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We are now accepting applications for two Research Assistant posts for our second topic, Environment and affect.
The Research Assistants will help support the topic’s research activities on a fixed term contract from the last week in March 2015 to 31st July 2015.
In summary, the role will involve providing research assistance to the Environment and affect team, including driving research participants to a named site, interviewing research participants and collecting data through an EEG device.
Training will be required on the use and set up of the specialist EEG equipment and this will take place during the last week in March (w/c 23rd March), prior to data collection (April to end of July, mornings only).
Masters level, or equivalent, research experience is essential.
Would you like to take part in our research? We require older volunteers (aged 65+) who can walk comfortably for 20 minutes and who are right-handed.
The study runs over the spring and summer months of 2015 and involves wearing a discreet headset during a short outdoor walk in Edinburgh.
Your involvement will help us explore how people’s moods change as they walk in different types of environment and, as a thank you for taking part, you will receive a retail voucher.
If you are interested, please get in touch with either: Dr Sara Tilley (T 0131 651 5834 / sara.tilley@ed.ac.uk) or Dr Chris Neale (T 01904 322 881 / chris.neale@york.ac.uk)
Hackney Wick is changing… but is it age-friendly? Come along to our exhibition of postgraduate design work on age-friendly environments for Hackney at the White Building, White Post Lane, Hackney, E9 5EN on Monday 16th February 2015.
Linked to our Co-created environments topic, the exhibition will feature work by postgraduate architecture and landscape architecture students at the University of Edinburgh. The designs have been produced over the past four months, following two days of site visits and interactive activities with older people in Hackney in October 2014.
Doors open at 11am and close at 4pm. Light refreshments will be provided and the students will be there to talk about their work and answer questions.
The White Building Hackney E9 5EN Image courtesy of The White Building
The 7th European Public Health Conference takes place in Glasgow this year, and MMP will be there.
On Thursday 20th November 2014, Professor Catharine Ward Thompson (MMP Principal Investigator) will chair a workshop at the conference, which this year has as its theme ‘Mind the gap: Reducing inequalities in health and health care’.
Co-organised by the EUPHA Section on Public Mental Health and the University of Edinburgh, the workshop will feature presentations by Catharine and six other researchers, including MMP team members…
Professor Jamie Pearce speaking about:
Opportunities and challenges in researching the longitudinal effects of green environments throughout the life course.
… and …
Dr Jenny Roe and Dr Chris Neale speaking about:
Using mobile EEG (electroencephalography) to explore the relationship between environmental affect (i.e. mood of a place) and mobility whilst walking through different urban settings with and without green space, in a range of participants, including older people, aged 65+
The workshop will be co-chaired by Jutta Lindert, Professor of Public Health at the Protestant University of Ludwigsburg, Germany.
The 7th European Public Health Conference conference runs from 19th – 22nd November 2014 at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow. It is hosted by the European Public Health Conference Foundation, the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) and the UK Society for Social Medicine. For full programme information, and to register, visit http://ephconference.eu/
Convened by Níall McLaughlin, of UCL and Níall McLaughlin Architects, the RIBA’s 9th annual Research Symposium is dedicated to how architects can benefit from designing for older people.
A key feature of the Symposium, which takes place on Tuesday 18th November2014 at the RIBA in London, will be an exploration of age-friendly placemaking through a series of case studies.
The case studies will offer an original insight into six inspiring projects from around the UK, based on a series of visits with the architects and a variety of academic reviewers.
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson (MMP) will be co-presenting with Liza Fior of muf architecture/art on muf’s public realm improvements to Barking Town Square.
The 9th annual RIBA Research Symposium is on Tuesday 18th November 2014 at the headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) on Portland Place in London. For full programme information, and to register, visit the RIBA website
Join MMP researchers, Dr Jenny Roe and Dr Chris Neale, for a demonstration of the headset we’re using in Topic 2 (Environment and affect) that measures brain activity on the move.
As part of YorNight, the University of York’s Europeans’ Researchers Night, Jenny and Chris will also be discussing how we are using this EEG technology to understand how older people navigate the city, the stress points they encounter and the places that they find most enjoyable and relaxing.
The event is FREE and will give you the chance to hear about a number of other health-related research projects from across eight different departments at the University of York.
Hosted by York Medical Society, the session will start at 17.00; Jenny and Chris are on from 17.20-17.35.
70% of older adults sit for more than 8.5 hours daily. Is this so bad? Find out in a FREE webinar, co-presented by Mobility, Mood and Place (MMP) team member, Professor Gillian Mead.
Get up and Go: Is sitting so bad for older people? will explore how prolonged sedentary behaviour poses an important health risk across the life course (a bigger waist, depression and social isolation, even an increased risk of death). Aimed at practitioners who work with older people, it will be a platform to share tips and ideas on ways to break up long periods of sitting and motivating ourselves, and others, to do so.
Gillian Mead is Professor of Stroke and Elderly Care Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, a Senior Lecturer in Geriatric Medicine and Honorary Consultant Geriatrician in NHS Lothian. She leads the NIHR Age and Ageing Speciality Group in Scotland, which brings together clinicians and researchers and currently has over 300 members.
Together with MMP colleagues, Professors Ian Deary and John Starr, and 15 other experts from Glasgow Caledonian, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham and Salford Universities, Gillian is involved with the Seniors USP project on Understanding Sedentary Patterns. Led by Professor Dawn Skelton, this collaborative project aims to inform future interventions to reduce sedentary behaviour and increase physical activity in older people.
Towards an Integrated Garden City, an urban design proposal conceived as part of Mobility, Mood and Place, has won the Architecture and Design Scotland Sust. Award for Sustainable Design at the 12th annual Scottish Student Awards for Architecture.
The project by recent Edinburgh College of Art graduates, Roseanne Knight, Jonathon Phillips and Stephanie Sharpe, was also highly commended in the Architecture and Design Scotland Urban Design Award categoryof the awards, which are a collaboration between Scotland’s placemaking champion, Architecture and Design Scotland (A+DS), and the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS).
Towards an Integrated Garden City is a proposal to re-frame an area of post-industrial urban infrastructure for the inclusive use and enjoyment of local residents. Co-created with older people in Manchester and Edinburgh, the project aims to reconnect the Castlefield area of Manchester with the city’s urban grain through the reframing of the disused Great Northern Railway Viaduct into an active, age-friendly street, infusing it with building programme and open space – ‘The Brownway’.
The awards judges said:
“This excellent project has sustainability at its very core. Re-working industrial age infrastructure to create a green route generates the context for intervention, including appropriately scaled and carefully designed housing. Very believable and pragmatic interventions are overlaid upon the green route strategy to deliver a very positive and practical new solution for the city.”
The students picked up their award at a ceremony on Thursday 17th July 2014 and their work is now on display in The Lighthouse in Glasgow (until 28th September 2014).
In other awards news, Sarah Lawson and Elise Rasmussen – also recent Edinburgh College of Art graduates – have won the Small Moves Big Impact prize, awarded by Somner Macdonald Architects, for their contribution to MMP.
Roseanne, Jonathon and Stephanie with their awards and (from left to right) Jim MacDonald (A+DS), Angela Brady PPRIBA (judging panel) and Neil Baxter (RIAS). Image courtesy of Angela Brady.
The students’ award-winning work on display during the ECA Degree Show 2014 in the historic Sculpture Court at Edinburgh College of Art. Image courtesy of Three Point Photography.
Would you like to take part in our research? We are currently doing a pilot study in Edinburgh for which we require older volunteers (aged 65+) who can walk comfortably for 20 minutes and who are right-handed.
We’re delighted to be invited to participate in today’s AGM of the Cross Party Group on Older People, Age and Ageing at the Scottish Parliament, which sets the Group’s agenda for the year ahead. MMP partner, Age Scotland, is the current secretariat for the CPG, which is convened by Sandra White MSP, with Nanette Milne MSP as deputy convenor. Study Manager, Dr Katherine Brookfield, is attending on our behalf.
MMP researchers, Dr Jenny Roe and Dr Chris Neale, have taken part in the annual Pint of Science Festival in York. At an event in the Stonegate Yard Bar, they explored how the quality of neighbourhood and work environments contribute to health and wellbeing, presenting their research using new technologies, including our EEG headset.
Jenny and Chris are involved in our second topic, Environment and Affect.
