Location decision-making of 'creative' industries: the media and computer games sectors in Dublin, Ireland

There has been significant research undertaken examining the “creative class” thesis within the context of the locational preferences of creative workers. However, relatively little attention has been given to the locational preferences of creative companies within the same context. This paper reports on research conducted to qualitatively analyse the location decision making of companies in two creative sectors: media and computer games. We address the role of the so-called “hard” and “soft” factors in company location decision making within the context of the creative class thesis, which suggests that company location is primarily determined by “soft” factors rather than “hard” factors. The study focuses upon “core” creative industries in the media and computer game sectors and utilises interview data with company managers and key elite actors in the sector to investigate the foregoing questions. The results show that “hard” factors are of primary importance for the location decision making in the sectors analysed, but that “soft” factors play quite an important role when “hard” factors are satisfactory in more than one competing city-region.

Reflections on Practice Learning in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: Lessons from Student Experiences

Practice learning is viewed as one of the most important components of social work education wherever in the world social work is practised. Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland provide an interesting case example of the educational impact on students resulting from their experience of different models of practice learning. Although sharing a common historical legacy, recent developments in policy in both jurisdictions have tended to engender greater divergences in how programmes organise and deliver social work education and practice learning. Drawing on findings from a joint-research project with students in Queen’s University, Belfast and Trinity College, Dublin, the authors highlight significant cross-border similarities as well as differences in the way practice learning is conceptualised, organised and delivered. Through comparing and contrasting student experiences, the authors reflect on how the findings might help to inform the future development of practice learning standards in both jurisdictions.

Anatomy and facies association of a drumlin in Co. Down, Northern Ireland, from seismic and electrical resistivity surveys

Seismic refraction and electrical resistivity geophysical techniques were used to reconstruct the internal architecture of a drumlin in Co. Down, Northern Ireland. Geophysical results were both validated and complemented by borehole drilling, ground water flow modelling, and geologic mapping. The geophysical anatomy of the drumlin consists of five successive layers with depth including; topsoil, partially saturated and saturated glacial tills, and weathered and more competent greywacke bedrock. There are numerous, often extensive inclusions of clay, sand, gravel, cobbles, and boulders within the topsoil and the till units. Together geophysical and geotechnical findings imply that the drumlin is part of the subglacial lodgement, melt-out, debris flow, sheet flow facies described by previous authors, and formed by re-sedimentation and streamlining of pre-existing sediments during deglaciation of the Late Devensian ice sheet. Seismic refraction imaging is particularly well suited to delineating layering within the drumlin, and is able to reconstruct depths to interfaces to within ± 0.5 m accuracy. Refraction imaging ascertained that the weathered bedrock layer is continuous and of substantial thickness, so that it acts as a basal aquifer which underdrains the bulk of the drumlin. Electrical resistivity imaging was found to be capable of delineating relative spatial changes in the moisture content of the till units, as well as mapping sedimentary inclusions within the till. The moisture content appeared to be elevated near the margins of the drumlin, which may infer a weakening of the drumlin slopes. Our findings advocate the use of seismic refraction and electrical resistivity methods in future sedimentological and geotechnical studies of internal drumlin architecture and drumlin formation, owing particularly to the superior, 3- D spatial coverage of these methods.

Transforming Researchers into Educators: Some Reflections on the University College Dublin School of Law Syllabus Design Workshop 2010

The priority given to the development of research skills during doctrinal legal education often neglects the importance of equipping PhD students with the pedagogical skills necessary to fulfill their important educational role as academics. Thus, in many instances there is a significant gap in the requisite skill base that PhD students acquire when they complete their doctrinal education. This paper outlines a first step that has been taken to address this deficiency in postgraduate legal education in Ireland. The PhD community of the University College Dublin (UCD) School of Law convened an internal Syllabus Design Workshop in April 2010 in order to provide doctrinal students with an opportunity to design a university module and to explore the issues which arise in undertaking such an exercise. The first part of this paper outlines how the workshop was conceived and convened, and provides an account of the considerations that each student had to take into account in the design of a syllabus. From here, we address the content of the workshop and reflect upon some of the important issues which were
raised. Finally, we offer a number of recommendations in relation to the development of doctrinal students as future educators. By highlighting the importance of uniting research and teaching, it is hoped that this paper will contribute to postgraduate legal education in Ireland,and also internationally.

Women (Re)Negotiating Care across Family Generations: Intersections of Gender and Socioeconomic Status

Changing Generations, a study of intergenerational relations in Ireland undertaken between 2011 and 2013 by the Social Policy and Ageing Research Centre (SPARC), Trinity College, Dublin, and the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology (ICSG), NUI Galway, used the Constructivist Grounded Theory method to interrogate support and care provision between generations. This article draws on interviews with 52 women ages 18 to 102, allowing for simultaneous analysis of older and younger women’s perspectives. The intersectionality of gender and class emerged as central to the analysis. Socioeconomic positions shape contrasting forms of interdependency among family generations, ranging from “enmeshed” lives among lower socioeconomic groups to “freed” lives among higher socioeconomic groups. Women are initiating changes in how care and support flow across generations. Older women in higher socioeconomic groups are attuned to how emotional capital women expend across family generations can constrain (young) women’s lives. In an expression of solidarity, older women are renegotiating the place of care labor in their own lives and in the lives of younger women. A new reciprocity emerges that amounts to women “undoing gender.” This process is, however, deeply classed as it is women in higher socioeconomic groups whose resources best place them to renegotiate care.