Hiraeth
AHIS Fund award; Rayne Foundation award
2019 – 2020
‘Hiraeth’ is a summer programme for unaccompanied asylum-seeking adolescents in Cambridgeshire. Through a series of workshops and a participant-led radio programme, it aims to improve their social capital and skills (e.g. English proficiency and communication, cookery, bike repair, mapping of their new home environment), leading to reduced social isolation and better mental health. In 2019, the project also allowed Cambridge University researchers to evaluate the usefulness of tools developed to support refugee children, to build a network with third sector partners, and to raise public awareness of the issues refugee children face, through radio and TV broadcasts, and a museum exhibition. The programme is taking place again - though online - in 2020.
ESRC award no. RES-000-23-1248
October 2005 - September 2009
More and more court cases involve the need to establish the speaker of some recorded speech - a hoax emergency call, a fraudulent phone transaction, an obscene voicemail, and so on. Voices, however, are not like fingerprints. A person's voice varies, depending for instance on tiredness, how loud and fast he or she is speaking, and many other factors. Despite this, there is a core of similiarity in an individual's speech. This project will record 100 speakers of the same accent in different speaking styles, and analyse their speech to determine how far they can be discriminated and what the best measures are for characterising their speech. The effects of using the telephone on an individual's speech will also be analysed.
In particular it will explore two ideas. The first is that speakers' 'vocal signatures' lie in the rapid, transitional movements of the speech organs between sounds. The second idea is that within a homogeneous speech community the sounds which are most likely to differ between speakers are those which are undergoing a rapid change in pronunciation over time. The results will show which parts of the speech signal forensic speaker identification should focus on. The project will also provide a carefully controlled large-scale speech database for further research.
The project is funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. We are also grateful to BT for sponsorship relating to the telephone transmission aspect of the investigation.
The DyViS Database - click here to access.
The database provides:
- speech recordings100 male speakers of Standard Southern British English aged 18-25
- speaking in a variety of styles
- simulation of forensic conditions
- approximately 1.25 hours of speech per speaker
- 20 speakers recalled for repeat of reading tasks after 2 months
Read more about the database below.
The complete database is available, as .wav files, associated Praat .TextGrid files with an orthographic transcript of the target speakers' turns in the spontaneous tasks, and the materials used in making the recordings, from the UK Data Service here.
Users have to register with the UK Data Service.
Project Aims
The project’s aims are three-fold:
- for the refugees: increase social capital & networks leading to reduced social isolation and improved conditions for good mental health; improve English confidence and proficiency; develop practical skills relevant to life in Cambridgeshire (cookery, bike repair, mapping of their new home environment, and communication skills, including interviewing)
- for the TAL researchers: evaluation of the effectiveness and potential impact of the MyRef research project’s main outcomes (https://sardes.nl/myref), a framework and toolkit with training materials for volunteers and practitioners working with asylum seeking children
- for all project partners: a valuable opportunity to build sustainable connections between a network of government organisations, researchers, NGOs, and other Education and Care providers for refugee children, with an eye to developing future projects; increase public engagement with refugee childrens’ perceptions of self, displacement, and their education and integration.
Description
Hiraeth isa summer programme for unaccompanied asylum-seeking adolescents and refugee children in Cambridge and Peterborough with the aim to provide
The radio programme also aimed to increase public engagement, as did the museum exhibition Hiraeth: The voices of young refugees and asylum seekers in Cambridgeshire (Museum of Cambridge, 4 Nov - 16 December 2019), which was covered on the local TV channel That’s Cambridge (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW40uxmk_FM), and coverage given by the University’s External Communications team (https://www.cam.ac.uk/nowwearetalking).
A very successful ‘Closing Event’, attended by representatives from the City and County Councils, participants and their guests, various community groups (Cambridge 105, CRRC, Oblique Arts, the Museum of Cambridge), and the University of Cambridge’s External Communications team allowed us to further evaluate the impact of the project and to further develop connections between a network of government organisations, researchers, NGOs, and for refugee children.
The project members were also invited to present at 4 international conferences which many of these stakeholders attended. The collaboration between Cambridge Hub and the MMLL MyRef research team also provided a valuable opportunity to evaluate and improve the MyRef toolkit. Four volunteers were trained using the toolkit, and gave detailed feedback to the toolkit’s developers both before and after their involvement with the project. The Council officer responsible for UASC in Cambridgeshire also gave us his feedback, and subsequently proposed a new collaborative project to adapt and extend the toolkit specifically for use with Education and Care providers for adolescent refugee children in the UK, involving professionals in Cambridgeshire who are working with this group (funding application to be submitted this autumn.
People
Project holders:
Project partners:
John Jordan-Hills for Cambridge County Council’s Virtual School for Looked-After Children
Cambridge Refugee Resettlement Campaign
MyRef Erasmus+ funded research team (including Post and Ianthi)
Associated Outputs and Events
- The exhibition Hiraeth: The voices of young refugees and asylum seekers in Cambridgeshire, Museum of Cambridge (4 Nov – 16 Dec 2019).
- Coverage by local TV channel That’s Cambridge at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW40uxmk_FM).
- Coverage by the University’s External Communications team Now we’re talking. Helping young refugees and asylum-seekers build a new life in Britain. Tom Almeroth-Williams, University of Cambridge, autumn 2019. Published at https://www.cam.ac.uk/nowwearetalking
- Hiraeth broadcasts on Cambridge Radio 105 (3 episodes in Nov-Dec 2019), published as podcasts on www.hiraethproject.weebly.com.
- Language Sciences web page https://www.languagesciences.cam.ac.uk/policy/refugee-access-to-early-childhood-education-and-care-in-the-uk.
- Hiraeth at the Early Childhood Education and Care for Refugee Children, MyRef closing conference, https://conference.issa.nl/node/162, June 2019.
- Invitations to conferences: The East of England Strategic Migration Partnership (March 2020); Children on the Move Symposium (also March ; http://fass.open.ac.uk/psychology/events/international-symposium-children-move); International Mobility, Migration and Wellbeing Conference & Workshop (RENTRE-2) (Dec 2019; https://uploads.strikinglycdn.com/files/18c18eb8-4432-4db5-b571-795195d440b7/Conference%20Program.pdf).
- MyREF: Multilingual Early Childhood Education and Care for Young Refugee Children - quality indicators for working with pre-school refugee children published at https://sardes.nl/myref, June 2019.
- MyREF Training packages (online resource for ECEC volunteers and professionals working with pre-school refugee children) published at https://sardes.nl/myref, June 2019.