LASALLE faculty and students are prominently involved in a large variety of research activities and projects, including publication in peer-reviewed academic journals and books.
Journal and book publications
Collaboration and Co-finitude: An Agenda of Care and Ends
Our collaborative work started in 2019 on the pretext of being part of the organizing committee of the Performance Studies international (PSi) annual conference scheduled for the following year. Under the banner of ‘Crises of Care: Act, respond, engage’, the 2020 conference would bring together various ‘streams’ or sub-conferences that proposed an in-depth focus on a particular theme and corresponding way of working. The four of us (together with Rayya El Zein) proposed a stream titled ‘Ends’. Our initial thinking in connecting our stream to a larger conference on ‘Crises of Care’ was to articulate connections between our work with collaborative methods for thinking, doing and writing (or care for one another) with our shared interests in ideas related to extinction, eschatology, planetarity, mourning and the non-human (or the crises of care themselves).
Citation:
Dixon, Steve, and Rustom Bharucha. ''Collaboration and Co-finitude: An Agenda of Care and Ends.'' Performance Research, vol. 27, no. 7, 2022, pp. 15-25, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2022.2197430.
By Invitation Only: A Multidisciplinary Framework for an Industry-Led Design Approach
Considering the issues faced by education during the pandemic, the need for design programmes to synchronise with the industry is rather essential. The disconnect between design students' studio practice during the pandemic has aggravated the situation further, considering that the most appointed defect of design programmes is their low involvement with the industry in multidisciplinary projects. What benefits for design students and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to participate in industry-led projects? How can those be implemented, considering the recovery state in which many design programmes currently are? Through a survey with students who participated in this brief (N=32), and interviews conducted with the alumni who mentored them during the project (N=8), this mix-methods approach will refine the framework used in this project, involving industry partners and design programmes, providing insight on how students can benefit from such projects, creating another approach to connect them with the industry, other than a traditional internship.
Citation:
Fernandes, Clara, et al. ''By Invitation Only: A Multidisciplinary Framework for an Industry-Led Design Approach.'' DRS2022: RESEARCH PAPERS, edited by D. Lockton, et al., Bilbao, Design Research Society, 2022, doi: 10.21606/drs.2022.192.
Do NFTs Sound Good? An Exploratory Study on Audio NFTs and Possible Avenues
Crypto, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and the metaverse have taken a massive place in our daily conversations and are highly valued. Moreover, NFTs range from luxury fashion to art, and sound is no exception, although it still needs to be explored. Could this be a unique opportunity to go digital from creation to distribution? This study looks at sound NFTs and new avenues for digital audio communication. During the pandemic, podcasts have been exhausted, leaving space for new digital media business opportunities. We look at how sound has grown, assuming a prominent role in the new media ecosystem due to podcasts consumption. We explore NFTs and their evolution in different markets over the years, highlighting the space that sound content has gained on these platforms as new possibilities for dissemination, promotion, and sale. We use content analysis on marketplaces that provide sound NFTs to understand what audio content consumers can find and future opportunities.
Citation:
Fernandes, Clara, and Ricardo Morais. ''Do NFTs Sound Good? An Exploratory Study on Audio NFTs and Possible Avenues.'' Informatics, vol. 9, no. 4, 2022, doi: 10.3390/informatics9040094.
Big Girls Don’t Cry: An Assessment of Research Units’ Leadership and Gender Distribution in Higher Education Institutions
Academia is often pointed out as a challenging environment to evolve in, especially for women. Whilst women perform in multidisciplinary settings, studies point out still-existing gender gaps in academia, especially in positions of power. This study looks at decision-making positions in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), specifically in Portuguese academic research. Furthermore, we seek to understand if research roles are distributed equally gender-wise among cohorts in research units, as well as if deans’ genders are a factor of influence in such role attributions. We will look at the research roles in academia, particularly research units fostered by HEIs, to observe gender distribution based on total cohorts. Using univariate and bivariate tests, our research aims to assess gender distribution in leading research roles in public and private institutions. We take the specific case of Portugal; therefore, we cannot extrapolate the results to other countries. However, outcomes point out resisting differences in fields of research and coordination and role distribution among R&D units, as well as in fundamental relations between power positions in academia and research.
Citation:
Morais, Ricardo, et al. ''Big Girls Don’t Cry: An Assessment of Research Units’ Leadership and Gender Distribution in Higher Education Institutions.'' Social Sciences, vol. 11, no. 8, 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11080345.
