THE 100FT TALL CANARY

Posted on June 25, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged Adansonia Adansonia, Africa, African Baobab, baobab, Botswana, capitalism, climate activism, climate change, crisis, developing, economics, environment, environmental justice, featured, forest, humanity, Idaho, Lion King, migration, Montana, Namibia, nature, Nature Plants, neoliberalism, Panke Baobab, pollution, Rafiki, research, resources, science, South Africa, trees, uk, war, West, Wyoming, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

by Stu Lucy

Back in the day, before Maggie had her way, there used to be a thriving northern powerhouse built on the foundations of a mining industry that provided thousands of jobs to people across a vast expanse of our fair isles. It was a dangerous job with the risks of explosions, cave-ins, and noxious fumes overpowering the brave men and women that dared descend into dark depths. One of the tools the miners had to protect themselves from some of the dangers of this perilous job was a tiny little yellow bird in a cage: a canary. When levels of noxious gases began to amass, this small bird would croak it, indicating to the miners it was time to get out. While hardly the most humane method of protecting themselves, it served its purpose and saved countless lives. The mines have now closed and canaries no longer employed to keep the miners safe, the metaphor however lives on, albeit in a somewhat larger capacity.Continue Reading

BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER: A REPRESSED SUPERPOWER, PART II

Posted on May 31, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged abuse, behaviour, behavioural disorder, bipolar, Bojack Horseman, borderline personality disorder, BPD, care, cbt, DBT, eggshell therapy, emotional intelligence, empathy, featured, MAriah Carey, mental health, mental illness, misconceptions, personal, psychology, Raphael Bob Waksberg, research, stigma, superpower, therapy, trauma, UKCP.

by Sunetra Senior

CW: abuse | Continues from Part I here

Both Analytical and Emotional Intelligence

Mystification: go to work in an office to endorse more of that analytical, grounded thinking.

Hidden Truth: having these two qualities in equal measure means you have constant access to an enviable social clairvoyance that does well in advisory and imaginative professions.

The twin pairing is an attenuated, ongoing version of psychosis which means you can control it and draw from it whenever you want. What’s more you can immediately translate profound ideas to those around you, having one foot in the cosmos and the other in the everyday. That same parental lacking when a person with Border Personality Disorder grew up, made them sharp to environmental clues in order to survive. As this person grows older, they will retain this attentiveness, accumulating little signs and symbols – politically, mathematically and socially – to equip them to make impressive and perceptive connections and even predict sociological algorithms.

Additionally, you are likely to be excellent in the arts and in critical thinking because you process such a sensitivity to surroundings and are rapidly processing information and images. You can identify intuitive nuances that make great cinema and literature.

The world needs more dedicated artists, sociologists, researchers and socially conscious politicians, not bankers, marketing executives and legal crooks.Continue Reading

BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER: A REPRESSED SUPERPOWER, PART I

Posted on May 29, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged abuse, behaviour, behavioural disorder, bipolar, borderline personality disorder, BPD, care, cbt, DBT, emotional intelligence, empathy, featured, MAriah Carey, mental health, mental illness, misconceptions, personal, psychology, research, stigma, superpower, therapy, trauma.

by Sunetra Senior

CW: self-harm, abuse

As a homage to mental health awareness week (14th- 20th May), I have decided to write on an often misunderstood and underrepresented psychological health condition close to my heart, or more accurately my spirit. Borderline Personality Disorder or BPD is characterised as a ‘behavioural disorder’, which is intrinsic to one’s selfhood, and because of its often abuse-induced origins, has been notoriously difficult to treat. It is not the expected actions or the very true fact that the condition is deeply ingrained that I take issue with, but the medical paradigm of dysfunction and negativity implied by the alliterative last acronym.

This pervasive perceptual context, reflective of the attitude towards many mental health issues, permits an entire trail of prejudice, extending to the defining symptoms of BPD. Common misconceptions are “attention-seeking, manipulative and over-emotional”. This comes from the high numbers of those with BPD who self-harm, especially during their already tumultuous teenage years, their expressing the need for special care or extra-vigilance and seeming not to be able to cope with the interpersonal and social challenges that everyone else can.

It is time to not only put the record straight, but to add some fucking colour.Continue Reading

EDUCATION AS EMANCIPATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #7

Posted on May 4, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged Beyond Tuition Fees, capital, capitalism, commodification, corbyn, cultural capital, david richardson, degrees, dissent, economy, education, featured, Free Education, government, HEFCE, higher education, Labour, labour market, marketisation, nationalisation, office for students, pedagogy, policy, professional classes, public ownership, research, society, state funding, student experience, student satisfaction, students, teaching, tuition fees, UEA, uk, UKRI, universities, university staff, workers.

By Michael Kyriacou

It is a time of extraordinary potential for change in UK Higher Education. Labour’s promise to end tuition fees has defied the critics and united many behind Corbyn’s political project. But what will the implications for universities be if this comes to pass? And what can we do to leverage this progress? In this series, the Norwich Radical and Bright Green are bringing together perspectives from across the sector to explore these questions.

The traditional arguments for ‘free education’ focus on reducing the upfront price of university courses to zero. Rather than HE being a commodity to be traded on the open market, it becomes a good paid for by the government. This kind of argument rests on a contradiction: we cannot solve the commodification of HE by continuing to assert the existence of HE as commodity, even a nationalised one. Abolishing tuition fees is undoubtedly a good thing, but to move beyond their legacy we must understand HE as devoid not only of its price but also its status as a commodity. We need to explore the potential for HE grounded not in classification or institution but in the fundamental equality of intelligences – HE without the degree.

THOUGHTS FROM THE FRONTLINE OF MARKETISATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #3

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged Beyond Tuition Fees, collective action, consumer law, consumer rights, consumerism, contact hours, corbyn, counselling, course closures, education, Free Education, funding, government, higher education, Labour, market regulators, marketing, marketisation, office for students, picket lines, policy, postgraduate, postgraduate education officer, postgraduate tutors, precarious contracts, profit, public, regulation, research, risk, specialist courses, state-funded education, student protection plans, students, students' unions, Success as a Knowledge Economy, taxation, tef, Tories, tuition fees, UCU, UEA SU, uk, UK Research and Innovation, universities, university collapses, USS strike, utopianism.

By Maddie Colledge, UEA SU Postgraduate Education Officer

CW: Mentions suicide

It’s common for arguments in favour of free education to be dismissed as abstract or utopian, and for students who promote it to be belittled as naïve. I fear that in our attempts to try to portray the significance of free education, we have fallen into a trap where the concept has become so expansive and broad, and the term so overused, that it has lost all meaning. We need to move away from talking about ‘free’ education, and towards articulating a vision more explicitly centred on ‘state-funded’ education or ‘public’ education. For me, the description ‘free’ makes the concept feel distanced from the viable possibility of education funded through public taxation, and does us no favours in making it reality.

HELPING PEOPLE SEE THE ECONOMY ANEW

Posted on March 11, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged Brexit, context, crisis, economics, economy, event, featured, finance, framing, Labour, metaphors, narrative, NEF, neoliberal, neoliberalism, NEON, ownership, PIRC, politics, report, research, War of Words.

by Justin Reynolds

Why, 10 years after a crisis of capitalism that has entrenched inequalities and insecurity, does the left still struggle to convince a sceptical public that an alternative economics is possible? That question was the focus of one of several intriguing sessions at The Norwich Radical’s recent War of Words conference. A new report by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) attempts to answer it.

Framing the Economy argues that progressives need to spend less time discussing the detail of economic policy and more on telling simple stories about how the economy works that people can understand. The project grew from a recognition that the right has long been better than the left at presenting ‘common sense’ understandings economic mechanisms.Continue Reading

AN OPEN LETTER TO VICE CHANCELLOR DAVID RICHARDSON AND THE UEA EXECUTIVE

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged academics, david richardson, featured, norwich, open letter, pensions, research, retirement, staff, strike action, students, students' union, trade union, UCU, UEA, UEA executive, UEASU, Union of UEA Students, university, University and College Union, University of East Anglia, USS, UUEAS, UUK, vice chancellor.

We the undersigned are writing to complain about the mistreatment of the university’s staff, and the fact that their mistreatment has led to such a major impact on our education. We wholeheartedly believe that the staff are the greatest asset to the university. The fact that they have been forced to take strike action shines a harsh light on the lack of care UEA’s executive and you, our Vice Chancellor, have for university staff.Continue Reading

MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Posted on January 28, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged AI, anniversary, artificial intelligence, arts, book, brain, computer, culture, Elon Musk, ethics, featured, frankenstein, Google, humanities, information theory, Jaan TAllinn, Larry Page, Mary Shelley, Max Tegmark, morals, neuromorphic computer, Nick Bostrom, philosophy, prometheus, research, science, society, STEM, technology, William Godwin.

by Justin Reynolds

Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus, the classic novel by Mary Shelley that stands at the pinnacle of the gothic tradition and looks forward to the new genre of science fiction, was first published 200 years ago this month. Shelley’s visceral tale of the terrible consequences that follow the failure of brilliant young scientist Victor Frankenstein to take responsibility for the strange new life he creates, is both of its time and utterly contemporary.

It can be read as a high Romantic fantasy set against a background of electric storms, shimmering Alpine peaks, Rhineland forests and Arctic wastelands, and as a subtle meditation on themes of knowledge and responsibility that resonate with today’s hopes and fears for the possibilities opened by artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology.Continue Reading

THE FATAL FLAW IN ECONOMICS FUNDING

Posted on December 19, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged academics, bias, campaign, climate change, curriculum, department for education, economics, education, finance, financial crisis, funding, future, gender, higher education, inequality, Laura Bannister, learning, market, post-growth, quality of life, REF, reform, research, Rethinking Economics, students, teaching.

by REFunding Economics

As the old saying goes, ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’. This week, a coalition of economics students, academics and campaigners gathered to get inside the piper-paying process – the funding of economics research – to create an economics fit for the real world.

WEEKENDS MATTER – WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN ACADEMIA

Posted on November 9, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged academia, academics, email, higher education, KEF, mental health, postgraduate, REF, research, students, tef, weekend, wellbeing, work, work-life balance, working conditions, working life, workload.

by Alex Powell

From the outside, it may appear that students and academics have pretty comfortable lives. We can largely work how and when we want. I frequently lie in past 10am and often come back home after just a 6-hour working day. But despite appearances, this doesn’t mean that we have it super easy. As I am finding more and more, maintaining a good work-life balance can be a real struggle – a struggle that academics and students around the world are all too familiar with.

research

THE 100FT TALL CANARY

BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER: A REPRESSED SUPERPOWER, PART II

Both Analytical and Emotional Intelligence

BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER: A REPRESSED SUPERPOWER, PART I

EDUCATION AS EMANCIPATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #7

THOUGHTS FROM THE FRONTLINE OF MARKETISATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #3

HELPING PEOPLE SEE THE ECONOMY ANEW

AN OPEN LETTER TO VICE CHANCELLOR DAVID RICHARDSON AND THE UEA EXECUTIVE

MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

THE FATAL FLAW IN ECONOMICS FUNDING

WEEKENDS MATTER – WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN ACADEMIA

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