Oxford Brookes Unscripted

Dr Casper J. Breuker is one of the founders of Butterflies Under Pressure, a project that has produced engaging practical science activities to engage primary school children with the curriculum topic of living things and their habitats. He is a Senior Lecturer and the Subject Coordinator for various Biological Sciences degrees at Oxford Brookes University, and also Director of the university's Centre for Functional Genomics, which aims to support scientists from evolutionary biology to biomedicine in their genomic research.

Dr Adam Bibbey is co-investigator of Tackling Colour Blindness in Sport (TACBIS), a three-year project funded by the European Commission. He is Senior Lecturer in Sport, Exercise and Health Psychology at Oxford Brookes University, where his research focuses on psychophysiology and sport and exercise psychology, particularly the impact of stress/recovery and other behavioural factors on health and sporting performance. He is currently researching the examination of stress, coping and well-being (in football), personality traits, ergogenic effects of music and motivating health behaviour.

Dr. Kiron C. Neale is a Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University graduate, and expert on systems-level energy transitions, the mainstreaming of solar energy, and small-island energy systems. Dr. Neale's research expertise focuses on the interactions between 'culture' and 'policy' during energy transitions i.e., how Government policies can influence and be influenced by cultures and vice versa to support the mainstreaming of residential solar energy. He has research experience in the Caribbean (Barbados and Trinidad) and Pacific (O'ahu, Hawai'i) and has recently published a book on this topic to highlight the solar energy narrative(s) of small, tropical islands: "Mainstreaming Solar Energy in Small, Tropical Islands: Cultural & Policy Implications”. At present, Kiron is one of the EiE Lead Assessors at Oxford Brookes University where he coordinates energy efficiency audits for small and medium-sized enterprises and community groups in Oxfordshire in the UK. Additionally, as part of his role, he is also involved in the development of a new Oxfordshire energy services company, Energy Solutions Oxfordshire, which aims to help businesses improve their uptake of energy efficiency and renewable energy measures.

Dr Maurizio Sibilla is a Senior Research Fellow in Sustainable Construction here at Brookes. He leads national and international research focusing on the low carbon transition. His work experience over the past few years has focused on the bridge between technology and design culture, reconfirming his interest and enthusiasm for environmental technology. His work was recently picked up by COP26 regarding how our approach to climate research must be more interdisciplinary.

Dr Giulia Rossetti is a Lecturer in Events Management in the Business School, Oxford Brookes University. She teaches modules related to events, festivals, and marketing at Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels. Giulia's areas of expertise are: understanding festival and event experiences using cultural sociology and serious leisure theories; festival socio-cultural impacts; and the educational value of festivals and events. Her PhD at the Technological University Dublin explored cultural capital development at literary festivals in Ireland and in Italy (URL: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/tourdoc/32/).

Dr Ingrid Medby is a Senior Lecturer in Political Geography. Ingrid joined Oxford Brookes University in the autumn of 2017, after having previously taught at University College London (UCL). Prior to this, she completed a PhD in Political Geography at Durham University. Her research interests lie in the areas of geopolitics, identity, nationalism, and statecraft, focusing on the Arctic region. Prior to her PhD, Ingrid worked for the North Norway European Office in Brussels, Belgium. She continues to write regularly on Arctic issues for High North News, and engage with related policy.

Simon Kövesi is Professor of English Literature at Oxford Brookes University. He researches working-class writing from the Romantic period through to contemporary literature. His books include Eighteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets, 1700-1800 (3 vols, 2003), James Kelman (2007), New Essays on John Clare: Poetry, Culture and Community (2015), and John Clare: Nature, Criticism and History (2017). He is currently working on a book entitled Literature and Poverty: 1800–2000, and a paperback edition of Pierce Egan's 1821 smash hit Life in London. He appears as a boxer-cum-fool in the 2015 feature film By Our Selves, made by Andrew Kötting.

In this instalment, Lindsay Steenberg discusses her research into gladiatorial imagery in the media and the recent release of her book on the subject, Are You Not Entertained? Mapping the Gladiator in Visual Culture. She also guides the listener through the paradoxical pleasures of the contemporary action cinema as part of her new project on the fight scene. Dr Lindsay Steenberg, BA (hons), MA, PhD, Cert HEP, SFHEA Lindsay Steenberg is Reader in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University where she co-ordinates their graduate programme in Popular Cinema. She has published numerous articles on violence and gender in postmodern and postfeminist media culture. She is the author of Forensic Science in Contemporary American Popular Culture: Gender, Crime, and Science and the recently published Are You Not Entertained? Mapping the Gladiator in Visual Culture, for which she was awarded Brookes' Research Excellence Fellowship. She on the steering committee for the Inclusion, Diversity and Gender Research Network and serves as mentor to early career researchers for the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies. She has recently begun a new project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, to map the fight sequence in post-millennial action cinema with Dr Lisa Coulthard at the University of British Columbia.

The Little Fireface Project is part of Oxford Brookes University's Slow Loris Fund. Led by Professor Anna Nekaris, the team has been working towards slow loris conservation, including in West Java Indonesia where they study the Critically Endangered Javan slow loris. In this podcast, they describe an innovative way to approach conservation, working with the local community to improve farming practices for coffee, whilst at the same time banning hunting and littering - this process has led to the village's certification as Wildlife Friendly. Postdoctoral researcher Marco and PhD student Sophie tell you more!

Dr Ryan C Pink PhD MSc BSc (hons) AFHEA After completing an Msc in Medical Diagnostics and Molecular biology PhD on dietary linked Oesophageal cancer in developing world South Africa, he worked for industry around Europe on a 6 million Euro point-of-care early diagnostic cancer tool, which lead on to working on an early cancer diagnostic tool for the International Technology Research Institute, Taiwan. Ryan went to Oxford Brookes as a Research Fellow in 2009 to set up primary blood cell culture and gene profiling in partnership with WIMM, University of Oxford and The Babraham Institute, Cambridge. Ryan is now a Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biology and Genomics at Oxford Brookes University focusing on the effect of extracellular vesicles in cancer and CEO of MetaGuideX cancer diagnostics. Ryan help set up the AHSC MSc Medical Genomics course. He is the assistant manager for the Oxford Academic Health Science Partners promoting biomedical research between Oxford Brookes University, University of Oxford, Oxford University Hospitals and Oxford Health NHS Trust. He is widely involved in Public Engagement projects from Art to science festivals and has presented and published his work internationally, including BBC, House of Commons, London Science Museum, Natural History Museum. For his community engagement projects he has a BBC award and made an honouree member of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. [email protected] - @drpink