21 to 23 November 2007, Marriott Hotel Cardiff
Keynote Speakers
Norman Sharp is Director of QAA Scotland, responsible for the development and implementation of the QAA's policy and practice in Scotland. He works with a number of bodies in Scotland related to government, funding, the higher education sector, the further education and school sectors, professional bodies and employers. He also helps develop and implement QAA’s international portfolio. Norman previously worked as a Lecturer (Public Economics), Senior Lecturer and Director of Programmes at Glasgow Caledonian University. Before his current role, he was Assistant Director at one of QAA's predecessor organisations the Higher Education Quality Council.
We are delighted to have Michael Burawoy as one of our keynote speakers. Michael is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkley, and has studied industrial workplaces in different parts of the world -- Zambia, Chicago, Hungary and Russia -- through participant observation. In his different projects he has tried to cast light -- from the standpoint of the workplace -- on the nature of postcolonialism, on the organization of consent to capitalism, on the peculiar forms of working class consciousness and work organization in state socialism, and on the dilemmas of transition from socialism to capitalism. During the 1990s he studied postSoviet decline as "economic involution": how the Russian economy was driven by the expansion of a range of intermediary organizations operating in the sphere of exchange (trade, finance, barter, new forms of money), and how the productive economy recentered on households and especially women. No longer able to work in factories, most recently he has turned to the study of his own workplace - the university - to consider the way sociology itself is produced and then disseminated to diverse publics. Over the course of his research and teaching, he has developed theoretically driven methodologies that allow broad conclusions to be drawn from ethnographic research and case studies. These methodologies are represented in Global Ethnography a book coauthored with 9 graduate students, which shows how globalization can be studied "from below" through participation in the lives of those who experience it. Throughout his sociological career he has engaged with Marxism, seeking to reconstruct it in the light of his research and more broadly in the light of historical challenges of the late 20th and early 21st. centuries.
Director of Bauman Lyons Architects Limited. Irena is a member of the RIBA and a member of the Association of Project Managers. She was a Visiting Critic at Liverpool University - 1994/95, Part time tutor at School of Architecture, Metropolitan University of Leeds - 1993/94, Regular lecturer in UK Schools of Architecture and an External Examiner, Sheffield University School of Architecture (2002-2004) and Newcastle University (2005 - 2008). Irena is one of the two founding members of Bauman Lyons Architects Ltd. She has extensive experience leading complex projects and large regeneration teams. She is a qualified project manager and has overall responsibility for the creative direction of the office. Her work has been widely published and received architectural awards. She has led a number of collaborative projects with artists, writers, photographers and sound artists.
Frank Furedi is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Since 1995, my work has focused on the different manifestations of contemporary risk consciousness. In 1995, I published a study on the international contraceptive pill panic of 1995, titled The International Impact of a Pill Panic. The varied response to this panic in different societies led me to ask questions about why some cultures have a more developed consciousness of risk than others. Most of my work in recent years has been devoted to an exploration of the cultural developments that influence the construction of contemporary risk consciousness. At present, I am working on two interrelated texts, Disasters, Terrorism and the Growth of a Market in Fear and Rumours, which discuss the cultural context for these developments. Both of these works are oriented towards investigating the interaction between risk consciousness and perceptions of fear, trust relations and the ambiguities of contemporary morality. Although my work is strongly influenced by the insights of social constructionist sociology, my past training in field work and history bring to the study of social problems a historical and empirical dimension. Elements of this approach are outlined in Population and Development (1997), The Silent War (1998) and in particular in The Culture of Fear (1997 - new revised edition 2002). These three texts examine the problematisation of different forms of social anxieties (race, population and risk) and have provided me with an opportunity to elaborate a sociological approach that synthesises the methods of historical inquiry with the insights of sociological investigation. Paranoid Parenting (March 2001, Allen Lane/ Penguin) develops this approach in relation to social anxieties about childhood. Since September 11, I have been exploring the way that the reaction to this event provides insights into the contemporary consciousness of risk and also the impact of this episode has influenced the public perception of risk. A preliminary study, Refusing to be Terrorised; The Management of Risk After September 11, published by Lloyds/Global Futures, attempts to develop an analytic framework for making sense of this dreaded form of risk. Alongside my study of risk consciousness, I have explored the cultural influences that have encouraged society to become risk-averse and to feel a heightened sense of vulnerability. The defining feature of people is increasingly represented as their vulnerability and it is frequently suggested we live in an age where people's mental health and emotions are permanently under siege. The cultural influences that promote a new version of diminished subjectivity constitutes the subject of my recently published book, Therapy Culture - Cultivating Vulnerability In An Anxious Age. Along with colleagues committed to the more robust version of personhood associated with the humanist tradition, I am engaged in a cultural critique of attempts to medicalise people's experiences and behaviour.
Opening Speaker
Labour Co-Op - Cynon Valley, Deputy Minister for Education with responsibility for 14-19 Education. Born in Porth, Rhondda 1956, gained a BA Hons at University of Wales, Aberystwyth and MscEcon at Cardiff University. A former Rhondda Cynon Taff Councillor, Education and Business Partnership co-ordinator and director of Mid Glam Careers. A member of the Institute of Careers Guidance, she has also been employed as a secondary school teacher, a youth worker and a careers adviser. Her special interests include education and training, equal opportunities, and social exclusion issues.
Awards Presentation
Jonathan Osmond
This year's C-SAP awards will be presented by Jonathan Osmond (Pro-Vice Chancellor Learning, Teaching and Students), Cardiff University. Jonathan is Professor of Modern European History and Director of The Cardiff Centre for Modern German History.
