Bite-size research at engagement event

The 12^th Public Uni event was held at the Chapter Arts Centre on Friday 14 October 2016.

The Public Uni series has built up a faithful non-academic audience and more than 70 people attended the most recent occasion to engage with Cardiff University researchers.

Established in 2014, the Public Uni series is an opportunity for Cardiff University academics and researchers to share their research in an informal and fun setting. Each speaker is given 10 minutes to present their research in bite-size, digestible chunks, with questions, comment and debate actively encouraged.

The most recent event welcomed five researchers from a range of different disciplines, who shared their current research and latest findings, setting it within a political, economic and cultural context. The topics were diverse and each speaker was warmly received and engaged in lively discussion.

Speakers and topics for the 12^th Public Uni included:

• Dr Jean Jenkins, Cardiff Business School: The clothes on your back … the bars on their windows: Garment manufacture in the 21st century
  Dr Jenkins argues that despite assurances given by high street brands in their sophisticated corporate codes of practice, in the factories that make the clothes on our backs, the reality is that health and safety guidelines are violated on a regular basis.

• Dr Kat Deerfield, School of Social Sciences: Trick or Treat? Halloween Revelry, Cultural Anxiety, and Child Protection
  With the growing popularity of Halloween celebrations in England and Wales, worries about the safety of trick-or-treating have become an annual fixture in the tabloid press – but, Dr Deerfield posits, are concerns about predatory strangers and poisoned sweets backed up by evidence?

• Dr Francesco Pannarale, School of Physics and Astronomy: The first sounds of the cosmic symphony
  One hundred years after Einstein formulated his theory of gravity, scientists have verified its longest standing prediction: we are now able to listen to the voices of catastrophic events in the universe, such as black holes colliding. Dr Pannarale explained what was heard, what will be heard, and what can be learned.

• Dr Christos Boukalas, School of Law and Politics: The Matter with Prevent: Policing British values and the paradox of counter-extremism
  What is Prevent, and what is it meant to do? Dr Boukalas presented an outline of the logic and objectives of Prevent, and the ways in which it involves the public.

• Dr Dawn Mannay, School of Psychology: The stigma of being 'looked after'
  Dr Mannay spoke of the view amongst children and young people she has worked with that there is a stigma that comes with their status as being ‘looked after’ and how they want to be viewed as individuals and not a label to be pitied or a problem to be solved.

The next Public Uni event will take place at 7.30pm, Friday 11 November 2016 at the Chapter Arts Centre.

Find out more about the Public Uni series on Facebook. If you would like to present at one of the forthcoming Public Uni events, please get in touch with Marco Hauptmeier or Harriet Lloyd.