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In a contemporary world preoccupied with the protection of children, it is profoundly shocking to learn that child labour played a key part in Britain's industrial revolution. Indeed that this pioneer economic transition would not have happened in the way that it did without child labour. Jane Humphries draws this startling conclusion from a study of more than 600 working-class autobiographies. These offer unprecedented insights into child labour, family life, careers and schooling. Seen from below, through the eyes of history's everyman, the costs and benefits of industrialization acquire new edge. The impact of Humphries' work has been to change public understanding of this momentous divide by integrating humanity back into economic history and trauma back into the Industrial Revolution.
Our work on children's agency in research has had three impacts:
This approach has been replicated in Australia, Turkey, New Zealand, Norway and Qatar. The CRC website hosts 150 successful projects by children and young people, and through the Diana Award more than 1500 children were supported in their research on cyberbullying.
The research addresses the need of the British Co-operative Group and its members across the UK for a stronger understanding of the development of the business model of co-operation in Britain, the importance of democracy in the governance and direction of the organisation and in adapting the model to future challenges. The project's findings are being used in the education of elected member officials who form the democratic bodies which govern the Co-operative Group, and employees who work for the organisation. Learning has focussed on the heritage of the co-operative movement and the development of the Co-operative Group's business model. It enhances the effectiveness of member democracy by increasing knowledge of the organization's development and democratic traditions.
From 2004, researchers at the university's Centre for Research in Primary and Community Care developed the `Tool to Measure Parenting Self-Efficacy' (TOPSE). This allowed community-based parenting support practitioners to evaluate and demonstrate, for the first time, the effectiveness of their services and providing, for example, quantifiable data to their funders. Parents too could rate the help they received, as well as their own efficacy as parents, and they subsequently reported increased confidence in their parenting ability and improved parent-child relationships. By 2008 the tool had spread nationally and internationally, and has since been used by more than 300 practitioners and researchers worldwide.
The Hafan Books project publishes creative writing by asylum-seekers and refugees [henceforth simply: `refugees'] in South Wales. The project promotes a civic culture of hospitality, compassion and respect through the publications, large-scale festive launch events, and further creative outputs. Beneficiaries include contributors and other refugees, charity workers and volunteers, and arts organisations. The publications are widely used in professional refugee awareness training. The project has been recognised as exemplary for refugee awareness and integration though the arts and has been emulated in the UK and overseas.
Research at Strathclyde has led to a significant increase in the delivery of school-based counselling in the UK, with services established in all secondary schools in Northern Ireland and Wales since 2007 and 2008, respectively. It is estimated that there are approximately 70-90,000 service users per year across UK secondary schools. School-based counselling significantly reduces young people's psychological distress, and helps them gain self-confidence, achieve their goals, and concentrate more in class. Strathclyde's research has led the way in demonstrating the effectiveness of this type of intervention, and has played a pivotal role in supporting its roll-out and development, thereby improving the well-being of large numbers of young people across the UK.
Publications analysing political mobilisation during the English revolution, widely disseminated through sales of the book God's Fury, England's Fire, reviews, and in public engagement activities, have shaped public understandings of how popular support for radical politics can be mobilised. The book's central arguments have made a significant contribution to contemporary political and social debates and have shaped the work of programme makers and other creative artists. The widespread use of the book in teaching in higher education and at A Level in the UK and internationally means that it has played a central role in shaping student understandings of this key period of English history.
Invented at the University of Oxford, an instrument for measuring the temporal shape of ultrashort laser pulses has delivered new capabilities for users and manufacturers of short-pulse lasers. The device, the LX SPIDER, is smaller, cheaper and more sensitive than its predecessor. Its impact has been realised by licensing patented technology to APE GmbH, who brought the LX SPIDER to market in 2008. Customers are from industrial and research institutions globally and the device has brought benefits to users in a variety of sectors including materials processing and biomedical diagnostics. It is also used by manufacturers of pulsed lasers in the specification, verification and installation of their laser products.
`Competition generally drives up standards and drives down prices.' This is the principle upon which first the Browne Review and then the HE White Paper proposed the `radical reform' of higher education in England in October 2010 and June 2011. The theoretical reasoning underlying this maxim is familiar. But is its application to higher education supported by empirical evidence - that is, by historical experience? Howard Hotson's research on Central European universities in the seventeenth century, a time of marketisation of university qualifications and expansion, has provided a model with which to understand current policy developments in higher education. He has used insights arising from this research to shift the terms of the national debate on whether the marketisation of British universities will drive standards up or down.
Two leading manufacturers of clothing for outdoor activities ([text removed for publication]) have produced a new range of functional clothing based on research at Ulster on wearable technologies for the active ageing. The new age-appropriate outdoor garments incorporate wearable technologies that enable self-monitoring of physiological parameters (heart rate, respiration rate) and activity levels (step-counts, distance walked) with optimal placement of sensors to improve signal-to-noise ratio. Additionally, [text removed for publication], a company producing [text removed for publication], have used feedback from Ulster's research evaluations to design a new range of [text removed for publication] that are incorporated into the garments, achieving increased levels of usability by elderly people.