PROMOTIONS TO SENIOR LECTURER

The following promotions to senior lecturer have been announced this week. As ever, these are subject to formal ratification of Senate and Council.

Dr Philip Catney (School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy and Research Institute for the Social Sciences). Phil Catney's rigorously inter-disciplinary research draws on approaches from political science, planning, urban studies, and geography to explore the politics of environmental and urban governance, thus making an essential contribution to one of Keele's key strategic areas, sustainability, and to associated research initiatives in resilience, risk and community studies. Phil has gained, as Principal Investigator, ESRC grants of more than £100k for his work on urban politics, governance and regeneration. He is the sole or substantial author of thirteen peer-reviewed journal articles and four chapters, and has co-edited an influential collection on Sustainable Brownfield Regeneration. The academic impact of Dr Catney's research and his international standing are demonstrated in regular invitations to present at major international conferences and national and local governmental organisations. Besides his own research achievements, he has done a great deal to make the research of colleagues possible. His enthusiasm and commitment, and his academic and community networks, are consistently deployed to promote University-wide research in sustainability, resilience and urban development. He has served as a Vice-Chair of one of the university's ethical review panels, and continues to act as a conscientious and rigorous panel member of Keele's Academic Misconduct Committee. Phil has also successfully delivered a range of modules on the undergraduate and taught postgraduate programmes in SPIRE: receiving consistently excellent student feedback, he has developed innovative assessment strategies for his undergraduate modules, significantly expanded the policy-related options in MA programmes, and contributed on behalf of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences to the sustainability strand of the Distinctive Keele Curriculum.

Dr Alastair Channon (Computing and Maths). Alastair Channon carried out his BA/MA in Mathematics at the University of Cambridge before focussing on Evolutionary and Adaptive Computation through an MSc at Sussex and a PhD at Southampton.  From there, he moved directly to an academic post at the University of Portsmouth in 1999, took up a lectureship at Birmingham in 2004 and moved to Keele in 2007.  His primary research interest is in the open-ended evolution of neurally controlled animats and he is best known for having created the only closed system other than Earth's biosphere to have passed the enhanced statistical "ALife Test" for open-ended evolution. Alastair's recent publications have included significant results on the relationship of mutation rate to population size, with clear implications for biological extinction events, and to fitness, computed over both abstract and biological fitness landscapes.  He is a partner in a £500k EPSRC project on information dynamics in evolutionary systems, with partners at Manchester, Middlesex and Warwick Universities.  He also specified and assembled the University's GPGPU compute cluster, which has enabled suitably matched research experiments to proceed more than one hundred times as fast as previously possible.  Alastair played a leading part in the design, proposal and implementation of new programmes at Keele in 2008, leading to Computing undergraduate intake numbers (FTE) increasing by 80%, whilst his innovative teaching methods are reflected in excellent student feedback.

Dr Jon Herbert (School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy and Research Institute for the Social Sciences). Jon Herbert has designed a range of key modules in Keele at all levels of undergraduate teaching. He has taught US Presidency and US Foreign Policy modules in MA programmes and a number of bespoke MRes modules on subjects such as the Kennedy presidency and US-UK foreign relations. Jon is a self-reflective teacher with a genuine concern to inspire critical thinking in his students. Students frequently comment on his organisation, accessibility, ability to generate insight into the subject and willingness to help, stating that his 'brilliant teaching makes usually obtuse and difficult ideas easy to comprehend'. He has been a leading light in disseminating good teaching and learning practice within Keele, most recently in 2012 on his experimental approach to curriculum internationalisation. His programme design discussions have prompted a set of conversations on the concept of an 'applied politics' degree, as reflected in an edited chapter on the future of politics teaching. Jon has discharged a daunting range of administrative roles in pastoral and academic support, programme directorship and examination and assessment policy and practice. He has designed new guidance on core forms of assessment, the procedures and materials for a School-wide pilot on exam feedback, and developed new policies on plagiarism and electronic submission. An outstanding ambassador for Keele, Jon has made outreach to local schools a priority, and contributed numerous talks to sixth-form conferences. His research on the US presidency has led to recent publications on executive power and the contemporary presidency: his synthesis of historical and political science approaches is widely recognised as enabling a broader and more holistic understanding of presidential behaviour. Jon's edited volume assessing the legacy of the Bush presidency was described by one reviewer as 'a fine collection, the best available account of the presidential politics of the day before yesterday'.

Dr Sheila Hope (Life Sciences). Sheila Hope studied for her BSc in Genetics at Glasgow University, before moving to Birmingham for her PhD in molecular cell biology (funded by the then Cancer Research Campaign, now CRUK).  She stayed at Birmingham as a Research Fellow for three years, working on cancer research, before moving to Keele as a Lecturer in Biochemistry in 1995.  She continued researching into cancer, apoptosis (cell death) and viruses associated with those processes, supervising five PhD students, attracting around £400k of research grant income, and publishing a number of highly cited papers.  Sheila has been keenly involved in the development and accreditation of several programmes in Life Sciences and, in addition to a number of major School roles, Sheila serves on the University's Academic Appeals Committee and the Occupational Health & Safety Committee. Always a popular teacher, Sheila really started to develop her educational skills over the last 5-6 years, introducing a whole range of innovative teaching methods, such as a CSI-style group exercise, and she has been an early adopter of many of the technologies such as electronic voting systems and screencast AV feedback. As well as involvement in sharing good practice at Keele, Sheila has made sure that her approaches are shared externally, through grants, publications and lectures; she became a Fellow of the HEA in 2011, and was awarded one of the prestigious Keele Teaching Excellence Awards in 2012.

Dr Ceri Morgan (Humanities). Ceri's research gained international recognition relatively early, with awards in 2001 and 2003 from the Canadian and Québec governments (the Prix du Québec), and more recently with a prestigious Research Fellowship at the University of McGill, Montréal in 2007. She is now acknowledged to be world-leading in the area of the francophone Canadian novel post-1960, with an international reputation in Canadian literary studies in both anglophone and francophone countries. She is one of few publishing in this area in English and has played a key role in raising the visibility of Canadian studies in the UK. The interdisciplinary focus of her work on cultural geography and urban studies gives her research a wide reach, well beyond Canadian studies. Her current research for a monograph, Heartlands/Pays du Coeur, extends the innovations of her recently-published Mindscapes of Montréal (2012) in combining creative writing and literary criticism in a project devoted to the neglected area of Québec's  'regions'. Mindscapes has been described as 'beautiful … [the] synthesis of Montreal's history is masterly, the language so elegant, [conveying] a real feeling about Montreal and its literature'. Ceri has also disseminated her research in peer-reviewed articles published in high-profile journals, such as the British Journal of Canadian Studies, of which she has recently assumed the joint editorship. She has had a number of grant successes from Canadian and UK funders, including the AHRC, and is regularly invited to participate in conferences in francophone Canada.

Ceri's activities in matters administrative and managerial build on her international expertise. She has taken the lead in the Humanities for promoting and representing international research and teaching activities, serving as International Champion. This experience led to a grant application to the HEA addressing the timely issue of teaching creative writing to international students. Ceri has also provided academic leadership in postgraduate activities at Keele. In addition to supervising at Master's level and contributing to postgraduate research training, she had a very successful term as Director of the Humanities MRes, overseeing an increase in student numbers of almost 50% between 2010 and 2011. As a teacher Ceri makes a substantial contribution to the programmes of English, English and American Literatures, Film Studies, and American Studies, and has contributed to the MA in Global Media and Culture.

Dr Helen Parr (School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy and Research Institute for the Social Sciences) is a productive and influential scholar whose work on international and diplomatic history, founded on meticulous archival research in France and Britain, has gained her a secure international reputation. Helen's British Policy towards the European Community (2006) was enthusiastically reviewed as 'well-written and compelling', a 'key text' and 'an important contribution'. Her work on Anglo-European relationships was crucial to an edited collection on the Labour government of the 1960s, which has also had significant impact. Her most recent publications are effecting a transformation in our understanding of Britain's nuclear policy and of the complexities of Anglo-French nuclear co-operation in the 1970s. She regularly presents her work to high-profile audiences, including international colloquia at Groningen and Copenhagen Universities, the AHRC Nuclear History Project in Southampton (2007), and the King's College London/ Charterhouse Nuclear History Conference (2012. Dr Parr's current research broadens her interests and expertise to encompass the wide-ranging social, cultural and emotional dimensions of the Falklands War, a crucial episode in Britain's recent history and a pivotal element in dominant conceptions of national identity. This research has been awarded a very competitive British Academy/Leverhulme Trust small grant to fund interviews with veterans and bereaved family members as well as political figures. A podcast for BBC History has already been recorded.

An elected representative on Senate, Helen is also a member of the Library and Information Strategy Committee. As Director of MA Programmes in SPIRE, she successfully restructured a number of diverse Master's programmes to create one overarching MA in Politics and International Relations with several pathways. This new structure combined teaching efficiency with greater flexibility for students to pursue areas of their own interest, and embedded bespoke research training. In her own consistently well-received teaching she has introduced highly effective formative assessments designed to encourage appropriate study skills, while her use of creative writing as an assessment for final-year undergraduates has been commended by the external examiner.

James Sheard (Humanities) joined Keele in 2008 as a part-time lecturer to work on the development and inauguration of Creative Writing programmes, both undergraduate and postgraduate. James is one of the leading new poets in Britain, and his work has been enthusiastically praised by writers of international standing. His ability was recognised early when he won the Ictus prize for poetry on the MA in Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. That work, subsequently published as Hotel Mastbosch, was a Poetry Book Society choice, and was anthologised in a volume edited by the then Professor of Poetry at Hallam, Sean O'Brien. His reputation as one of the country's most accomplished new poets led to the acceptance of his well-received first collection, Scattering Eva, by Cape, one of the leading publishers of poetry in Britain. Adam Thorpe, winner of the Whitbread Prize, called this 'a remarkable first collection by a poet for whom human experience is the "kindling to history": his language has the acid precision of a drypoint, perfectly servicing the difficult ambition of its subject-matter with images that made me catch my breath'. His poetry has been included in Identity Parade, the latest in a series of anthologies published every ten years which establishes the best poets of the decade, thereby securing his place as one of the very best poets writing today.

James' individual achievements are matched by generous support to colleagues across the disciplines in the Research Institutes. He is a dedicated and inspired teacher, who has worked tirelessly to develop a series of writing programmes at Keele; his basic philosophy of how writing should be taught has been at the core of Keele modules from the outset. He has exploited his contacts and experience to develop, organise, and run a series of writing events. He secured the support of the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy for the new annual Roy Fisher prize for the best Keele poet. He is a key member of the team that set up and now delivers the MA in Creative Writing; he has led on the establishment of a postgraduate research programme; and he inaugurated a successful Summer School in Creative Writing, which has run for two years, and is profit-bearing.

Joe Stretch (Humanities) came to Keele in 2008 as a part-time lecturer with a brief to help establish undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Creative Writing. Joe is an extraordinarily talented and versatile artist, whose creativity extends far beyond his primary talent as a novelist. Friction (which has a distinctive, economic style) and his second novel, Wildlife (which extends Friction's satirical take to the virtual worlds of the internet and social networking) are commercially and critically successful satires of urban life.  The New Statesman described Friction as, 'Vicious, funny and disturbingly honest … a fine debut from an assured new writer'; a review of Wildlife in The Independent compared him to Ballard (a considerable accolade for such a young writer). His most recent novel, The Adult, was published by Cape in 2012 to enormous and immediate critical acclaim. A melancholic portrayal of failure in a world dominated by celebrity and representations of success, it has accurately been read as a commentary on post-crash Britain. It has been nominated for the Portico Prize (other nominees include A.S. Byatt and Joan Bakewell, while past winners include Anthony Burgess).

Joe's productivity is matched by exceptional creative versatility. Videos of his band Performance currently have a hundred and fifty thousand 'views' on YouTube; its album is included in NME's list of 'top albums you've never heard'; its songs included in films nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and on the Radio 1 playlist.  His Sony-commissioned novel, published on Spotify, won a Cannes Lion Award, and most recently, his independent film Wizard's Way was awarded 'Best Comedy Feature' at the London Independent Film Festival 2012.  While he has been doing all this, Joe has also been ghost-writing an autobiography of a company, revolutionary music management company Big Life Management (Wham, The Verve, Snow Patrol).

Joe has thrown himself into teaching with an infectious enthusiasm that has communicated itself to both students and staff. Under his supervision, students are encouraged to line-edit carefully, paring their work to its bare essentials. This has produced a very high quality of undergraduate fiction. Similar successes have been achieved at Master's level, and we are now seeing a number of students moving from the Keele MA and from other institutions to do a practice-based PhD at Keele.

Dr Eliza Varney (School of Law and Research Institute for the Social Sciences). Dr Varney's pioneering work on the rights of persons with disabilities and the regulation of information and communication technologies extends earlier research on media regulation. She has published seven substantial peer-reviewed articles in leading journals and two book chapters. Her work is original in its insistence on a broad socio-legal approach to disability, and ambitious in its comparative frameworks and commitment to policy as well as academic impact. Her 2006 article on regulating digital television in the European Union has been recommended to policy makers by the European Parliament, while the more recent work on disability, citizenship and information technology is reaching beyond academic lawyers to broader communities concerned with media regulation, disability and human rights. The academic impact of this existing body of research is demonstrated by Eliza's success in placing her forthcoming book on Disability and Information Technology with Cambridge University Press. This extensive work, running to 312 pages, is founded on meticulous research encompassing legislation, personal testimony and organisational responses. It broadens her comparative scope to cover Canada and the European Union as well as Britain and the USA, and demonstrates the importance of her integration of a broad conception of citizenship and the rights of persons with disabilities with a clear analysis of the implications of the technicalities of media regulation. Dr Varney's standing in her discipline is demonstrated by regular invitations to present at prestigious conferences in the United Kingdom and at events in Germany and Romania.

In 2012, Dr Varney won the LawCareers.Net inaugural Law Lecturer of the year award (sponsored by the Law Society), in the face of strong competition from established and high-profile academics. The shortlisting of this very prestigious national prize is based on student nominations. She has a profound commitment to student support based on a nurturing approach to teaching and a conviction that effective learning is based on partnership between students and teacher. She has demonstrated outstanding leadership in her teaching, not only through the high quality of her own practice, but also through initiatives to share best practice and strengthen the student learning experience. As Director of Learning and Teaching and Senior Tutor, she plays a crucial role in the School of Law and beyond; she is, inter alia, an influential voice in general university discussions on personal tutoring.

LEADING LAWYER RETURNS TO KEELE TO OPEN MOOT COURT

Fiona Woolf CBE, a leading lawyer who studied at Keele, returned to the University to officially open the School of Law's Moot Court and deliver a public lecture.

The new Moot Court, funded through a partnership between the University and its alumni, will enable Keele Law students to take part in simulated court proceedings and promote interactions between students and the legal profession.

Fiona Woolf, who studied Law and Psychology at Keele, was President of the Law Society in 2006-07 and Sheriff of the City of London in 2010-11 and has been a key supporter of the project from its inception.

She said: "The Keele Moot Court Project will enable the School to provide first class facilities for its students to develop important skills of widespread application. It will enhance the School's reputation for the delivery of a high quality and distinctive legal education. I am very happy to be able to add my support to this campaign."

There was a mooting competition introduced by Professor Martin Wasik, which featured two students, Dexi-Louise Ellis and Hannah Lowe, putting forward their arguments to Judge, Sir Peter Coulson, also a Keele graduate.

After opening the Moot Court, Ms Woolf gave a lecture entitled "The Opportunities and Educational Challenges of the New Legal Landscape". The lecture focused on the opportunities for law graduates in a world that is adjusting to "The New Normal", the challenges of the "Triple Bottom Line" (people, planet, profit) and the need for long term value creation.

KEELE OBSERVATORY LIVE ON BBC MIDLANDS TODAY

Holly Lewis and a film crew travelled to Keele Observatory for a live comet seeking feature for BBC Midlands Today. As twilight set in, they joined Keele astronomers and pupils from the visiting Brine Leas school, Nantwich, as they searched the skies for comet PANSTARRS, the first comet for many years that is bright enough to see with the naked eye.

The comet will still be bright enough for a couple of weeks to come, and another month with binoculars, and as it climbs higher into the northern sky it will become easier to find. See http://www.astro.keele.ac.uk/Observatory for Keele Observatory events.

LIVING IN THE ALUMINIUM AGE

Professor Chris Exley, Professor of Bioinorganic Chemistry, gave the latest lecture in Keele's programme of Inaugural Professorial Lectures.

In the lecture, "You can call me Al", he explained the myriad of ways that aluminium impacts on life on earth. During the lecture he took the audience on a whistle-stop tour of the 'natural history of aluminium and the unnatural future of living in the aluminium age'.

The picture shows Professor Exley with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, Rama Thirunamachandran, and Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Natural Sciences, Professor Pat Bailey.

CHINA JILIANG UNIVERSITY VISIT

Keele hosted a visit from Professor Jianguo Chen, Deputy Head of the International Office of China Jiliang University - one of the University's key partner universities in China.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed in October 2011 between the two universities, which paved the way for further collaboration. A new supplementary agreement was signed with respect to the 3+1+1 study abroad arrangements with Keele Management School in February 2013. The first cohort of students is expected to enter the University in September..

China Jiliang University has around 12,500 undergraduate students, recruited from over 30 provinces throughout China, as well as 1,500 academic and support staff. The University specialises in engineering courses, but also offers such subjects as computing, life sciences, economics and management.

Professor Patrick Baily, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, pictured with Professor Jianguo Chen, hosted a welcome lunch and chaired an afternoon meeting, where discussions focused on research collaboration in computer science, as well as on new initiatives such as the 4+0 co-operation in Biology. The purpose of the visit was to strengthen the institutions' existing ties and explore new collaboration opportunities between the two universities.

Also in attendance were Mrs Ximena Canter, Business Manager of the Faculty of Natural Sciences; Professor Graham Rogerson, Head of the School of Computing and Mathematics; Dr Tom Duan, International Partnerships Manager; Dr Jack Cao, Lecturer in HRM at Keele Management School; Mr Steve Linkman, Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing and Mathematics, and Mrs Lisa Stoker, Study Abroad Manager.

A LITTLE ACT OF KINDNESS

Professor Mihaela Kelemen, KMS was awarded £15K to showcase research on personal communities and volunteering, conducted jointly with Dr Anita Mangan, KMS, and Sue Moffat, Director of New Vic Borderlines, at the first Connected Communities AHRC Showcase.

The event was attended by over 100 organisations and was opened by Rt Hon David Willets, Minister for Universities and Science.  Following an introduction to the project by Professor Kelemen and Dr Mangan, a documentary drama entitled 'A little act of kindness' was performed. The performance was scripted and directed by Sue Moffat, New Vic Borderlines and the actors were some the volunteers who had been interviewed and recorded for the original AHRC project.  The performance brought to life the various types of personal communities that are formed through volunteering namely altruistic, instrumental, militant and forced personal communities.  The session concluded with a Q&A session in which the audience had the opportunity to share their own volunteering experiences and as well as debate with the project members and the 'actors' the importance of these issues in today's society.  It was concluded that what we need is not a Big Society but a better society and volunteering could be an important factor in delivering it.  The session was recorded by the AHRC and live streamed.

SO YOU WANT TO BE A DOCTOR?

The School of Medicine, in association with the Royal Society of Medicine, hosted its eleventh "So You Want To Be A Doctor?" careers day. The popular event attracted over 250 school pupils, aged between 14-17, from over 40 schools from the local area, the North West, Midlands, London and Kent.

The morning session was chaired by Foundation Year Doctor, [Helen Clarke] and delegates heard a range of talks including sessions on why to choose a medical career, how to choose a medical school, qualifications required and career pathways within medicine. Another Foundation Year doctor, [Mohammed Jawad] shared his experiences as a medical student at Imperial College and the transition to Foundation Year in the University Hospital of North Staffordshire.

Current Student Ambassadors from the School of Medicine were on hand to answer questions and guide the pupils round the School. Accompanying teachers were able to find out more about what universities look for in their applications as well as enjoy an informative tour of campus by student ambassadors.

After lunch the pupils rotated through a series of workshops, including practical sessions in the multi-user laboratories and resource room, a Q&A session with admissions tutors and the opportunity to talk to current practising doctors and students.

GRANT OF £244,691 FOR CLIMATE POLICY AND POLITICAL PARTIES PROJECT

Professor Robert Ladrech (SPIRE) and Professor Neil Carter (University of York) have been successful in securing an ESRC grant of £244,691 for a project on Climate Policy and Political Parties.

Professor Ladrech, as Principal Investigator, will lead the comparative study, which is a two-year project that aims to understand and explain the way mainstream political parties in Western Europe develop their positions on climate change policy.

It will examine the impact on party policy development of domestic factors, including internal party dynamics and party system competition, environmental and business interests, and external factors notably European Union legislation and international commitments.

PEATLAND RESTORATION AND BIOGEOCHEMISTRY WORKSHOP

Dr Sami Ullah, School of Physical and Geographical Sciences and EPSAM, co-ordinated a workshop on 'Peatland Restoration and Biogeochemistry' as part of the regional workshop series funded by the British Society of Soil Science.

The workshop was attended by delegates from different universities, government agencies, NGOs and environmental consultancies across the country.

The workshop involved a guided tour of the restored Fenns-Whixall peatland (Shropshire) where the participants were briefed on the techniques of restoration.

The tour was followed by invited seminars in the afternoon at the Sustainability Hub at Keele.

The role of peatlands in atmospheric carbon sequestration, climate change and greenhouse gas emissions were the key topics presented and discussed in the workshop with an aim of how these critical biogeochemical functions could be recovered in restored peatlands.

The workshop was also useful for the participants in forging multidisciplinary research collaborations.

KEELE SCIENTIST MAKES IT MOLECULAR IN SCIENCE WEEK

Make it molecular have had a busy science week.  Dr Graeme Jones, School of Physical and Geographical Sciences, hosted two assemblies
at Thomas Alleynes High School in Uttoxeter and gave a 'Sex Flies and
Smelly Sticky Tape' talk to Year 9 pupils.

Then, with the help of
Sixth form chemistry students from Alleynes, he put on two make it
molecular activities for Windsor Parks and Ryecroft Middle schools.

Dr Jones also gave three talks for Rotary Club Science in Crewe and
Nantwich, sadly for the last time.  The organisation started in the 1990's as Set-up Science organised by the Soroptimist Club and
supported by Rotary.  As time has gone on the diminishing size of the clubs  and the difficulty in finding funding means that the science
programme can no longer be supported.

In total Dr Jones has given over 50 presentations to schools in South Cheshire through this
scheme.

KEELE ACADEMIC WINS SLSA ARTICLE PRIZE 2013

Professor Michael Thomson, School of Law, (with Marie Fox) has won the SLSA (Socio-Legal Studies Association) article prize for 2013 for 'The new politics of male circumcision: HIV/AIDS, health law and social justice' (2012) Legal Studies 32(2): 255–81.

Former PhD student and ex-colleague, Nicola Barker, won the Hart Socio-Legal Book Prize 2013 for 'Not the Marrying Kind: A feminist critique of same-sex marriage', Palgrave Macmillan.

They will receive their prizes at the SLSA annual conference in York, where they will also take part in author-meets-reader sessions.

PUBLIC CONVERSATION IN CALIFORNIA ON NOVEL COMMUNITIES

Dr James Peacock and American writer Jonathan Lethem staged a public conversation called "Novel Communities" at Pomona College in California.

Part of James' AHRC-funded research project on Brooklyn fictions, the discussion covered, among other topics, the novel's unique capacity for depicting complex communities; the ways in which contemporary writers, including Lethem, have attempted to deal with new formations such as extraterritorial and virtual communities; and whether the romantic view of "community" as signifying face-to-face contact and localism is an obfuscation which ignores socioeconomic realities.

The conversation was followed by a lively Q and A session with Pomona students and staff and members of the public.

'AGES AND STAGES' IN THE SPOTLIGHT AT EDINBURGH CONFERENCE

The 'Ages and Stages' project has been in the spotlight again, featuring in the keynote address given to the 'Generations Working Together' Annual Conference in Edinburgh.

Professor Miriam Bernard, Project Leader, was invited to speak about the project – and, in particular, about how the intergenerational performance piece - Our Age, Our Stage - was developed from research interviews and archival material.

In the lovely setting of St Paul's and St George's Church in Edinburgh, she spoke about the interdisciplinary and community-based nature of the project (which involves colleagues David Amigoni and Lucy Munro in English; Mike Murray in Psychology, and Jill Rezzano, Head of Education at the New Vic Theatre); and about how the intergenerational Ages and Stages Theatre Company had come together to devise the hour long documentary piece.

The conference audience also enjoyed seeing an extract of the final performance on the Vic's main stage in July 2012, and hearing what participants and performers had said about being involved.

The presentation and extract can be seen on the Ages and Stages website here.

The Ages and Stages Company are currently touring a new piece – Happy Returns – as part of a year's follow-on funding awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and supported by the Keele Key Fund.

FURTHER MATHEMATICS SUPPORT PROGRAMME YEAR 10 MATHS COMPETITION

Twenty-three teams of four students from 16 secondary schools, with each team accompanied by a teacher, competed in a Further Mathematics Support Programme Year 10 Maths Competition in Keele Hall.

The event was organised by Richard Stakes, Teaching Fellow in the School of Computing and Maths and Further Mathematics Support Programme Area Coordinator.

The competition is organised on a regional basis with over 50 events taking place across England.

Students needed to work as a team or in pairs and only occasionally as an individual.

Questions included both recreational mathematics and some of a more traditional nature.

The winners were a team from Great Sankey High School, Warrington, and the runners-up were from Stafford Grammar School.

The students enjoyed the opportunity to visit Keele and be challenged by mathematical problems of the type not normally met in their GCSE Maths studies.

Further information about the FMSP is available at www.furthermaths. org.uk.

PILATES COURSE FOR PHYSIO STUDENTS

Keele Sports Centre supported 14 final year Physiotherapy students attending a pilates course by giving them free use of the facilities for the weekend.

The course taken by the Australian Physiotherapy & Pilates Institute and was arranged by one of the students as an addition to their studies at Keele.

It saw a high level of teaching, giving theoretical underpinning to all of the pilates movements the students would use in a clinical setting.

The course was so well received by the students that a second course is being arranged before graduation.

COMIC RELIEF MASTER BAKER IN FINANCE
 
For Comic Relief, Finance held a Great Finance Bake Off.  All the men took part in baking cakes in aid of Comic Relief. 

Each cake was numbered and the ladies in Finance sampled all the cakes and then had to judge their favourite. 

The votes were cast and the winning cake was a coffee and walnut cake and Paul Buttery (Deputy Director of Finance) was declared Master Baker! 

The cakes were sold to raise a total of £120 for Comic Relief.  

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Ten years ago –

Keele played Staffordshire University in the Richard McPartlin Memorial Inter-Varsity football match at Newcastle Town FC to raise money for the Donna Louise Trust hospice for terminally ill children, newly built at Trentham Lakes.

The Rugby Club also organised a sponsored 24 hour touch rugby match to support the year's Comic Relief appeal. 14 March 2003

A 2.5m model of DNA was built in the central Halle Shopping Centre in Sofia, Bulgaria, by Dr Graeme Jones, School of Chemistry and Physics, and the British Council in Bulgaria. 

The model building was covered by the Bulgarian national press and made the Channel 1 national television evening news. 21 March 2003