Lexsyg — A new system for luminescence research

The newly developed lexsyg system by Freiberg Instruments is a versatile luminescence reader, suited for research on the luminescence of materials, fundamental research in luminescence dating, but also for routine mass measurements in retrospective dosimetry as well as in dating application. The 80 sample storage wheel is disconnected from the measurement chamber and therefore crosstalk of optical stimulation is absent and cross-irradiation is negligible from the α- and β-sources, which are providing very uniform irradiations, with the latter especially designed for radiofluores-cence (RF) measurement. Optical excitation sources and filter wheels to vary detection wavelengths can be programmed to change at almost any time within measurement sequences, including the auto-mated change of an optional wheel holding up to four different detectors. Thermoluminescence meas-urements and preheating are possible with a versatile heater, which can be programmed for linear or non-linear heating or cooling, as well as holding a temperature constant. Rates as well as durations can be varied, together with individual ramping, staging and cooling for an almost unlimited number of steps. Violet- and IR-lasers, green and blue LED-arrays can be operated in continuous (CW) or modulated mode (linear/non-linear), and optionally for pulsed as well as time resolved luminescence detection. Six arrays of power LEDs allow the simulation of different bleaching regimes (‘solar simu-lator’), while luminescence detection can be achieved by a variety of photomultiplier tubes and by CCD cameras for spatially resolved measurements and luminescence spectra.     

Migrations and militant research? Some brief considerations

Abstract

The first part of the essay raises some doubts about the possibility of understanding research on migrations as ‘militant research’. A brief analysis of the discourse where research work is confined allows to glimpse at the deferral of two moments, that of militancy and of research. In such deferral a temporal dimension is at stake: first, the researcher wanders in the world or ‘wanders through the texts’, then he/she lingers on for a while in order to produce a discourse. It is necessary to interrogate this deferred dimension, not to elude it hence running the risk of reproducing the classical philosophical gesture of placing the speaking (and thinking or researching) subject at a ‘theoretical distance’. In the second part of the essay, the deferral between militancy and research is developed with reference to the struggle of the mothers and the families of Tunisian migrants, who left towards Italy and Europe right after the Tunisian revolution and who are ‘missing’ in the Mediterranean. The stubbornness of Tunisian mothers' struggle, which interrupts the path of virtualization of their sons, is countered to the oscillating ontology that migration policies enact, oscillating between the being and the not-being there of persons, dealing with the physicality of people, produced as migrants and rendering the bodies not completely adhering to space and as fantoms. The essay closes with a few considerations on the topic of a politics of testimony and its risks.     

Can first-year undergraduate geography students do individual research?

Based on the affirmation in the scholarship of teaching and learning that adding research component into early geography classes is mutually beneficial to both instructors and students, this paper presents a case study that quantitatively articulates the effects of adding a research project into a first-year physical geography class on students’ academic performance. Pushing research into earlier stages of undergraduate students’ academics, even in large classes, can be very beneficial yet challenging because most students at this level have no experience in research; plus, they may still be adjusting to university life. Part of the Undergraduate Research Initiative called First Year Research Experience (FYRE) at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada invited faculty to embed a research component into first year undergraduate classes to align research and teaching. A two-year endeavour in a first year physical geography class resulted in some interesting outcomes. (1) The most challenging part of research for students was the research question formation. (2) Students valued the opportunity to conduct a research project. (3) Doing in-class research actually improved student performance as seen in the higher overall average grades. (4) Students who attained the highest exam marks were not those who attained the highest research project marks.     

Children's experiences of participating in research: emotional moments together?

This paper reflects upon emotional moments in research with children and young people. In particular, we seek to contribute to the now-extensive literature on emotions in social scientific research practice by: (i) attempting to acknowledge the often-overlooked emotions experienced by children and young people whilst participating in research; (ii) highlighting the complex, multiperspectival nature of emotions in research. We suggest that these complexities can, simultaneously be problematic and an opportunity to celebrate the achievement of doing research together.     

A ‘sense of failure’? Everydayness and research ethics

A key legacy of much recent theorising in Anglo-American Human Geography has been the realisation that the ‘excess’ and ‘messiness’ of (too-easily and too-often overlooked) everyday events, geographies and experiences ought to have far-reaching conceptual and methodological implications. The aim of this paper is to elaborate some (as yet relatively implicit) ethical dimensions of this challenge, via a consideration of one particular notion and domain of ethics (research ethics in Human Geography) and, then, via one specific case study (re-presenting moments from my experiences of – and small ‘failures’ in – conducting qualitative research with children, as an adult male, in the UK, in 2000–2002).     

Productive tensions—engaging geography students in participatory action research with communities

This study discusses the benefits and challenges of an undergraduate module on participatory geographies, involving students in co-producing research with community partners. The module challenges the knowledge production model predominant in Geography curricula. We argue that it develops students' skills and understanding through engaging them intellectually, socially and emotionally outside the university. As a student, two community partners and a professor, we offer our perspectives on the opportunities and conflicts that arose. We do not gloss over tensions in achieving the module's diverse aims, but suggest that these are productive for teaching, learning, research and the needs of community organizations.     

Zoos as heritage tourism attractions: A neglected area of research?

Abstract

Zoos are a form of museum.¹ The main difference between zoos and other forms of museum is that zoos exhibit living objects. These objects are examples of natural heritage. Unlike other museums, the focus of much research in the past decade, zoos appear under‐researched. Zoos, however, are significant tourist attractions. There are over 10,000 zoos worldwide,² many in major world cities and some attract millions of visitors annually. Zoos date back at least three thousand years, but their role has been changing in the past twenty‐five years from menageries to conservation centres. Concern recently has focused on animal welfare when wildlife is in captivity, and this has led to a re‐examination of the purpose of zoos. This article examines the aims of zoos, their nature as heritage‐tourism attractions and the profile of zoo visitors. In an attempt to establish a new research agenda, the article also examines issues about the future of zoos, including questions concerning potential and real conflict between their educational, scientific and entertainment roles.     

Boundary-making in feminist research: new methodologies for ‘intimate insiders’

In the past 20 years, feminist geographers have gone to great lengths to complicate notions of ‘the field’ and make clear that the field is not an easily bounded space. This body of work has demonstrated the complexity of field spaces, explored ways to destabilize boundaries, and traced the power relations between researchers and participants. Ultimately, this work takes the breaking down of boundaries as an inherent good in field research, and, subsequently, little work has focused explicitly on the utility of physical and emotional boundaries that develop in field research. Our experiences as feminist geographers who reside in our fields show there is much left to understand and subsequently disrupt regarding the boundaries of ‘the field.’ In this article, we build on the concept of ‘intimate insiders’ to discuss the complex negotiation of doing research in the places where we have created personal lives and our sense of community. We often found ourselves struggling to define the physical and emotional boundaries of ‘the field’ on the outside for the sake of our participants and ourselves. In this article, we reflect on boundary-making as a specific feminist methodological practice for addressing the complexity of fieldwork. We discuss the techniques and strategies we used for conducting research in the communities in which we are long-term community residents. In the tradition of feminist methodology, we draw from our research experiences in State College and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to reconsider how producing distance through boundary-making has the potential to benefit our participants, our projects, and ourselves.     

Going ‘backstage’: observant participation in research with young people

This paper reflects on fieldwork undertaken at youth-led community radio station, KCC Live. It draws on Goffman to elucidate the differences between front and backstage spaces at KCC Live, and provides snapshots from research encounters to illustrate the importance of observant participation (over participant observation) in permitting access to these spaces. This paper celebrates the embeddedness of the researcher as a member of the community under study. In doing so, it argues that immersion in community research settings can enable insight into the functioning, relationships, rules and peculiarities of the place and people, all of which are fundamental to ethnographic research.     

Institutionalization,neo-politicization and the politics of defining Sámi research

This article critically examines recent changes in the social terrain of Sámi research in Finland, where the research field is subject to a new wave of academic institutionalization, and where questions regarding “Sáminess” have become particularly prominent. The article argues that in this conjuncture of institutionalization and neo-politicization, definitions of Sámi research which emphasize its political and ethical qualities (“Sámi research” as research done from a “Sámi perspective” or “taking it into account”) appear increasingly problematic and can actually end up doing the opposite of what was originally intended. Instead of bringing questions regarding the politics of perspective, location, representation and power/knowledge to the fore, presenting the research field in these terms might turn attention away from a variety of interests and political desires that currently are projected onto Sámi research, and hence depoliticize understandings of Sámi research and its complex interdependence with the state and society.     

Who and what is Canada? Constructing cultural identities in health care research

This paper concerns the negotiation of cultural categories embedded in and informing the ongoing nation formation of Canada. It discusses the construction of cultural identities by health care professional students as they participated in a qualitative study concerned with health care practice in an increasingly culturally diverse society. The study methodology, embedded in layers of narrative about «difference», fostered a negotiation of «self» and «other» on the part of the students and provided an intense site for reflection on cultural identities and social categories in a period of rapid demographic change in Canada. As the students defined and interpreted cultural issues during their fieldwork placements they interrogated and contested various dimensions of difference, including their own sense of Canadian-ness as this played out in «lived» multiculturalism in a specific Canadian city. It is argued that the students» negotiations of boundaries of the cultural «self» were closely linked to a changing place narrative and identity of Canada, expressed in discourses and material practices around difference at local and national scales.     

The ‘voices’ of children: de‐centring empowering research relations

This paper examines some problematic methodological and ethical issues associated with in‐depth qualitative research with children. The discussion has wider resonance for qualitative studies of young people in ‘rural’ contexts. Particular ethical issues arise when researching with children, which are underpinned by children's relative powerlessness in society. With this in mind, the paper considers substantive strategies to promote ‘empowering research relations’, drawing upon an empirical study with children in primary school spaces. Re‐theorisations of identities and power as fractured, dynamic and contextual, suggest that research is comprised of specific moments or ‘research performances’. It is argued that developing empowering research relations involves negotiating such performances in ways that contest, or transform, dominant societal relations between children and adults. In this paper, I consider some of the specific, embodied performances involved in my research, to expose some of the complexities of power relations and negotiations within space. Bringing to light particular moments emphasises that power relations between children and adults are not reducible to the powerless and the powerful. It is also demonstrated that research performances are influenced and constrained by expectations placed upon adult and child practices in society and institutional spaces, and by researchers' own unconscious reproduction of dominant identities.     

Representation and identity ‐ convergence of brain research and mind‐brain philosophy

Abstract

The localization or representation of mental abilities in the brain have always been considered as key questions for understanding the organization of the human nervous system. Particularly with the advent of modern electrophysiological and imaging techniques that provide maps of electromagnetic fields and metabolic processes on the living central nervous system, the representation theory is experiencing a scientific renaissance in neurology, but is only one theory, however, in the succession of a long philosophical tradition dealing with the possible identification of mental phenomena and brain processes. This dichotomy was formulated at the latest in the Cartesian dualism of res cogitans and res extensa of the mind‐body problem. Nowadays philosophical discussion, on the contrary, is dominated by monistic concepts that attempt to explain the mental realm on an organic foundation in order not to succumb to the problem of a psychophysical dualism. Of these, the identity theory offers a philosophically plausible concept postulating that the identity of brain conditions and mental phenomena is based on organic foundations. In this theory, the efforts of brain research converge on the representations of mental phenomena in the human nervous system. In a comprehensive approach, both concepts could complement each other.     

Magnetosheath,magnetopause and low latitude boundary layer research, 1987–1989

Important developments over the past two years (1987–1989) in studies of the magnetosheath, the magnetopause and the magnetopause boundary layers are reviewed. The pace of research shows no sign of abating, but progress has become focused on certain topics. These include flux transfer event reconnection and the relevance of solar wind dynamic pressure variations for magnetopause and polar cusp dynamics. A promising development in both these areas is the use of ground observations under the polar cusp ionosphere for monitoring solar wind-magnetosphere coupling processes at the magnetopause. In contrast to these progress areas, the magnetosheath and the low latitude boundary layer remain topics which are being unjustifiably neglected. The controversies and the key remaining questions are highlighted and suggestions are made on how to proceed further.