Loughborough Institute of Advanced Studies Podcast

Dr Alison Barnes - Hiding in Plain Sight: Graphic Heritage, Toponymy and Settler Colonialism in Paddington, Sydney

IAS Alumni Fellow (from the 2023-24 academic year) Dr Alison Barnes [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias/fellows/2023-24/barnesalison/] delivers a seminar on their research - Street and house name signs in Paddington, Sydney, function as material articulations of the settler colonial project. Both hide in plain sight, yet in diametrically opposed ways. Drawing on a survey of 315 house names and 128 distinct street names, the research develops a taxonomy of naming strategies which are analysed in relation to their design, materiality, and role within colonisation. Street signs foreground legibility and functionality through a 'rhetoric of neutrality', while house names announce their presence through an overt use of materials, colour, and craft. For the house names, it is precisely this aesthetic dimension that obscures their role in the overwriting and taking of place. In contemporary Paddington, where the real estate narrative foregrounds original heritage features and houses sell for millions of dollars, a doubling of dispossession is at play in which graphic heritage, property ownership, and an ongoing ‘white possession’ are inextricably entangled. For more information about the IAS, please visit - https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias]

Dr Everardt Burger - Rethinking Urban Mobility Through the Lens of Human Experience

IAS Guest Speaker Dr Everardt Burger [https://www.linkedin.com/in/everardt-burger-830927/?originalSubdomain=za] delivers a seminar on their research - Urban transport infrastructure is typically planned and evaluated through technical performance measures such as efficiency, capacity, and operational reliability. Yet the real-world success of mobility systems depends fundamentally on how people experience, interpret, and use them in everyday life. This talk introduces a human-centred perspective on urban infrastructure that places user behaviour and spatial accessibility at the core of transport planning. Drawing on empirical research across South African cities—including studies of mode choice, commuter satisfaction, pedestrian accessibility, and infrastructure utilisation—the presentation shows how mobility environments operate as socio-technical systems shaped by perception, decision-making, and spatial connectivity. Rather than viewing infrastructure as static provision, the talk explores how design, accessibility, and behavioural response interact to produce system performance. The session proposes an integrative framework for understanding mobility infrastructure through user experience and spatial function, and reflects on the implications for planning more responsive, inclusive, and effective urban transport systems. For more information about the IAS, please visit - https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias]

Dr Yolandi Burger - Nelson Mandela’s Narrative Spaces

Joint Loughborough-Leicester IAS Fellow Dr Yolandi Burger [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias/fellows/2025-26/burgeryolandi/] delivers a seminar on their research - How do places named after Nelson Mandela operate as narrative infrastructures through which memory, identity, and civic meaning are negotiated? Building on the Named after Nelson (NaN) project, this IAS–LIAS fellowship complements the Gauteng City-Region Observatory's project on urban places as narrative spaces. The presentation explores how toponymy, graphic heritage, and storytelling intersect to shape public understanding of Mandela’s legacy across diverse urban contexts. Drawing on case studies from Gauteng in South Africa, and extending the dialogue to Leicester in the United Kingdom, this talk positions narrative mapping and interpretive design as methodological instruments, while drawing on urban observatory thinking as a conceptual framework for analysing how symbolic association translates into lived spatial experience. The presentation advances interdisciplinary dialogue across urban heritage, design, and digital mapping by demonstrating how narrative methodologies can structure the interpretation of symbolic urban landscapes within SDG-oriented heritage discourse. It proposes narrative space as both an analytical lens and a collaborative platform for advancing transnational heritage engagement. For more information about the IAS, please visit - https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias]

Climate Change, Body Image, Eating Behaviours and Wellbeing

This event is made possible with thanks to the Biddle Family Scholarship. The International Academy for Body Image, Eating Problems and Health [https://oraprdnt.uqtr.uquebec.ca/portail/gscw031?owa_no_site=7969] is formed of a group of researchers focused on understanding more about the development and occurrence of body image concerns and eating problems. Current members are from Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Spain, the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Established in 2016, the Academy is an unfunded international collaboration which has already successfully completed one large scale cross-cultural study and has now launched the second. The current research focuses on exploring perceptions of climate change in relation to body image, eating behaviours and wellbeing among young adults and is running across 15 countries. This spotlight event will be comprised firstly of presentations which will introduce the Academy and the current research project, reflect on conducting cross-cultural research with multiple countries and outline preliminary findings. The second part of this event will include a roundtable discussion relating to experiences and advice for maintaining successful and unfunded international collaborations. Programme: * Introduction to the International Academy for Body Image, Eating Problems and Health. Dr Esben Strodl [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias/fellows/2025-26/strodl-esben/] * Rationale and theoretical model for the current research project exploring perceptions about climate change, body image, mental health and eating behaviours among young adults. Dr Rachel Rodgers [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias/fellows/2025-26/rodgers-rachel-f/] * Reflections on conducting cross-cultural research. Professor Jacinthe Dion [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias/fellows/2025-26/dion-jacinthe/], Professor Annie Aimé [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias/fellows/2025-26/aime-annie/], Professor Alvaro Sicilia Camacho [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias/fellows/2025-26/sicilia-camacho-alvaro/], Dr Naomi Hayami [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias/fellows/2025-26/hayami-naomi/] * Preliminary findings of the current research project. Professor Gianluca Lo Coco [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias/fellows/2025-26/lo-coco-gianluca/], Dr Esben Strodl [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias/fellows/2025-26/strodl-esben/] * Roundtable discussion: Experiences of maintaining successful and unfunded international collaborations (all Academy members). For more information about the IAS, please visit - https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias]

Dual IAS Seminar - Associate Professor Sumiko Miyata & Professor Takamichi Miyata

Externally Funded Fellows Associate Professor Sumiko Miyata [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias/fellows/2025-26/miyata-sumiko/] & Professor Takamichi Miyata [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias/fellows/2025-26/miyata-takamichi/] each deliver a seminar on their research - Associate Professor Sumiko Miyata - Incentive-Driven AI Networks for Future Road Safety  To achieve fully autonomous driving, "cooperative perception" via V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) is essential for eliminating blind spots and improving recognition accuracy. However, a major barrier to sustainable implementation lies in ensuring "fair incentives" for participants to share data and computational resources. This seminar introduces an AI-driven network framework designed to balance infrastructure efficiency with participant satisfaction. The presentation first covers a reward distribution mechanism based on the game theory concept of "Nucleolus" to minimize user dissatisfaction within the monitoring system and ensure long-term cooperation. Building on this foundation, the discussion addresses essential network mechanisms for "City as a Service," such as high-speed AI processing that optimizes task offloading between edge servers to minimize communication latency. By integrating incentive design with advanced communication control, it is possible to build a reliable social infrastructure that reduces accidents and optimizes urban mobility. Professor Takamichi Miyata - Multimodal AI that Understands Driver Behaviour without Training Data  Distracted driving remains a critical safety concern, as even brief lapses in attention can lead to serious traffic collisions. Current supervised learning methods require large, labelled datasets and struggle to generalize, while vision-language model (VLM) based methods enable training-free recognition but tend to capture driver identity rather than actual behaviour. This seminar presents a novel framework that overcomes both limitations. The key innovation lies in decoupling identity-related information from behaviour-related cues, combined with refined textual representations to enhance zero-shot recognition robustness across diverse drivers and environments. By integrating decoupled multimodal representations with a lightweight model architecture, the proposed system achieves practical, scalable performance without relying on extensive labelled data. This approach offers a promising pathway toward reliable driver monitoring systems for real-world deployment. For more information about the IAS, please visit - https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias [https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias]