The festival will feature a broad and stimulating programme of public lectures, talks and events, which promote the very best of Swansea University’s globally significant research advances.

A number of public lectures will take place in the Taliesin Arts Centre throughout the festival, which are free of charge. No booking is required and everyone is welcome to attend – undergraduate and postgraduate students, University academic and support staff, guests, visitors, and interested members of the public.

Among this year’s festival event highlights will be Professor David Bewley-Taylor, Director of the Global Drug Policy Observatory (GDPO) and Professor of International Relations and Public Policy in the Research Institute for Arts and Humanities (RIAH), College of Arts and Humanities, who will be debating issues of global drug policies on Wednesday, February 19.

The event will comprise the screening of the documentary “Raw Opium: Pain, Pleasure, Profits”, followed by a panel discussion and audience question and answer session on The Dilemmas of Drug Policy: Global to Local, chaired by Professor Julia Buxton, GDPO Senior Research Officer and Professor of Comparative Politics, School of Public Policy at the Central European University, Budapest.

The panel will feature Baroness Molly Meacher,Chair, All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Drug Policy Reform; Ifor Glyn, Chief Executive, SANDS CYMRU; and Mike Trace, Chief Executive, The Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust (RAPt), Chair, International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) steering group, and former Deputy UK Anti-Drug Coordinator.

On Thursday, February 20, in a lecture called Online Grooming: Communicative Stages and Paedophile Profiles, Professor Nuria Lorenzo-Dus of the Department of English Language and Literature, College of Arts and Humanities, and Dr Cristina Izura, an expert psychologist interested in language and cognitive processes’ research, of the Department of Psychology, College of Human and Health Sciences, will discuss how through the University’s Language Research Centre, they have brought together expertise in cognitive psychology and linguistics to develop a communicative profile of online sexual predators.

The festival will culminate with three public lectures on Saturday, February 22.

In a lecture called A Mathematical Meditation on the Circle, Dr Jeff Giansiracusa, an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded research fellow in the Department of Mathematics, College of Science, will consider how the simplicity of the circle – the simplest and purest geometric figure – conceals a devastating wealth of powerful ideas.

He will follow the circle through art, science, and mathematics on a surprising journey that will take the audience from antiquity to modern medicine and engineering and eventually to the abstract world of topology and extra dimensions.

In a lecture called Poetry of Memoir: Testimonial of a Female Holocaust Survivor, Frances Rapport, Professor of Qualitative Health Research in the College of Medicine, will introduce us to the life of Anka Bergman, who survived the Holocaust and came to live and settled in Wales post-war.

Professor Rapport, the author of the book “Fragments: Transcribing the Holocaust”, will advocate that poetry offers readers and listeners privileged access to Holocaust survivor testimonials.

And Dr Richard Johnston, senior lecturer in the College of Engineering’s Materials Research Centre and a British Science Association Media Fellow (based at Nature), will reveal how science and engineering can explain the super powers of many a MARVEL Super Hero, in a lecture called MARVELlous Materials: Superheroes and Science.

Andrea Buck, the festival’s organiser, said: “For our third Festival of Research, the emphasis is on making science accessible, interesting and fun, to engage a wide audience – including a number of events which are suitable for young adults and budding scientists.

“We aim to publicly celebrate the variety and reach of the University’s research in terms of its connections to the local community, the city, and the wider impact of research carried out at Swansea, much of which is important on a global scale.”

For more information about Swansea University’s Festival of Research, contact Andrea Buck on 01792 606669, email: a.j.buck@swansea.ac.uk. 

For more on the latest research from Swansea University visit http://www.swansea.ac.uk/research/.