diff --git a/content/blog/interwebs.md b/content/blog/interwebs.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..15d7342 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/interwebs.md @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +--- +title: "The Interwebs" +date: 2016-03-31T13:57:35+01:00 +draft: false +author: Jeremy Kidwell +#layout: post +slug: the-interwebs +categories: +- web-research +--- + +Note: *Crossposted on [Tools of the Trade](https://blog.bham.ac.uk/tools-of-the-trade/2016/03/31/the-interwebs/)* + +Usually we tend to think of the WWW as a tool for research, and I'll dive into some of the ways that I make use of specific tools to search and mine the web for resources into a later post, but today I wanted to share a bit about how the web can serve as a subject for research. Web social science is the next big thing, with regular sessions now appearing at many major academic society conferences. If you want to get the big overview, I'd recommend you start with Robert Ackland's recent book, Web Social Science: Concepts, Data and Tools for Social Scientists in the Digital Age. Ackland's book is a terrific resource, covering both qualitative and quantitative modes of research and he covers a large range of tools from online surveys and focus groups, web content gathering and analysis, social media network analysis (which I'll discuss in a future post), and online experimentation. For an author who is quite technical the book covers a very helpful range of ethical considerations, surveys a range of contemporary methodological literature, and he presents the domain of research involved in each of these which would be accessible to a readership that hasn't done this kind of work before. A few years ago when I began doing web social science and social network analysis, I found Acklands book to be a terrific catalyst into the wider field of web studies. + +I've been gathering websites for a few research purposes. Connecting back to my interest in geocoding - many of the groups I'm studying have publicly available data on member group locations. A quick web scrape, and a more lengthy bit of data cleaning yields a table of site names, with address, coordinates, and often a web address. I'll go into this a bit more in my next post so you can try you hand at creating a geocoded database. + +There is also a huge amount of data available for documentary-style analysis sitting out on the internet. Many groups post their newsletters in web-only format, or will archive PDF versions of their print materials and this provides a really useful way to get at historical work of a particular group - in my case environmental community groups and churches. Now in some cases, you may find that a website has disappeared or has been hijacked by malevolent forces. Fear not if this happens to you (I've found both to be the case in my own relatively recent work), just hop on over to the [Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive](https://archive.org) and look up a historic version of your page. This is a ridiculously useful tool, and will also allow you to view a historic development of a webpage including content changes at regular (usually bi-annual) intervals. + +Finally the web can offer a terrific data set for "big data" explorations. Now here there are a few ethical implications I should highlight as they aren't immediately obvious if you haven't hosted a web site of your own before. There are a range of tools that can "crawl" websites that is, download *en masse* a large batch of pages. Basically, this is a software tool that will download a web page you specify and then analyse that page for any URL information - the program then goes on to download whatever data happens to on that page, and so on. You can usually specify "link depth" to restrict how many times the program will follow a link to another page as this can get very big very fast. On that last detail is where the ethical problems can arise. Many web hosts provide a metered service, so if you generate a huge volume of traffic for some small charity you may inadvertently crash their website (if the server is small), use up their monthly quota, or increase the amount they pay on their hosting invoice. Any of these situations are best avoided, and some web crawling software has begun to build in time and bandwidth limitations to prevent researchers (and search engines) from zapping small web properties with a massive web crawl. So with that in mind, let me note a few tools that are already adapted for academic use: + +Tthe University of Amsterdam developed a software application called Issue Crawler. He is also author of [Information Politics on the Web](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/information-politics-web) (University of MIT Press, 2005). Issue crawler is meant to crawl what Rogers calls issue networks on the web - since I'm interested in environmental issue networks, I find his work pretty compelling and useful. You can read more about issuecrawler on Rogers' wikipedia page. + +I've already mentioned Robert Ackland and his book above, but it's important to note that he is the creator of another tool for web crawling, called VOSON which is hosted through uberlink.com. VOSON is cool in that you provide a list of seed links and then the tool slowly accumulates all the web pages that match your list, storing them on their server. In some cases they'll have already crawled a website and so can aggregate user requests and reduce the load on web clients. VOSON and Issue Crawler both cost money to use, so you'll want to write them into your next big grant. But there are a few other options if you want to run some of your own crawling, albeit on a more modest scale (and off peak hours!). I use a German software application called devonthink to parse through large batches of text, including PDF files and web sites (which the application can archive). It is a very powerful tool with algorithmic searching which can intelligently sift through lots of data and help you find connections you might not have been expecting. Of course, you can also go to the command line and use CURL or Wget. Konrad Lawson breaks down the procedure for web scraping using the command line over at the ProfHacker blog. There is much more to be said on this topic, and a ton of other tools I'll continue to introduce on this blog, but that's a good introduction for now, I think. + +Have you used websites in your research? I'd love to hear more in the comments about what you've found useful and what has proven a distraction! \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/blog/merchants.md b/content/blog/merchants.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0698b0c --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/merchants.md @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +--- +title: "Merchants in the Kingdom?" +date: 2014-05-15T13:50:36+01:00 +draft: false +author: Jeremy Kidwell +#layout: post +slug: merchants-kingdom +categories: +- economic ethics +- merchants +--- + +Crossposted from [KLICE Comment](http://tyndalehouse.createsend1.com/t/ViewEmail/r/91EF42EAF02E701E2540EF23F30FEDED) + +Over the course of several years of doctoral research, I've been reading the Christian Scriptures closely to see what we might responsibly say about the relationship between our everyday work and the New Creation. Along the way, I was struck by a strange prohibition that ends the book of Zechariah: 'and there shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day' (14:21, NRSV). On my first reading, I thought it strange that merchants might be singled out for exclusion from God's holy kingdom. However, as I have reflected on this text and read more widely in the prophets, I've come to see a startling, if forgotten biblical critique of a danger that lies in business. Let me begin by providing a bit of context before I note how this may be relevant to our contemporary context. + +The closing chapter of Zechariah offers an 'apocalyptic' description of the age to come. There, the writer describes the new kingdom as a sort of impenetrable bulwark in the midst of violent conflict and collapsing political order. In the midst of this, Zechariah 14 describes a pilgrimage of the nations who come to offer worship to the King, by bringing their wealth to the Lord of Hosts (similar to Isaiah 60, from which Adam Smith derived his title 'The Wealth of Nations'). One of the theological trajectories of Zechariah is the democratisation of holiness. To this end, Zechariah uses a remarkably mundane lexicon, noting how horse's bells and cooking pots (related to predominant ancient forms of work: warfare and subsistence) become 'Holy to the Lord' (vs. 20–21). Then comes that strange final verse, 'and there shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day'. + +The Hebrew word kena'ani, which the NRSV renders as 'traders', is a possible reference to 'canaanites'. Some interpreters have suggested that this is meant to carry forward the 'dissolution of boundaries' as Carol Meyers puts it, which is a major theme in Zechariah. The thinking goes: rather than Israel becoming like Canaan, the reverse will be the case, Canaan will be culturally absorbed into Israel, and this will serve as a sign of the triumph of God's holiness in this kingdom. However, this interpretation of Zechariah neglects a wider critique of merchant-activity which one finds with surprising regularity in the Old Testament. We find more obvious hints at this in Hosea 12:7 which warns of 'a trader (canaanite), in whose hands are false balances, he loves to oppress'. As Ralph Smith notes, fraudulent scales 'became symbolic in OT literature of unscrupulous dealings' (and we find condemnations of such fraud in Deut. 25:13, Prov. 11:1, 20:23, and Micah 6:11). + +The text of Zephaniah 1:11 parallels Zechariah in offering a wholesale dismissal of merchants. Here the problem is not related merely to dishonest merchants (as in Hosea), but rather 'all who weigh silver are wiped out' (JPS). We can only assume that, in the age of these prophets, the activity of merchant middle-men had gained such a reputation that the term for 'merchant' or even the more generic designation of 'canaanite', could be used to connote deceptive business activity without clarification. The honest merchant was an exception to the rule. + +While it may be tempting to argue that our contemporary situation is categorically different, I think this misses the way in which certain forms of business carry a latent moral risk – they can carry a predisposition towards dishonesty which is embedded in their very structure. I think that the conditions under which the dishonest ancient merchant profited are not so different from the present: they capitalised on knowledge asymmetry from an established position. Seen in this way, we may appreciate how manipulating scales is similar to many contemporary covert business activities which seek to manipulate the representation of value and exploit the trust of unwitting customers. Just as ancient customers questioned whether merchants added value to the goods which they sold, today's Christians have good reason to question similar tactics used by modern firms. + +Some of my American friends like to poke fun at this ambiguity by referring to the posh eco-grocer, Whole Foods, as 'Whole Paycheck', but expensive groceries are hardly the worst instance of mark-up without value. A far more troubling example lies in the reliance of so many contemporary firms on massive marketing budgets. It is hard to justify as moral behaviour the manipulation of customers to believe that a product will provide intangibles such as status or sex appeal. Perhaps the worst recent practice has been the tendency towards 'greenwashing', where manufacturers leave the contents of their products unchanged but change product labelling to emphasise meaningless descriptors such as 'all-natural' or add terms like 'eco' or 'green' to a product's name. + +One insufficient response to the problem I've posed is the Amazon or Walmart solution, where a retailer cuts profit margins to such a bare level that one must deal in massive volume to make any profit at all. Yet this avenue does not escape the merchant's quandary, as these retailers fail to bring value, and instead they obscure the immoral business practices (such as outsourcing labour and exporting externalities) which are latent in the goods they sell. In my discussions with various local makers where I live in Edinburgh, they always note how difficult it is to survive in the midst of such proactively distorted consumer expectations. + +Described in this way, I worry that much of our business emulates the merchant activity which Zechariah proudly expects a holy God to destroy. The recent turn towards amateur craft and locally-made well-crafted goods is encouraging, but very fragile. These prophets, and indeed many people in the ancient world, noted that, as the maker of all good things, God cares about truthfulness in the way we represent value in business. There has never been a more urgent need for Christian leaders to provide a counter-cultural example of honesty in business, and I would argue that such action is explicitly commanded by Christian scripture. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/blog/peer_review_reddit.md b/content/blog/peer_review_reddit.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5925c42 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/peer_review_reddit.md @@ -0,0 +1,14 @@ +--- +title: "Peer review and reddit?" +date: 2017-02-10T13:54:58+01:00 +draft: false +author: Jeremy Kidwell +#layout: post +slug: [fill in] +categories: +- reddit +--- + +Crossposted from my [Tools of the Trade blog](https://blog.bham.ac.uk/tools-of-the-trade/2017/02/10/peer-review-and-reddit/) + +There’s a terrific interview this week on the Inquiring Minds podcast with Nate Allen, one of the lead moderators for the r/Science subreddit. Colleagues will be especially interested in their discussion of the r/Science AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) events they run which host sciences who have recently published results for an interactive, carefully moderated and pretty high-level conversation with the 15 million + users on that forum. [Check it out here](https://art19.com/shows/inquiring-minds/episodes/3992f5e7-b17a-4319-b5c7-979719ed4572) \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/blog/voting.md b/content/blog/voting.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..670658e --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/voting.md @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +title: "Voting and Civic Participation, a response to Wayne Grudem" +date: 2016-11-07T10:20:12+01:00 +draft: false +author: Jeremy Kidwell and Matthew Arbo +#layout: post +slug: voting_civic_participation +categories: +- politics +--- + +Note: Crossposted from [Mere Orthodoxy](https://mereorthodoxy.com/voting-civic-participation-response-wayne-grudem/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed) and [In All Things](http://inallthings.org/on-voting-and-civic-participation/) + +This has been a strange and bewildering year for American politics, and for certain segments of the American church. [Some commenters] (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/opinion/campaign-stops/the-religious-rights-trump-schism.html) have felt confident to call the church’s reaction to the general election a “schism” in the religious right—quite strong language. The candidacy of Donald Trump has been inordinately mystifying for many of us, Christians included, but “schism” is far too vague a diagnosis in attempting to capture the state of this discourse, just as “religious right” is a rather unimpressive sociological descriptor. We would like to suggest that this and a great many other takes on “evangelical politics,” reflects a troubling confusion about the nature of Christian political citizenship that has finally been drawn from the background into the foreground of political discourse. This confusion is on clear display in Wayne Grudem’s 19 Oct piece [“If You Don’t Like Either Candidate, Then Vote for Trump’s Policies.”] (http://townhall.com/columnists/waynegrudem/2016/10/19/if-you-dont-like-either-candidate-then-vote-for-trumps-policies-n2234187) + +In Grudem’s narration, the situation is one in which voters must make a decision between two unsavory options. He doesn’t especially like either candidate, but nevertheless recommends that Christians consider voting for Trump’s policy proposals, though he at the same time admits that he doesn’t agree with Trump “on everything.” He then highlights Trump’s proposal to “immediately deport all undocumented immigrants” as one example of disagreement. In many ways, the narrative of Grudem's argument is matched by Justin DePlato in his iAt post, ["Voting for Donald Trump"] (http://inallthings.org/voting-for-donald-trump/) + +This disagreement comes with a proviso, though; Grudem stipulates that we can look away in this instance because “[Trump] could never get it [his deportation proposal] through Congress, and he has backed away from that and now only talks about deporting those convicted of crimes and those who have overstayed their visas.” If we judge the cogency of a Trump policy by its overall probably of passing through congress, then there isn’t going to be much left of the Trump platform. This is, after all, the candidate who rose to prominence by promising to build a wall and have another sovereign nation pay for it. But an idiosyncratic argument is only one issue among a wider array of problems with Grudem’s proposal. + +On a more fundamental level, at the heart of this vote-for-the-policy-but-not-for-the-man approach lies a highly reduced account of Christian political participation to *voting*, a related reduction of theological judgment to utilitarian tactics, and an untenable bifurcation between a candidate and his policies. + +Let us begin with the matter of voting. It is important to note at the outset that voting is a crucial and important part of democracy. We celebrate the many crucial advances that have been won against injustice around voter equality and note the many ways in which this fight is still ongoing. However, in Grudem’s presentation, the Christian citizen’s electoral duty is imprecisely portrayed and over-prescribed. In this view, the candidate we choose will be radically determinative on issues of concern. But politics can be a much wider domain and we would like to point towards an alternate theological account of civic participation, particularly in its electoral expression, which adheres more closely to the traditional logic of Christian discipleship. + +When we vote we are casting a ballot in favor of the candidate whom we believe will do the best job of governing. The restrictive character of voting itself disallows voting in protest or opposition. To undertake this particular activity—voting—the Christian must be convinced that the ballot is cast as *an obedient response to the command of God in discipleship*. The Christian seeks to discern the word God has for them and to act upon it faithfully. One participates willingly in democratic elections *as a disciple* or not at all. This might mean that the Christian abstains from voting or votes for an alternate candidate who they believe (again, in good conscience) will best carry out the office. Yes, God works through material affairs themselves to inform the Christian of whom a candidate is and what is at stake in voting for them, but God's revelatory providence is by no means restricted to the empirical and obvious. + +Politics is about far more than electing a president. It is also, one may hope, a rich tapestry of interwoven institutions, traditions, processes, representatives, jurisdictions, and practices. But it is precisely the complexity of politics—and the Church’s place within it—that undermines the whole of Grudem’s argument. For, if we acknowledge that politics is about more than just a presidential election, we must appreciate how our involvement in politics—our political citizenship—is about so much more than a single vote. + +It is also about our votes for other offices, like judges, city councilors, school board reps, sheriffs, and state legislators. It is about matters that may not even involve voting at all, like our willingness to pray, to notice and stand up for the vulnerable (as Jesus put so powerfully in his parable of the good samaritan), it is about our commitment to a range of social structures including churches and schools. It is about our individual vocations. To cast the current election as if it is only about this single vote, which has produced such troubling theatre, is a deception in which we prefer not to participate. This view also, ironically, contradicts the vision of Jeremiah 29 which is a message given to a nation in exile. Verse 7 is preceded by examples of what seeking the good of the city looks like – these are long-term tasks which do not reduce well to a four year election cycle: conducting work, building houses, committing to reside in a place and raise families there. + +Turning to the matter of political judgment, we are also deeply troubled by Grudem’s (and indeed DePlato's) suggestion that Christians take a consequentialist approach to voting. He feels it would be un-evangelical of him to vote for Secretary Clinton because of her “ultraliberal” policies. On the face of things, Grudem’s presentation indicates a sort of culture-wars ideology which reflexively divides the world into binaries: Republican / Democrat; liberal / conservative; etc. But this kind of view simply does not reflect the kind of careful reflection that we should be able to expect from someone who puts themselves forward as a public Christian intellectual. From this ideologically determined space, Grudem goes on to parse out his consequentialist logic: given his identification of Clinton as “enemy” he can only vote either for Trump or for a third-party candidate, and tactical speculation leads Grudem to conclude that his voting options are really only two: Vote Trump or help Clinton get elected. + +Nevermind that there are policy proposals by Clinton which could be easily identified as “Christian,” or even politically conservative, Grudem’s conclusion here does not follow. Even if one were to approach voting in the calculated way Grudem prefers, his individual vote does not have the causal efficacy that he thinks it does. Grudem’s concluding question makes it particularly clear that he is commending a utilitarian approach. He asks, “which vote is likely to bring about the best results for our nation?” Of course, Christian moral reasoning is deliberative and anticipatory. It is imperative that we have the moral imagination to contemplate potential futures we may or may not act within. + +Grudem’s question, however, functions as a guiding *moral rule*. The Christian’s vote should be world-improving. Ironically, Grudem appeals to Jeremiah 29:7, to “seek the good of the city,” as grounds for his claim. Only it is not at all clear to us why Grudem thinks that Trump represents such an overt good. To what noble attribute or comprehensive policy statement can one point to support the suggestion that Trump will “for the most part govern in the way he promises to do, bringing good to the nation in many areas?” Since the vamping up of the election primaries early last year Trump has added a fresh entry each week to the catalogue of incendiary, vindictive, and even wicked remarks. We doubt very seriously that Trump is capable of articulating what governing for the good of the city would even look like. + +Following on from this concern is our final point relating to the matter of relating person and policy. Grudem argues that one can vote for policies without necessarily voting for the person who advocates them. This distinction between the person and policies resembles the untidy but expedient distinction Luther wished to draw between person and office. One may be forced to do violence as *Prince* without thereby implicating himself personally. The claim has its charms, but as many within the Christian tradition have pointed out, it is theologically mistaken. A ruler’s discipleship is not temporarily suspended simply because the social order they’re required to govern is discomfiting with the Word of God. Likewise, neither can a distinction be drawn consistently between Trump and his policies, since policies do not arise ex nihilo, but are in this case propounded and advocated by Trump himself. When you enter the ballot box next month it is not his policies that you will find listed beside other party candidates, but his name. And, again, underlining this tendency towards idiosyncrasy, by his article’s end Grudem has in different places stated that its Trump he’s voting for, not just his policies. + +In the end, Grudem has a misshapen conception of conscience. His response to the first type of objection he typically receives when trying to argue this case with well-meaning Christians is illustrative. Many tell Grudem that their “conscience won’t allow a vote for Trump.” He’ll hear nothing of it. How could a Christian’s conscience allow them to help Clinton get elected, since withholding a vote increases her chances? Shouldn’t one’s conscience be troubled by the inevitable harms she’ll bring to our nation, he asks? Grudem’s breathless dismissal of sincere appeals to individual conscience is perplexing and in the end he simply does not offer an alternative. Conscience is surgically removed from political judgment to allow for a more forensically pure utilitarian calculus. Apparently the only way to vote in good conscience is to share the same level of disapprobation toward Clinton as Grudem. + +We wish here to affirm those Christians who, like us, cannot comprehend either themselves or a fellow believer casting a vote for Donald Trump. There are ample Christian reasons not only for withholding your vote from him, but even for actively opposing his candidacy. Perhaps you also question the evangelical heritage sometimes evoked by certain apologists for Trump. Is it possible, we ask, to live and announce the good news in Jesus Christ and at the same time publicize one’s support for a candidate who openly and brashly advocates viewpoints in direct contradiction to the gospel and who boasts of exploiting others for fame, pleasure or financial gain? Can someone, out of intense anxiety (whether justified or not) about what a Clinton presidency might bring, justify acting to help appoint a man whose campaign is a great public purveyor of insidious vitriol? + +Such questions press into deeper theological concerns, and reflection upon these concerns may be of help to the Church during this time of travail and questioning. As one political theologian recently suggested, “When believers find themselves confronted with an order that, implicitly or explicitly, offers itself as the sufficient and necessary condition of human welfare, they will recognize the Beast” (*Desire of the Nations*, 272). And we’d like to suggest the “order” O’Donovan mentions can also be a person, who claims alone to possess the unique power of making a nation “great” again. For this reason and those above, we reject both Donald Trump and any argument that somehow a Christian responsibility is to vote for him this November. We invite Grudem and others who are persuaded by his argument to consider a wider view of Christian civic participation that is not reduced to vesting unwarranted hope in the promises of a charlatan to do in the future what his own character in the present seems to wholly contravene. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/presentations/bham_employability.md b/content/presentations/bham_employability.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8cba19b --- /dev/null +++ b/content/presentations/bham_employability.md @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@ +--- +title: "Employability Forum for Academic Partners" +date: "2017-09-13T11:30:00+00:00" +host: "University of Birmingham" +duration: 7776000 +--- + +I'm presenting for colleagues on some work we've done enhancing my course "Religion in the Public Sphere" to create student projects that involve work with local employers, charities, etc. It's very exciting stuff. Slides below for the curious: + + + +My slides (which used [http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/#/](reveal.js)) are [available here](https://jeremykidwell.info/files/presentations/presentation_20170913_ employability.html") \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/static/files/presentations/presentation_20170913_ employability.html b/static/files/presentations/presentation_20170913_ employability.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0655123 --- /dev/null +++ b/static/files/presentations/presentation_20170913_ employability.html @@ -0,0 +1,98 @@ + + + + + + + +
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Employability Forum for Academic Partners

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Enhancing a course: "Religion in the Public Sphere"

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Jeremy Kidwell, Theology & Religion

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Setting the Stage

2 Intertwined Problems

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  1. (your parents worry that) humanities study isn't 'career friendly'
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  2. (some) philosophers neglect "grounding" in real world contexts

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The Context

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Department of Theology & Religion Course
"Religion in the Public Sphere"

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Course Structure:

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  • critical theory of religion (wks 1-5)
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  • religion in public policy contexts (wks 6-20)
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  • assessment = essay + "policy projects"
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Assessing Course Year 1

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  • Student policy projects take on "big ideas"
  • presentations are expansive and exploratory
  • There's a need for more focus to enable synthetic (and contextual) learning
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A new approach

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From "blue sky" to...

...Real world problems

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Implementation and Planning

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  • Identify shortlist of 5 employers with religion and public policy engagement
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  • Set up point of contact and communications protocols
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  • Establish brief, work to be completed towards student "menu" of options
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  • Ask employers for relevant reading material (whitepapers,reports, etc.)
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  • Plan towards long-horizon relationship, Connect employers with one another
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Execution

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  • Revise handbook: identify skills objectives
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  • Monitor student progress / experience through journalling (transferrability!)
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  • Students "apply" for project placements
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  • Work is in teams
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  • Each student chooses to conduct a specific kind of "personal research" in the organisation
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  • Policy project submitted individually
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Critical Self-Reflection

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Implemented in canvas via 8 timed "prompts"

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1. What are your impressions of your organisation? How are the early dynamics of your team? (wk5)

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2. What skills do you want to develop (as an individual) as a result of your work on the policy project? What do you think will be your role in the project team? (wk3)

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3. What are your impressions of your organisation? How are the early dynamics of your team? (wk5)

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4. Please specify a timeline of intended work for your project. Work backwards from submission of your individual policy projects in April and your group presentations in Jan-Mar) to the briefings in week 5...

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5. Share about what you have discovered in your individual research work for your policy project team. What have been some of your struggles to date on the project? What have been some of your achievements so far?

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6. Review your reflection (2). Since beginning the project last Fall, what have you learned about your employer and the context behind the project brief? How have your impressions changed?

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7. Review your reflection (1). Since beginning the project last Fall, what new skills have you developed? What new things did you learn in your exit-interview with the organisation?

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8. Reflect on what you have accomplished in working on your policy project. What is the significance of your project results? Given further time, what more could you have done? What suggestions do you have for future research that could take this project further?

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Individualising Assessment

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Handbook excerpt

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Your policy project write-up should include the following elements (with the following rough indications of words to be included):

+(1) Overview. Provide an introduction to your organisation that may be accessible to a lay-reader and include details of the brief you were given by the organisation. (500 words)

+(2) Research: summarise the findings of your individual research work. Explain the mode of research you conducted (interviews, survey, discourse analysis, etc.), explain what you hoped to achieve with this work, and present the results you found. On particular, you should indicate how this research helped illuminate the brief presented by your policy project. (750 words)

+(3) Analysis: provide a briefing on the wider problem that serves as a backdrop for your project (i.e. hate-crime; environmental protection; integration of spirituality in business practice; etc.). Provide specific details relating to the West-Midlands context. (750 words)

+(4) Policy project: present your group policy project from your own perspective. Explain how this project was designed to address the problem and context you have illuminated above and how it was tailored to the specific needs of your organisation. What did you attempt, how did this relate to the brief you were given by the organisation, and what did you achieve? Include details of your own role within the team and indicate what skills you developed over the course of that work. (500 words)

+(5) Knowledge gained: Writing towards a public audience, familiar with your organisation, summarise what you learned about religion in the public sphere in conducting your project in this very specific context. What kind of advice might your project and the research you conducted lead you to provide to someone working professionally in business, third sector, or government with relation to the brief you considered? (500 words)
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Questions?

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Note: you can read this presentation at http://jeremykidwell.info/presentations/

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