The K-band luminosity function of nearby field galaxies

We present a measurement of the K-band luminosity function (LF) of field galaxies obtained from near-infrared imaging of a sample of 345 galaxies selected from the Stromlo-APM Redshift Survey. The LF is well-fitted over the ten magnitude range -26 < M_K < -16 by a Schechter function with parameters alpha = -1.16 +- 0.19, M* = -23.58 +- 0.42, phi* = 0.012 +- 0.008 Mpc^-3 assuming a Hubble constant of H_0 = 100 km/s/Mpc. We have also estimated the LF for two subsets of galaxies subdivided by the equivalent width of the Halpha emission line at EW(Halpha) = 10A. There is no significant difference in LF shape between the two samples, although there is a hint (~1 sigma significance) that emission line galaxies (ELGs) have M* roughly one magnitude fainter than non-ELGs. Contrary to the optical LF, there is no difference in faint-end slope alpha between the two samples.Comment: 10 pages, 9 embedded figures, MNRAS, in press. Minor changes to correspond to accepted versio

“So agreeable and suitable a place”: a late eighteenth-century suburban villa

The suburban villa rose to prominence in the eighteenth century. Burlington, Pope and others built large houses on the outskirts of London as expressions of their wealth and taste, using them to showcase collections, entertain friends or escape from the gaze of the city. Many others acquired rather more modest houses which they used as a convenient and comfortable base for engaging in London life. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these smaller villas have attracted relatively little attention: overshadowed by the grandeur of their rural, and the showiness of their metropolitan, counterparts they contained few artistic treasures or architectural innovations. Yet they were an important element of elite life and material culture. This paper explores one such house in detail: Grove House in Kensington Gore, the property of the Honourable Mary Leigh. Drawing on a large collection of bills, I examine the processes of decorating, furnishing and supplying Grove House around the turn of the nineteenth century. This provides insights into the operation of the suburban villa and the ways in which its material culture and habitation were linked to its country equivalent

Changing power relations in work based learning: Collaborative and contested relations between tutors, learners and employers

This is the author's pdf pre-print of a book chapter due to be published in 2011.This book chapter discusses some of the implications for the role of university tutors and the centrality of educational objectives in circumstances where there is a 'cultural shift' towards meeting the needs of learners and employers. The work based and integrative studies (WBIS) programme at the University of Chester is used as a case study to examine the changing power relations between university tutors, learners, employers and the university, compared to relations on traditional programmes

Virtual Classroom Management and Communicative Writing Pedagogy

Writing, essentially a social act, is concerned with cognition and is alliedto context. Most writing takes the form of dialogue and it is out of dialogic processes that language acquisition takes place. Writers andreaders convene in the cognitive and social space that is at the heart of adiscourse community. The social aspects of writing are diminished whenthere is a restriction on the social space where readers and writers cometogether. This is exemplified by the state of affairs in certain classroomswhere writing, reading and responding are undertaken in a solitarymanner. The use of computers to teach writing can enliven socialexchange by engendering new social structures. In particular,collaboration between writers is prompted by the use of word processors.When the teaching of writing takes place in a computer lab, teachers oftenstructure activities in a qualitatively different manner. In turn this has aninfluence on student writing. This paper reports on our experience of teaching an in-sessional course in Academic Writing to L2 students at theUniversity of Luton