City News for staff November 2012

November 2012 | issue 13 Recent weeks have seen City open a new silent study space for postgraduate students and the oďŹƒcial launch of our City Graduate School. City News also explains why the Research Excellence Framework will be so important to our future and outlines the latest Strategic Plan developments.

In this last edition of 2012 we also have Cass’s 10th anniversary celebrations and introduce our new visual identity and writing guidelines.

CIT Y NEWS

NEWS IN BRIEF Vince Cable praises Cass Business Secretary Vince Cable praised Cass’s ‘global reputation’ for education and research in the sixth annual Sir John Cass Foundation Lecture last month. He is pictured second left, with (l-r) Richard Gillingwater, Dean of Cass Business School; Kevin Everett, Chairman of the Sir John Cass Foundation; and Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Curran.

City marks opening of new research Graduate School

You can read the transcript of Mr Cable’s lecture online: http://tinyurl.com/CableatCass

City has launched an outdoor advertising campaign targeting potential student applicants in key regional areas. The posters and bus-sides will be live until mid-December and feature two of our student bloggers; Veronika Kelemen and Ryan McConnell.

Two new Deans confirmed City has confirmed new Deans for The City Law School and the Conjoint Schools of Engineering & Mathematical Sciences and Informatics (SEMS and SoI).

Visualising the Smart Home Dr Veselin Rakocevic, Professor Neil Maiden and Dr Sara Jones are collaborating with the IMDEA Energia Institute (Spain) on a £190,000 research project on consumer energy use. The research grant was awarded for winning the E.On 2012 International Research Initiative Competition.

About City News

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City’s Graduate School was opened by Dean Professor Ken Grattan and Professor John Fothergill, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research & Enterprise) at a special event last month.

Professor Grattan (above left) said: "City's Strategic Plan is ambitious in its research agenda and our research students ... make a very important contribution to our research successes and will support our ability to deliver the performance targets in the Plan.”

Professor Fothergill (above right) commented that the School will support City's commitment to academic excellence and noted the ‘exceptional contribution’ that City’s PhD students make to the University.

Research students registered on a City research degree programme become members of the City Graduate School, which will work closely with Schools and Professional Services to strengthen our research student community and support its development.

Professor Carl Stychin (right) has been appointed Dean of The City Law School.

He will join City on 1st December from the University of Reading where he was Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Enterprise).

Professor Stychin has an international reputation for his research on the legal construction and regulation of sexual and gender identities. He has a research interest in the law of negligence and his recent work has focused on law and popular culture.

City News is produced each month by Marketing & Communications and distributed to all staff.

Library Centre opened

Professor Roger Crouch, Head of the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences at Durham University, has been appointed Conjoint Dean of SEMS and SoI, starting on 1st April 2013.

If you have any comments or feedback about the magazine or its distribution, or suggestions for content, please email: Christopher.leonard.1@city.ac.uk

The Graduate School Library Centre, a dedicated silent study area for postgraduate students in the Northampton Square Library and featuring commissioned artwork by artist Chris Pickup (see front page), was opened last month by Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Curran.

He has an international reputation for research on the structural thermomechanics of nuclear pressure reactor vessels. He is credited with a major restructuring of undergraduate education and the research direction of his School at Durham.

An evening with the VC

New look for City’s identity

In an informal ‘chat show’ event last month, our Vice-Chancellor was interviewed by Professor George Brock, Head of Journalism.

Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted the new City University London logo on our front page, now with the addition of ‘EST 1894’.

Professor Curran shared his initial thoughts about City on joining in 2010 and discussed how the challenges facing higher education might impact on City’s Vision for 2016 before taking questions from staff.

This change is part of a wider update of City’s visual identity guidelines for the University’s publications and advertising (pictured). Changes include the introduction of new graphics based on our crest and the phasing out of the onecolour logo. From now on the logo will be used in its original red and black form and situated on white background.

You can listen to a recording of the event through YouTube at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDd8FrRtnBk

Cass’s 10th anniversary Pictured below are members of Cass Business School at the launch of celebrations marking an important anniversary.

It is 10 years since the School changed its name from City University Business School following a generous donation from The Sir John Cass Foundation.

Over the last decade Cass has grown to be a leading global business school; its undergraduate programmes are ranked first in London and third in the UK (The Guardian University Guide 2012) and its MBAs are third in the UK and seventh in Europe (Financial Times 2011 Global Executive MBA rankings).

Highlights from the last decade include launching the MSc in Management; collaborating with the Dubai International Financial Centre on the EMBA in Dubai; establishing the Peter Cullum Centre for Entrepreneurship and the £10 million Cass Entrepreneurship Fund; and gaining the prestigious triple crown accreditation in business education.

Find out more at: www.cass.city.ac.uk/10th-anniversary

These new rules are complemented by our updated Writing Style Guide, setting out the rules and conventions that everyone at City should use when writing documents.

Lindsey Venden, Interim Head of Marketing, said: “The strategy behind these initiatives is to promote consistency, integrity and accessibility in City’s communications and reflect our heritage as a University with both a long and proud history and an association with business and the professions.”

You can access the revised Writing Style Guide, our new PowerPoint template and the latest guidelines at: www.city.ac.uk/brand

Help City’s students by shopping online The City Future Fund, which supports our students through personal financial hardship, provides scholarships and helps with accommodation, is urging staff to donate while shopping online through Give As You Live (www.giveasyoulive.com).

City Future Fund will automatically receive donations every time you buy online from thousands of participating retailers.

Find out more online: www.city.ac.uk/alumni/cityfuture-fund

NEWS IN BRIEF Academician award Professor James Hampton of the Psychology Department has been conferred the award of Academician by the Academy of Social Sciences. He was one of 63 leading social scientists to be awarded, including former Home Secretary David Blunkett and Peter Riddell, Director of the Institute for Government.

Dean’s Lecture Series Last month Professor Chris Ham, Chief Executive of the influential think tank The King's Fund, outlined his vision for reforming health and social care in the UK, in the first School of Health Sciences Dean's Lecture this academic year.

National Customer Service Week During October’s National Customer Service Week, Victoria Wright from Timetabling was voted this year’s Customer Service Star

by City colleagues. In a new Mystery Shopping competition, the Reception team won the award for Best Customer Service.

Emmy success for alumni Ramita Navai (Broadcast Journalism 2003) and Nicole Young (International Journalism 2002) were individually recognised at this year's Emmy Awards for their documentary filmmaking. The Emmys are considered to be the television equivalent of the Oscars in the United States.

www.city.ac.uk/staff

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NEWS IN BRIEF Chaire d’Excellence Professor Dermot Bowler of the Autism Research Group has been appointed Chaire d’Excellence to work with colleagues from the Université de Caen Basse-Normandie and world-renowned neuropsychology laboratory INSERM. The two-year project aims to develop a collaborative programme of research into the neuroscience of memory in autism.

Open days With the 2013/14 undergraduate application process underway, City held Open Days on Saturday 6th October and Saturday 3rd November. More than 2,000 potential City students and 5,000 people in total attended the two days, with colleagues from across City promoting the University’s academic programmes and the student experience.

Stephen Avery Stephen Avery, who joined City as interim Chief Financial Officer earlier this summer, has been appointed to the role permanently.

Stephen, an experienced CFO, joined City from the University of Salford. He will continue to review and revise the University’s Financial Plan, which underpins our Strategic Plan.

Cass MBA now ranked 30th in the world The full-time MBA at Cass has been ranked 30th in the world in The Economist’s Which MBA rankings, seven places higher than last year and 23 places higher than two years ago. Cass's full-time MBA is now ranked third in the UK and ninth in Europe

by The Economist.

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City celebrates its fourth annual Green City Week

Myddelton Street opening

City is celebrating its fourth annual Green City Week from Monday 12th to Friday 16th November.

Events and activities will encourage staff and students to participate in environmental initiatives at the University and highlight the importance of living a sustainable life. Activities include: • City Food Fair: Held in Northampton Square • Events on FAIRTRADE, careers in the energy sector and Walking in London (a panel discussion on walking, cycling and urban physical activity in London) • Guided lunchtime walks on Tuesday and Thursday • Cycle activities: Free Bike Doctor repairs, a bike maintenance workshop and a cycle challenge • Vegetable garden volunteering: Help to spruce up City’s vegetable garden and decorate it with a mural • Stalls on University Building main walkway: running all week with interactive exhibits, products for sale and competitions from Tapwater.org, Recycling at City, The Water Explorer, Love Food Hate Waste and My Green Planet.

The full schedule of events can be found at: www.city.ac.uk/thepoint

Staff from across the University gathered to open the Myddelton Street Building which provides accommodation for the School of Health Sciences, HR, IS, Finance and Property & Facilities.

Pictured above (l-r) are Professor Stanton Newman, Dean of the School of Health Sciences, Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Curran and Roger Ward, Deputy Director (Property) from Property & Facilities, who cut a ribbon following the staff event to signal the building’s formal opening.

Professor Curran thanked staff involved in the relocation for helping it to go smoothly, adding: “This is the type of high quality space we want at City and it is a great addition to our estate.”

Life-saving AEDs installed In cases of cardiac arrest, every minute that passes without defibrillation lessens the the victim’s chances of survival by 14 per cent but Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) can be used by anyone while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

City has installed seven AEDs in the Security Office and Occupational Health Service in Northampton Square and in the receptions of Bunhill Row, West Smithfield, Gray’s Inn Place and the Social Sciences and Myddelton Street buildings.

For more information email: Andrew.Wigley.1@city.ac.uk

Making the case for strategic plan projects The latest developments in the implementation of our Strategic Plan Six months after the launch of our Strategic Plan, the University has put in place a roadmap for how it will achieve the Vision of being a leading global University by 2016.

Each workstream has developed outline business cases for year one projects, to be considered by ExCo for prioritisation and approval based on six criteria: • Strength of fit with the Strategic Plan • Value for money • Benefits

After an initial wave of publicity and internal briefings, eight workstreams were established to drive the implementation (City News, July/Aug 2012).

• Complexity and feasibility of implementation • Interdependencies • Sustainability (i.e. could a project outcome be overtaken by technological, market or organisational change?).

Over the summer working groups were established for each workstream with representation from across City, to develop business cases for an initial wave of ‘year one’ implementation projects (beginning between August 2012 and July 2013).

Dean Stokes, Director of Strategic Planning & Performance (below), explains that a lot of work is already underway – for example, the recruitment of academic staff, City’s preparations for the Research Excellence Framework 2014 (see pages 6 and 7) and ambitious plans for the University’s estate. Business cases for several other projects are being developed and reviewed.

The workstreams and their projects

Workstream projects under consideration include:

Enhancing our culture to deliver Academic Excellence Academic recruitment and supporting high performance.

Succeeding with Research and Enterprise The REF. The workstream is also thinking about how we can improve the induction of academic staff and increase research grant and enterprise income.

Succeeding with Students He says: “The Strategic Plan is not about starting from scratch with additional projects on top of existing work.

Instead we are identifying the projects that will make the biggest contribution to the Strategic Plan, which we can prioritise for year one.

“A small Programme Office within the Strategic Planning & Performance team is supporting collaborative work and over-seeing new and existing projects to ensure their fit with City’s objectives under the Strategic Plan.”

Proposed projects will be considered in terms of six criteria (see box right) and, over the next few months, workstreams will begin implementing them. Regular updates will be provided through the Strategic Planning & Performance intranet pages, regular updates to staff and in City News.

If you would like to know more, contact Dean Stokes or Christine Giroux, Strategic Programmes Manager.

A range of work under the education and student plan.

International International student recruitment, education and research partnerships.

IS and Facilities Enablers (two workstreams) The IS workstream is focusing on improving the University’s information and communications technology platform. The Facilities workstream is being shaped by the estates strategy.

Operational Excellence This work stream is focused on improving quality of service to students, staff and stakeholders.

Marketing, Communications and Engagement This workstream has two strands: internal communications and engagement (staff and students); and external communications (with outside stakeholders, including prospective students).

www.city.ac.uk/staff 5

Building a framework for research excellence at City Why the entire University has a stake in City’s submission to the Research Excellence Framework Beer and universities are normally associated with students’ extra-curricular activities but they could be linked in another way.

Richard Taylor, the University of Leicester's Director of Corporate Affairs and Planning, has said the only UK market more competitive than university admissions is canned beer.

As well as competing for high-calibre undergraduate and postgraduate students, universities also compete for research funding, both individual research grants and core Quality-Rated (QR) funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The latter depends on a university’s performance in the Research Excellence Framework 2014 (REF) exercise.

Post-REF, for the subsequent six years or more, HEFCE research funding

– currently worth around £10 million a year to City – will be provided for research outputs rated of 4* (world-leading) and 3* (internationally excellent) quality. Universities must ensure that as much as possible of their research submitted to the REF is of this quality.

With City’s future reputation and research income largely in the hands of our REF outcome, Professor John Fothergill (left), our new Pro ViceChancellor (Research & Enterprise), is prioritising City’s REF submission.

“It is likely that HEFCE research funding [‘QR’ funding] will become even more focused on those universities that do better in the REF,” he explains.

“It is a limited pot of money. The result will determine research funding until the following REF, which may not take place until around 2020. It is vital we maximise our efforts to do well or other universities will move on without us and it will be very difficult to catch up.”

Our submission process City is currently preparing its choice of 4* and 3* research outputs for submission to appropriate REF units of assessment (each one covering particular areas of research).

REF assessment panels, comprised of academic subject experts, will consider publications (or other ‘outputs’) from each academic submitted to the REF. Thus, City is taking a strategic approach to its REF submission, anticipating what is required to get the best possible results from the assessment panels (see boxout).

The level of interest in the REF at City was demonstrated by a recent workshop on issues relating to the choice of outputs for academics from the Schools of Engineering & Mathematical Sciences and Informatics, which over 50 people attended.

Jo Bradford (opposite page), Director of the Research Office, says: “The increasingly competitive environment and the change to the funding formula mean that we have to be very selective about the research we submit, taking account of the context for each unit of assessment as well as the overall result for the University.

By Chris Leonard

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“We will comply with our published Code of Practice on the selection of academics to ensure that our criteria are applied fairly and that we identify everyone who can be submitted on this basis.”

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 The REF is a new system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education, replacing the old Research Assessment Exercise.

Regional funding bodies in England (under HEFCE), Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will each use REF assessment outcomes to inform their allocation of research funding from 2015/16.

For City, the REF outcome affects the entire University. Achieving a good outcome will influence our position in national and international league tables, thereby improving our ability to recruit students, but it will also help to increase our HEFCE research funding and to attract research grants and contract funding.

Professor Fothergill says everyone at City, in all Schools and Professional Services, has a part to play in the REF; whether it is academics helping colleagues preparing research submissions, staff providing direct administrative and personal support or by simply playing your part in helping to achieve the Strategic Plan and thereby making City a more attractive destination for research-excellent academics.

He says: “It is important for everyone in the University to be signed up to the REF. This is something we are all very capable of doing. The REF will be the primary indicator of how good we are and I’m very optimistic that we can do well in it.

REF 2014: Key dates 31st July 2013: End of assessment period for research impacts, research environment and data about research income and awarded research degrees 31st October 2013: Census date for staff eligible for selection 29th November 2013: Closing date for submissions

Higher education institutions submit research publications and other outputs in up to 36 units of assessment (e.g. psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience; mathematical sciences; law; sociology etc).

31st December 2013: End of publication period for research outputs including those underpinning case studies

Assessments are based on three elements: the quality of research outputs; the impact of research on society; and the research environment.

2014: Panels assess submissions

The ‘impact of research on society’ is a new assessment element introduced with REF 2014. This requires case studies demonstrating the impacts resulting from City’s research in each area of activity, with statements describing City’s support for staff in achieving them.

Spring 2015: Publication of submissions, panel reports and sub-profiles

December 2014: Publication of REF outcomes

Impacts can include: influencing government policy; changes to working practices leading to greater efficiency and/or employee wellbeing; technological development leading to economic growth; and public engagement with research.

A quality profile will be drawn up for each assessment element, showing the proportion of a university’s submitted research in each that meets defined starred levels (unclassified and one to four stars). From this, an overall quality profile is awarded to a university’s research activity in each assessment area.

Find out more about the REF and City’s submission process on our website: www.city.ac.uk/ref

“We know our people are good but achieving our Strategic Plan will give people confidence and allow them to fulfil their potential.”

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Highlights of recent research at City University London

Research at City Building trust in the cloud New research from City has proposed a mechanism for calculating the reputation of cloud service providers.

Cloud computing has emerged in recent years as a ‘utility in computing’, enabling IT services in which resources are retrieved from the internet as distinct from connections to servers. Cloud computing has several advantages over server-based systems. It enables employees to work remotely from different geographic locations, reduces IT infrastructure costs and enables companies to upgrade their software more easily.

However despite these advantages, cloud computing faces several issues of trust, security, identity and privacy arising from its reliance on internet connections from computers and mobile devices.

Professor Andrea Zisman and Dr Muttukrishnan Rajarajan with colleagues from BT, have proposed mechanisms to calculate the reputation of cloud service providers. They evaluated and compared their proposed model with existing reputation models using subjective logic operators and computed opinion values.

The research was published in Trust Management IV, part of a series by the International Federation of Information Processing; IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology.

The research is illustrated by a cloud computing education application being deployed by BT for universities and other education institutions.

This enables cloud-hosted virtual laboratory environments, with access to an institution’s applications, computers and servers.

The academics modelled the trustworthiness of service providers through the combined opinion of three computations: the compliance of service level agreement parameters; service provider satisfaction ratings; and service provider behaviour.

The authors are presently extending their model to consider relationships between service providers and infrastructure providers, to be used as another variable when calculating trust values.

European accountability post-Lisbon The comitology regime, the committee-based mechanism for controlling the European Commission's exercise of its powers to implement EU measures, has historically been subject to severe criticism on the grounds of a lack of accountability and transparency.

This system was fundamentally reformed through the Implementing Acts Regulation (IAR), which came into force on 1st March 2011.

Now, research by Dr Marios Costa, Lecturer in the City Law School, has explored whether the new IAR rules are sufficient to remedy the accountability deficits referred to above. Dr Costa’s research, entitled ‘Accountability for Delegated and Implementing Acts after the Treaty of Lisbon’, was published in the European Law Journal.

His research contends that the latest developments regarding the delegating and implementing of acts under the IAR are unlikely to remedy the accountability deficits inherent in this area. He shows that more specifically, as regards to implementing measures, accountability to the EU’s member states remains the same, at least on a transitional basis, although the European Council (as distinct from member states) no longer has a significant role.

Dr Costas argues that there has been no improvement in transparency

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The research used the context of the Fukushima Daiichi Tokyo Power Company accident in Japan in 2011, caused by a 15-metre tsunami following a major earthquake.

Research at City

Stupples and Spurgin examined the impact accidents have on the ways nuclear power plants are organised and argued that, ‘often accident situations and their responses are affected by long-term decisions of management’.

They researched how nuclear power plants could be managed based on a model devised by cybernetisist Professor Stafford Beer known as the Viable Systems Model (VSM), which is applied to management running high reliability organisations. This states that during a nuclear accident, a normal VSM nuclear power plant organisational model would transform itself into a compact VSM (with simpler management organisation). standards for members of the public under the IAR and that in fact, the development of the delegated acts process has actually worsened the standards of accountability and transparency.

He explains that although in theory the European Parliament (EP) has impressive control powers over delegated acts, in practice the Parliament’s gains are more modest than they appear compared to the IAR’s predecessor (the regulatory procedure with scrutiny).

In their research, Stupples and Spurgin established a connection between nuclear plant models (including automatic control and protection modules) and Professor Beer’s model. They recommended improvements in emergency procedures during accident control and mitigation, which should be flexible and ‘based upon something like a symptom-based procedure and should consider beyond design-basis events’.

Nuclear industry – shaped by accidents The catastrophic nature and implications of nuclear accidents such as Fukushima Daiichi (2011) and Chernobyl (1986), have caused the spotlight of nuclear industry-related academic attention to fall on studies of accidents.

However, until now such studies have not encompassed the decisionmaking processes of those managing power plants, particularly before and during accidents.

Professor David Stupples, Professor of Systems and Cryptography and Anthony Spurgin, a City engineering PhD student, have published research in the International Journal of Engineering Management and Economics, examining the influence of accidents on the development and management of nuclear power plants.

City Research Online Have you uploaded your research outputs to City’s research repository? City Research Online (City News, November 2011) will help you raise the visibility of your research and help the University to collate and monitor its research.

Find out more at: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk

www.city.ac.uk/staff 9

Student journalists on an initiative to use art to raise self-confidence in homeless people

Cafe Art - where homelessness, art and coffee meet There are more than 5,500 people sleeping rough or in homeless hostels in London. Many suffer cripplingly low self-esteem and have become isolated from society. Those who find a place to stay at hostels can even lack the confidence to leave during the daytime.

Cafe Art is a project established in April this year with the specific aim of encouraging homeless people to see themselves in a new light. Eighty per cent of London’s homeless charities are now working with Cafe Art to display artwork done by homeless people in 20 London cafes.

Cafe Art is not about money and there are no grants or government loans supporting this initiative. There is no pressure on those having a coffee or meeting for lunch in one of the 20 participating cafes to buy the artwork on display. They are simply encouraged to go online and leave positive feedback on the pictures they like. This is made simple by QR codes found at the bottom of each frame.

Cafe Art’s organiser, who wishes to remain anonymous, believes the project gives the artists a sense of self-worth: “Most important are the artists. It is the artists that get the self-confidence. If you do not have self-esteem, even with all the qualifications in the world, you will not stand out and you will get lost in the crowd.”

The first problem The first problem Cafe Art ran up against was the expense of providing frames for the paintings but, once the project was explained to furniture giant IKEA, it donated 100 frames free of charge.

When a piece of artwork is sold through Cafe Art, the artist and the person who has bought their work are encouraged to meet in the cafe where the work was on display. This is intended to create an opportunity for the buyer to empathise with the homeless artist.

“It is a very simple concept; there is no money involved and everybody wins,” said a Cafe Art spokesperson.

By Liva Adéle Øverland, Lucy Palmer and Zhuliyana Boyanova

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They add: “It is just wall space so it is a win-win for the cafe owners and for the charity because they [both] get free publicity through the website and people showing an interest in what we are doing. The public get to see new artwork in a [regularly] changing landscape while having a cup of coffee. But most important of all, it is the artists that get a boost to their self-confidence.”

St Mungo’s Hostel on Argyle Street (behind London’s Oxford Street) was the first charity approached by Cafe Art because it runs an art class every Wednesday. Joe Kitson and Reza Partoern are two participants.

Joe was sleeping rough in a bivouac for several years until he moved into St Mungo’s and now he produces art and literature for the St Mungo’s magazine, Homeless Diamonds. “I get really big-headed about it,” he laughs.

Joe has also sold work though Cafe Art (above): “Twenty five years ago I used to sleep rough near Belsize Park in a camper van. It was freezing! I sold a piece [of artwork] in a cafe just around the corner from there.

Meeting the lady who admired it was very nice.”

Joe points out that Belsize Park is no longer just a place where he slept rough but he is now known locally for being an established artist. Joe feels the art he and other Cafe Art participants produce benefits society by helping independent businesses in this difficult financial climate.

“People go to the cafes to see the art and it stimulates trade for the cafes.”

Reza, another St Mungo’s resident, is originally from Iran. He came to England to study English Literature and he says there is one good reason why he enjoys art and why it gives him confidence: “It is a way of expressing my feelings.”

For more information about Cafe Art, visit: www.cafeart.org.uk

Meet your colleagues

Name and job title Dr Caroline Wiertz, Reader in Marketing

What do you do at City day to day?

Research, education and administration although the proportions depend on the term. At the moment I am focused on the MSc and PhD programmes which take up most of my time but are a lot of fun. I had a wonderful sabbatical last year but really missed contact with students. The MSc in Management students are great this year – I am teaching ‘Principles of Marketing’ and we are working on a very interesting real-life case. The students must develop a marketing plan for the UK introduction of a completely new product: a sun monitor wristband that warns you when you should get out of the sun before getting burnt. Prototype technology exists but has not been commercialised yet which makes it particularly challenging. My students must come up with every aspect of the marketing plan. The Swedish entrepreneur commercialising the product visited London last month to meet the students, distribute product samples and answer their questions. The students are really excited about this project which is very rewarding for me.

Regarding research, I am interested in how new media affect consumer behaviour. I am currently revising my ‘Twitter paper’ for the Journal of Marketing, one of the top journals in my field. My co-author Thorsten Hennig-Thurau and I investigated whether there is an impact on the adoption of new products – in our case movies – from word-of-mouth messages sent via Twitter. We analysed over four million tweets on about 105 movies throughout their respective opening weekends. We found that even though positive reviews outnumber negative reviews by a factor of seven on average, only the negative reviews impacted viewing throughout a film’s opening weekend. This is a very interesting finding for wordof-mouth literature and should hopefully make our reviewers happy.

I have six other papers at different stages in the review process but unfortunately not enough time to work on them! And then there are still my three PhD students... so I am not getting bored.

What is the biggest challenge in your job?

Juggling everything and not panicking when I think about what I have to do at any point in time.

How do you overcome it?

I get on with it and get it done.

If you didn’t do your job, what would you be doing?

Definitely starting my own company! I am plugged into Tech City and have been working closely with several start-ups over the past few years.

I am increasingly tempted to give it a go myself.

What do you do to relax?

My husband and I have a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel called Memphis and we go for long walks on Hampstead Heath. I love to cook (I am halfFrench after all), I read and I play the piano. I try to enjoy living in London as much as possible and I go to a lot of exhibitions, concerts and dance and theatre performances. I am very interested in contemporary art and unfortunately for my savings, have started collecting it. I like skiing in winter and scuba-diving in summer and I also go to the gym.

I have recently become a Trustee of the St Martin-in-the-Field's BBC Radio 4 Christmas Appeal (http://tinyurl.com/lavkrp), raising money for the homeless in London and people in need across the UK. There is a lot of work involved and I will probably say goodbye to my spare time for the foreseeable future.

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?

My good friends Natasha and Tuba (former Cass colleagues some of you might remember), Evan Williams, Jack Nicholson, Ferran Adria (if I can get him to cook) and Jon Hamm as eye-candy.

Favourite place in London?

‘My’ corner of town: Hampstead. The Heath is beautiful in any season and the village feels like a village. I even know my neighbours. I am inspired by its intellectual heritage – Karl Pearson spent most of his life near to where I live and Ian Fleming wrote his first James Bond novels down the road.

Favourite film?

Impossible to answer, I love too many. However, I will share my most embarrassing film obsession: I watched Dirty Dancing 23 times when I was 14.

Favourite book?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and almost everything else he has written. My favourite funny book: Changing Places by David Lodge. I got it from my PhD advisor; I think he was trying to scare me off academia.

Favourite song/music?

Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2 in C Minor. I have listened to it countless times and I still get goose bumps.

www.city.ac.uk/staff 11

Dates for your diary www.city.ac.uk/events Green City Week Monday 12th to Friday 16th November Events and activities to encourage staff and students to participate in environmental initiatives (see page four). There is a schedule of events online at: www.city.ac.uk/thepoint

Clare Hammond in concert 7pm to 8.30pm Tuesday 13th November, Performance Space Clare Hammond, a Doctorate of Musical Arts graduate, gives a recital as part of pieces by Handel, Szymanowski, Beethoven and Scriabin.

Olive Tree Forum: Jordanian-Palestinian Relations What's at Stake?

6pm to 7.30pm Wednesday 14th November, Room A130 College Building The second of the 2012/13 Olive Tree Middle East fora (www.city.ac.uk/olive-tree), on the future of Jordan in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Syria and quests for political reform in Arab countries.

University staff quiz night 5.45pm to 9pm Friday 16th November, Northampton Suite The latest of our popular staff quiz nights. Teams of up to six (including up to one non-City employee) compete for prizes throughout the evening. For more details and to enter your team, contact Graham Miller on extension 3270.

Electronic Exchange: City – Kingston 7pm Tuesday 20th November, Performance Space

GDL & GE LLB Open Evening 6pm to 9pm Thursday 29th November, Gray’s Inn Place

Concert with performers and composers from City and Kingston University.

Open evening for prospective Law students.

Postgraduate Open Evening: Schools of Engineering & Mathematical Sciences and Informatics 5pm to 7pm Wednesday 21st November An informal event giving prospective students the chance to talk with course directors.

Inaugural lecture: Professor Michael Bromley (Journalism) 6.30pm Thursday 22nd November, Oliver Thompson Lecture Theatre

Includes works by Gardiner, Stanford and Mendelssohn.

Class of 2002 - 2006 reunion 5.30pm to 10pm Friday 30th November, Students' Union Northampton Square An alumni event for anyone who worked or studied at City between 2002 and 2006.

City’s new Professor of International Journalism presents his inaugural lecture: What are we going to do about journalism?

The role of higher education in the ‘crisis’.

City University Symphony Orchestra: Mozart and the Two Haydns 7.30pm Tuesday 4th December, St Giles Cripplegate (Barbican)

BPTC & LPC Open Day 11am to 2pm Saturday 24th November, Gray's Inn Place

Includes Mozart’s Flute Concerto No.1 and Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 in G Major.

Open Day promoting The City Law School.

Vice-Chancellor’s Open House 3pm to 4.30pm, Wednesday 28th November, Oliver Thompson Lecture Theatre Professors Paul Curran and Richard Verrall will discuss progress with the implementation of our Strategic Plan and answer questions from the staff audience.

Staff training and development Finance and purchasing training Wednesday 21st November Safeguarding children and vulnerable adults Thursday 29th November Retirement planning workshop Friday 7th December

City University London Chamber Choir: Cathedral Classics 7.30pm Thursday 29th November, St Clement Church, King Square

Student appeals and conduct – Training for panel members Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Managing workload training for academics Thursday 31st January 2013 For more information, email: evan.bates.1@city.ac.uk or visit: http://www.city.ac.uk/sd/index

Olive Tree Forum: US Elections – The implications for the Middle East 6pm to 7.30pm Wednesday 5th December, Room A130 College Building A panel of specialist speakers discusses what the outcome of the US Presidential and Congressional elections will mean for US policies in the Middle East.

Graduation Ceremonies Monday 14th January and Wednesday 23rd to Thursday 24th January 2013 Our first graduation ceremonies of the 2013 calendar year will be held in the Barbican Centre, London.

I did that course!

Jackie Monte-Colombo, Manager of General Services, took the retirement planning workshop.

“I found the course stimulating and very interesting,” she said. “Not only were finances covered well but the presenters were very encouraging about the next chapter of our lives.”