Guest Panel Sessions Flashcards
What three areas of work/research did the panel sessions cover?
- Qualitative and interdisciplinary research; connecting physical and natural science with social sciences and history
- GIScience, spatial analysis - quantitative and qualitative
- Quantitative research and statistics
Who were the three main guests for qualitative research examples?
Nick Gill - political geography; asylum seekers and appeals
Steve Hinchcliffe - scientific, agricultural and institutional approaches to life security
Katrina Brown - vulnerability and resilience; understanding and response to climate pressures; capacities for adaptation and transformation
Who spoke to us about the application of GIS?
Mike Williams - Landmark; Data Research Consultant
- Source infor for land and propoerty corporations
- Plethora of uses e.g. environment, mapping, estate agencies, valuation, insurance
Daisy Atkin - Transport Planner with Charterships
- Aids development and sustainable town planning
- Accessibility, safety
- Travel patterns, plans, behaviour, routing
Which guests could I refer to if talking about interdisciplinary approaches?
Dr Rebecca Pearce - Natural Environment Research for councils; Historic Droughts
- Incorporates hydrologists, linguistics, geographers, geologists
- To combine historic accounts, interviews, reports with instrumental data = consistent record since 1870s
Dr Jenny Barnett - House planning with Exeter City Council
- Implications of second homes using questionnaires; qualitative methods to find perceptions of public
- Reveales issues within population; Exeter’s residents not as a homogenous group or statistic
- Further policy strategies using results
Outline methods used by Nick Gill and the implications of them. How could they be criticised?
Ethnographic perspectives on the immigration tribunal
3 researchers went to appeals for a year at 3 different hearing centres; 100 cases (390 total) - followed by interviews with some appelants, solicitors and repreentatives (did some stats)
+ found 96 different judges
+ 85% appellants were represented, 82% had interpreter
+ detailed, emotional observations; ‘conveyor belt justice’, economic incentives, high stress level, messy, fatigued judge, varying speeds and lengths, varying attitudes towards appellants, pre-determined outcomes for some (detained fast track), emotionless, varying levels of concern and patience
+ in-depth accounts of the atmosphere and speech used that puts appellant under pressure e.g. suffix, judge referred to as ‘sir’ or ‘maam’; hierarchical and unneccessarily formal/strict/cultural, bowing and standing
- Slow process; interpretevist and v. time consuming/complex to analyse when done
- Controversial and hugely impacting findings
+ Revealed inequalities and injustice of the system
+ By 2015, suspended DFT - 100s released from detention
Outline methods used by Steve Hinchcliffe and the implications/successes of his work. How could they be criticised?
- Urban development and wildlife = paricipant observations
Development threat on brownfield site in Brimingham; environmental value; water voles (protected species)
+ Deductive process; found urban water voles
+ Inductive process; po’s with Wildlife Trust and active investigation revealed the complex ecological niches present in URBAN landscapes = stimulated new debate
- Lost campaign
- Complexities; not generalisable perhaps - Biosecurity = ethnographical interrogation
Many fear disease spread from animals to us through farming practice; regulation of livestock production by scientific research for biosecure process = is the industry complying?
+ Ethnography and interviews/discussions revealed the reality of farming; independent farmers
+ Conclusion; to make life safe need inter-disciplinary changes - Antibiotics and farming = gov ABC model criticised with regards to telling farmers of dangers of overreliance on antibiotics = 40 clear statements ranked agreement by 35 ppl; factor analysis
+ Found there was not a lack of awareness, mindfulness required
Outline methods used by Katrina Brown and the successes/limitations of her work.
Researching, resilience in science; policy and practice
= themes of complexity, intersecting and interacting risks; using qualitative methods to:
+ gain in-depth analysis/data
+ focus on experience/relationships
+ give voice to multiplicity/difference; complexity
+ different contexts; non-scientific
= interdisciplinary approach e.g. gathering sample of policy statements, coding them, resilience tied to basic entities like economy, environment, communities
3 main discourses identified
- Optimist (nurturing resilience)
- Pessimist 1 (disaster risk reduction from external authorities/powers)
- Pessimist 2 (social vulnerability from within communities)
Conclusions: interdisciplinary approaches needed; to give voice to people, their emotions and understandings, using heritage and culture and performance to engage with resilience issues; who should be the agents?
With regards to Nick Gill’s work, outline the background of immigration tribunals and the process (just so I know what I’m talking about)
Those from outside UK wanting to live here to be safe from persecution in their home country = asylum seekers
- Required to legally attain Refugee Status
- If unsuccessful, they are deported
- A tribunal takes place to judge whether the individual is worthy of that status
- Multiple parties involved; Government, Home Office Presenting Officer, Judge, audience, representative, interpretor
- The asylum seeker is the Appellant
- DTF means Detained Fast Track where appellants faced a 90% failure rate, only 7 days to make case
Who spoke to us about the application of statistics and quantitative methods? What does he do and how does he use statistics? (2 case studies)
Dr Matt Amesbury; palaeoclimatic research using peatland cores; identification of climate proxies e.g. chemical, geological or biological
- New Zealand: new stable isotope proxy for Holocene evolution of SH westerly winds
- Basic descriptives = experimental design; how sites fit (mean, ranges, SD) = whether sites useful for testing hypothesis
- Correlation coefficients (Pearson’s r) = found strong negative relationship with temp; combined with linear regressions = isotopic data and climate
- Confusion; positive relationship expected so perhaps plants in N adapted; more stomata?
- Counting stomata, F-test and two sample t-test revealed NO statistical significance (interval, normal = parametric) - Antarctic Peninsula (2017): significance of changes in moss banks since 1950
- Moss banks 5k yrs old, 3 m deep
- Multiple box-plots to compare spreads around mean, followed by t-tests
- Later used TRANSFER FUNCTIONS = advanced statistical method to simplify multivariate data on testate amoebae to single lines
- Observed/predicted values are compared through models; the outputs on a graph plot an environmental variable optima (based on ecological niches) for each testate amoebae species e.g. water table depth
- Gives trend lines, can see relation to trends, R square value etc.
