Previous Events – 2015

All reviews can be found on the Reviews page.

PubhD #22: 18 November 2015

• Anja Rohde (History/Archaeology) is a PhD student at the University of Nottingham and is researching the coins of William the Conqueror and William Rufus. She is investigating what the coins can tell us about the Norman Conquest and how they can be used in museums to tell us more about the period.
• Hannah Williams (Mathematics) is a mathematical modeller at the University of Nottingham. She is (a) trying to save the world? (b) keeping people supplied with bacon? (c) sat at a desk all day staring at numbers? Some of those points may be slightly exaggerated, but she does apply maths to real world problems, and her PhD is linked to helping investigate the anticipated food shortage that may occur if the global population keeps growing.
• Matthew Clemence (Medical Physics) is a senior scientist at Philips Healthcare. His work involves developing the hardware and software needed to adapt clinical machines to allow the study of lung disease with MRI; “imaging thin air” by using MRI gas imaging to see the spaces in the lungs.

PubhD #21: 21 October 2015

• Sunil Rajput (Chemistry/Pharmacy) is a PhD student based in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Nottingham. He is playing with light and drug molecules!
• Yves van Gennip (Mathematics) is a lecturer in Applicable Analysis at the School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Nottingham. His research interests are in the mathematical theory underlying image processing and data analysis methods, as well as their practical applications. Did you know that oil and water and image segmentation go together like oil and water don’t?
• Eddie Cheetham (History) is a PhD student at Nottingham Trent University. He is looking at hospital and healthcare communities in the county of Derbyshire in the pre-NHS era. As well as typical administrative and financial factors, a primary focus of this thesis is the community fundraising and sense of ‘ownership’ that local people had towards their local institutions. From plays to parades, tea parties to comic football matches, the vibrancy of the hospital fundraising is a valuable insight into class, culture and community politics in an era devoid of the welfare state.

PubhD #20: 16 September 2015

• Mike Taylor (Chemistry) is a PhD student from the University of Nottingham. His research is concerned with understanding how we can influence the way stem cells grow using artificially developed materials.
• Mattia Colombo (Mathematical Physics) is a PhD student in Maths at the University of Nottingham. He is researching gravity and black holes.
• Johanna Barry (Biomedicine) is researching language and listening difficulties in children. Many behavioural measurements of these difficulties are not as informative as they pretend to be. It turns out, if you really want to know what is wrong with someone, ask them! The trick (or is it the art?) is to ask them the right way.

PubhD #19: 19 August 2015

• Lisa Glaser (Theoretical Physics) is a Post-Doc at the University of Nottingham and is researching space and time. She is exploring different attempts at introducing “space-time atoms”, and how to use those to find out more about the universe. This often, but not always, involves simulating universes on the computer.
• Gareth Mott (Security Studies) is a first-year PhD student at NTU. His research is entitled ‘The Hands Behind the Keyboard’ and is analysing the role of imagery in the representation of a ‘threatening unknown’, which has led to the ‘securitisation’ of cyberterrorism in the UK.
• Amy Manktelow (Politics) is researching International Relations at Nottingham Trent University. Specifically, she is looking at the UK 2014 Immigration Bill and what this means for UK/EU relations.

PubhD #18: 22 July 2015

• Emily Jackson (Microbiology) is PhD student at Nottingham Trent University. She is researching the Cronobacter bacteria and using its DNA sequences to investigate how those sequences relate to the behaviour of the organism.
• Maxine Cunningham (History) is a PhD student at Nottingham Trent University and is researching English Reformation History. In particular she is investigating how belief in angels changed/remained during and after the Reformation. By using angels as a unit of historical enquiry she hopes to demonstrate how this belief was used by Protestant reformers to comfort the English populace into accepting a new reformed religion whilst simultaneously warning them of the dangers of their old faith, Catholicism.
• Dr. Wang Qi (Architecture) is a Lecturer in Architecture in the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Nottingham. His research interests are generally focused on Museum Study, Exhibition Design and Informal Learning. He is also a big fan of Dinosaurs and Football.

PubhD #17: 17 June 2015

• Lucy Judd (History) is a Nottingham Trent University PhD student. She is researching examples of early modern Nottinghamshire & Derbyshire gentrywomen’s ‘receipt books’. These are, essentially, recipe compilations consisting of medicinal remedies and culinary favourites representing a culmination of domestic knowledge in the household, over a period of time. Receipt books hold interesting implications not only for the history of food and medicine in the local area, but also in identifying local networks of recipe sharing, and the ways in which women engaged with reading, writing and learning in the period.
• Angelica Ortiz de Gortari (Psychology) is researching “Game Transfer Phenomena” at Nottingham Trent University. This research concerns how video game playing affects gamers in real life. Some examples include gamers seeing power bars above people and involuntary movements of fingers when trying to use video game elements in real life.
• Alex Summerfield (Physics) is a nanoscience PhD student at the University of Nottingham. He is in his final year and is about about to start writing up his thesis.

PubhD #16: 20 May 2015

• Lexi Earl (Education) is a final year PhD in the School of Education. Her research explores food experiences in primary schools and focuses in particular on how policies are taken up in schools. She examines how food-related topics like obesity and ‘foodieness’ are adopted within the school setting, and how this affects the kinds of human beings we can become. She blogs about cake and the PhD experience at Philosophy and Madeleines.
• Alex Hiller (Marketing) is the Head of Postgraduate Programmes at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University and in addition to teaching marketing and managing MSc and MBA courses, is in his eighth (yes, eighth!) and final year of a part-time PhD in the field of ethical consumption. His research examines clothing consumption and how ‘ethically-principled’ people make decisions and trade-offs to live in accordance with their values.
• Stephen Kenny (Pharmacy/Chemistry) is a third year PhD student in the pharmacy department at the University of Nottingham. He is studying the surface chemistry of anti-biofouling coatings for ships.

PubhD #15: 22 April 2015

• Jessica Butterworth (Materials Science) is a PhD student at the University of Nottingham developing new glass optical fibres for a cancer detection system.
• Mark Iliffe (Geospatial Information Systems) is researching mapping in developing countries and how to create better services using that data.
• Alan Williams (Health/Education) is a Lecturer in the Division of Nursing and a Registered Nurse with a clinical background in resuscitation and Emergency Care. He is investigating how student and tutors create and develop web-based resuscitation educational resources for junior nursing students.

PubhD #14: 11 March 2015

• Chris Gaffney (Medicine) is a post doctoral research fellow at the University of Nottingham Medical School. His PhD work looked at how the body produces energy and how this changes as we get older and in response to certain drugs.
• Rossella Pulvirenti (Law) is a third year student in law. Her research focuses on witness protective measures at the International Criminal Court and how they affect witnesses’ and defendants’ rights.
• Benjamin Swift (Microbiology) is a post doctoral research fellow at the School of Biosciences. He is researching new diagnostic methods for tuberculosis and cystic fibrosis.

PubhD #13: 18 February 2015

• Leslie Bode (Archaeology) is a first year Archaeobotanist PhD student in the Department of Archaeology studying hunter-gatherer diets in Jordan.
• Ciaran O’Hare (Physics) is a PhD student at the Nottingham University Centre for Astronomy and Particle Theory. He is working on the detection of dark matter.
• Renata Seredynska-Abou Eid (Media) is in the Department of Culture, Film and Media. She is researching Polish immigration to the UK in a broad sense, beyond just migration statistics.

PubhD #12: 21 January 2015

• Lesley Fosh (Computer Science) is doing a PhD in Computer Science, or more specifically, Human-Computer Interaction. Her research focuses on the design of digital technologies/mobile guides for museums and art galleries.
• Rebecca Dewey (Medical Physics) is a neuroimaging physicist with an interest in measuring changes that we cause in the brain – with drugs, prosthetics, etc. Her current research is working out how the brains of profoundly-deaf people develop differently to hearing people, and whether that information is useful to us in deciding their treatment or predicting the effect of treatment.
• Stephen Walker (History/Archaeology) is a 2nd year History/Archaeology student at the University of Nottingham. He is looking at the rise and fall of cotton spinning in the Leen valley, north of Nottingham, in the late 18th and early 19th century.