Senior Lecturers Gill Ballard and Dr Stewart Piper and subject librarian Peter Stokes (FHSCE, all based at Guild House, Peterborough) have had their article on blood pressure measurement published in a recent edition of the Nursing Standard. The article, featured as the main story on the front cover, looks at exploring whether additional teaching and simulated learning of one-hour duration could improve the blood pressure measurement skills of nursing students.

Three members of Faculty of Science & Technology staff have been rewarded for their commitment above and beyond their role. Nominated by their peers, Elaine Brown (Senior Lecturer in Computer Science), Santino 'Tino' Ficarra (Technician, Department of Vision & Hearing Sciences) and Paul Trevillian (Faculty Resources Manager) each received the Dean's Award.

Dr John Gardner's new book 'Poetry and Popular Protest', which examines the importance of poetry in the early 19th century, has been shortlisted for a European Society for the Study of English Book Award and also nominated for the James Russell Lowell Prize.

Professor Lester Lloyd-Reason (Director of the Centre for Enterprise Development & Research - CEDAR) was one of four UK academics invited to the House of Lords to be interviewed for the position of Special Adviser to the House of Lords Select Committee on small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) exports. Although not appointed due to the time commitment involved, he was invited back to provide oral evidence to the Select Committee, drawing primarily on his research with UK Trade and Investment, where 1,000 SMEs were surveyed and his work as expert adviser to the OECD-APEC 44-country survey 'Removing Barriers to SME Access to International Markets'.

Dr Rohan McWilliam, Course Leader for History, has become President of the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS), the main British society of scholars dedicated to understanding the world of the Victorians. Dr McWilliam is the first historian to become President and will serve a 3-year term. He will be working with academics from around the world to develop new research and thought, focusing on nineteenth-century Britain. The organisation brings together researchers across a range of subjects and has a membership of over 700.

Dr Valerie Purton's new book 'Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition' explores the sentimental in Dickens' novels, placing them in the context of the tradition of Fielding, Sheridan and Lamb. This timely book arrives in the bicentenary of Dickens' birth, and follows on from the one-day conference organised by Dr Purton hosted at our Cambridge campus.

For information on the Dickens Fellowship go to www.dickensfellowship.org/branches/cambridge

Tim Sidell, Senior Lecturer Film & Video, has been involved in two major film projects, both of which have received praise from the industry press. Tim worked as second Unit Director of Photography on 'Berberian Sound Studies' starring Toby Jones and also produced and directed an 'optical FX' sequence. The film was described in The Guardian as "seriously weird and seriously good". Tim was also Director of Photography on the sci-fi horror 'Storage 24', described by Empire magazine as "a superior British horror sci-fi".

Dr Hazel Wright (Senior Lecturer, Education) is celebrating three new achievements in her efforts to gain a foothold in the UK academic publishing scene. She has been accepted as a member of the international Editorial Board for the Education Action Research Journal, as peer reviewer for Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood and as a book reviewer for Women's Studies International Forum. Research and writing are areas that Hazel really enjoys as they enable her to bring together skills learned in an earlier career in publishing and those developed more recently during her teaching career at Anglia Ruskin.