Faculty of Social Sciences Inaugural Lectures - Spring 2013
The Faculty of Social Sciences is pleased to announce the following Inaugural Lectures, scheduled to take place in spring 2013:
"Ecological Urbanism, Designed Ecologies and the Super-Natural Landscape: new directions in urban green infrastructure"
Professor Nigel Dunnett, Department of Landscape
To be held on Thursday 21st February 2013, 5:30pm, in room 13.8 of the Arts Tower. A drinks reception will also be held in the Arts Tower.
"The psychopathology of the normals: Why non-disabled people are so messed up around disability"
Professor Dan Goodley, School of Education
To be held on Thursday 14th March 2013, 5pm, in the ICOSS Conference Room.
"Lighting and visual perception: Things that go on in the dark"
Professor Steve Fotios, School of Architecture
To be held on Wednesday 20th March 2013, 5pm, in room 13.19 of the Arts Tower. A drinks reception will also be held in the Arts Tower.
"Magic, mayhem and moral order in young children's play"
Professor Elizabeth Wood, School of Education
To be held on Wednesday 19th June 2013, 5pm, in the ICOSS Conference Room.
"Children’s play is often interpreted from an educational perspective in terms of its contribution to their learning and development. But the rhetoric of progress has come to embody the taming of play and the taming of children. Both seek to constrain the apparent chaos and disorder that play represents, and have the effect of denying or ignoring the cultural, social and symbolic complexities that are typical of freely chosen, child-initiated play.
What emerges when we foreground those complexities are children’s different routes to power through imagined selves, including their inventive uses of magic as a means of both creating mayhem and apparent disorder. They skirt the boundaries of rebellion, resistance, deviance, misrule, propriety and confrontation; they manage multiple identities, and exercise power and agency in ways that may not be approved by adults. But at the same time, they resolve contradictions, negotiate rules and compromises, and create the conditions in which their own versions of moral order can be restored.
I will examine the ways in which children create their own social and symbolic complexity, based on the creation of semiotic associations, and shared meanings and intentions. I will consider the theoretical implications of the different ways in which play is understood, and the different sites in which those understandings are constructed."
Unless indicated otherwise, lectures will be followed by a drinks and nibbles reception in the ICOSS Foyer.
Please contact Gaynor Hague (g.hague@sheffield.ac.uk) in the Faculty of Social Sciences office if you have any queries about these events.