YorkTalks 2022
On Wednesday 12 January 2022, hundreds of staff, students and members of the public from York and across the globe joined us online and in-person for a day of inspirational short talks about the world-leading research happening at York.
Given just 15 minutes each, 15 of our academics introduced their research. Their accessible talks covered subjects from plastic pollution in the Galapagos, to child mental health and indoor air pollution.
The talks were grouped together in sessions, followed by a Q&A.
Session one
With a focus on health and healthy communities, our first session explored the appetite for a new food system in Yorkshire’s primary schools, and stayed in schools to examine the teaching of emotional and social skills in the classroom. It gave a voice to families living on low incomes during covid, before heading to Malawi where York’s health economists have drawn up funding models to make sure limited budgets are spent in the best possible way.
Session two
Our speakers explored new universes and technologies in the second session. We began with a look at how ‘troubling features’ in quantum mechanics could be turned to our advantage, before exploring the tricky ethical, political and economic complexities of Artificial Intelligence. Then we headed into space to consider how robots could explore new universes, before returning to Earth for a look at the implications of our increasing reliance on AI technologies in our daily lives. Has Alexa got a darker side?
Session three
In session three we went green, opening with a talk which explores how York’s cutting edge plant science has helped tackle malaria. Then we rummaged around under the kitchen sink to uncover the threat to our health posed by the chemical cocktail found in cleaning products and so-called air purifiers. The third talk imagined a new cleaner, greener future for manufacturing industries and our final speaker explained how tropical rainforests are losing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide.
Session four
Our fourth session opened with a talk exploring how musicians could counter the dominance of streaming platforms, followed by a presentation which challenged us to move from the dystopian view of our AI-controlled future to something more human centred. We then travelled to the Galapagos to find out how archaeology is helping us understand the very contemporary problem of plastic pollution. We ended YorkTalks 2022 with a tasty culinary journey through South Asian culture.
PhD Spotlight competition
This competition is an opportunity for postgraduate researchers from all disciplines at York to demonstrate the value of their research to non-specialist audiences.
- 1st place: Daisy McManaman: "A Girl Resembles a Bunny": A Feminist Re-Analysis of Representations of Women in Playboy
- 2nd place: Manli Zhu: Crafting Insta-Glammed Eyecandies: The Lived Experience of Foodstagramming
- 3rd place: Jess Gibson: The Representation of Disability in Disabled Animated Films: Using Models of Disability as Pedagogical Tools for Analysis
- People's choice: Sonam Sidhu: Structure and composition of an intercellular channel in sporulatin Bacillus subtilis