Sarah Barnard

Loughborough University | Lough · School of Civil and Building Engineering

Despite sustained focus in recent years on understanding the experiences of underrepresented groups in construction, there has been a paucity of work that has explored the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) workers. Research has shown homophobia is commonplace in the construction industry and very few gay employees feel ab...

Policies and actions to address gender inequalities are widespread across a range of institutional and organisational contexts. Concerns have been raised about the efficacy and impacts of such measures in the absence of sustained evaluation of these activities. It has been proposed that important contextual factors may propel or inhibit measures to...

There has been a longstanding concern among construction scholars and practitioners in classifying construction innovations, whether as “incremental” or “radical,” “technological” or “organizational,” “product” or “process”. In this paper we extend this interest in classification to examine what classification work accomplishes within construction...

The transition of early career researchers into academic posts is understood to be a crucial career step and marks a point at which representation of women declines significantly. The research adopts a participatory qualitative research methodology through career narrative interviews and group discussions with women engineers recently appointed int...

A significant recent technological development concerns the automation of knowledge and service work as a result of advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its sub-fields. We use the term Intelligent Automation to describe this phenomenon. This development presents organisations with a new strategic opportunity to increase business value. Howe...

This report summarises the findings of a rapid evidence review that was conducted between October and December 2016 into the impact of various emerging technologies (artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation technologies) on knowledge and service work, relevant professions, and society. The review focuses on academic literature (peer-review...

Today, in many European countries, research and higher education institutions have made steps to implement gender mainstreaming: integrating the gender issue in management processes, in staff and leadership development programmes and assessment procedures. There are signs of concerted efforts to tackle persistent gender inequality, with varied leve...

With the introduction of key information sets (KIS) for all university programmes in the UK from 2012, the character, content and delivery of university degrees may be increasingly used by potential students to differentiate between degree programmes. Therefore, developments in curricula and the relationship to the profession are of growing importa...

Despite sustained efforts to promote engineering careers to young women, it remains the most male-dominated academic discipline in Europe. This paper will provide an overview of UK data and research on women in engineering higher education, within the context of Europe. Comparisons between data from European countries representing various regions o...

In the UK and elsewhere, progress and achievements in tackling theunder-representation of women in science, engineering and technology(SET) are far outweighed by the investment in this area in terms of both research and initiatives. The authors attempt to explain this by presenting a critical analysis of the development of research on women profess...

The Olympics is a global event that acts as a carrier of cultural meanings that are available to international audiences and markets. Though the heritage of the Olympics is claimed to be derived from the ancient world, in fact the contemporary legacy is very modern. Indeed, such meanings, and the legacy thereby attached, are re-represented, distrib...

Drawing on work located within critical political economy and process sociology, this article uses content analysis to examine the types, frequency, and content of Olympic related advertising in the British press and television during the 2004 Athens Olympics. We assessed the degree to which The Olympic Partner (TOP) sponsors incorporated themes de...

The Olympics is a global event that acts as a carrier of cultural meanings and identities that are available to international audiences and markets. Our wider project examining the Athens Olympic Games seeks to investigate how such meanings are re-represented, distributed, and marketed by the media-sport complex. Here, we investigate how the initia...