David Roberts | Loughborough University (original) (raw)
Profile by David Roberts
I'm conducting a world-wide survey on student engagement in the visual era. One of the participan... more I'm conducting a world-wide survey on student engagement in the visual era. One of the participants said she was ‘very interested in the use of images in teaching/learning’, adding that the survey ‘was so easy to do, it took only 5 minutes’.
The survey’s here:
and the winner will be notified when the survey closes in April 2020
Thanks for your support and cooperation
Dr. David Roberts, SFHEA
This article is concerned with the gap between how we teach International Relations and Politics ... more This article is concerned with the gap between how we teach International Relations and Politics (IR & P), and how students learn this subject at the physiological level. It discusses a 3-year trial of a visual pedagogy that better matches how we teach, to how our students live and learn.
Globalization and digitization have combined to create a 'pictorial turn' that has transformed co... more Globalization and digitization have combined to create a 'pictorial turn' that has transformed communication landscapes. Routine exposure to visual stimuli has acculturated our students' learning processes long before their arrival at university. But when they reach us, we expose them to text-centric teaching out of kilter with the worlds from which they come. More importantly, emerging scholarship argues that such textual hegemony is out of kilter with how they learn. This article describes a 3-year experiment to assess the veracity of such claims. It found that student academic engagement was greater when apposite images were applied. In addition, the experiment revealed that introducing imagery triggered active learning behaviours. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for Politics and International Relations teaching, and with proposals for diversifying research methods through a recently-formed Community of Practice. Abstract Globalization and digitization have combined to create a 'pictorial turn' that has
David Roberts is Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies. His research areas are divided be... more David Roberts is Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies. His research areas are divided between postconflict peacebuilding in places like Cambodia and Sierra Leone, and ways to transform the large group lecture experience for students and teachers alike. Abstract An important contemporary challenge to the large group lecture in higher education is that it encourages passive learning which is claimed to be out of sync with intellectual expectations and social needs. Attempts to change this practice have salvaged some aspects of the higher education experience for students, but they have not transformed the learning environment that is the most usual one, that is, one characterised by lectures, into an arena of active learning. This article tests recent multimedia learning propositions which claim that using certain images dislocates pedagogically harmful excesses of text, reducing cognitive overloading and exploiting under-used visual processing capacities. The experiments yielded unpredicted results which indicate that the use of certain images can also prompt students to become active co-producers of knowledge. This is not about visual aids, where images are a side-bar to a traditional lecture. This is about images as the medium through which active learning is energised. Marshall McLuhan famously remarked that 'the medium is the message'. But for this article, the message is the medium.
This article is concerned with student engagement and understanding in large group teaching in Hi... more This article is concerned with student engagement and understanding in large group teaching in Higher Education (HE). Specifically, it is concerned with the application of Multimedia Learning (MML) methods in Politics, History, International Relations, Sociology, Social Work, and Business and Economics teaching that privilege the use of images to complement text in lecture presentations. This ‘visual’ method, it is claimed in the literature, generates engagement and understanding better than text alone. This article develops, applies and empirically tests with students, MML methods across a range of Higher Education disciplines over three years. The research deploys Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods engaging students as active agents of investigation and change. It finds evidence to support the hypothesis that apposite images combined with reduced text increases students’ engagement and understanding with academic content, but that much formal research needs to expand on the range of demographics tested
I am concerned with improving teaching and learning in lectures, for better engagement, to demons... more I am concerned with improving teaching and learning in lectures, for better engagement, to demonstrate innovation, and to help with the Teaching Excellence Framework. In line with leading Multimedia Learning theory, I have developed a transformative way of enabling PowerPoint so it helps, rather than hinders.
I reduce text and privilege large, high-quality imagery, because a picture still paints a thousand words. Ongoing research tells us this method helps students understand, engage with and recall academic material better than text-heavy slides. The method needs only a few extra 'clicks', and transforms 'Death by PowerPoint' into award-winning lectures. I can show you how to do this easily, quickly and effectively, whether your audience consists of students, peers, research and grant bodies, administrators or management. The method will help all staff create genuinely memorable lectures, and help them engage successfully with external benchmark agencies into the future.
Tranforming PowerPoint by David Roberts
This short video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQMtyih0ziU&feature=youtu.be looks at how we... more This short video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQMtyih0ziU&feature=youtu.be
looks at how we can use images to engage students better. It presents recent research on MultiMedia Learning and the role of imagery in attention, retention and engagement, and then tests the claims made in the lecture hall. The findings are unequivocal: high quality images and digital art offer an invaluable means of supporting the HE engagement agenda
Papers by David Roberts
Peace Review, 2012
The evangelist was preaching… very much in earnest, and he meant well, but… what did he know… wit... more The evangelist was preaching… very much in earnest, and he meant well, but… what did he know… with his smooth black coat and… his belly full, and money in his pocket?-and lecturing men who were struggling for their lives... These men were out of touch with the life they discussed [and] they were unfit to solve its problems… They were trying to save their souls-and who but a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?'
Development and Change, 2008
This work is concerned with the local legitimacy of formal postconflict statebuilding. Much recen... more This work is concerned with the local legitimacy of formal postconflict statebuilding. Much recent scholarship has stressed the legitimacy of a state's behaviour in relation to conformity to global governance norms, while others are concerned with a reformed state's legitimacy regarding democratic 'best practice'. Less evident is a discussion of the extent to which newly-enshrined or redeveloped postconflict polities are able to engender the societal legitimacy central to political stability. As long as this level of legitimacy is absent (and it is hard to generate), civil society will likely remain distant from the state, and peace and stability may remain elusive. A solution to this may be to apply existing international legislation centred in the UN and the International Labour Organization to compel international organizations and national states to deliver through their institutions basic needs security. This has the effect of instigating local-level state legitimacy while simultaneously sustaining global governance human rights regimes.
Review of International Studies, 2011
The debate on peacebuilding is deadlocked. Leading scholars of ‘fourth generation’ peacebuilding,... more The debate on peacebuilding is deadlocked. Leading scholars of ‘fourth generation’ peacebuilding, who take Liberalism to task for creating what they refer to as crises in peacebuilding, have themselves been challenged by those they criticise for over-stating Liberal failure and failing themselves to produce the goods in terms of an alternative. But behind this debate, it seems that both approaches are asking the same question: how can stable, legitimate, sustainable peace be engineered? This article engages critical theory with problem-solving social sciences. It proposes that the crises in orthodox post-conflict peacebuilding are genuine, but there are approaches that might put flesh on fourth generation concepts without bringing the Liberal edifice down, shifting the debate away from ontology and ideology and returning it to the people in whose name it is held.
This review article discusses the recent publication of two 2005 reports on the human security si... more This review article discusses the recent publication of two 2005 reports on the human security situation and debate. It analyses their conceptual and methodological disparities and contrasts their relative strengths and weaknesses, surmising that both approaches reflect the wider academic debate on human security but neither advances the definition or approach. It then proposes an alternative interpretation of what might constitute human security and how it can be coherently redefined and meaningfully applied.
Post-conflict peacebuilding is failing, according to both its critics and its advocates. By way o... more Post-conflict peacebuilding is failing, according to both its critics and its advocates. By way of solutions, proponents seek more of the same, whereas opponents argue for a radical shift. Both contain parts of a possible solution to the lack of local legitimacy that stigmatizes interventions, many of which descend into violence within five years and few of which produce democracies. This article advances the idea of a ‘popular peace’ that refocuses liberal institution building upon local, democratically-determined priorities deriving from ‘everyday lives’, in addition to internationally-favoured preferences (such as metropolitan courts and bureaucratic government). This is hypothesized to better confront the prevailing legitimacy lacuna, create social institutions around which a contract can evolve, and generate the foundations upon which durable peacebuilding may grow.
What is the potential for statebuilding interventions to foster domestic legitimacy? This article... more What is the potential for statebuilding interventions to foster domestic legitimacy? This article advocates a shift in current approaches to statebuilding. Rather than inserting modern institutions that create external legitimacy, statebuilding should focus on closing the gap between civil society and the state. More emphasis should be placed on building domestic legitimacy by fulfilling basic welfare needs. This approach would stimulate local-level state legitimacy while formalising social justice and positive peacebuilding
Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2012
The notion of legitimacy in international peacebuilding is an assumed one; there is an expectatio... more The notion of legitimacy in international peacebuilding is an assumed one; there is an expectation that the formal, Weberian state institutions advanced therein will automatically be condoned by those in whose name they are delivered. But such bodies have, since at least colonial times, been suspect in many postconflict spaces and have routinely been ignored, resisted and bypassed when their local propriety does not reflect social preferences, and the empirical evidence does not suggest this pattern has stopped. The persistence of this null legitimacy derives from the exclusionary nature of Liberal interventionism, which neither seeks local knowledge from which to design institutions nor considers their requirements important in relation to popular legitimacy. This article uses survey data drawn from Southern Sudan to discuss how legitimacy is seen from within and what it might look
The debate on peacebuilding is deadlocked. Leading scholars of ‘fourth generation’ peacebuilding,... more The debate on peacebuilding is deadlocked. Leading scholars of ‘fourth generation’ peacebuilding, who take Liberalism to task for creating what they refer to as crises in peacebuilding, have themselves been challenged by those they criticize for over-stating Liberal failure and failing themselves to produce the goods in terms of an alternative. But behind this debate, it seems that both approaches are asking the same question: how can stable, legitimate, sustainable peace be engineered? This article engages critical theory with problem-solving social sciences. It proposes that the crises in orthodox postconflict peacebuilding are genuine, but there are approaches that might put flesh on fourth generation concepts without bringing the Liberal edifice down, shifting the debate away from ontology and ideology and returning it to the people in whose name it is held
I'm conducting a world-wide survey on student engagement in the visual era. One of the participan... more I'm conducting a world-wide survey on student engagement in the visual era. One of the participants said she was ‘very interested in the use of images in teaching/learning’, adding that the survey ‘was so easy to do, it took only 5 minutes’.
The survey’s here:
and the winner will be notified when the survey closes in April 2020
Thanks for your support and cooperation
Dr. David Roberts, SFHEA
This article is concerned with the gap between how we teach International Relations and Politics ... more This article is concerned with the gap between how we teach International Relations and Politics (IR & P), and how students learn this subject at the physiological level. It discusses a 3-year trial of a visual pedagogy that better matches how we teach, to how our students live and learn.
Globalization and digitization have combined to create a 'pictorial turn' that has transformed co... more Globalization and digitization have combined to create a 'pictorial turn' that has transformed communication landscapes. Routine exposure to visual stimuli has acculturated our students' learning processes long before their arrival at university. But when they reach us, we expose them to text-centric teaching out of kilter with the worlds from which they come. More importantly, emerging scholarship argues that such textual hegemony is out of kilter with how they learn. This article describes a 3-year experiment to assess the veracity of such claims. It found that student academic engagement was greater when apposite images were applied. In addition, the experiment revealed that introducing imagery triggered active learning behaviours. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for Politics and International Relations teaching, and with proposals for diversifying research methods through a recently-formed Community of Practice. Abstract Globalization and digitization have combined to create a 'pictorial turn' that has
David Roberts is Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies. His research areas are divided be... more David Roberts is Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies. His research areas are divided between postconflict peacebuilding in places like Cambodia and Sierra Leone, and ways to transform the large group lecture experience for students and teachers alike. Abstract An important contemporary challenge to the large group lecture in higher education is that it encourages passive learning which is claimed to be out of sync with intellectual expectations and social needs. Attempts to change this practice have salvaged some aspects of the higher education experience for students, but they have not transformed the learning environment that is the most usual one, that is, one characterised by lectures, into an arena of active learning. This article tests recent multimedia learning propositions which claim that using certain images dislocates pedagogically harmful excesses of text, reducing cognitive overloading and exploiting under-used visual processing capacities. The experiments yielded unpredicted results which indicate that the use of certain images can also prompt students to become active co-producers of knowledge. This is not about visual aids, where images are a side-bar to a traditional lecture. This is about images as the medium through which active learning is energised. Marshall McLuhan famously remarked that 'the medium is the message'. But for this article, the message is the medium.
This article is concerned with student engagement and understanding in large group teaching in Hi... more This article is concerned with student engagement and understanding in large group teaching in Higher Education (HE). Specifically, it is concerned with the application of Multimedia Learning (MML) methods in Politics, History, International Relations, Sociology, Social Work, and Business and Economics teaching that privilege the use of images to complement text in lecture presentations. This ‘visual’ method, it is claimed in the literature, generates engagement and understanding better than text alone. This article develops, applies and empirically tests with students, MML methods across a range of Higher Education disciplines over three years. The research deploys Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods engaging students as active agents of investigation and change. It finds evidence to support the hypothesis that apposite images combined with reduced text increases students’ engagement and understanding with academic content, but that much formal research needs to expand on the range of demographics tested
I am concerned with improving teaching and learning in lectures, for better engagement, to demons... more I am concerned with improving teaching and learning in lectures, for better engagement, to demonstrate innovation, and to help with the Teaching Excellence Framework. In line with leading Multimedia Learning theory, I have developed a transformative way of enabling PowerPoint so it helps, rather than hinders.
I reduce text and privilege large, high-quality imagery, because a picture still paints a thousand words. Ongoing research tells us this method helps students understand, engage with and recall academic material better than text-heavy slides. The method needs only a few extra 'clicks', and transforms 'Death by PowerPoint' into award-winning lectures. I can show you how to do this easily, quickly and effectively, whether your audience consists of students, peers, research and grant bodies, administrators or management. The method will help all staff create genuinely memorable lectures, and help them engage successfully with external benchmark agencies into the future.
This short video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQMtyih0ziU&feature=youtu.be looks at how we... more This short video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQMtyih0ziU&feature=youtu.be
looks at how we can use images to engage students better. It presents recent research on MultiMedia Learning and the role of imagery in attention, retention and engagement, and then tests the claims made in the lecture hall. The findings are unequivocal: high quality images and digital art offer an invaluable means of supporting the HE engagement agenda
Peace Review, 2012
The evangelist was preaching… very much in earnest, and he meant well, but… what did he know… wit... more The evangelist was preaching… very much in earnest, and he meant well, but… what did he know… with his smooth black coat and… his belly full, and money in his pocket?-and lecturing men who were struggling for their lives... These men were out of touch with the life they discussed [and] they were unfit to solve its problems… They were trying to save their souls-and who but a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?'
Development and Change, 2008
This work is concerned with the local legitimacy of formal postconflict statebuilding. Much recen... more This work is concerned with the local legitimacy of formal postconflict statebuilding. Much recent scholarship has stressed the legitimacy of a state's behaviour in relation to conformity to global governance norms, while others are concerned with a reformed state's legitimacy regarding democratic 'best practice'. Less evident is a discussion of the extent to which newly-enshrined or redeveloped postconflict polities are able to engender the societal legitimacy central to political stability. As long as this level of legitimacy is absent (and it is hard to generate), civil society will likely remain distant from the state, and peace and stability may remain elusive. A solution to this may be to apply existing international legislation centred in the UN and the International Labour Organization to compel international organizations and national states to deliver through their institutions basic needs security. This has the effect of instigating local-level state legitimacy while simultaneously sustaining global governance human rights regimes.
Review of International Studies, 2011
The debate on peacebuilding is deadlocked. Leading scholars of ‘fourth generation’ peacebuilding,... more The debate on peacebuilding is deadlocked. Leading scholars of ‘fourth generation’ peacebuilding, who take Liberalism to task for creating what they refer to as crises in peacebuilding, have themselves been challenged by those they criticise for over-stating Liberal failure and failing themselves to produce the goods in terms of an alternative. But behind this debate, it seems that both approaches are asking the same question: how can stable, legitimate, sustainable peace be engineered? This article engages critical theory with problem-solving social sciences. It proposes that the crises in orthodox post-conflict peacebuilding are genuine, but there are approaches that might put flesh on fourth generation concepts without bringing the Liberal edifice down, shifting the debate away from ontology and ideology and returning it to the people in whose name it is held.
This review article discusses the recent publication of two 2005 reports on the human security si... more This review article discusses the recent publication of two 2005 reports on the human security situation and debate. It analyses their conceptual and methodological disparities and contrasts their relative strengths and weaknesses, surmising that both approaches reflect the wider academic debate on human security but neither advances the definition or approach. It then proposes an alternative interpretation of what might constitute human security and how it can be coherently redefined and meaningfully applied.
Post-conflict peacebuilding is failing, according to both its critics and its advocates. By way o... more Post-conflict peacebuilding is failing, according to both its critics and its advocates. By way of solutions, proponents seek more of the same, whereas opponents argue for a radical shift. Both contain parts of a possible solution to the lack of local legitimacy that stigmatizes interventions, many of which descend into violence within five years and few of which produce democracies. This article advances the idea of a ‘popular peace’ that refocuses liberal institution building upon local, democratically-determined priorities deriving from ‘everyday lives’, in addition to internationally-favoured preferences (such as metropolitan courts and bureaucratic government). This is hypothesized to better confront the prevailing legitimacy lacuna, create social institutions around which a contract can evolve, and generate the foundations upon which durable peacebuilding may grow.
What is the potential for statebuilding interventions to foster domestic legitimacy? This article... more What is the potential for statebuilding interventions to foster domestic legitimacy? This article advocates a shift in current approaches to statebuilding. Rather than inserting modern institutions that create external legitimacy, statebuilding should focus on closing the gap between civil society and the state. More emphasis should be placed on building domestic legitimacy by fulfilling basic welfare needs. This approach would stimulate local-level state legitimacy while formalising social justice and positive peacebuilding
Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2012
The notion of legitimacy in international peacebuilding is an assumed one; there is an expectatio... more The notion of legitimacy in international peacebuilding is an assumed one; there is an expectation that the formal, Weberian state institutions advanced therein will automatically be condoned by those in whose name they are delivered. But such bodies have, since at least colonial times, been suspect in many postconflict spaces and have routinely been ignored, resisted and bypassed when their local propriety does not reflect social preferences, and the empirical evidence does not suggest this pattern has stopped. The persistence of this null legitimacy derives from the exclusionary nature of Liberal interventionism, which neither seeks local knowledge from which to design institutions nor considers their requirements important in relation to popular legitimacy. This article uses survey data drawn from Southern Sudan to discuss how legitimacy is seen from within and what it might look
The debate on peacebuilding is deadlocked. Leading scholars of ‘fourth generation’ peacebuilding,... more The debate on peacebuilding is deadlocked. Leading scholars of ‘fourth generation’ peacebuilding, who take Liberalism to task for creating what they refer to as crises in peacebuilding, have themselves been challenged by those they criticize for over-stating Liberal failure and failing themselves to produce the goods in terms of an alternative. But behind this debate, it seems that both approaches are asking the same question: how can stable, legitimate, sustainable peace be engineered? This article engages critical theory with problem-solving social sciences. It proposes that the crises in orthodox postconflict peacebuilding are genuine, but there are approaches that might put flesh on fourth generation concepts without bringing the Liberal edifice down, shifting the debate away from ontology and ideology and returning it to the people in whose name it is held
Statebuilding as a panacea for post-conflict societies is a largely uncriticized notion, like the... more Statebuilding as a panacea for post-conflict societies is a largely uncriticized notion, like the liberal democracy it articulates. But, according to some, the policy framework of large-scale transitional statebuilding is often inappropriate, in particular where its focus on liberal democratic forms either ignores or
tries to overwrite structural determinants shaping particular national behaviours.Democratic assumptions run so deeply that, without necessarily having overt intent, the lack of reflection upon the paradigmatic assumptions of Western models, often results in the denial of legitimate and viable alternatives.
A more minimal approach, which could be based upon limited
externally-supported electoral support encouraging indigenous organization,however, offers to reverse the imperious and democracy-orientated trend, and to promote internally legitimate plural-indigenous systems with long-term sustainability.
Defence Studies 1(1) , 2001
International Journal on World Peace 22(3), 2005
Security Dialogue 37(2), 2008
This review article discusses the recent publication of two 2005 reports on the human security si... more This review article discusses the recent publication of two 2005 reports on the human security situation and debate. It analyses their conceptual and methodological disparities and contrasts their relative strengths and weaknesses, surmising that both approaches reflect the wider academic debate on human security but neither advances the definition or approach. It then proposes an alternative interpretation of what might constitute human security and how it can be coherently redefined and meaningfully applied.
Medicine, Conflict and Survival 24(1), 2008
Politics 28(2), 2008
discussed, in a recent issue of Politics, how the human security debate is stymied by conceptual ... more discussed, in a recent issue of Politics, how the human security debate is stymied by conceptual and definitional weaknesses, and how it is politicised in conventional security studies. In response, this article takes a different approach and develops from the critical security literature a working conceptualisation and definition of broad human insecurity. It proposes as one example of objectively identifiable and measurable dimension of human insecurity the largely preventable high rates of under five mortality (U5M) and demonstrates its origins in the socially constructed international system. In this way, it responds to Ewan's remarks concerning the need to debate subjectivity and historical (and contemporary) political determinism in order to circumvent the unending 'circuitous debates' that stymie the development of human security.
This site www.hearingvoicesproject.org has been created to gather people's stories of building pe... more This site www.hearingvoicesproject.org has been created to gather people's stories of building peace and doing research in conflict and postconflict spaces. People's stories can be sent to a website from their phones of PCs if they have them, and there they can be read by anyone with internet.
We are hoping thousands of people's voices in conflict and postconflict places can be heard by western peacebuilding agencies, so the peace that gets built is meaningful locally and therefore more sustainable than the peace outsiders often install.
Please feel free to send this link to anyone you think could send it yet further afield into conflict and postconflict spaces, and please pass it on to anyone you know who may have a story to tell.
Chandler, D and Sisk, T. Routledge Handbook of International Statebuilding, 2013
Chandler, D and Hynek, N, Critical Explorations of Human Security: From Discourse Deconstruction to Political Emancipation, 2010
McIntosh, M and Hunter, A, Perspectives on Human Security, London: Routledge, 2010
The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations, 2009
This chapter is concerned with whether large-scale statebuilding interventions have an impact on ... more This chapter is concerned with whether large-scale statebuilding interventions have an impact on democratizing state polities much beyond their metropolitan centers. It reviews the effectiveness of statebuilding in Cambodia vis-à-vis its impact on aspects of the political and social organization of metropolitan elites and rural masses, and finds that, after 17 years, political change in both sectors has been superficial and remains operationalized and dominated by informal, socially-ruled systems of patronage and clientelism, rather than determined by impartial, independent and impersonal institutions associated with the democratic prerogative explicit in statebuilding and democratization. The chapter discusses how comprehending political activities is complicated by the appearance of democracy disguising the functioning of political and social institutions. There are, it argues, superficial political institutions in the metropolis of Phnom Penh that are nominally democratic, but which, on closer scrutiny, are political husks. They are less meaningful democratic institutions concerned with the rule of law and the separation of powers, for instance, and more labeled buildings. Furthermore, rural areas seem even less susceptible to democratization than the metropolis, especially where -new‖ systems render people temporarily or permanently less secure than the pre-democratic means of social organization. The chapter proposes that statebuilding in Cambodia has been of limited impact in terms of its implicit and explicit democratization agenda.
Chandler, D. Statebuilding and Intervention,, 2009
Kiernan, B and Hughes, C (Eds.), Conflict and Change in Cambodia, 2007