Getting Real: Interactive Fieldwork

The Getting Real: Interactive Fieldwork walking tour is one of the CCW Graduate School's Year of Resilience events. It explores what happens when research and teaching take place outside the academic institution through engaging directly with a situation, place or space. How might this direct experience engage with our understandings of embodied (physically understood) proximity, and through this allow us to empathise with diverse situations. Taking ‘fieldwork’, i.e. when we leave our (enclosed) laboratories, be they the overall college or studios/workshops as a starting point, the walking tour invites us to makes connections with each other and the world beyond Wimbledon College of Arts. The day is led by artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey - Heather also has a background in theatre and performance, so it is an opportunity to talk across the Fine Art and Theatre programmes and levels. They have innovative insights into both research techniques and making processes, which in turn connects with their resilient approach to living and engaging with space and place. They have worked on many occasions with Cape Farewell, who are currently in residence at the CCW Graduate School

Implications of CoGeNT and DAMA for Light WIMP Dark Matter

In this paper, we study the recent excess of low energy events observed by the CoGeNT collaboration, and discuss the possibility that these events originate from the elastic scattering of a light (m_DM ~ 5-10 GeV) dark matter particle. We find that such a dark matter candidate may also be capable of generating the annual modulation reported by DAMA, as well as the small excess recently reported by CDMS, without conflicting with the null results from other experiments, such as XENON10. A dark matter interpretation of the CoGeNT and DAMA observations favors a region of parameter space that is especially attractive within the context of Asymmetric Dark Matter models. In such models, the cosmological dark matter density arises from the baryon asymmetry of the universe, naturally leading to the expectation that m_DM ~ 1-10 GeV. We also discuss neutralino dark matter from extended supersymmetric frameworks, such as the NMSSM. Lastly, we explore the implications of such a dark matter candidate for indirect searches, and find that the prospects for detecting the neutrino and gamma ray annihilation products of such a particle to be very encouraging.Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures. v2: references added, fig 4 and surrounding discussion modified

Particle Physics Implications for CoGeNT, DAMA, and Fermi

Recent results from the CoGeNT collaboration (as well as the annual modulation reported by DAMA/LIBRA) point toward dark matter with a light (5-10 GeV) mass and a relatively large elastic scattering cross section with nucleons (\sigma ~ 10^{-40} cm^2). In order to possess this cross section, the dark matter must communicate with the Standard Model through mediating particles with small masses and/or large couplings. In this Letter, we explore with a model independent approach the particle physics scenarios that could potentially accommodate these signals. We also discuss how such models could produce the gamma rays from the Galactic Center observed in the data of the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope. We find multiple particle physics scenarios in which each of these signals can be accounted for, and in which the dark matter can be produced thermally in the early Universe with an abundance equal to the measured cosmological density.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Economic reality: The ontology of money and other economic phenomena.

The contemporary academic disciplines of Philosophy and Economics by and large do not concern themselves with questions pertaining to the ontology of economic reality; by economic reality I mean the kinds of economic phenomena that people encounter on a daily basis, the central ones being economic transactions, money, prices, goods and services. Economic phenomena also include other aspects of economic reality such as economic agents, (including corporations, individual producers and consumers), commodity markets, banks, investments, jobs and production. My investigation of the ontology of economic phenomena begins with a critical examination of the accounts of theorists and philosophers from the past, including Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Marx, Simmel and Menger. Here I discuss various themes that have emerged from these writings, including the metallism-chartalism debates and whether economic value is an objective or subjective notion. Then I turn to contemporary philosophers, such as Searle, Bloor and Collin, who have used money as an example in their accounts of social phenomena. I argue that their accounts fail for a number of reasons, including that they cannot accommodate abstract money (money that is not in the form of notes, coins or commodities). Based on a much modified and expanded version of Hadreas' speech act theory of money, I develop an analysis of exchange into reciprocal, conditional promissory relations and I provide a diachronic account of how money developed out of such promissory relations. I then go on to examine how my account can be applied to money in all its forms and to the development of economic systems and production and I show how it is possible to overcome an epistemological difficulty with respect to how neophytes learn about economic phenomena

Exploring the Relationship of Enrollment in IDR to Borrower Demographics and Financial Outcomes

As federal policymakers consider changes to income-driven repayment (IDR) schemes, research examining the characteristics and financial behaviors of student loan borrowers participating in IDR is necessary. Using the nationally representative Survey of Consumer Finances, we examined the demographics of IDR enrollment. Counter to expectations, low-income borrowers, and borrowers with high debt-to-income ratios are less likely to enroll in IDR. Conditional on having a large amount of debt, married women of color are likely to enroll in IDR programs. Findings concerning IDR participation may be highly sensitive to how groups are defined and what covariates are in models. IDR participation does not predict engagement in other financial behaviors such as retirement savings or homeownership

Another Lesson on Caution in IDR Analysis: Using the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances to Examine Income-Driven Repayment and Financial Outcomes

We update Collier et al. (2021) by using the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) 2019 dataset to explore characteristics of enrollees in Income-Driven Repayment (IDR). SCF 2019 is more likely to include borrowers engaged in REPAYE. Findings support an ongoing need to encourage greater IDR participation for lowest-income borrowers and reinforce greater participation by female borrowers. Again, model specification affects findings regarding IDR enrollment. REPAYE appears to have widened access to IDR by lowering the debt floor for entry. IDR enrollment was correlated with less money in a traditional checking account and a lower chance of engaging in retirement savings

Submission of Evidence on the Disproportionate Impact of Covid-19 on Grassroots Football: An agenda to protect our game and communities.:Submitted to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee

In this submission, we discuss why grassroots football (and particularly the vulnerable communities that rely on it) will be negatively affected by COVID-19. The centrality of football – in terms of the both professional football clubs and grassroots football – to people’s everyday lives has been brought into focus by the pandemic. But, to date, the response by government and the football authorities has privileged the narrow stratum of the elite professional game (i.e. the English Premier League [EPL]) to the detriment of other levels, notably grassroots football. In the short-term, the pandemic is likely to have a disproportionately negative impact on the physical and mental well-being of those adults and children in the most deprived communities in England