Criminology

The criminology team are all active researchers who regularly publish their findings in peer reviewed journals. Newman’s criminologists regularly present at national and international academic conferences and are active members of scholarly associations. All members of the team have ongoing collaborations with scholars from other institutions in the UK and internationally. The team are keen to hear from potential PhD students in any of our areas of research expertise.

As well as journal articles, books and magazine articles published members of the team have undertaken funded research projects and carried out third sector evaluations. Current work includes the ReachOut project with young people which incorporates detached (street based) contact-making and resource-mediating social activity in public spaces in Bartley Green and surrounding wards and school-based outreach work. Applications are currently being made to funding bodies to enable this project to be evaluated.

Research Interests

  • Desistance
  • History of punishment
  • Postcolonial perspectives on ‘crime’, law and punishment
  • Psychosocial criminology
  • Social justice
  • Socio-legal methodologies
  • Technology, sexuality and criminal justice
  • Youth crime and technology
  • Youth work and youth violence

 

Education and Professional Studies

In addition to our work on taught degree programmes, Education and Professional Studies staff are active in a number of areas of research. This is conducted in collaboration with colleagues in subject areas from across the University College and with regional, national and international partners.

EPS Research Interests

  • Creativity and imagination in education
  • Creative drama approaches in health & wellbeing and social awareness
  • Education and equality
  • Education and human rights
  • Education and interdisciplinary practitioner research
  • Education and social policy
  • Gender order and emerging femininities and masculinities
  • Inter-professional collaboration and communities of practice
  • Migration, diaspora and national belonging
  • Professional identity and gendered identity in educational settings
  • Qualitative research methodology and research representation
  • School assessment and discursive negotiation of learning identities
  • Safeguarding children and workforce reform

 

English

English at Newman is a thriving research area with expertise in colonial and postcolonial literature, twentieth century and contemporary writing, drama and manuscript and print culture. As well as giving papers at national and international conferences, the team host a research seminar series, and co-organise an annual conference on print culture – the Print Networks series. In addition to publishing articles, editing essay collections and literary texts, members of the team are also contracted for forthcoming monographs with Ashgate and Palgrave-Macmillan.

English staff at Newman work with published writers and dramatists to enhance regional and national literary and performance culture. Doctoral study in the department currently includes work on postcolonial and eco-critical approaches to the representation of landscapes in Indian literature, the twentieth-century middlebrow writer Clemence Dane, and the representation of Trade Unionism in the twentieth century.

Research Interests

  • Early modern drama
  • Early modern travel writing
  • Print culture
  • The contemporary dramatist Edward Bond
  • Colonial and postcolonial literature
  • African women’s writing
  • South Asian literatures
  • The twentieth century middlebrow writer Clemence Dane

Members of the research team

 

History

History at Newman is one of the most successful areas in terms of academic research. There is a strong research ethic within the team, who consistently produce internationally recognised publications. Expertise within the subject team covers a number of areas, from the social history of the West Midlands to late Victorian political culture; from the Ancient Greek world to Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. All academic staff are very active in their fields, attending national and international conferences and publishing in peer reviewed journals. We have published with, and have contracts for forthcoming monographs with Ashgate, I.B. Tauris, Oxford University Press and Phillimore.

The History team have a proven track record in supporting postgraduate students. Our supervision teams are interdisciplinary and work closely with other research institutions.

Research Interests

  • The First and Second World Wars
  • Victorian politics and political culture
  • The history of the West Midlands; political, social and cultural
  • The French Revolution and Napoleonic empire
  • History of wine
  • Early modern England
  • Ancient Greek cultural history
  • History of religion and magic.

Members of the research team

 

Physical Education and Sports Studies

The Physical Education and Sports Studies subject area is among the most active and successful research groups at Newman University. There is a strong research ethos within the subject area with a highly committed team of early career and more experienced researchers. All staff are encouraged and supported to pursue research in line with the institutional strategy.

The scholarly work of this enthusiastic research team involves a range of topics related to physical education and sports studies. In recent years, this research has resulted in a range of outcomes including publications in peer-reviewed journals, chapters in edited books and presentations at international conferences. The research group has established collaborative research initiatives with academics from other universities, local authorities, businesses, and national governing bodies of sport.

Research Interests

The following areas of research interest are those in which it may be possible to offer supervision:

  • Young people’s physical activity, health and well-being
  • Physical education pedagogy and school-based physical activity provision
  • Children’s attitudes towards and engagement with physical education and school-based activity
  • Influences on sport officials decisions
  • Mental toughness in sport and exercise
  • Combat sport psychology
  • Load monitoring in team sport performance
  • Physiology of team sport performance.

The following are additional areas of staff research interest:

  • Mental skills training to support motivation, learning, well-being, and performance
  • The effects of exercise-induced muscle damage on performance and recovery
  • Health, lifestyle and metabolic risk factors of UK university students
  • Health and well-being in youth SEN populations
  • The impact and interaction of stakeholders in elite sport
  • The role and impact of stakeholders in the development of public policy
  • The challenges facing policy makers and education partners in the areas of Health and Education.

Members of the research team

 

Psychology and Counselling

The Psychology and Counselling area at Newman has a focus on issues around health, well-being and applied psychology. The subject area has major strengths in the teaching of professional courses in counselling and applied aspects of psychology, and this drives the research agenda.
Research Interests

Health, well-being and counselling:

  • Assessment and rehabilitation of the dys-executive syndrome
  • Students’ health risk perception, health knowledge and health behaviour
  • Deliberate self-harm and suicide in adolescence
  • The emergence of spirituality in contemporary psychoanalysis
  • The relationship between postgraduate students’ life and learning experiences and academic outcome. The impact of this on support and counselling provision in higher education
  • Developing the interface of contemporary neuroscience and evolutionary biology with the theory and practice of counselling and psychotherapy
  • Assessing the competence of counsellors in working with sexual minorities and ways in which the teaching and training can be enhanced
  • Counselling psychology interventions for clients with neurological conditions and their carers
  • Masculinity and counselling.

Applied Psychology:

  • Human factors
  • Eye witness testimony and the influence of different questioning techniques
  • Motor development in young people and specifically how children with visual impairments use auditory information to provide feedback for locomotion.

Members of the research team

 

Theology

The Theology staff at Newman have taught postgraduate students successfully for over ten years through a well-established Masters programme in Contemporary Christian Theology.

Research Interests

  • Old and New Testament Studies
  • The use of the Old Testament in the New Testament
  • Early Post-biblical Judaism
  • Reception of the Jewish and Christian Bible
  • Seventeenth and eighteenth century English Platonism and Neo-Platonism
  • Contemporary developments in natural theology and its place in the science-theology conversation
  • Bio-ethics
  • Feminist theology
  • Religious Education
  • Theologising and philosophising with children

Members of the research team

Members of the Theology team regularly publish and present conference papers in their areas of special expertise, and all value the promotion of good relationships between staff and students and the provision of good support networks.

The Newman Research Centre for the Bible and its Reception is located within the Theology subject area, providing opportunities for research students to network with scholars of international standing and to benefit from engagement with an active research culture.

Research supervision

Research supervision (MPhil/PhD) is offered in a number of areas, including aspects of:

Christian theology;
Biblical studies;
Early post-biblical Judaism;
Contemporary philosophical theology;
History of philosophy;
Feminist theology;
and Religious Education.

Theological Reflection

We are also able to work with those wishing to apply theological reflection to their ministry or professional practice.

The recent appointment to the subject area of two visiting professors and the provision of a fully-funded PhD studentship has enabled Theology to become a rapidly expanding research area within the University.