder
needs, market demand, cultural and societal
influences etc).
Do you consider the new methods of
construction to have appealing
environmental factors that will
incentivise the use of them?
One of the benefits of adopting new
methodologies and techniques such as this
includes its impact on the environment. This
includes a variety of issues, such as a lower
carbon footprint, improved waste control,
fewer defects, more efficient processes,
creating and engendering Corporate Social
Responsibility etc. This means that
companies are now increasingly aware of
their responsibilities and are actively aligning
these into cogent sustainable building
practices. Therefore, using an approach
such as offsite construction can have a
positive impact on this. For example, the
ability to procure materials, products and
services at a much earlier stage in the
process allows everyone to think about
issues at a very early stage, including: the
pre-vetting of suppliers, manufacturers,
contractors etc (regarding their sustainability
credentials), through to looking at aspects
of design, functionality, maintenance etc
(over the lifecycle of the product).
So this is about making the building
industry more environmentally friendly,
more energy efficient and more
sustainable?
Yes, but again, it is much more than this.
All these benefits are overt and well
documented. Controlled environments such
as factories can help companies achieve
defendable sustainability solutions. However,
what tends to happen now is that the design
often evolves in parallel with construction to
save time. Using modern methods of
construction requires people to make
different decisions, and much earlier well in
advance of construction. Making those
decisions early means that you can make
parts of the product in the factory very
quickly. You therefore know the costs in
advance, know what you are getting, and
everything is very well defined. The downside
is that once you have made these decisions,
you do not have the flexibility to change your
mind as a client that easily, as the products
may be being assembled in multiple factories
for the deliverable dates you have agreed
with them. Changing your mind would
therefore tend to incur additional costs with
cancelled contracts, materials no longer being
needed etc. In this respect, clients within the
industry often change their minds during the
construction stage for a variety of reasons.
So these new methods are as applicable
for small housing projects as for large
construction sites?
Yes, you are right. I have worked with people
on simple commercial dwellings, through to
large-scale projects. The principles are the
same, only the scale and complexity changes.
For example, it is now possible to create such
things as “pods”, which could be a complete
bathroom, kitchen etc which can be slotted
into a building, through to panelised walls
that look exactly like external brickwork – but
much better. The finishes are exemplary; you
would not know for example (even looking
up close) whether panelised walls were brick
or not - you would not know the difference.
Looking at recent show homes, there
was an en-suite bathroom that seemed
poorly designed in terms of space utility.
Are we getting to the stage where a
whole bathroom will be designed and
fitted as a unit?
You have highlighted a problem that has
existed for a long time. Traditional house
builders have existing “house types” and
models that they work with. The problem is
construction, and the workmanship used to
create the rooms and spaces needed. If there is
a problem with the construction of the space
or quality of workmanship, then problems
inevitably arise. This does not tend to happen
with offsite manufacturing, as these two issues
are taken out of the equation. You asked if the
whole bathroom could be designed and fitted
as one unit; the simple answer is “yes”.
We have been doing this for some time now.
The clients (you and I) are king here. If you
come to me and tell me what you want, all I
need to know is the specifications you want
(quality and product-wise), along with the
dimensions or constraints that I have to
comply with. This is obviously more expensive
for a one off, but if you are working for one of
the traditional house builders, then they will
have all the design styles available for you to
choose. In some cases, you will be able to go
online and see your design changes being
made live. Changes that cannot be made will
be for example, ‘greyed out’ as they may
already be in the production process. Virtual
imagery of the end products is also available
online. One particular advantage we have here
is the increased use of BIM I mentioned earlier.
BIM can provide real-time, on-demand
building information over the Internet. This not
only helps support the design and construction
process, but can also help generate more
environmentally sustainable and energy
efficient buildings.

28 Conference Reviews
Sunbeam: 9th to 12th May 2011
Sunbeam Project team:
(L to R) Dr Robert Walsh, Stephane Regnier,
Chris Meigh-Andrews and David Henckel.
could affect power transmission and
communications here on Earth.
Sunbeam in May was possibly a unique event
for the University bringing together
contemporary electronic art, cutting edge
solar research, and state of the art
technology. Chris Meigh-Andrews, Professor
of Electronic and Digital Art and Dr Robert
Walsh, Director of Research at UCLan have
come together in collaboration which uses
one of UCLan’s tracking solar panels. The
solar trackers located between Allen Building
and Harrington Car Park are designed to
follow the position of the Sun. Each tracker
comprises 30 solar panels, which should
generate about 5.4 MWh of energy per year
and save 3.1 tonnes of CO2. The trackers are
about 40% more efficient than panels that
are mounted on a static frame. The trackers,
which are believed to be unique in the UK
were installed by Facilities Management and
Energi Plc with support from BRE’s Low
Carbon Building Programme.
Robert Walsh’s area of research is solar
physics and has been instrumental in
working with NASA to make UCLan the
European data hub for the solar images from
the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). An
image is taken every 10 seconds at very high
resolution and across a range of
wavelengths. These images are used by solar
physicists across the globe to understand the
processes taking place on our Sun and to act
as an early warning of out bursts which
Sunbeam was a project by Chris Meigh-
Andrews with assistance from Dr. Stephane
Regnier and David Henckel. It was the latest
in a series of projects by Chris Meigh-
Andrews over the years, which have involved
the use of renewable energy technology as
both subject and the power source, for
example Perpetual Motion from 1994, Fire,
Ice and Steam, from 1995, Mothlight in
1998, and Resurrection from 2005/6. For this
project, sequences of images of the Sun
taken from the SDO were projected onto one
of the solar tracker platforms. The artwork
represents both the energy of the Sun and
displays its effects by using the energy to
make the projected image possible.
References
Bataille G. (1991), The Accursed Share,
vol. 1 (New York: Zone Books)
Gere C. (2011), http://www.meighandrews.com/archives/2569,
accessed
27 June 2011
>
Sunbeam in May was possibly a unique event for
the University bringing together contemporary
electronic art, cutting edge solar research, and
state of the art technology.

Conference Reviews
29
Graduate Research School – Inaugural
Research Student Conference June 2011
“Very high standard of research this year. Engaging with people
from other departments and hearing their projects with their
>unique enthusiasm was most definitely the highlight”
This year saw the launch of the first cross
University Research Student Conference,
7th – 9th June 2011, after the centralisation
of research development under the new
Graduate Research School. Over the three
days, more than 90 students and staff
attended the inaugural event convened in
Brook Building on the Preston Campus. The
programme allowed for oral presentations by
students nominated from their respective
schools. Nomination categories included
“Best Presenter” and “Best First Timer” to
allow all students irrespective of the stage of
their research to participate. Thirty three
students presented in these two categories
over the first two days of the event.
Also accommodated were the “Best”
(nominations from Schools) and “General”
(open nominations) poster categories. Over
twenty four students took part in this section,
with separate rooms being allocated for the
effective display of their combined works.
The Conference was opened by Dr Robert
Walsh, University Director of Research. In his
welcoming address, he emphasised the
purpose of the event as a celebration of the
rich diversity of UCLan’s research
environment; the opportunities the
conference presented for inter-disciplinary
networking; and the benefit to research
students of rehearsing academic presentation
skills in a supportive peer group setting.
The event will also have a longer term
educational benefit to students who
participated, as all presentations were
recorded and edited sections will be given to
the respective speakers to allow them to
conduct their own evaluation of their
performance. Judging at the event itself was
by a combination of audience participation
using sophisticated hand held voting devices,
and an academic panel. Prizes were awarded
to – Best Oral (Winner) Helen Godfrey, School
of Forensic and Investigative Sciences; Runner
Up Dorothee Boughton, School of Forensic
and Investigative Sciences. First Timer
(Winner) Michelle Wienhold, School of
Forensic and Investigative Sciences; Runner
Up Robin Moll, School of Postgraduate
Medical and Dental Education. Best Poster
(Winner) Jennifer Rhodes, School of Forensic
and Investigative Sciences; Runner Up
Shradda Aptekar, School of Pharmacy and
Biomedical Science. General Poster (Winner)
Simon Murphy, School of Computing,
Engineering and Physical Sciences; Runner Up
Caroline Alexander, School of Computing,
Engineering and Physical Sciences.
Comprehensive evaluation of the Conference
took place with all those who attended.
Comments were extremely encouraging on
the format of the conference, “It felt like a real
conference – with time to get absorbed into
the ‘feel’ of a research setting”; “I have really
enjoyed it. I feel proud to do my PhD at UCLan
when I see such passionate PhD candidates
talking about their research”; “Very high
standard of research this year. Engaging with
people from other departments and hearing
their projects with their unique enthusiasm
was most definitely the highlight”.
For further details on next year’s conference,
please contact Emma Sandon-Hesketh,
Research Development Manager, Graduate
Research School on 01772 892735 or
ehesketh@uclan.ac.uk

30 Book Launches
Book Launches
Biomechanics of Hard Tissues
Biomechanics, the application of mechanical methods to biological systems, is a rapidly growing
area of immense importance. The ability to influence the “lifetime” of parts of the human body
or to offer adequate replacements in the case of failure has a direct influence on our entire well
being. This becomes increasingly important during old age when joints must be replaced in order
to guarantee an adequate mobility of the various components of the human body. To adopt the
mechanical performance of structural parts of the body or to offer alternatives if they do not
function properly any more in order to meet the biological life expectancy is a major challenge
that requires coordinated efforts of a number of academic disciplines.
Editors
Professor Andreas Öchsner
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, and
Professor Waqar Ahmed
University of Central Lancashire
Wiley-VCH
ISBN 978-3-527-32431-6
Copyright Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co.
KGaA. Reproduced with permission.
The application of analytical, numerical and experimental characterization methods, which
were originally applied to engineering structures, allows us to model, analyze and understand
the behaviour and performance biological structures. However, this area is much more
complicated than engineering structures. For example, classical test specimens, as in the case of
metals, are difficult to manufacture from biological materials. Biological materials are in many
cases not as isotropic and homogeneous as traditional engineering materials and their
properties depend on many factors and may be subject to considerable variation during the
lifetime of the structure.
This monogram focuses on hard tissues, that is, tissues having a firm intercellular structure such
as bone and cartilage. Their physical properties are described in detail. Modeling approaches on
different length scale are presented in order to predict mechanical properties. The influence of
different biological, mechanical, and other physical factors and stimuli on the performance and
regeneration ability is discussed in several chapters. Other chapters include topics related to
bone replacement using implants. Different types of implants are characterized, tribilogical
aspects covered and the bone-implant interaction modeled and simulated numerically. Finally
the design of bone implants based on mathematical criteria is presented.

Book Launches
31
Creating Memorials Building Identities
A groundbreaking investigation of memorials and monuments to slavery throughout the
African diaspora, Creating Memorials, Building Identities analyses not only physical memorials
(and their absence) but also the practice of remembering in museums and plantation houses,
and through contemporary cultural forms – visual art, literature, music and film. A series of case
studies, ranging from the 18th to the 21st century, from Senegal and Montserrat to
Manchester and Paris, explore issues such as the Lancashire cotton famine, black soldiers in
World War II and the 2007 commemoration of abolition in regional museums. The book also
looks at ‘guerrilla memorialisation’, with its refusal to consider amnesia as an option, and the
artistic interventions it has provoked.
Author
Dr. Alan Rice
University of Central Lancashire
Liverpool University Press
ISBN 978-1-84631-471-1
Expanding on recent theoretical writing on memory and memorialisation, Creating Memorials,
Building Identities draws on the work of contemporary thinkers, writers and artists of the black
Atlantic, such as Toni Morrison, Jackie Kay, Lubaina Himid and Caryl Phillips. The book presents
a compelling case for the continuing importance of the legacy of slavery, whilst engaging with
the complex problem of how traumatic histories are best commemorated.
‘Rice’s book combines breadth of learning, enthusiastic engaged scholarship, and commitment
to freedom and equality.’
Professor Gen Doy, De Montfort University
‘...an insightful and often moving critical response to the diaspora-wide search for memorials
“that conserve memory without being conservative.”’
Professor Arlene R. Keizer, author of Black Subjects: Identity Formation in the Contemporary
Narrative of Slavery
‘Interdisciplinary work is often called for but rarely achieved. Alan Rice’s Creating Memorials,
Building Identities is a striking example of how it is best done. With this new book, British
“heritage” is considerably enriched and diversified.’
Professor Richard H.King, University of Nottingham

32 Book Launches
Ethics and Self Knowledge
Author
Dr Peter Lucas
University of Central Lancashire
Springer
This book makes a contribution to ongoing research in ethical theory and applied ethics,
in which several members of the UCLan Philosophy team are engaged. Until now, the human
capacities that have received most attention from ethicists have been our capacity for pleasure
and suffering, and our capacity to make self-determining choices. However, human beings
also have a distinctive capacity for self-interpretation and self-knowledge. The aim of this
book is to outline and account for our ethical responsibilities to others in respect of this
capacity. It focuses in particular on a distinctive class of moral wrongs – interpretive moral
wrongs – which affect others at the level of their self-understanding. When we (e.g.)
discriminate against someone, when we objectify or commodify them, we wrong them in a
manner that promises to impact not only on their wellbeing and their autonomy, but also on
their understanding of who and what they are. By highlighting the importance of this theme,
the book aims to re-connect contemporary moral theorising with the tradition of philosophical
reflection on ethics and self-knowledge, which links philosophers as diverse as Hegel, Sartre
and Foucault, amongst others. The book will be of interest to anyone with an interest in the
philosophical underpinnings of contemporary applied and professional ethics.
ISBN 978-94-007-1559-2
Online Learning
With the recent emergence of Web 2.0 technologies and the widespread use and availability of
laptop computers and wireless networks, the integration of digital technologies is increasingly
seen as an inevitable factor in e-Learning and education. Published in June 2011 by Sage,
Online Learning (Volumes I-IV) examines the influence of new technologies on online pedagogy
and provides an authoritative synthesis of existing research in the field. It also investigates the
direction of e-Learning in the digital age. Consisting of approximately 85 articles, the five parts
focus on:
Part One: Professional Development and Training
Editor
Dr Michael Thomas
University of Central Lancashire
Sage
ISBN 978-0-857-02765-8
Part Two: Digital Pedagogies
Part Three: Digital Literacies
Part Four: New and Emerging Technologies
Part Five: Online Assessment
“Online learning is growing rapidly as a discipline and in terms of its influence on education
and training. Many activities that seemed impossible a decade ago - such as person to person
online video - are now common place. The last five years have produced dramatic change in
how individuals interact with each other and with information. This publication provides among
the best theorizing, research, and implementation on online learning. Those who are new to
technology in learning will find it a wonderful starting point. Those with extensive experience in
online learning will find it to be an excellent foundation to revisit.”
George Siemens, Athabasca University, Canada

Book Launches
33
Deconstructing Digital Natives
There have been many attempts to define the generation of students who emerged with the
Web and new digital technologies in the early 1990s. The term "digital native" refers to the
generation born after 1980, which has grown up in a world where digital technologies and the
internet are a normal part of everyday life. Young people belonging to this generation are
therefore supposed to be "native" to the digital lifestyle, always connected to the internet and
comfortable with a range of cutting-edge technologies.
Editor
Dr Michael Thomas
University of Central Lancashire
Routledge
ISBN 978-0-415-88993-3
Deconstructing Digital Natives offers the most balanced, research-based view of this group to
date. Existing studies of digital natives lack application to specific disciplines or conditions,
ignoring the differences of educational fields and gender. How, and how much, are learners
changing in the digital age? How can a more pluralistic understanding of these learners be
developed? Contributors to this volume produce an international overview of developments in
digital literacy among today’s young learners, offering innovative ways to steer a productive
path between traditional narratives that offer only complete acceptance or total dismissal of
digital natives.
“Deconstructing Digital Natives uses multiple analytic/descriptive lenses to bring the mercurial
lives, literacies, and learning of digital youth into sharp focus. This comprehensive compilation
of studies by noted, international scholars provides the most compelling understandings to
date of how global youth engage in meaning making, personal representation, and social
participation enabled by new media. These rich, research-based discussions also deconstruct
myths, assumptions, and either/or projections about digital youth promoted both by disciples
and dissenters of increasingly immersive digital technologies.”
Professor Jabari Mahiri, Graduate School of Education, University of California, USA
Enhancing Asia-Europe Co-operation
through Educational Exchange
Author
Professor Georg Wiessala
University of Central Lancashire and
Routledge
ISBN 978-0-415-48194-6
Reproduced with permission of
Taylor & Francis.
This book examines the ideas of knowledge-transfer and higher education exchange in the
relationship between the European Union and countries, regions, universities and think-tanks
across Asia. It critically investigates some discourses of particular relevance to the cognitive
framework of the academic discipline of ‘European Studies’, as currently taught across a
number of countries in the Asia Pacific. For this purpose, this book presents a range of
theoretical explanations, drawn from notions such as the global knowledge village, intercultural
dialogue, regional integration, foreign policy analysis and international education. The author
offers a unique, in-depth, investigation of a range of EU policies and agendas towards Asia,
scrutinizing a number of contemporary centers, curricula and exchange initiatives in the field of
European Studies in Asia, and analyzing over-arching themes, such as human rights and further
sheds light on the long history of the exchange of ideas and knowledge between East and
West, surveying the function of educational and intellectual exchange as a developing foreign
policy tool of the European Union in Asia.
This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the relation between Europe and Asia,
within Politics, International Relations, Asia-Pacific Studies, European Studies, Education, Law
and Human Rights.

34 Book Launches
Ethics and Burial Archaeology
The investigation of human remains has always been central to archaeological, but archaeologists
are not the only ones with an interest in their treatment. Political groups, religious organisations,
descendant communities and disenfranchised interest groups are all becoming more vocal in
expressing their opinions on this subject on a world stage.
Author
Dr Duncan Sayer
University of Central Lancashire
This book sets a new agenda for ethical studies in mortuary investigation, adducing a series of case
studies which can be used to understand the questions facing burial archaeology. Who owns the
dead – not just their bodies but also their stories? Do the remains themselves matter or are there
other political agendas which influence interest groups? The author encourages archaeologists to
be more open and inclusive when conducting mortuary projects, as it is often the perception of
secrecy or interference with the dead that raises concern about the treatment of historical and
scientifically important skeletal remains.
Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
ISBN 978-0-71563-893-4
Jerzy Skolimowski: The Cinema of a Nonconformist
Jerzy Skolimowski is one of the most original Polish directors and one of only a handful who
has gained genuine recognition abroad. This is the first monograph, written in English, to be
devoted to his cinema. It covers Skolimowski’s career from his early successes in Poland, such as
Identification Marks: None and Barrier, through his émigré films, Deep End, Moonlighting and
The Lightship, to his return to Poland where, in 2008, he made the internationally acclaimed
Four Nights with Anna.
Author
Professor Ewa Mazierska
University of Central Lancashire
Berghahn Books
ISBN 978-1-8454-677-1
Ewa Mazierska addresses the main features of Skolimowski’s films, such as their affinity to
autobiographism and surrealism, while discussing their characters, narratives, visual style,
soundtracks, and the uses of literature. She draws on a wide range of cinematic and literary
texts, situating Skolimowski’s work within the context of Polish and world cinema, and drawing
parallels between his work and that of two directors, with whom he tends to be compared,
Roman Polański and Jean-Luc Godard.
‘Ewa Mazierska’s monograph is the first book-length study of his [Jerzy Skolimowski’s] work,
nearly half a century after his emergence as a one-man Polish New Wave ... Mazierska eschews
a chronological survey in favour of five themed essays ... this approach allows her to make
connections between outwardly disparate films and mount a convincing challenge to the
received opinion that there are fundamental differences between his Polish and non-Polish
output ... this is an important, desperately overdue book.’ Sight & Sound

35
Editorial team
Professor Mike Holmes
Head of Graduate Research School/Co-Editor
MCHolmes@uclan.ac.uk
01772 893561
Emma Sandon-Hesketh
Research Development Manager/Co-Editor
Graduate Research School
EHesketh@uclan.ac.uk
01772 892735
Alison Naylor
Senior Administrative Assistant – Research
Graduate Research School
AZNaylor@uclan.ac.uk
01772 892728
Sarah Warren
Communications Manager
Knowledge Transfer Service
SWarren@uclan.ac.uk
01772 895377
Carolyn Stanley
Marketing Manager
Advancement
CStanley@uclan.ac.uk
01772 894441

University of Central Lancashire, Preston, PR1 2HE
Tel: 01772 201201 Email: breakthrough@uclan.ac.uk www.uclan.ac.uk/research
Produced by Graduate Research School and Knowledge Transfer Service
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