INFORMATION & UPDATES


UPDATES & INFORMATION


News briefs


DATA RELEASE OFFERS GREAT RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY Understanding Society is a world- leading study of the socio-economic circumstances and attitudes of 100,000 individuals in 40,000 British households. The first large wave of data from this survey is now available to researchers. As the survey’s first ‘full wave’ of information has been deposited with the UK Data Archive, interviews from the world’s largest household


ENTER THE WORLD OF DATASETS The ESRC’s research catalogue is getting bigger. In addition to the 100,000-plus research outputs currently featured in the catalogue, we are now publishing details of over 900 datasets generated by ESRC-funded grants. Over 200 datasets covering every major project funded by the ESRC, from the population, health and housing surveys to the British Crime survey, are available to download from the Economic and Social Data Service and UK Data Archive. For more information see www.esds.ac.uk


GREEN BUDGET The financial crisis and recession have revealed ‘a £114-billion hole in the public finances’, state researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies at the launch of the Green Budget in February 2012, their annual analysis of the UK economy. The report also predicts that the Government will borrow less than predicted in 2011- 12 (£2.9 billion), with departments underspending by more than £3 billion this year. For the full report see www.ifs. org.uk/publications/6003


NEW TEAM TO NAVIGATE THE RETAIL SECTOR Building relationships, raising the profile of social science research and identifying opportunities for collaboration will be the main focus of a new Retail Knowledge Navigator Team announced in January 2012. Given the broad range of stakeholders and research agendas, the ESRC has


panel survey are for the first time accessible for research analysis creating countless exciting research opportunities. A team of researchers with early access to the data has already examined the material across a range of areas – from young people’s health and wellbeing, links between parents’ income and children’s achievements, and the role of social support networks in coping with stressful events, through to the division of housework


identified the need to supplement its existing resource with a team of expert knowledge brokers who will be able to forge stronger links between the social science community and the retail sector. This team will include Professor Kim Cassidy, Dr Sheilagh Resnick and Professor Paul Whysall, all from Nottingham Business School, part of Nottingham Trent University.


THE BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE CORPUS PROJECT The Deafness, Cognition and Language (DCAL) research centre has announced that data from the British Sign Language Corpus Project (BSLCP) is now publicly available. The collection of video recordings shows 249 deaf men and women of different ages and backgrounds conversing in BSL with each other in pairs. They answer questions, tell stories, and show their signs for 102 key concepts. DCAL hopes the video data will lead directly to improved sign language teaching and improvements in training BSL teachers, sign language interpreters and teachers of deaf children. For more information see the data section of www.bslcorpusproject.org


AWARD-WINNING DRILLING IN VIRTUAL TEETH


An innovative multidisciplinary project that developed a 3D virtual dentist’s chair has scooped a prestigious award. The hapTEL project – whose name derives from haptics, the science of touch – picked up the BETT award for Innovation


and a range of specially-commissioned research using the survey’s ‘ethnicity boost sample’. For more information see www. understandingsociety.org.uk/default.aspx


in ICT resources for education at a ceremony in London on 11 January 2012. BETT is the UK’s leading trade show for educational technology and described as ‘The Oscars of Educational Software’. The project had already won a Medical Futures award in June 2011. For more information see www.tlrp.org/tel/haptel


HISTORY MAKERS A book by Jane Humphries, a professor of economic history and ESRC Professorial Fellow, shows the terrible price the labourers of the Industrial Revolution paid. A BBC 4 documentary based on her research, ‘The children who built Victorian Britain’, won Best History Production at the 2012 History Makers International festival in New York in January. The awards recognise the very best in history, current affairs, and non-fiction programming from around the world, across digital and TV platforms.


SOCIAL MOBILITY The ESRC has produced a series of evidence briefings on social mobility that investigate how health, parenting, education, skills and poverty influence the opportunities for individuals. The briefings draw from a range of research produced by the centres and studies we fund, and analyse possible policy interventions that could give people the chance to break the cycle of social immobility. For more information see www.esrc. ac.uk/news-and-events


SPRING 2012 SOCIETY NOW 29


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