Wednesday 20 January 2010 IS TEXTING VALUABLE OR VANDALISM? Children who are heavy users of mobile phone text abbreviations such as LOL (laughing out loud), plz (please), l8ter (later) and xxx (kisses), are unlikely to be problem spellers and readers, a new study funded by the British Academy has found. The research*, carried out on a sample of 8-12 year olds over an academic year, revealed that levels of “textism” use could even be used to predict reading ability and phonological awareness in each pupil by the end of the year. Moreover, the proportion of textisms used was observed to...

8 Fellows funded by European Research Council's Advanced Grants programme in recognition of pioneering researchIn its second competition for established leading researchers ("Advanced Grants"), the European Research Council (ERC) has selected eight British Academy Fellows to carry out pioneering research throughout Europe. The British Academy welcomes the funding awarded to Professor Orazio Attanasio, FBA Professor Michael Batty, CBE, FBA Professor Maxine Berg, FBA Professor Miriam Glucksmann, FBA Professor Ruth Mace, FBA Professor Stephen Shennan, FBA Professor Mark Steedman, FBA Professor Lorraine Tyler, FBA Under the EU's 7th Research Framework Programme, the ERC supports projects aiming at making important discoveries in...

Does an apple a day make our skin more 'attractive' to others?  Are case studies the fruit flies of a social scientist's world?  Why did so many young people join the Irish Revolution?  What can political unions in the past usefully tell us about modern politics? Four major new research studies, co-ordinated by the British Academy and funded by the Wolfson Foundation, are to be unveiled today at a special event in London.  The British Academy Wolfson Professorships, each at the level of £150,000 over three years, recognise the most outstanding scholars in the UK, enabling them to concentrate on...

New research has revealed the negative impact ‘bride price’ is having on women’s lives in Uganda.  The report, funded by the British Academy, uncovers the domestic violence and impoverishment  which is being fuelled by this common practice in African countries whereby material goods or money are paid by a groom to a bride’s family upon their marriage.  The study is the first of its kind. Although bride-price operated beneficially in the past to give formal recognition to marriages and to stabilise partnerships, key findings from the research identify the serious effect the tradition is having on gender equality, early or...

The British Academy has today (3 December 2009) welcomed the emphasis on peer review in the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)'s proposals for the new Research Excellence Framework (REF) but urges it to make the assessment of 'impact' conditional on the overriding quality of the work. In its response to the HEFCE consultation, the Academy accepts there is a legitimate public interest in the impact of research, but warns that the proposed methods of measurement are untested and will need to take into account the multiplicity and individuality of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. With ways...

British Academy event explores the necessity of anthropology in the current global discourse on rightsNotes In 2009, Muslim feminists from both 'East' and 'West' launched two well-funded global initiatives to advance women’s human rights. They were inspired by the idea that women's rights should come through interpreting Islamic texts and reforming Islamic family law, not just enforcing or extending standard national and international rights law. Does the different dialect of rights these Muslim feminists use, or the new transnational circuits for rights work they forge, resolve the dilemmas that critics of other forms of human rights practice have pointed out? ...

Event at the British Academy exposes the global effects of affirmative action for the first time Women only shortlists; the numbers of working class children admitted to Oxbridge; ethnic minorities in the Met - the debates around affirmative action policies in the UK have continued unabated in recent times.Yet the long term effects of such proposals remain unknown, as British policymakers have rarely sought advice from other countries with long experience in such matters, from the USA to Malaysia. For the first time ever, in an event hosted by the British Academy, and convened by leading sociologist, Anthony Heath and...