We currently organising this year's Brains at The Bevy lineup, and we want your input. Read through this list and see what grabs your attention, and Vote for it! You can vote for more than one.
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Sole Searching – Shoes and stories of our modern material culture.
This interactive talk, based around pairs of shoes made of weird, wacky and wonderful waste materials will explore how we think and feel about the materials that make up the things we buy in the modern consumer age.
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The rise of smartphone addiction and how we can get the best out of the digital world.
How can we remain awake and free in the world of smartphones, tablets and computers? How do we stay in control of a realm that increasingly alerts us, notifies us, and tries to control what we read, see and hear? A very gritty and hands-on talk about staying on top of the digital realm.
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The power of cafes as places of creativity
This talks is all about where we find our creative flow. Are formal meeting rooms past their sell-by date? Is it time to get around the table and ditch PowerPoint once and for all?
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Why do we collude with mediocrity... and what to do about it.
This talks, based on 20 years of work explores why we collude and end up with mediocrity? How do we skilfully get out of our comfort zones and into the potentially uncomfortable real world? Full of practical ideas and stories, you might just never be the same again after this talk.
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The rise of horizontal trust
(Based on research into trust - the rise of crowdfunding, informal lending, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, and flash mob entertainment). Have we permanently lost trust in banks, governments and the old hierarchies? This talk offers examples of how we no longer look upwards for authority but into our communities, our peers, our friends and families. Is there a role still for the old vertical forms of organisation?
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Making the unseen visible: How can 'practice theory' help us talk about the work we do in the voluntary sector?
Over the last two years, university academics and voluntary and community sector workers have explored whether and how new academic theories might help understand the everyday work that the sector does. One result was finding that some of these theories were valuable in drawing attention to activities and approaches that are common place in the sector, but often 'unseen' or not recognised by policy makers and funders - in particular the things people do related to caring for others. We want to share what we learned and why we think it's important.
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How to save our NHS
The NHS has been struggling for decades -- but was it doomed to fail, or has it been destroyed on purpose? We will zoom through a brief history of the NHS to understand how our health system got to be the way it is today, and what we can do to make it thrive and survive.
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What makes us sick?
A brief history of disease and medicine, focusing on common causes of illness and what we can do to make ourselves, and society, healthier.
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What is feminism?
Who is it for? Not only is gender a source of struggle for women, so too are race and class. This talk introduces the idea of "intersectionality," which simply means that feminists should consider the many different, interlinked ways in which people are affected by the way our society operates. This teaches us that when we campaign for justice in society, we should always ensure that the most vulnerable groups are our first priority.
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Migration and the NHS
The government is making it more and more difficult for migrants to access the NHS. Is this fair? What is the actual cost of health tourism? What about the migrants who staff the NHS? Which countries do they come from, and why do they choose to work here? This talk asks whether the current rules are fair, and explores the way in which the NHS relies on the rest of the world.
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Urban mammals: what happens in your garden after dark?
Dawn will talk about the behaviour and ecology of urban mammals. She will explain how badgers, foxes and hedgehogs have adapted to our cities, what opportunities and problems can occur and how they interact with us and each other. Dawn would also like to discuss with the audience how we can coexist with urban mammals, minimizing any problems and maximising benefits of living together.
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The People’s Pier - Regeneration, community, and popular culture heritage
Today only fifty nine of the original hundred or so British seaside piers remain, and many of those are under threat. Despite this downturn piers remain important to the coastal communities and are often at the heart of costal regeneration projects. However, regeneration processes are complex and not always inclusive; they can be both divisive and inequitable. This talk presents findings from two case studies exploring the new phenomena of ’the community pier’: The Hastings Pier and the Clevedon Pier. It focuses on seaside piers as community hubs as well as contested spaces, showcasing examples of how the pier can be utilised to build community.
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New approaches to combat cancer by targeting surrounding normal cell types
The last decade, the role of the ‘tumour microenvironment’, which consists of a variety of other types of ‘normal’ cells has been thoroughly investigated. It is now clear that normal and cancer cells communicate by sending messages to each other that can affect in a positive or negative way the progression of cancer. This knowledge gives us new information and options about how to successfully treat cancer.
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How do we make new medicines?
The drug discovery process describes the typical 15-20 year effort made by many scientists to get a new medicine from idea to market. Once a way of targeting a disease has been identified (usually by shutting down a specific function in our cells) chemists work in laboratories making lots of very similar shaped “jigsaw piece” drug molecules that might carry out this desired effect. This talk would come from my perspective as a medicinal chemist making these molecules, how I make and vary them, and how working with other scientists informs my work.
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Chemistry vs the Great British Bake Off
There are a lot of similar skills and equipment used in both an average kitchen and a chemistry lab. Chemists spend many hours tweaking their “recipes” in order to improve the quality/quantity of chemical product they want to make. This talk will show how a day in that infamous marquee isn’t so different from a day in a chemistry lab as you might think.
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How the Arts Can Change the World (Again)
For many years, arts-activists and community artists have used the arts as tools for social and individual change, drawing on poetry, painting, theatre and other art forms for social activism, political commentary, individual expression and therapy. In recent decades, increasing numbers of social scientists have also begun to draw on the arts to help them understand and affect society. In this talk, I use examples of my own work with poetry, music and visual arts, to explore how such ‘arts-based research’ can change not only how we represent the world, but also how we think about and act in the world.
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UK Constitutional Convention 2019 – a future scenario
Following months of political turmoil the Queen has called for a Constitutional Convention, made up of randomly selected citizens, to design a new constitutional settlement for the UK. With the opportunity to make fundamental change to the way the country is run, what would you do? Academics from the University of Sussex School of Law, Politics and Sociology will give an overview of some of the arguments, but the final decisions will be yours.
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“The limits to growth” model, updated
45 years ago, the book “The limits to growth” was published. It was the first attempt to measure how and when exponential economic growth and population growth would collide against finite resources. It was also the first popular science book that described in detail a computer model. Several minor updates have been done to this model. Ten years ago, I attempted a more ambitious update: To establish specifically how limited fossil fuels and climate change are likely to affect this picture.
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Food allergy: facts and fiction
What exactly is food allergy? Is it increasing? What foods are we allergic to in UK? Are different people allergic to different food in different countries? Are some food allergies more series than others?
Come and listen to Professor Dean who has been studying food allergy for 30years
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