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Student Profile
David McAleavey
Addressing the consequences of socioeconomic inequality has been a motivating factor in much of my professional life as an educator, both in formal and popular contexts, for over two decades. Expanding our understanding of the social and biological pathways through which socioeconomic inequalities become amplified and embedded, not only across an individual’s life course but intergenerationally, is now the aim of my PhD.
Currently, I’m focusing on better understanding how aspects of the social environment are crystallised in the built environment, and in particular the proximate environmental, behavioural and perceptual mechanisms that account for how our interaction with the built environment modulates our social behaviour.
Levels of personal and social trust are the key attitudinal factors that affect rates of prosocial behaviour. In communities with low levels of trust - and correspondingly low levels of prosocial behaviour - multiple sources of chronic stress can result, which in turn lead to well established biological changes to the body’s immune system. This typically results in negative health consequences across the life course. Thus, a better understanding of the contribution the built environment has on trust - that is an understanding of the proximate mechanisms that account for how buildings “get under the skin” - will help illuminate one pathway, among many, through which the social environment and health are linked.
Supervisor: Dr. Rick O’Gorman
Advisors: Dr. Tom Foulsham and Dr. Amy Clair
McAleavey, D. (2015), Of All Studies, Study Your Present Condition: Essay Review of Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). International Journal of Art & Design Education, 34: 145–154. doi: 10.1111/jade.12014