Urban planning after the Black Death: townscape transformations in later-medieval England (1350-1530)

This article offers a reconsideration of planning and development in
English towns and cities after the Black Death (1348). Conventional historical
accounts have stressed the occurrence of urban ‘decay’ in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Here, instead, a case is made that after 1350 urban planning continued to influence towns and cities in England through the transformation of their townscapes. Using the conceptual approaches of urban morphologists in particular, the article demonstrates that not only did the foundation of new towns and creation of new suburbs characterize the period 1350–1530, but so too did the redevelopment of existing urban landscapes through civic improvements and public works. These reveal evidence for the particular ‘agents of change’ involved in the planning and development process, such as surveyors, officials, patrons and architects, and also the role played by maps and drawn surveys. In this reappraisal, England’s urban experiences can be seen to have been closely connected with those instances of urban planning after the Black Death occurring elsewhere in contemporary continental Europe.

A New Concept of Interprofessional Education in Planning Programmes: Reflections on Healthy Urban Planning Project

Although widely debated, some of the defining professional characteristics of planners appear to be competencies in co-ordination, mediation and multidisciplinary working. Despite this, there is little pedagogical reflection on how interprofessional skills are promoted in planning programmes. This paper reflects on the experience of bringing together undergraduate students from medicine and planning to explore the concept of Healthy Urban Planning in a real life context of an urban motorway extension. This reveals a number of unexpected outcomes of such collaboration and points to the value of promoting interprofessional education, both as a way of increasing interest in some of the key challenges now facing society and in order to induce greater professional reflection amongst our students.

A New Concept of Interprofessional Education in Planning Programmes: Reflections on a Healthy Urban Planning Project

Although widely debated, some of the defining professional characteristics of planners appear to be competencies in co-ordination, mediation and multidisciplinary working. Despite this, there is little pedagogical reflection on how interprofessional skills are promoted in planning programmes. This paper reflects on the experience of bringing together undergraduate students from medicine and planning to explore the concept of Healthy Urban Planning in a real life context of an urban motorway extension. This reveals a number of unexpected outcomes of such collaboration and points to the value of promoting interprofessional education, both as a way of increasing interest in some of the key challenges now facing society and in order to induce greater professional reflection amongst students.

Miniaturization of electromagnetic band gap structures for mobile applications

It is well known that interference of the human body affects the performance of the antennas in mobile phone handsets. In this contribution, we investigate the use of miniaturized metallodielectric electromagnetic band gap (MEBG) structures embedded in the case of a mobile handset as a means of decoupling the antenna from the user's hand. The closely coupled MEBG concept is employed to achieve miniaturization of the order of 15:1. Full wave dispersion relations for planar closely coupled MEBG arrays are presented and are validated experimentally. The performance of a prototype handset with an embedded conformal MEBG is assessed experimentally and is compared to a similar prototype without the MEBG. Reduction in the detuning of the antenna because of the human hand by virtue of the MEBG is demonstrated. Moreover, the efficiency of the handset when loaded with a human hand model is shown to improve when the MEBG is in place. The improvements are attributed to the decoupling of the antenna from the user's hand, which is achieved by means of suppressing the fields in the locality of the hand.

Are rural development programmes socially inclusive? Social inclusion, civic engagement, participation, and social capital: Exploring the differences

Considerable importance is attached to social exclusion/inclusion in recent EU rural development programmes. At the national/regional operation of these programmes groups of people who are not participating are often identified as ‘socially excluded groups’. This article contends that rural development programmes are misinterpreting the social processes of participation and consequently labelling some groups as socially excluded when they are not. This is partly because of the interchangeable and confused use of the concepts social inclusion, social capital and civic engagement, and partly because of the presumption that to participate is the default position. Three groups identified as socially excluded groups in Northern Ireland are considered. It is argued that a more careful analysis of what social inclusion means, what civic engagement means, and why participation is presumed to be the norm, leads to a different conclusion about who is excluded. This has both theoretical and policy relevance for the much used concept of social inclusion.

Universities as Anchor Institutions

Presentation as part of the Economics Panel at the annual conference of the Anchor Institutions Task Force. The presentation highlighted the economic contribution of Queen's University to the City of Belfast, the wider region and more globally. Impact was seen as covering direct and indirect financial factors, the social and economic impact of our research, and the social and civic contribution made through our teaching and the volunteering work of students.