PVC's Lunchtime Seminars

I'm preparing for the new round of PVC's Lunchtime Seminars today. The first will be led by Dr Charlotte Sleigh in History, who will gather together a group of fellow academics from across the University to look at the question of 'the Face of the Expert'. Who are (and were) experts? How do they get to be experts? Can they cease to be experts? What are their relationships with lay persons? How do these relationships structure knowledge and society? And as members of academia are we experts or not?
It should be interesting: Charlotte's idea is that, rather than have each participant give individual talks about their research (which we've done in the past), they will discuss issues raised by the topic, similar to Radio 4's 'In Our Time.'
All welcome: it starts at 12:30 in Keynes Seminar Room 14.

ESRC Changes Final Reporting System

The ESRC has announced that it's changing its Final Report System. The Council will be contacting award holders individually (they say), but here’s the gist of the changes:

• The current requirement for a 5000 word End of Award Report has been dropped;
• In its place is a new system to collect evidence on impacts of your research.

This consists of:

• A much shorter ‘End of Award Report’, due 3 months after the end of the project;


• An ‘Impact Report’, due 12 months after the end of the project.

They insist that the new system will be ‘more economical in terms of its demand on award holders’ time’, and that ‘award-holders who report only scientific contributions will not be disadvantaged in any way in the Council's evaluation process. It will be possible to achieve the highest evaluation grades for scientific and/or practical impacts.’
More details of these changes are available here.