EGS Seminar - Tuesday 02 November 2010

Tuesday 02nd November, E0.05 from 1.00-2.00 pm.


Lunch, and an opportunity to chat with the speaker, will be in room E402 from 12:30. All are invited!

‘ As Found: Contested (re)appropriations within the ‘left-over’ spaces of the city’
In this talk Jo will discuss ‘informal,’ left-over spaces which are intrinsic to the planning system and the ordering, zoning and separating of the urban landscape. Such interstitial, dis-used and marginal geographical spaces emerge in various urban locations and punctuate the staged and controlled official public sites and the everyday, ubiquitous spaces of the contemporary city. According to De Sola-Morales (1995: 120) these ‘strange places exist outside the city’s effective circuits and productive structures,’ and from an economic point of view represent places ‘where the city is no longer.’
Their qualities are overlooked, and in various discourses from the realms of architecture, planning, design and urban theory, they are depicted negatively. Represented on official maps as ‘a white mark’, they remain ignored until planners, architects and developers realise their real estate value. As places once used but now abandoned, to an authoritarian viewpoint they represent unacceptable socio-economic abandonment, contrary to the ideal image of the city. Yet, Jo suggests, they also represent a ‘domain of unfulfilled promise and unlimited opportunity’ (Cupers and Miessen 2002: 83). Over time these non prescriptive, liminal spaces acquire and express multiple and shifting social, aesthetic, political and economic meanings as opposed to clarity of function and distinct identity. They provide the context for instances of ‘pure potentiality’ (Anderson: 2010) to unfold, allow for alternative readings of space and offer a temporary context for activities normally prohibited. Jo proposes that policy makers and city officials could learn from the transient qualities of these spaces and the activities that enliven them, rethinking them as a resource rather than a hindrance to the city.

IMPORTANT: message from Liz Price

Dear Student,

Please take some time NOW to familiarise yourself with the Exceptional Factors Submission
Guidance in the Faculty Student Handbook available at:

http://www.sci-eng.mmu.ac.uk/students/handbook/except_factors_sub_guide.pdf .

In particular, please note that if you experience exceptional factors that affect an
assessment you should hand in an Exceptional Factors Form to the Student information
Point (SIP) either before, or on, the deadline of an affected assessment. Further
important information is provided in the guidance notes.

Best wishes,

Liz

* * *Faculty Staff-Student Liaison Meeting* * *

***EMSD Staff - Student Liaison Meeting***

Hello all,

This coming Wednesday is the Staff-Student Liaison meeting for EMSD at 3pm. As we have a self study week and I will not be see you before the meeting, I am having to ask for views over the blog/email.

Do you have any issues you would like to raise with staff - Negative or Positive?

Any comments you would like to be addressed?

If you could please email me your views/issues that I can take forward and hopefully they will be resolved and/or addressed ASAP

My email is

siobhangibbons@msn.com
or 07129283@stu.mmu.ac.uk

All feedback will be anonymous and would appreciate the email before Weds at the latest.

Thanks guys

Siobhan

Research Seminar

Tuesday 19^th October, E0.05 from 1.00-2.00 pm.  

Lunch, and an opportunity to chat with the speaker, will be in room E402 from 12:30. All are invited!

Dr Scott Smithers, James Cook University, Queensland Australia

'Coral microatoll records of sea-level change in the Indian and Pacific Oceans'

Coral microatolls are intertidal corals with morphologies that can accurately record sea level position at high resolution and with high fidelity.  They occur in mid-ocean settings, where long-term instrumental sea level records are scarce, where geophysical models predict important evidence of 'far-field' sea level trends during the postglacial transgression should be located, and where many low-lying islands likely to be directly affected by projected future sea level changes are concentrated. 

This seminar presents an overview of microatolls as sea-level indicators before presenting the results of several sea level investigations using microatolls in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans.  The focus in on key debates to do with the occurrence and elevation of a mid-Holocene highstand in the Indian Ocean, and the reality or otherwise of oscillating sea level during the late Holocene in the Pacific, as advocated by other researchers.  The seminar concludes with an account of some recent research in Papua New Guinea, where the inhabitants of an extremely remote low-lying atoll are being pressured by the government to migrate due to sea level rise issues, but where microatolls suggests there has actually been relative sea level fall.

IMPORTANT: Your Student Representatives

Hi All,

I am pleased to say that we now have a student representative for both EMSD and SA:

EMSD:

Ms Siobhan Gibbons (SIOBHAN.GIBBONS@stu.mmu.ac.uk)

Sustainable Aviation (SA):

Mr Andreas Pericleous (ANDREAS.PERICLEOUS@stu.mmu.ac.uk)

These student Reps will represent you all at the regular Faculty Staff-Student Liaison Meetings.

If you have any issues you would like to raise - and bring to the attention of the Faculty - please get in contact with your Rep.

Congratulations to both Siobhan and Adreas.....and thanks!

Cheers

Mark

UPDATED: University Regulations

The revised versions of the Assessment Regulations for


Undergraduate and Taught Postgraduate Programmes 2010-11 are now

available on the CASQE Website:
http://www.mmu.ac.uk/academic/grad_regulations.php

Summaries of the revisions to the regulations, their appendices

and the criteria for Boards of Examiners are also available

through this website.

Mark.