LIFE SOLVED lifts the lid on the latest ideas and discoveries that look set to change our lives. Every week we'll bring you a fresh episode featuring cutting-edge research. Find out how this is set to revolutionise the way our world works. We'll explain how technology and community go hand in hand with the natural world, and how industry and sustainable environments can connect for the benefit of society.
Real research. Real world change.
Dr James Dennis is a Senior Lecturer in Political Communication and Journalism at the University. During England’s summer of unrest in 2011 – when thousands rioted on the streets – James was doing his PhD.
"I was the first in my family to go to university. I come from one of the areas of lowest social mobility in the UK," he says.
Each day, more than 1,000 lives are lost by drowning – but that number doesn’t include unrecorded drownings in low and middle-income countries. The real figure could be as high as 1.2 million deaths per year, with 25% of those deaths being children.
We’re living through a time of amazing technological change. So amazing, in fact, that it’s been called a revolution – the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or 4IR, to be exact. It’s a revolution that is already changing everything from the way we work, the way we create and consume entertainment, to our concepts of privacy, medical practice, functional technologies for the disabled, grocery buying and perhaps, most importantly, the ways we teach and learn.
The edges of his suit are sharp and crisp. Dark and funky spectacles frame eyes that flash with curiosity and zeal. He smiles easily, speaks animatedly, and has perspectives on how technology can solve some of South Africa’s socioeconomic problems that he is all too eager to share.