Milena Kremakova named as Guest of the Director at re:work

Milena Kremakova has been awarded an honorary position as Guest of the Director 2015-16 at the institute IGK Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History (re:work), Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. At re:work, Milena will work on her ongoing project comparing the employment trajectories of mathematicians and computer scientists in Germany and the UK.

re:work belongs to the Käte Hamburger Collegia for research in the social sciences and is part of the ‘Freedom for Research in the Humanities’ funding initiative run by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Research and discussion at re:work focus on developing a typology, defining the most important trends and understanding the historic fundaments of the interdependent relationship between work and life course, the imaginaries surrounding work and life course, as well as the order of work and life course.

Events

Presentation on tackling poverty in cities

Anne Green attended the 'Tackling spatial inequalities: the prospects for economic development and regeneration' conference in Sheffield on 10 September. Together with Paul Sissons from Coventry University, Anne gave a presentation on 'Tackling poverty in cities: changing policy and the opportunities and constraints of local action'. The presentation can be downloaded here.

Presentation 51st ITH Conference

Milena Kremakova participated in the 51st International Conference of Labour History (ITH) which focused on 'Work and Non-Work' in historical and in contemporary contexts, and took place at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin), on 17-19 September. Participants were drawn from Europe and North America and from the disciplines of history, sociology and anthropology. Milena presented a paper entitled 'Do mathematicians work? Academic marketisation and the changing meanings of scientific labour in UK and German academia'. The full conference programme is available here.

IAEVG Conference inputs

Jenny Bimrose, Alan Brown and Deirdre Hughes each contributed to expert research-based inputs at the International Association of Educational and Vocational Guidane (IAEVG) Conference in Tsukuba, Japan on 18-21 September.

Women and STEM

Deirdre Hughes delivered a keynote address at the Inside Government Conference on 'Successfully Integrating Women into STEM' held in London on 29 September 2015 on 'Tackling Gender Imbalances in STEM through Supporting Students to Continue their STEM Education'. The conference programme can be found here.

Greening TVET in the EU

Nick Sofroniou joined an expert meeting at the United Nations campus in Bonn for reviewing and inputting to the forthcoming UNESCO-UNEVOC Greening Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Guide for institutions on 21-22 September 2015. This has been developed to facilitate greening of TVET institutions in the Member States as part of institutional transformations and implementation of Education for Sustainable Development.

Forthcoming virtual conference on Greening TVET

In early November 2015, a virtual conference on the topic of Greening TVET will be hosted by UNESCO-UNIVOC with Nick Sofroniou invited as Guest Moderator, who will also produce a subsequent conference report. The conference will consider global frameworks and agreements of the UN Summit 2015 in New York and to be made at the UN climate Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris as they challenge TVET to expand quality skills provision and to ensure skills relevance not only for the world of work, but also to support lifelong learning, inclusion and low-carbon transitions of economies and societies. The aim is to promote focused discussions on crucial themes in TVET development and to gather valuable input from the e-Forum community. Interested participants may join the virtual conference in the e-Forum section.

Work, Wages & Wellbeing

On 30 September IER Director, Chris Warhurst, gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament inquiry into Work, Wages & Wellbeing. The Inquiry considered the characteristics and contrasting qualities of different jobs, with a particular concern to improve the quality of work and wellbeing of workers in Scotland.

Graduate tracking presentation in Lithuania

Charikleia Tzanakou was invited as an expert by the Research and Higher Education Monitoring and Analysis Centre (MOSTA) in Lithuania to provide advice on graduate tracking. As part of her visit, she delivered a presentation on PhD graduate tracking entitled ‘Graduate Tracking: Prospects and Applications’ to an audience of national and international policy makers, academics and university staff on 1 October. She also contributed to internal discussions about good practices, challenges, application of results and future development of graduate tracking efforts in Lithuania. More information about speakers and the event programme can be found here.

Publications

Solving Britain's maths challenge: reaching out to young people

Businesses are rapidly growing aware of this skills gap, with 62% of them saying that young people are disadvantaged in the global jobs race due to their lack of maths skills. Increasing the number of post-16 students doing maths is a major challenge that has to be met across Britain. Deirdre Hughes, Chair of the DfE/CfBT 'Core Maths Support Programme in England', argues in a recently published FE News article "we need to help more young people who achieve GCSE maths (grade C or above) to continue with maths. We need to help students appreciate the relevance of maths to everyday life, including current and future studies and work opportunities". The full article can be found here.

New Projects