The spaces of UK students’ unions: extending the critical geographies of the university campus

This article seeks to further our knowledge of the university campus by focusing on one particular aspect of most UK campuses: the students’ union. UK students’ unions have rarely been the subject of scholarly attention, despite them now occupying an important place within the higher education landscape. Nevertheless, in this paper we draw on a UK-wide study of students’ unions to explore, firstly, the role played by the buildings of the students’ union and, secondly, the ways in which aspects of the university’s campus influence union activity. We pay particular attention to the expansion of the university campus, in many institutions, from a single site to multiple sites, both within the UK and overseas. We contend that a focus on the materiality of the students’ union and the level of union activity (or inactivity) across various campus spaces can illustrate the values, ideologies and power relations that dominate contemporary British higher education.     

Ryan White CARE Act Title I Funding Priorities and Unmet Service Needs in Baltimore, Maryland

The analysis presented in this paper explores the similarities and differences between the services selected as priorities for funding by the Baltimore Ryan White CARE Act Title I Planning Council during the first 2 years of the program in this metropolitan area, and services perceived by HIV/AIDS service providers and people living with HIV/AIDS to be unmet needs. The data used for these analyses were collected as part of a study to assess the implementation and impact of the CARE Act legislation in the Baltimore eligible metropolitan area( EMS ). This project includes three interrelated components: (a) a case study of the legislatively mandated Planning Council, (b) a survey of providers representing HIV/AIDS service organizations, and (c) a qualitative field study of the perceptions of people living with HIV/AIDS about the service delivery system. Taken together, the data from these three sources describe the similarities and differences among these three groups involved in HIV/AIDS care in Baltimore, in terms of their perceptions of services needed by people living with HIV / AIDS. The conclusions drawn from this study can be used to strengthen needs assessments in Title I-EMAs throughout the United States.     

Spaces of the street: Socio-spatial mobility and exclusion of youth in Recife

The ‘street’ and ‘youth’ have long been issues of social concern and the subject of research both in Brazil and elsewhere. The perception and experiences of youth in relation to the street, however, and the corresponding gender and class relations which permeate these, remain an under-researched topic. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in low- and middle-income neighbourhoods in Recife, this paper shows how the street consists of different spaces and how the youth experience corresponding layers of socio-spatial exclusions and inclusions which vary over time.