Luke Bevan, Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy, UCL
Pathway: Social and Policy Studies of Energy and the Environment
Research area & contact details
About me: Luke is a PhD candidate in STEaPP and the UCL Energy Institute. He is researching the ways in which different communities working on different sides of the climate change problem understand and use uncertainty in their modelling work.
Luke holds a Physics degree from Balliol College, Oxford and an MSc in Sustainable Energy Futures from Imperial College London. He has previously worked at the Centre for Climate Finance & Investment and the Grantham Institute at Imperial College.
Outside of his core research, Luke has interests in Climate Finance, as a visiting researcher at the Centre for Climate Finance & Investment at Imperial College Business School. He is also interested in climate communication, working with the UCL Policy Commission on the Communication of Climate Science.
Supervisor: Professor Arthur Petersen and Dr Will McDowall
Email: l.bevan.17@ucl.ac.uk
LinkedIn: Luke D Bevan
Twitter: @lukebevan
Lucy Hughes, UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences
Pathway: Linguistics
Research area & contact details
About me: Having completed my undergraduate degree in Modern Languages at Queens’ College Cambridge, I spent seven years working in the Media before retraining as a Speech and Language Therapist. I gained my MSc in Speech and Language Sciences at UCL and worked clinically before returning to academia as a Research Associate on the ESRC-funded Word Retrieval and Development (WoRD) Project. I have a special interest in the design and evaluation of interventions to help support children with language needs
My research: Following my experience on the WoRD Project, my MRes and PhD will focus on designing and trialling a new therapy programme for children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and their main carers. I have chosen this area of study because of its functional relevance; DLD is among the most prevalent childhood impairments and poor conversational abilities can put children at risk of social and emotional problems. The intervention has potential to improve the language and communication skills of children involved, thereby increasing their access to education. Parents and teachers will learn strategies to support children in conversation. Broader effects of the intervention will be explored using a quality of life scale.
Supervisor: Professor Wendy Best
Selected publications:
- Best W., Fedor A., Hughes L., Kapikian A., Masterson J., Roncoli S., Fern-Pollak L., Thomas M. (2015). Intervening to alleviate word-finding difficulties in children: case series data and a computational modelling foundation. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 32 (3-4), 133-168.
- Hughes, L., Masterson, J., Thomas, M., Fedor, A., Roncoli, S., Kapikian, A., Fern-Pollak, L. & Best, W. (2013). The WORD project: a case series study on intervention for developmental word-finding difficulties. Stem-, Spraak- en Taalpathologie, 18, 48-51.
- Best, W., Masterson, J., Thomas, M., Hughes, L., Fedor, A., Kapikian, A. & Fern-Pollak, L. The WORD Project: A case series study on intervention for word-finding difficulties (2013) Child Language Seminar Programme and Abstracts.
Email: lucy.hughes@ucl.ac.uk
Danilo di Emidio, University of East London
Pathway: Sociology
Research area & contact details
About me/education: My undergraduate course in Anthropology at Goldsmiths college gave me a solid foundation to explore broad notions of what-makes-us-humans from an interdisciplinary, and creative, perspective. It enabled me to transfer anthropological knowledge and understanding as well as (observational) skills into the teaching profession in secondary school (Humanities teacher). I have been teaching in inner city London for 16 years and my doctoral research is certainly inspired by such a lengthy firsthand experience with young people.
My research: Given the growing evidence of worsening ill mental health amongst adolescents, I intend to investigate the extent to which these are mainly caused by the school experience and/or assessment procedures.
The difference my research makes: It aims to offer, following in depth ethnographic fieldwork in one London school (academy), a nuanced analysis of the extent school life plays a role in adolescent’s ill mental health. It adopts an interdisciplinary perspective through politics, psychology, anthropology, sociology and philosophy of education, to cast light on what I believe is the paradox of schooling seen as synonymous with learning and the correlated mental health issues stemming from the learning environment
