Features

How is social media affecting our behaviour?

Has the gender of an author influenced whether their work is accepted into the literary ‘canon’?

These are among the questions being explored by four new research networks at Oxford University.

The new networks will bring together researchers from across the Humanities and beyond will come together to discuss topics from the Psalms to social media as The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) launches four new research networks.

The new networks, #SocialHumanities, Gender and Authority, Rethinking the Contemporary, and the Oxford Psalms Network, will hold talks, workshops, performances and conversations for scholars to share and discuss their findings.

Professor Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English and Director of TORCH, said: ‘We are delighted to support these new networks that capture the breadth, liveliness and diversity of research in Oxford.

'Bringing together researchers from a wide range of subjects and career stages, these networks address contemporary concerns, longstanding questions, and pressing new global challenges. The networks’ events are open to all and we encourage you to come along and find out more!’   

#SocialHumanities will look at how social media is affecting our language, behaviour and culture. The network will probe the value of social media to society, and what the risks and dangers might be.

Yin Yin Lu, who is studying for a DPhil in Information, Communication and the Social Sciences, said: 'Social media research is exploding.

'Data generated by platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have become the substance of academic inquiry, because they reveal much about social processes and human behaviour.'

The Gender and Authority project will look at the literary “canon”. Through public seminars, researchers will explore how gender influences whose work comes to be considered “classic literature”, and whose work is marginalised.

It will look at how we determine the quality and authority of works of art, and which assumptions might distort our view.

Rethinking the Contemporary will investigate the major forces at work in the world since the 1980s, from the changing role of religion to the transformative effects of the internet.

David Priestland, Professor of Modern History, said: 'Of course, a great deal of work is being done on the contemporary world, especially in the social sciences, but many scholars in the humanities are also interested in these issues, and we wanted to create a forum to link them together.'

The Oxford Psalms Network will examine the impact of the Psalms from the earliest times to the present day, looking at how the Psalms have been translated and reinterpreted in different cultures and settings, and how they have influenced culture and identity in Christianity, Judaism and other world religions.

TORCH is an interdisciplinary research centre which promotes collaboration between Oxford humanities researchers and other disciplines, institutions and external partners.

For more information on these networks, and the other networks in TORCH, click here.

This academic term will be a busy one for the Humanitas Visiting Professorship programme.

Novelist and historian Dame Marina Warner will give her inaugural lecture as Visiting Professor in Comparative European Literature tomorrow (27 April). This will be the first in a series of talks by her called ‘The Sanctuary of Stories’.

From 9 May, historian and television presenter Simon Schama will give a public lecture and take part in a round table discussion with Craig Clunas and Margaret Macmillan on the past and its publics. He is Visiting Professor for Historiography.

He will be taking part in an in conversation with Craig Clunas and Margaret Macmillan on the 11 May.

Award-winning playwright Tom Stoppard is this year’s Visiting Professor of Drama Studies. He will give a public lecture on 18 May and a Q&A on 19 May.

Then on 25 May and 26 May respectively, renowned guitarists the Assad Brothers will give a talk and a recital as Visiting Professors for Classical Music.

Oxford University’s Professor Sos Eltis, the Academic Director for the Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Drama, says of Professor Stoppard’s visit: ‘Tom Stoppard is one of the greatest modern playwrights. He has delighted audiences worldwide with the wit, daring, wisdom, dazzling intellectual challenge and sheer theatrical fun of his plays.

‘He has pushed the boundaries of dramatic form and reinvented the play of ideas. These events will be a wonderful opportunity for schools, university students and anyone interested in theatre to hear an extraordinary writer offer new perspectives on his life and work.'

Professor Elleke Boehmer, director of TORCH, adds: 'We are thrilled to bring some of the world’s most inspiring thinkers and creative minds to Oxford for a richly diverse programme of workshops, talks and performances.

'This term we will be joined by leading figures from the spheres of theatre, history and music, including award winning playwright Tom Stoppard, world renowned historian Simon Schama and gifted guitarists Sérgio and Odair Assad. Exploring issues as wide ranging as public history and theatre making, the events are a rare opportunity for public audiences to join leading speakers for debate and discussion.’

Humanitas is a series of Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge intended to bring leading practitioners and scholars to both universities to address major themes in the arts, social sciences and humanities.

Created by Lord Weidenfeld, the Programme is managed and funded by the Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Trust with the support of a series of generous benefactors and administered by TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.

The events are free and open to all. For more information, including booking details, visit the TORCH website.

The website also includes a more detailed summary of the dates and content of each Visiting Professor’s visit.

The winners of the 16th Christopher Tower Poetry competition have been announced at Christ Church, Oxford.

The competition, which was judged by Alan Gillis, Katherine Rundell and Peter McDonald, attracted more than 1,100 entrants born between 1997 and 2000.

Ashani Lewis, from The Tiffin Girls’ School, Surrey, was awarded the £3,000 first prize for her poem Flowers From The Dark. Her poem is published in full below.

The winner of the second (£1,000) prize Safah Ahmed (Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre, London) with ‘Accent’ and the third prizewinner, Sophia West (Oxford High School) won £500 with ‘The Awakening’. Their schools receive £150 each.

This year's theme of wonder for the 16th Christopher Tower Poetry competition attracted over 1,100 entrants (all born between 1997 and 2000) with many schools encouraging entrants for the first time. 

Poet Alan Gillis said: 'Reading through all the poems, I was struck first of all by the great range and diversity of work in terms of voice, style and subject matter. But overwhelmingly, I was impressed by the consistency of excellence.

'The experience of judging has been really uplifting because of the passion and daring, boldness and confidence of the poems entered. This is a wonderful competition.'

The competition is just one of the initiatives developed by Tower Poetry at Christ Church to encourage the writing and reading of poetry by young adults.

Other projects include summer schools (to which the first three winners are invited as part of their prize), poetry readings, conferences, an ongoing publication programme and website, which is used as an educational resource in schools.

You can see the winning entries for yourself on the Tower Poetry website where the young authors read their own poems. The winning poem by Ashani Lewis, Flowers From The Dark, is here:

She is quiet,
With skin as tight as the wheeling crows:
She kneels over the dirt and grows
The roses.
Your lawn chair holds a pale absence;
A tulip dies, falls back against the fence,
And decomposes.

You watch her.
(And from her fair and unpolluted flesh)
The shadows on the windowsill – fresh
Violets Break up the clean square of light,
And, thoughtless, obstruct the sight
Of her silence.

She grows the flowers
For you. From loam and wombs,
The pits of eyes and empty rooms,
From hipbones,
Harpoons, moons and crows: everything dark –
Seaweed, oil, the time around stars;
And olive stones.

People admitted to intensive care have experienced feelings of being trapped in metal tubes, alien abduction, and having a gun to their head, amongst other things. While none of this really happened, for patients struggling with hospital-acquired delirium they seemed all too real.

These experiences are just some uncovered by the Critical Care Research Group at the University of Oxford. Lead researcher Julie Darbyshire explained: 'Delirium is a well-known consequence of prolonged stays in intensive care. Until now, research has focused on how medical staff can identify and treat the condition. But there has been almost no research on patients' experiences.'

Using a repository of in-depth interviews with patients and their family members held by the Health Experiences Research Group (HERG), in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and published on the patient experiences website, www.healthtalk.org, the team re-analysed the transcripts for descriptions of delirium.

Dr Lisa Hinton from HERG said: 'Throughout the interviews we found an overwhelming sense of complete bewilderment and fear expressed in nightmares, altered realities and false explanations. Admission to intensive care is often a surprise and the experience is unlike even other areas of a hospital. With their senses limited, and their ability to communicate often hampered, it seems that people 'fill in the gaps' to create explanations for their experiences.'

However, those explanations are often false. One patient was surprised to discover that their ICU had just six beds, having built a mental image of a huge room with two levels. Another became convinced they were on a flying hospital, while a third was certain they had been kidnapped. Disturbing nightmares meant that some patients actively avoided sleep, setting back their recovery.

Sarah Vollam, Researcher and Intensive Care Nurse said, 'ICU staff are aware that patients may suffer delusions during their stay, but this paper offers a unique insight into what this is really like. It brings their experiences to life and demonstrates the power of qualitative research. The exploration of recurring themes in patients' delusions will assist ICU staff in their management of confused and hallucinating patients, as well as their general day-to-day practice.

One issue is that patients often have no control. Staff will be doing things but the patient may not know what is happening and frequently cannot ask. This may be one reason why some patients begin to develop paranoia, in a number of cases suspecting staff of wanting to harm them. 

For others, reality blurs so that they cannot tell what is real and what has been a dream or hallucination. One patient saw all the people around their bed as plasticine figures like those in the Wallace and Gromit films.

The team say that the very real fear created through this confusion and uncertainty can set back patient recovery and leave traumatic memories even after leaving hospital. Their hope is that by raising awareness of how patients feel, research and medical practice can better help.

Julie Darbyshire said: 'For example, when delirium is identified staff often tell patients their experiences are normal – in a well-intentioned effort to reassure. Patients, however, know there is nothing normal about their experiences and would prefer to have that reality acknowledged.

'One simple change could help. Even when they cannot communicate, patients tend to have some awareness. Just explaining what is happening could help reduce the gaps in understanding where delirium can take hold.'

More information

Patients can experience two forms of delirium:

• Hyperactive delirium – the patient becomes restless, agitated or aggressive.
• Hypoactive delirium – the patient becomes withdrawn and uncommunicative. It is often harder to diagnose in intensive care where patients’ condition, drugs and equipment might all make it harder for them to communicate.

Julie Darbyshire has written an Editorial for the BMJ about the problems of noise in the ICU and the link with ICU-delirium.

Lisa Hinton has also written in the BMJ about her own experiences of intensive care unit noise.

The original interviews were conducted by the Health Experiences Research Group, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, funded by ICNARC. Interview extracts from the original study are available on the www.healthtalk.org website run by the DIPEx Charity.

The earlier research completed by the Health Experiences Research Group was published in Critical Care 2008 (Field, Prinhja, and Rowan, Critical Care, 2008, 12:R21) and 2009 (Prinjha, Field, and Rowan, Critical Care, 2009, 13:R46).

Follow the University of Oxford Critical Care research team on Twitter @KadoorieCentre

As reported by the BBC, scientists at Oxford University have built a mathematical model to explain the secrets of the chameleon's extraordinarily powerful tongue.

The chameleon's tongue is said to unravel at the sort of speed that would see a car go from 0-60 mph in one hundredth of a second – and it can extend up to 2.5 body lengths when catching insects.

A team from Oxford's Mathematical Institute (working in collaboration with Tufts University in the US) derived a system of differential equations to capture the mechanics of the energy build-up and 'extreme acceleration' of the reptile's tongue.

The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

Derek Moulton, Associate Professor of Mathematical Biology at Oxford and one of the authors of the paper, said: 'If you are looking at the equations they might look complex, but at the heart of all of this is Newton's Second Law – the sort of thing that kids are learning in A-levels, which is simply that you're balancing forces with accelerations.

'In mathematical terms, what we've done is used the theory of non-linear elasticity to describe the energy in the various tongue layers and then passed that potential energy to a model of kinetic energy for the tongue dynamics.'

Special collagenous tissue within the chameleon's tongue is one of the secrets behind its effectiveness. This tissue surrounds a bone at the core of the tongue and is surrounded itself by a muscle.

Professor Moulton added: 'The muscle – the outermost layer – contracts to set the whole thing in motion. We've modelled the mechanics of the whole process; the build-up and release of energy.'

The researchers say the insights will be useful in biomimetics – copying from nature in engineering and design.