PHASE 1: University and secondary school research collaboration

Maneesh Kuruvilla

In the summer of 2016, Maneesh Kuruvilla, a Postgraduate Researcher in the School of Psychology & Neuroscience, won the St Andrews final of Three Minute Thesis and was awarded £500 to run a public engagement with research project.

This is what he did.....

I came up with the idea of PHASE 1, a Platform for Honing and Accelerating Scientific Excellence aimed at introducing my passion for research to students at Madras College. Through PHASE 1, I hope to not only equip students with research skills for university but to also encourage future cohorts of school students to take up Higher Psychology courses.

I pitched my idea to the Depute Head Teacher and Higher Psychology Teacher at Madras College, a local secondary school in St Andrews.What makes Madras College unique is that it offers students a Higher Psychology course. Students who take this course must conduct their own psychology research projects.

Over several months I went into the Higher Psychology classes and delivered modules on various aspects of research fundamentals, design and methodology. We then selected students who had expressed a desire to pursue Psychology at university. The students worked in two groups and chose their research areas of interest, designed studies, formulated hypotheses and collected data by recruiting their peers to participate in their experiments.

Over a six-week period, these students were then invited to the School of Psychology and Neuroscience and spent over 10 hours analysing and interpreting their data and preparing 8-minute presentations and academic conference-style posters.

At the closing event, the students, who had been mentored by throughout the project, presented two 8-minute talks on the research projects and presented posters of their projects over tea and coffee. ​

The main objective of this outreach programme was to give school students a breath of research experience at a university level and, in this regard, PHASE 1 has been an unquestionable success. To put things in perspective:

1. The basic research fundamentals and types of analyses the students have performed with their data is at par with First Year Psychology undergraduates. 
2. The use of SPSS statistical package to analyse data is at par with Second Year undergrads. 
3. The ability to visually represent data in the form of a poster is comparable to Junior Honours level. And to receive supervision and give a presentation on one’s own research project is Senior Honors level and above. 

The sold-out event took place at the Byre Theatre in front of close to 100 audience members made up of staff and students from The University of St Andrews and Madras College as well as the general public.

Student presenters

PHASE 1 also featured guest talks by Professor Dave Perrett, Dr Jamie Ainge and Dr Maggie Ellis from the School of Psychology & Neuroscience.

We were pleased to welcome Professor Sally Mapstone (Principal and Vice Chancellor, University of St Andrews), Professor Keith Sillar (Head of School, Psychology & Neuroscience) and Mr David McClure (Rector, Madras College) at the inaugural edition of PHASE 1.

Student Presenters: Aeonie Ramsay, Ross Lavin, Till Sprengelmeyer, Arin Beaver and Jack Laird Mentors: Maneesh Kuruvilla (PhD Student, University of St Andrews); Brianna Vandrey (PhD Student, University of St Andrews); Dr Akira O'Connor (Lecturer, University of St Andrews); Mrs Catherine O'Donnell (Higher Psychology Teacher, Madras College)

EU-LAC-MUSEUMS: Museums and Community: Concepts, Experiences and Sustainability in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean

Dr Karen Brown

Museums can provide vital services to their communities, providing under-represented people with a chance to stake a place in history, as well as contributing to sustainability, community empowerment and links between generations. Dr Karen Brown, Lecturer in the School of Art History and Museum and Gallery Studies and Director of the University’s Museum and Galleries Collections Institute, is leading a new EU-funded project exploring the role that small, community-run museums play in their communities. The EU-LAC-MUSEUMS project will run from 2016 to 2020, and investigate rural community museums in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. It will bring together researchers from Scotland, Portugal, Spain, Costa Rica, Chile, Peru, and the West Indies. The project has received funding from Horizon2020, the EU’s biggest ever research and innovation programme.

Over the next four years, the international team of academics will investigate how rural, community-run museums can inform museum practice, particularly for remote and island locations. Two of the museums involved are Ceumannan-Skye Ecomuseum in Scotland, and the Rey Curré Museo Comunitario in Costa Rica, which is run by the native Boruca people. Both of these community museums are open air, and encourage visitors to explore the natural landscapes and traditional structures. It is hoped that the project will allow both academics and the public to better understand the benefits of, and challenges facing, such geographically isolated museums.

Dr Catherine Spencer

As well as academic work, the EU-LAC-MUSEUMS project will hold a youth exchange, bringing young people from each region together to work on an oral history project with community elders. This project will allow young people to engage with their society’s history, explore other cultures, gain skills in research techniques and IT, and learn to work effectively in a culturally diverse team. Community museum members will in addition produce a Virtual Exhibition with the help of St Andrew’s Open Virtual Worlds (www.openvirtualworlds.org). Some preliminary results from our first workshop in Shetland involving Alan Miller, Iain Oliver, Catherine Cassidy and Karen Brown can be seen here: https://sketchfab.com/models/cf20d43bd5e948c0bb53d82662ad30b9.

The project will also see the creation of an exhibition of Caribbean Contemporary Art on the theme of migration, curated by an international team including Dr Karen Brown, Dr Catherine Spencer (School of Art History), Dr Alissandra Cummins (University of the West Indies) and Verle Poupeye (National Gallery of Jamaica). This exhibition will tour the Caribbean and Europe from 2017 to 2020, including representation in the 2019 Venice Biennale.

A major partner in the EU-LAC-MUSEUMS project is ICOM (the International Council of Museums (www.icom.museum). Working with this organisation will allow the project to reach ICOM’s 35,000 members in 136 countries. The project will also reach the public through the Youth Exchange, exhibition and a website hosting all research output of the project, as well as audio-visual content and 3D models of museum objects. The project website will be available at http://eulacmuseums.net/. 

EU-LAC-MUSEUMS: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 693669.

Communicating with people with advanced dementia

There are 850,000 individuals with a diagnosis of dementia in the UK, many of whom are likely to progress to a state of advanced dementia. Professional care places a considerable strain on NHS resources and the distress that Alzheimer’s places on those living with the illness, their loved ones and professional caregivers cannot be underestimated. Much of this distress owes to the breakdown in speech-based communication that accompanies the illness.

People with advanced dementia who have lost the ability to speak are typically thought to have no communicative abilities or desire to interact and, as such, are typically excluded from the social world. Research by Dr Maggie Ellis and Professor Arlene Astell of the School of Psychology & Neuroscience has found that, despite a lack of speech, people with advanced dementia retain both the urge to interact and individual repertoires of non-verbal communicative capacities including sounds, movements, facial expressions and the capacity to imitate. These behaviours can be used by caregivers to re-engage individuals with advanced dementia in social interaction - an approach now known as 'Adaptive Interaction'. Organisations providing care for individuals with dementia have recognised the value of this evidence-based approach. For example, Alzheimer Scotland recommends Adaptive Interaction in a public document and the Alzheimer’s Society commissioned Dr Ellis to develop a training programme in the approach that is currently being rolled out to approximately 1000 volunteers across the UK.

While not eliminating Alzheimer’s disease, Adaptive Interaction supports the interpretation of behaviour as intentionally communicative and provides the means to engage with those living with advanced dementia. By supporting communication, Adaptive Interaction increases the wellbeing of those diagnosed and their family members and the job satisfaction of formal caregivers.

Research:
Astell, A. J., & Ellis, M. P. (2006). The social function ofimitation in severe dementia. Infant and Child Development, 15(3), 311-319.

Ellis, M. P., & Astell, A. J. (2011). Adaptive Interaction - a new approach to communicating with people with advanced dementia. Journal of Dementia Care, 19(3), 24-26.

Philosophy education in schools

Coordinated by Dr Lisa Jones, under the auspices of a Philosophy-in-Schools Programme (POPS), philosophers from the Department of Philosophy have informed, supported, and developed the work of teachers of philosophy in primary and secondary education, principally within Scotland where the teaching of philosophy has doubled in the last 10 years. To date, teachers from one-third of all Scottish centres (schools/colleges) delivering the Scottish Philosophy Higher have received accredited philosophy training via a formal programme of continuing professional development. An annual ‘Study Day for Higher Philosophy students’ held in St Andrews, consisting of a day of lectures/workshops delivered to S5 (year 11-12) students and their teachers from schools all over Scotland. Materials used in Study Days, masterclasses and in the online modules have helped in the design and delivery of the Scottish Higher syllabi.
Additionally, Professor Berys Gaut’s novel philosophical work on creativity has had an impact on the teaching of philosophy to very young children, mediated both through a book for teachers co-authored by Prof. Gaut and Morag Gaut,  (Philosophy for Young Children: A Practical Guide, Routledge, 2011), and by events and personal contacts. In one primary school, HMI inspectors had commented specifically on the advanced thinking skills of the pupils, which their teacher credits to a method for carrying out philosophical enquiry sessions with very young children that she learned about in a series of workshops at St Andrews as part of the ‘curriculum for excellence’.

Fostering Local Film Heritage

Filming of Chariots of Fire on the West Sands of St Andrews, April 1980
Image is courtesy of the St Andrews Preservation Trust Museum

The historical research of Dr David Martin-Jones, Dr Tom Rice and Dr Joshua Yumibe as part of Cinema and Cultural Studies (Department of Film Studies), as exemplified by Dr Martin-Jones book, “Scotland: Global Cinema” (University of Edinburgh Press, 2009), has been supporting and fostering a thriving community-based film culture in St Andrews by calling attention to the historical, cultural, and economic value of film within the St Andrews community. Dr Rice and Dr Yumibe have been innovating archival, digital humanities projects in film studies utilising detailed local and national histories as a means of studying global history. This serves, in part, to examine the ways in which digital access is affecting the archival circulation of film culture and capital on a global scale. The research findings have spawned an open access website, Cinema St Andrews, which uncovers and examines local cinema history and curates and contextualises digitised holdings, such as photographs, architectural plans, local interviews, and newspaper clippings, in partnership with St Andrews Museum (2011), British Film Institute (2012) and the Media History Digital Library (2013).
The project has also been used to develop teaching programmes, which have been successfully incorporated across the curriculum in a local secondary school as part of their International Baccalaureate in English Language and Literature.
In addition, the project cultivates local film culture, working with local partners. Such initiatives have resulted in exhibitions and a series of screenings in local venues, which make use of extensive local footage. As a recent example, in 2013 the project ran a film season that celebrated the town’s rich cinematic heritage by curating free film shows in historically significant local sites, helping to build a collaborative network with which to sustain a thriving film culture in St Andrews.

Interfacing with historical reconstructions through Open Virtual Worlds

In a similar way as the PiXaR film Brave, set in an imaginary Scottish castle, introduced millions to Scottish landscapes or computer games such as Assassins Creed enable exploration of historic scenes, the Virtual Time Travel Platform (VTTP) of Open Virtual Worlds enables authentic recreations of community settings as they were in their heyday. The combined experience of Dr Alan Miller, Lisa Dow and Dr Colin Allison (School of Computer Science) in both systems research and technology-enhanced learning, and the domain expertise of Dr Rebecca Sweetman (School of Classics), Prof. Richard Fawcett (School of Art History) and Tom Dawson (School of History), has been instrumental in adapting and developing emerging 3D technologies to create digital interpretations of the past and connected them to local communities. Where Brave presents a single pathway through a fictional narrative, VTTP enables visitors to explore authentic scenes; and, where Assassins Creed delivers pre-defined scenarios to a global audience, VTTP enables community participation in the creation and exploration of scenes directly connected to actual historical communities. Some examples are the Time installation which features a pre-clearance Caen Highland Township, a reconstruction of the St Kilda world heritage site, and the virtual St Andrews Cathedral. The low equipment cost and support for content creation make embedding the VTTP available to small museums for the first time. The Timespan VTTP installation, for example, with a 300” wrap-around display, natural body movement control and visually powerful 3D graphics, forms a highly effective and interactive educational experience.

Additionally, the studies of S1 pupils at Madras College in St Andrews have been enriched as the history of the St Andrews Cathedral was "brought to life" for them with the interactive digital displays.
A new mobile app detailing the mediaeval roots of St Andrews has been launched which allows users to explore 22 key sites across the St Andrews via a range of interactive and media tools. The app is free to download via the Google Play store and is available now and features the 1580 Geddy map, generously donated for use by the National Library of Scotland, and special 'guest appearances' from honorary University of St Andrews alumni Sir Sean Connery and Joanna Lumley. Expansion packs to the app are planned for 2015.
The research was funded by the EPSRC, HEA, and the University of St Andrews.

The continuing influence of a once-forgotten shipwreck

The important French text, the Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Eole by C.E. Boniface, originally published in Cape Town in 1829, lay forgotten in the National Library of South Africa (NLSA) until its discovery in 2010 by Dr David Culpin of the School of Modern Languages. The narrative is concerned with the equally forgotten shipwreck of a French vessel in the Eastern Cape earlier that year, and tells the story of the survivors’ walk, barefoot and without food, through 200 miles of unknown territory until they reached Cape Colony, and it is completed by a description of their reactions to life in Cape Town. The book gives a rare account of encounters between Europeans and the indigenous Xhosa population as well as offering an eye-witness description of several towns in South Africa just a few years after their establishment. In addition, this account, which was the first French book and the first travel narrative ever published in South Africa, is the first travel narrative ever to have been published in Cape Colony and provides a unique commentary on important political changes introduced by the English government in the 1820s into the administration of the Colony. It includes biographical information Boniface, a leading figure in the literary and musical life of Cape Town in the 1820s, and gives an insight into the literary and intellectual culture that underpins this text and his other writings.
Dr Culpin, who learned Afrikaans in order to read other scholarly works dedicated to Boniface which had been written in that language also corrected an error in existing biographies of Boniface, which suggest that one of the survivors of the Eole had a child by Boniface’s slave, whereas this child was Boniface’s own. Since then, Dr Culpin has been involved with several exhibitions, numerous public discussions, media coverage, over 20 school visits and online resources for schools. As a result, the cultural heritage of South Africa, through this insight into the French vision of the country’s pre-colonial period, has been enriched particularly on issues of cultural memory, reconciliation and social justice. 
Forgotten musical items written by Boniface, notably his collection of Ariettes, expand upon the musical references included in the shipwreck narrative.

GeoBus: Driving Earth science education in schools

Over 27,000 pupils have been involved in hands-on, experiential learning activities in 150 schools across Scotland since January 2012!

GeoBus is an educational outreach project developed by the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences. It visits schools every week of term time from Tuesday to Friday (roughly 35 weeks per year). The project:

• supports the teaching of Earth science in secondary schools 
• provides teaching resources that are not readily available to educators 
• introduces Earth science research outcomes and young researchers to pupils and teachers
• provides a bridge between industry, HEIs, Research Councils, and schools 
• highlights career opportunities in geology specifically, and Earth sciences and STEM areas more broadly 

GeoBus teaching packages are developed by the GeoBus team, academics in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences and the School of Physics and Astronomy. Many workshops are based on the research outcomes of young academics or are developed with our industry sponsors.

Who runs GeoBus and where does it go?
GeoBus is coordinated by Kathryn Roper, a BSc Geoscience graduate from St Andrews and a trained secondary school teacher, and Charlotte Pike, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. The project is directed by Dr Ruth Robinson. Undergraduates, postgraduates and academics also accompany GeoBus on some school visits, and industry professionals are encouraged to directly participate in order to improve school pupils' understanding of career opportunities. GeoBus brings educational resources to schools across Scotland and northern England, and visits rural and urban areas in all council regions.

What does GeoBus do? 
GeoBus is a mobile outreach resource that is dedicated to providing a range of interactive learning experiences for school pupils. The workshops are designed to include research outcomes and fit with the curricula. Key aspects include the use of equipment not normally available in schools, the opportunity to conduct experiments, and experience outdoor field work. Teacher support is a key component of GeoBus for teachers, with or without geological backgrounds. Workshops to support the chemistry, physics, and biology curricula are currently being developed.

The GeoBus team also coordinate the Higher Geology Conference (with the Royal Scottish Geographical Society), introduced in 2013 to support those pupils and teachers involved in Higher Geology.

GeoBus is supported by Natural Environmental Research Council, Centrica Upstream Energy, Dana Petroleum, Maersk Oil Ltd, Shell and Premier Oil. For more information on the project, please contact Dr Ruth Robinson (rajr@st-andrews.ac.uk).

History of Mathematics Archive

James Gregory, first Reigus
Professor of Mathematics at St Andrews

The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, created and maintained by researchers at the School of Mathematics, is arguably the most widely consulted mathematics information resource in the world and one of the most accessed scientific websites, with an average of two million hits per week.

Persian astrolabe,
used for astronomy and navigation

The Archive includes detailed biographies of 2740 mathematicians and over 2000 other pages of essays and supporting material. It has helped to popularise mathematics and science to the public in the UK and internationally, as well as to inspire future scientists. The Archive is widely recognized as a major online educational resource, being widely used for university courses and high school teaching and projects, as well as being a source for popular scientific writers, lecturers and broadcasters. The development of the web Archive is a dynamic and on-going process. It is updated almost daily with additional biographies and other material added regularly and feedback and input from users and mathematicians contributing to its breadth and efficacy. This provides the impetus for further research and ensures that the vitality, utility and many other benefits of the Archive will continue into the future.

“Seamus Heaney’s Five Fables” iPad app

Drs Chris Jones and Ian Johnson, from the School of English, have collaborated with Flickerpix Animations and Touch Press on their exciting new multimedia iPad app of Seamus Heaney's translation of Five Fables by the medieval Scottish poet Robert Henryson. Henryson was a master of the craft of verse, who probably lived and worked in Fife in the 15th century. No longer widely read, Henryson deserves proper recognition as a giant of medieval European literature, and towards the end of his life Seamus Heaney translated several of Henryson's poems into modern English, with a view to renewing interest in this neglected genius. This app, and its accompanying animated versions of Heaney's translations of Henryson's verse adaptions of Aesop's fables, which Heaney was working on at the time of his death in August 2013, will continue to find new audiences both for Heaney and for Henryson.
Ian Johnson, an expert in late medieval literature, was recorded reading aloud the original medieval Scots of Henryson in original pronunciation. Users of the app can switch between hearing Johnson's interpretation of Henryson, and Billy Connolly's performance of Heaney's modern versions. Chris Jones, who has carried out extensive research into the use that modern poets have made of medieval literary sources (e.g. Strange Likeness: The Use of Old English in Twentieth-Century Poetry. Oxford University Press, 2006), was commissioned to write a detailed set of interpretative notes set of interpretative notes to both Henryson's original text and Heaney's adaptations.

Seamus Heaney’s Five Fables Is available at http://fivefablesapp.com/

An introduction to the fable, The Two Mice, which was shown on BBC Two Northern Ireland in March and tells the story of a country mouse invited by her sister to taste the delights of the town but finds, to her cost, it is not all it is made out to be. http://vimeo.com/88443256

Living Link to Human Evolution research centre

Since ‘Living Links to Human Evolution’ opened in Edinburgh Zoo in 2008, around 250,000 visitors per year have engaged with live, on-going science and multiple associated resources and activities. Through classes visiting the Centre and online teacher packs, the research is also integrated with Scottish Biology Highers and Advanced Highers, which recently came to include primatology and animal behaviour. The teacher packs contain a lesson plan and video resources.
Living Links is a University of St Andrews research centre established in partnership with the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and based in Edinburgh Zoo. Visitors can ‘join’ the primate family tree, match human chromosomes with a chimpanzee’s to see the similarities and differences and view active, on-going cognitive research at the Centre. Large outside and inside enclosures house capuchin monkeys and squirrel monkeys together, species which form mixed-species groups in the wild. For further information on the public engagement activities of Living Links, please download ‘Living Links Public Engagement with Science’.

Living Links is designed to support studies by scientists from the School of Psychology and Neuroscience as well as the Universities of Stirling, Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt, Aberdeen and Abertay, as part of the Scottish Primate Research Group (SPRG) and is the result of world-leading primate research by the ‘Origins of Mind’ research group. Relevant research articles include “Assessing public engagement with science in a university primate research centre in a national zoo.” (PLoS ONE) and “The ‘Living Links to Human Evolution’ Research Centre in Edinburgh Zoo: A new endeavour in collaboration” (International Zoo Yearbook). For further information, please contact Professor Andrew Whiten, Director of Living Links.
Living Links was created through a generous grant from the Strategic Research Development Scheme of the Universities’ Scottish Funding Council, and public engagement has been supported by sponsorship from the Scottish Governments’ Science Engagement Scheme and from the Wellcome Trust.
Living Links is affiliated with the Zoo’s Budongo Trail exhibit where SPRG scientists also study chimpanzees.

 

MONKEY MEDICINE at Living Links in Edinburgh Zoo

View more videos on YouTube

In March 2014, Prof. A. Whiten was awarded the Royal Society of Edinburgh' s Senior Prize for Public Engagement for his extensive, creative and unique forms of public engagement particularly as founding Director of the “Living Links to Human Evolution” Research Centre at Edinburgh Zoo.

The research is highlighted in the Leverhulme Trust Annual Review 2013.

Shaping perceptions of the Roman army

Dr Jonathan Coulston (School of Classics) is a leading authority on the Roman army. His expertise has underpinned the work of a wide range of heritage organisations, media companies and Roman army enthusiasts. Museums such as Housesteads Museum on Hadrian’s Wall (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) have drawn on his publications and personal expertise to classify and display their Roman army collections.
He has been consulted for magazines such as National Geographic – for articles on Roman frontiers (2012) and Libya (2013) – and for numerous television documentaries, including Lion TV’s An Untold Invasion of Britain (2009). His definitive publications on Roman military equipment are the touchstone for a wide community of living history re-enactors, illustrators and figure wargaming enthusiasts, and his regular public lectures have reached out to school children and public audiences across the country.

Dictionary of Scottish Architects: A free online database resource

Robert Lorimer ...

The Dictionary of Scottish Architects, launched in 2006 by Emeritus Professor David Walker (School of Art History) and his team, is a fully searchable, free, online database, which has transformed how individuals interested in Scottish architecture, from 1840 onwards, can engage with the subject.
The database provides biographical information and job lists for all architects (and some engineers) known to have worked in Scotland during the period 1840-1940 (and many from 1940-80), including almost 15,000 biographical and over 57,000 building entries.

.... and his work: the gatehouse at Earlshall, Fife, 1900

The large quantity of material collected and researched by Prof. Walker provided the core data for the project. The resource, searchable by name or location of architect, practice, or building, as well as by client, has become an important tool for anyone interested in Scottish architects and architecture and many who became part of the Scottish diaspora across the world.