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This week’s events are all about seeing our society in a different light, so we’re kicking off it off with some big questions: Why do so many people wear football shirts? Is the media controlling your child’s eating habits? What is the best way to get Europe’s unemployed back to work? Come to our first event to find out! Please note that this event takes place on the ground floor and is accessible for those with impaired mobility.
Full food menu will be available.
Full food menu will be available.
Shirt tales: why adults adopted replica football kits
Dr Christopher Stride
(Senior Lecturer (Statistician))
Football crowds from Plymouth to Newcastle blend into a blocks of vivid colour by wearing their replica team shirt. Though replica shirts have been produced for children since the late 1950s, their adoption by adults is relatively recent, beginning in the late 1970s and only really popularised after 1990. This talk identifies the 'whens' and 'whys' in the adoption of this terrace fashion, including explorations of cup final fancy dress traditions, the 70s jogging boom, the rise of the club superstore, football casuals, 80's rave culture, and the post-Premier League gentrification of football.
The good, the bad and the ugly: Media Influence and Childhood Obesity
Laura von Nordheim
(Developmental Psychologist)
It is essential to celebrate health and beauty at every size, shape and weight. Obesity, however, is a serious health condition that affects more than 42 million children worldwide. By the time we reach adulthood, this figure has doubled. Rather than driven by personal choice, weight gain is closely linked to our environment. Media clearly affects our food choices, eating behaviours and exercise habits and can be used for better or worse. Find out how food advertising impacts our eating behaviour, and how we can use this powerful influence to improve children’s diets!
Evaluating Social Policies Like Evaluating a New Drug
Dr Bert Van Landeghem
(Research Fellow in the Department of Economics)
Unemployment is both costly for society and for the individual. Yet, it is surprisingly hard to pinpoint the most effective interventions to get people (back) into a satisfying job. Changes in the unemployment rate do not only depend on labour market policies but can be caused by many other things such as a financial crisis. That’s why employment agencies are recently adopting practices that are long-standing in medicine: they first “test” the new policy on a random group of people before rolling it out to the entire population. Such exercises have led to intriguing insights.
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