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PhD candidate Patrick Low has published an article on the changing presentation of punishment, in particular execution. This topic has been at the heart of much criminal historiography. However, little work has been done to examine the transition outside of London. Newcastle offers a fascinating perspective on any national picture of capital punishment, as it adopted changes far later than most, including close neighbours like Durham. In this article - which appears in Law, Crime & History - Patrick questions why so late a transition occurred and what the motivating factors were. Focusing on executions between 1844 and 1863 it shows that far from being led by London, the decisions were largely reactive to immediate crises, chief amongst them an unruly crowd, and not underpinned by any ideological bent. In short, it will argue for caution in speaking of a unified national change in punishment when even to speak of a regional one is problematic.   Read 'The changing p...

Dr Susan Mandala has published an article in the journal Discourse, Context & Media. In ''Listening' to the Neanderthals in William Golding’s The Inheritors : A sociopragmatic approach to fictional dialogue' , Susan employs theory of mind and intentionality as analytical tools in order to ‘listen’ more closely to the Neanderthals in Golding’s 1955 novel. Paying particular attention to these characters as they express their religious beliefs, engage in storytelling, and work through interpersonal conflicts, she argues that readers are invited to infer that the Neanderthal characters are themselves inferring beings, and further demonstrate that this interpretation has implications not only for how individuals approach the novel, but for the way The Inheritors as a cultural text can be understood to participate in discursively mediating our relationship with the figure of the Neanderthal.

In an article published in Social Semiotics , Professor Angela Smith explores recent developments in masculinity, focusing on the sexualisation of fatherhood in Anglophone media. As it becomes socially acceptable for men to engage with “hands-on” fatherhood roles that had previously been primarily associated with motherhood, the appeal lies not just in this shift in gendered performance, but the representation of this as an opportunity for men to reveal a desirable body image. Where previously the hands-on fatherhood role had been glossed as “nappy changing duties,” this more recent development focuses on men’s bodies and in particular the act of carrying a young child which affords the chance for biceps to be flexed in juxtaposition with the gentle act of holding a child. Colloquially, this has led to the emergence of the “DILF,” particularly on social media where sites are devoted to photos of such men. Smith, A. 2017. Bulging biceps and tender kisses: the sexualisation of fatherho...

Politics senior lecturer Dr Peter Hayes has co-written an article for the journal Child: Care, Health and Development. The authors show how girls adopted internationally from some states have been found to have high rates of early puberty, including early menarche. Explanations for the link between international adoption and early puberty include post-adoption catch-up growth triggering puberty, and under-recorded age. Hayes, P. and Tan, T.X. (2016) Timing of menarche in girls adopted from China: a cohort study . Child: care, health and development. 42(6): 859-862.

A West View of Newgate by George Shepherd (1784-1862) PhD student Philippa Abbott has had an article published in the journal Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies . In it, she explores the representation of female criminals in 'the Newgate Novels' - a genre of sensationalist fiction popular between the 1820s and 1840s. You can read the article here .

Dr Angela Smith has co-written an article with Michael Higgins which looks at the development of broadcast talk in those reality TV genres associated with shopping and negotiation, focusing on Antiques Road Trip . In a context in which reality TV has become associated with judgement and rancour, Angela is concerned with the balance between expertise and ordinariness, and exploring the place of conversational and interactional styles we have come to associate with “sociability” and the maintenance of “face”, both in terms of pleasure and spectacle and providing a tactical basis for on-screen negotiation. Angela argues that these performances differ from conventional discourses of expertise as arbiters of specialist insight and market value, and offer new performances of expertise, based on a tactical mix of professional capital and sociability. Smith, A. and Higgins, M. (2016) Flirtation, desire and cut-glass biscuit barrels: Forms of expertise in Antiques Road Trip . Discours...

Dr Angela Smith has co-written an article with Professor Philip Drake (Edge Hill University) which considers the format and cultural politics of the hugely successful UK television program Top Gear (BBC 2002–2015). 'Belligerent broadcasting, male anti-authoritarianism and anti-environmentalism: the case of Top Gear ' analyzes how—through its presenting team—it constructed an informal address predicated around anti-authoritarian or contrarian banter and protest masculinity. Regular targets for Top Gear presenter’s protest—curtailed by broadcast guidelines in terms of gender and ethnicity—are deflected onto the “soft” targets of government legislation on environmental issues or various forms of regulation “red tape. Repeated references to speed cameras, central London congestion charges and “excessive” signage are all anti-authoritarian, libertarian discourses delivered through a comedic form of performance address. Thus, the BBC’s primary response to complaints made about t...

The journal Irish Studies Review is shortly to publish a special commemorative 1916 edition entitled ‘Commemorating Connolly’. Amongst the seven invited papers for the issue is an article by Dr Alison Younger entitled 'A terrible beauty is bought: 1916, commemoration and commodification'. Mindful of Benedict Anderson’s emphasis in Imagined Communities on the power of print culture – and print-capitalism – to shape and share national ideas and identities, her article offers a comparative analysis of the commemorations in Ireland of 1798 and 1916 by looking at commemorative ephemera: kitschy memorabilia, themed merchandise, newspaper cuttings and advertisements, handbills and inventively branded commodities, as important cultural texts which purveyed ideological values and meanings at the time of their production. It suggests that the consumer sphere allows us to shed light on the commemorative discourses these ephemeral objects produce, retelling and retailing the risings in ...

Dr Geoff Nash 's article 'Postmodernism' is an entry in Gale's newly published Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World (ed. Richard C. Martin, Gale 2016) .  It outlines how Islam was viewed by a postmodern philosopher such as Foucault, what Muslim intellectuals like Ziauddin Sardar, Salman Sayyid and Anouar Majid have written about postmodernism, and how Muslim writers and film-makers have responded creatively to the postmodern period. 

Dr Geoff Nash has had an article published on 'Orientalism' in The Encyclopedia of Empire (John Wiley, 2016). Geoff shows how the term is first used in the late 18th century to refer to scholarly study of the East and a style in the arts. In the same period the British East India Company was expanding its control of the Indian subcontinent, while in Islamic domains Napoleon's expedition to Egypt of 1798 was followed by French colonization of Algeria beginning in 1830. The British decision to demote Eastern languages and culture in India in favor of education in Western knowledge signaled the emergence of an imperialistic sense of Western superiority. As orientalism became institutionalized in Europe, it contributed to imperialist governance in the East. However, the extent to which orientalists individually and collectively were responsible for buttressing imperialist ideology was not fully debated until the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978. Click here ...

Some are widely-known and have a long history; others are rarer and were coined more recently, but if you're from the North East you will have an opinion about them. In an article published in Nomina (the journal of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland ), Dr Mike Pearce explores the history of North East ethnonyms, focusing on Geordie, Mackem, Sand Dancer, Smoggie, Pit Yacker and Monkey Hanger. Combining newly unearthed evidence from historical research with folk-accounts from surveys and online discussion forums, the article offers the most complete account of these fascinating and culturally significant terms yet published (for more on ethnonyms, click here ). Pearce, M. 'Not quite a Geordie': the folk-ethnonyms of North East England. Nomina Vol. 37 .

In a recently published article on race relations in the USA, Dr Kevin Yuill explores how, before 1905, most observers assumed the inferiority of Blacks and saw race conflict as the fault of African Americans. But a new possibility arose when the fate of African Americans was linked to the rising power of Japan, occurring after the defeat of Russia by Japan in 1904–5. Race conflict, in this new model, was a form of conflict between nations. Kevin's paper explores the thesis that a liberal perspective based on developments in contemporary international relations slowly changed the way race was regarded in the United States. From 1905 onwards, a new liberal paradigm sought to manage race conflict. It was this—rather than labour-based racial antipathies or commitment to racial equality—that shaped US race relations in the twentieth century. Yuill, K. 2015. The spectre of Japan: the influence of foreign relations on race relations theory, 1905–24 . Patterns of Prejudice 49(...

In an article published in the journal Ethics, Medicine & Public Health , Dr Kevin Yuill explicates the libertarian case against assisted dying. He argues that there is a broad discussion throughout many countries in the West about whether or not assisted suicide/dying will increase human happiness by decreasing suffering. Understandably, many of the articles address the issue from a medical standpoint but, at the same time, they assume that freedom will increase with legalization. Kevin's article is critical of that assumption and shows that the individual autonomy purportedly increased by assisted suicide will in fact decrease. This article stresses the dangers to general freedoms that will accompany a law that sets objective criteria for suicide, which is a subjective decision. Yuill, K. 2015. The unfreedom of assisted suicide: How the right to die undermines autonomy . Ethics, Medicine & Public Health 1(4): 494-502.

Dr Geoff Nash’s article 'Aryan and Semite in Ernest Renan and Matthew Arnold’s Quest for the Religion of Modernity' has just been published in the latest issue of Religion & Literature . His article shows how Renan and Arnold’s search for a suitable religion for modernity found a focus in Gobineau’s writings about Persian Shi’ism and Babism. Each descried in these manifestations of religious feeling  solvents for the agnostic scientism of Europe, even while their observations remained meshed into the Victorian conflation of race and modernity.

Dr Angela Smith has published an article which explores the influential role played by the media in perceptions of political leaders. Since the latter part of the twentieth century, leaders’ personalities have come to play an increasing role in their appeal, in particular their gendered performances. In her article, Angela explores Barack Obama's 2008 election campaign through a gendered lens, contrasting it with the construction of male political leaders in other parts of the world, particularly that of Vladimir Putin in Russia. Building on work carried out in relation to the mediatisation and personalisation of politics in the last 50 years, Angela shows how gendered performances can be seen to mirror changes in society. Smith, Angela (2015) 'Mediated political masculinities: the commander-in-chief vs. the new man.' Social Semiotics . 

Mike Pearce has written a comment piece for the website of The Northern Correspondent . You can read it here .

In an article published in the journal Sociolinguistic Studies, Dr Michael Pearce   considers how the technological advances associated with Web 2.0 allow people to interact in online ‘communities’ built around shared interests and concerns. Michael's article examines an online messageboard virtually located in North East England, and explores the ways in which participants’ beliefs about and attitudes towards sociolinguistic variation emerge through discourse. He focuses on a single ‘conversation’ about the sociolinguistic variable mam/mum , revealing the language ideologies which inform the sociolinguistic awareness of participants, and concludes by using the concept of ‘late modernity’ as an interpretive frame to help understand what is happening as people appropriate a global technology for local social action. Pearce, M. 2015.  Mam or mum? Sociolinguistic awareness and language-ideological debates online . Sociolinguistic Studies , 9 (1): 115-135.

What are the origins and history of the ethnonym Geordie in North East England? How does this history – which according to some authorities has never adequately been explained – help us to understand its current usage and meanings? In an article published in Names: A Journal of Onomastics , Dr Michael Pearce attempts to answer these questions by drawing on evidence from a range of sources (including newly-available material in the British Newspaper Archive). Pearce, M. 2015. 'The Ethnonym Geordie in North East England.' Names: A Journal of Onomastics 63 (2): 75-85.

The importance of stories written for young readers is undisputed, and in particular the central place of the fairy story in popular culture is clearly recognized. In an article published in Children's Literature in Education , Dr Angela Smith argues that whilst most of these stories are centuries old, they have been adapted by the cultures of the tellers to be more compatible with the ideological views of the audience. She explores how feminism has influenced two versions of the same story, published by the same publisher for comparable age groups through an examination of the Ladybird versions of Rapunzel as published in 1968 and 1993. Angela shows how there are subtle changes in the text which do not affect the overall narrative structure but can offer an insight into the ways in which society has ideologically positioned men and women. Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) is used to show how a close linguistic analysis of the text can reveal the impact of feminism o...

Kim Willis (TESOL) has co-written an article which appears in the English Language Research (ELR) Journal . Kim and her co-author Dr Ahmad Nazari (London Metropolitan University) explore perceptions of the development of group dynamics amongst a cohort of MA TESOL students. Ahmad Nazari and Kim Willis 2014. 'One Big Happy Family? An Investigation into Students' Perceptions of Group Dynamics on an MA TESOL Program' . ELR Journal . Issue 1: 105-128.