LAURA BASSI SCHOLARSHIP
The Laura Bassi Scholarship was established in 2018 with the aim of providing editorial assistance to postgraduates and junior academics whose research focuses on neglected topics of study, broadly construed, within their disciplines. The scholarships are open to every discipline and are awarded three times per year: December, April, and August. The value of the scholarship is remitted solely through editorial assistance as follows:
Master’s candidates: $750
Doctoral candidates: $2,500
Junior academics: $500
These figures reflect the upper bracket of costs of editorial assistance for master’s theses, doctoral dissertations, and academic journal articles, respectively. All currently enrolled master’s and doctoral candidates are eligible to apply, as are academics in the first five years of full-time employment. There are no institutional, departmental, or national restrictions.
Deadlines
Spring 2024
Deadline: 31 March 2024
Results: 10 April 2024
Summer 2024
Deadline: 31 July 2024
Results: 10 August 2023
Winter 2024
Deadline: 30 November 2024 – Extended.
Results: 11 December 2024
How to Apply
Applicants are required to submit a completed application form along with their CV using the portal prompted by the 'Apply' button below by the relevant deadline.To help defray the Scholarship’s administrative costs, applicants are subject to a voluntary USD 10.00 fee. All applicants who are unable to pay the application fee are welcome to take advantage of the fee waiver option on the application portal. If you wish to pay the application fee in a non-USD currency, please consult the FAQ below for instructions.
Answers to common questions about the application process are provided in the FAQ section. In order to avoid delays, applicants are encouraged to read the FAQ carefully before writing to us with their questions.
Please do not submit your application material by email, as this would breach our impartiality rules and potentially invalidate your application. If you wish to update your application material, please upload your documents afresh using the same email address as your initial submission. Your dossier will then update automatically. Please also note that your application documents need to be uploaded together rather than separately.
Postdoctoral Research Grants
In addition to the Laura Bassi Scholarship, the Bassi Foundation is also pleased to provide a small number of five-year postdoctoral grants each year. For more information, please consult the Bassi Foundation's website.
Bassi Scholars
For a list of Bassi Scholars, past and present, including statements of research, please see below (click to expand).
Derrais Carter’s manuscript, Patriarchal Blackness (co-authored with Andres Guzman), examines the manifold ways that racial ideology fuses with patriarchal thought in contemporary Black popular culture. Specifically, the manuscript addresses how Black cultural producers mobilize a patriarchal politic that centers cisgendered, heterosexual Black men as the basis for cultural thought and criticism.
Patriarchal Blackness extends recent Black Studies scholarly projects that address the relationship between blackness and patriarchy including Vexy Thing: On Gender and Patriarchy by Imani Perry and The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam by historian Ula Yvette Taylor. Patriarchal Blackness also contributes to Black feminist scholarship by advancing an analysis that examines the deceptive allure of patriarchy in fantasies of Black resistance.Spencier Ciaralli's project, Female Sexual History and Pleasure, aims to deconstruct and reframe our current understanding of female pleasure through the use of narratives of women speaking about their sexual history and pleasures, with a focus on how women conceptualize their own experience and compare it to dominant narratives. By taking a critical approach, Ciaralli's research explores the organization of power and domination, with interests in the interrogation of hierarchies of power and the lived experiences of social location within said hierarchies. By considering women’s narratives, one must consider the social, cultural, and political stakeholders who benefit from maintaining a particular understanding of female pleasure and the female body. This research seeks to fill a gap in the literature on sexual histories, pleasures, orgasms, and kink narrative by centering the voices of women.
When watching films, reading scholarly articles, or flipping through a magazine, it is eerily easy to ignore the lack of representation of women’s voices when discussing sex or sexual pleasure. When we discuss women in the bedroom, we too often talk about or for them, failing to recognize that when we make assumptions of what a woman desires or should be, we write a script of what it means to be a “normal” woman, which is a mold many women may fail to fit. Understanding how complex and diverse female sexuality is experienced, as well as who benefits and who loses when defining female sexuality, is imperative in striving toward equitable pleasure, and creating safe spaces for women to discuss and explore their desires. Addressing the root causes of social injustice in women’s sexual life stories is the first step in creating a discussion surrounding the long-held taboo: female sexual pleasure.
Afro-German women’s scholarly works have brought attention to their important contributes to German society by giving voice to the existence and identity of Afro-German history. Scholars of German nationalism marginalized the existence of Afro-Germans, and it was not until 1986 that a group of young German women formed the first national organization of Black Germans, Initiative Schwarze Deutsche, and coined the term ‘Afro-German’. This was a time when Germany’s native population of Afro-Germans began to trace their lineage to 19th-century immigrants from German-controlled African colonies. Prior to this, their identities failed to be included in the nation’s census and official histories. The last three decades, however, have revealed Afro-German women’s efforts in academia in gaining recognition for the Afro-German community and in expanding the answer to the question ‘Who is German?’ Using discourse analysis, Amber G. Johnson investigates the texts of Afro-German, African American, and German nationalist historians, and finds that ‘Afro-Germans’ have long been ‘othered’ in scholarly narratives of German history. With these texts, Johnson challenges middle passage epistemology in order to shed light on the lived experience of Afro-Germans, more speficially those directly impacted by Adolf Hitler’s belief that their presence in Germany was part of the desecration of the white race.
Johnson’s research contributes to the fields of history, sociology, women’s studies, and science technology & society studies by providing a new perspective on racial Blackness in the African Diaspora, women’s impact on mainstream German history, and African American / Afro-German efforts to invoke change nationally and internationally. These narratives are often excluded in the analysis of how knowledge moves across borders for the greater good of the nation-state. Johnson’s research reveals how two groups actively resisted the nation-state through social justice movements and stood in solidarity against the racial antagonism of the Jim Crow South and Nazi Germany.
Thembela Ndesi's study is a combination of composed and written texts, aiming to explore the use of music in African science fiction on screen. Ndesi's focus on music’s role in imagining African futures (or, occasionally, alternative presents) seeks to emphasise the extrapolative nature of science fiction. The trend of composers conforming to generic film music tropes and the seeming lack of experimentation in science fiction music would appear to be true also for the African-set science fiction films. These, too, seem to draw on generic musical strategies and tropes from music in science fiction film generally. It is, in part, this failure of imagination in producing a distinctly ‘South African’, ‘Malian’, etc., science fiction aesthetic that this study seeks to examine. While the setting and visuals of such films might be distinctively and ingeniously ‘African’, the music can often seem generic and somewhat bland. While it is certainly the case that the majority of composers commissioned to score high profile African science fiction films are westerners, the same generic tropes crop up in South African-authored film music (in Fabian Sing’s music for Room 9, for example). One of the questions Ndesi's study seeks to investigate, using both composed and written texts, is what a truly South African, Malian, Cameroonian, etc., might science fiction music sound like. How might a composer consider incorporating ‘African’ compositional elements or techniques (those associated with Zimbabwean mbira music, for example, or Zairean rumba, perhaps) in order to contribute to a particularly ‘African’ science fiction aesthetic?
Ndesi's study attempts to answer both analytically and creatively what a less-imported, less generic, and more locally-rooted musical representation for such films might sound like, and why there often seems to be a failure of imagination in the production of some African science fiction soundtracks. While works such as Lesilo Rula, Yeelan, District 9, Pumzi, Room 9(2012), Chappie, and Crumbs (2015) are all evidence of African-set science fiction, there has been little sustained critical study of music in African film generally and little to none in relation to African science fiction.
Violence against women is a global public health and human rights concern rooted in gender inequality. One in three women report violence exposure in their lifetime (World Health Organization, 2013), but the prevalence of victimization varies greatly between countries (Heise & Kotsadam, 2015). The wide geographic variation in the prevalence of violence against women worldwide might be explained by the geographic variation in gender-based structural stigma (i.e., societal-level conditions, cultural ideology, and institutional laws and policies that constrain opportunities, resources, and wellbeing of women; Hatzenbuehler & Link, 2014). Compelling evidence suggests that gender-based structural stigma perpetuates gender inequality and the subordination of women and can even shape risk of violence.
To examine the role of gender-based structural stigma on violence against women, we took advantage of a rare opportunity that combines multiple methodological advances. Specifically, the Violence Against Women Survey represents one of the largest population-based data sets of women, including 42,000 women from 28 countries across Europe. We examined associations between gender-based structural stigma and violence-related outcomes among women, including physical violence exposure, reporting violence to police, expecting violence, knowing that legal action was taken against the perpetrator, and seeing campaigns or media addressing violence against women
Preliminary population-based studies demonstrate that women living in high gender-based structural stigma countries disproportionately experience violence (Heise, 2012). These few studies are limited, however, in their use of self-reported perceptions of structural stigma and lack of geographic variation and comprehensive violence assessments. To address this limitation, and given that structural stigma is a complex and dynamic process, it is critical to include an objective measure of structural stigma.
Additionally, without sufficient geographic variation, there are limitations with which researchers can assert that macro-level factors account for the geographic distribution of violence. Further, no study has examined country-level variation levels of violence-related outcomes among women using population-based data. We have the unique combination of individual level information on violence-related outcomes, in combination with objective measures of gender-based structural stigma. This enables us to simultaneously test the influence of structural factors controlling for individual level risk factors and potential cross-level interactions.
What makes a good listener? What does it mean to be a good listener in contemporary society? Nanase Shirota’s ethnographic project investigates the art of listening in hostesses (escorts) and listening volunteers in Japan. At night clubs in Tokyo, hostesses, who are famous for being good listeners, use listening as a survival skill. Their listening is a ‘weapon of the weak’, gaining male customers’ favour, while intensifying the division of labour in interactions. Conversely, listening volunteers who communicate with elderly people use listening for reaching out. However, they sometimes fall short, unintentionally forcing interlocutors to stay in a subordinate helpee’s position. Listening can be a mask of silent authority. Listeners’ perspectives reveal influences of ‘power’ and subtle mechanisms of interaction.
Our society neglects listening. People wish to be competent speakers but not listeners. Reflecting this, most studies on interactions were conducted from the speakers’ perspectives but not listeners’ perspectives. Researchers in communication and sociolinguistics have recently realised this omission and within the field of sociology and anthropology, this research would be pioneering work. The research also contributes to the study of emotional labour and gender relations in contemporary Japan. Although Anne Allison’s study of a hostess club in bubble time is insightful and influential, her research missedsu subtleties in communication. Shirota became a hostess and listening volunteer and carried out participant observation. This methodologically challenging research provides rich ethnographical data and arrives at a better understanding of human interaction.
Abibah Sumana's project seeks to explore the various dynamics of the Adinkra Symbols and how they embody an indigenous African Philosophy. This is done by identifying the various signs and symbols which make up the concept of the Adinkra and the role they played both as indigenous communication forms among the Akans, before the advent of modern forms of writing, as well as recording for posterity the thoughts, feelings, and values of the people. The goal is to show that indeed before the coming of “foreigners”, indigenous Africa had reached a level where it could develop a system which would record for generations the various happenings in the society.
Sumana's research will be of use to the field of African Studies because it touches on key themes that are typically glossed over in the various writings about the African continent——themes which relate to the art of Black Africa, and how they can help in making a case against the denial and existence of an indigenous African Philosophy. Sumana's study also shows that, in contrast to longheld views about the continent, various methods and styles existed in Africa for the recording of thoughts and feelings for posterity through certain kinds of timeless art.
Tamas' study, In Spectral Company: Impossible Mourning in Early Modern France, examines how ghosts became an object of fascination at the end of the 16th-century in best-selling treatises. At the crossing of many different fields, ghosts are a fascinating object that can be approached by relying on the anthropology of fear, philosophy, scientific discourse, and the history of beliefs. They also inhabit a number of literary texts (especially novels and theater). Being present but referring to the past, they question temporality, especially during the process of mourning. Paradoxically, ghosts can altogether enslave and free the one they haunt. Tamas' book examines the influence of ghosts in the life of widows by comparing historical figures with those portrayed in novels and in the theater.
By working on widows, Tamas hopes to make a significant contribution to the history of women and of religious beliefs in Old Regime France. In 17th-century, the belief in ghosts has its own rationale. It corresponds to a need to conceptualize death and separation. Tamas will explore the religious discourse in light of the court customs and practice. On the one hand, widows who had children needed to remarry in order to sustain the education and the expenses of the household. On the other hand, young widows who did not yet have children wanted to forget about the ghost of their deceased husband. These women strive to free themselves: widowhood empowers them in the public sphere. Theater opens a new rhetorical space of freedom.
Rachel E. Holmes’ manuscript, Clandestine Contracts, draws on original-language literary and legal sources to trace the journey across early modern Europe of the tales of Romeo and Juliet, the Duchess of Malfi, and the siblings Claudio and Isabella in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. These are tales of clandestine marriage, the mediaeval institution of Christian marriage undertaken outside the recognition of legal authorities, which was increasingly the object of renegotiation across early modern Europe. Clandestine marriage was a pressure point because its illicitness undermined marriage as a managed exogamy, posing a threat to social controls, familial expectations, and honour. Holmes shows that the relationship between versions of these tales is shaped by legal anxieties about clandestine marriage and demonstrates the centrality of legal questions to transnational literary adaptation.
Scholars have long-acknowledged the influence of other European literatures on authors such as Shakespeare, but traditional source study tends towards either formalistic or nationalistic explanations of intertextuality—thinking of adaptation as a purely literary exercise that showcases canonical authors or as a politicised one that reinforces the superiority a national character. In contrast, Clandestine Contracts considers adaptation as an embedded transnational phenomenon shaped by legal as well as literary structures, concepts, and influences. Renaissance Studies will benefit from this research both intellectually and pedagogically, since it seeks to draw scholars and students beyond their disciplinary confines and encourages them to reconsider accepted readings of canonical texts in ways that are attentive to a more dialectical or intertwined literary and cultural history.
Tanusree Jain's manuscript, 'Even Tokens Matter', adopts a critical perspective of extant tokenism scholarship within the management discipline, specifically in the context of women on boards. The manuscript synthesises perspectives from sociology and psychology to suggest that a reductive logic that equates tokens with tokenism fails to fully reflect the latent power of women tokens as potential agents of both personal and inter-group change within organisations.
Jain's work dismantles stereotypes embedded within the token theory by adopting a more nuanced perspective of tokenism, and advocating that the designation ‘token’ in relation to a female board appointment should be regarded as qualitatively neutral in terms of the ex post facto contribution of the individual to board dynamics within a spectrum of organisational circumstances. In this manner, "Even Tokens Matter" advances a layered token theory that will have relevance for gender discourse and management.
Sarah Liva’s manuscript, 'Information and health service needs of new mothers: A scoping review' (co-authored by Christine Ou), collates the literature to identify the information and health service needs women and professionals view as priorities for supporting a healthy postpartum transition. Women’s risk for mental health disorders, intimate partner violence, decreased relationship quality, pelvic floor and sexual health dysfunction, and physical morbidity increase during the year following childbirth (i.e., postpartum period). Attention to postpartum care services is increasingly important with growing evidence identifying the magnitude and scope these post-birth concerns and strength of the relationship between maternal mental health and lifetime infant health status.
Liva and Ou's manuscript maps the scope, breadth, and trends in women and professionals’ views about postpartum care fills an important literature gap. Support for women during the postpartum has decreased in the context of demedicalization and normalization of birth, yet post-birth issues may emerge beyond traditional follow-up periods and increase in severity across the postnatal year. Women and professionals across diverse disciplines and sectors have increasingly critiqued postpartum care service delivery and identified care and information priorities, but a clear view about the breadth and nature of these perspectives is limited by the lack of a scoping review. This work enhances clarity on women’s postpartum care priorities across stakeholders and disciplines, which is an important step in determining how to orient services and improve care.
Moeini’s project, Effect of Coflow Turbulence on the Dynamics and Mixing of a Turbulent Axisymmetric Jet , examines how the dynamical velocity field and hydrodynamical mixing of an axisymmetric jet issued into a moving environment is affected as the turbulence of the environment is varied from low to high values. Moeini's experimental data sheds new light on the evolution of shear flows in the presence of external turbulence. The secondary objective, which arose during the experiments, is to improve the acoustic Doppler velocimetry (ADV) measurements. ADV is a comparatively new instrument for the measurement of turbulent flows, which are extensively used in various studies of hydraulic engineering, but their accuracy in predicting the statistics of turbulence quantities has been questioned. Moeini's model offers an opportunity to improve the precision of ADV measurements in turbulent flows.
Many practical engineering applications, ranging from acidic discharges from ships and brine disposals from desalination plants, to release of organic wastes into water bodies and gaseous emissions into the atmosphere, frequently occur in the form of turbulent jets. After their initial release, contaminants may have harmful effects both to public health and the environment. This underscores the special status of the study of the impacts of such jet-based releases, which sporadically or permanently contaminate the environment. Moeini’s project addresses, from an experimental viewpoint, how the turbulence of the environment could increase the dilution rates of the turbulent jets as in the case of the discharged contaminants. Our knowledge of this aspect has been at best partial, and thus Moeini’s work attempts to fill the gap in the experimental and theoretical framework.
Ngidi's qualitative study examines the extent to, and ways in which, a group of 27 adolescent orphans in a school living in the Inanda, Ntuzuma and Kwamashu (INK) township precinct in the greater Durban region of South Africa understand their vulnerability to sexual violence in and around their township's secondary school. Specifically, Ngidi's study explores the ways in which the participants experienced, responded to, and resisted sexual violence in and around their school. The inquiry is positioned within a critical paradigm, and employed participatory visual-methodologies (PVM) in its efforts to take an approach-based on the notion of research as an intervention. Informed by the transformative learning theory, findings show that sexual violence was a persistent threat in the lives of adolescent orphans.
Ngidi’s work is concerned with the methodological approaches that were appropriate and ethically sound for engaging vulnerable orphans. The PVM approaches Ngidi selects are experienced as creative and fun by the adolescent orphans who participated in the study. These methodologies placed orphans at the centre of the research and provided them with a safe space to explore and represent their experiences of sexual violence. The methodologies further made what is often invisible, visible and made knowledge that is often silenced, spoken. Ngidi’s work helps inform school-based interventions that are aimed at developing and nurturing care and support frameworks for vulnerable children.
Christian democratic parties are not known to be feminist allies. Yet, in Germany, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has adopted several feminist policies directly violating the traditional gender ideology underpinning the party’s beliefs about traditional womanhood and family values. Och’s work shows that the position of feminist actors in the policy making process matters greatly: policy success is more certain when feminist actors are gatekeepers and insiders in the policy making process. To illustrate this argument, Och explores two cases of feminist policy adoption in Germany: the adoption of partner months in 2006 which provides financial incentives to fathers to take childcare leave and the adoption of the corporate board quota law which mandates a 40% quota for women on corporate boards in 2015.
Och’s work allows us to draw two main conclusions that have more general implication on how we understand feminist policy adoption: first, feminist actors in the CDU did not merely adopt feminist rhetoric for political gain but rather expressed strong feminist sentiments and attitudes often going against the more traditional sentiments of the CDU. Second, the mere presence of feminist actors is not enough. Instead, we must ensure that they occupy pivotal roles – especially in environments perceived as hostile towards feminist ideals – if we hope to advance feminist policies. This means that it is not enough to elect women to office, but we need to ensure that they are placed in positions of power both within parties and in the policy-making process.
In recent years, scholars across the humanities have argued that the American abolitionists articulated important conceptual lessons about democracy. Ramesh's work contributes to this literature by newly interpreting the political thought of Charles Sumner. Regnant scholarly treatments of Sumner have been narrowly biographical. Ramesh shifts focus by looking to the theoretical content of his writings and speeches, focusing on his use of the word caste as an analytic and political term. Ramesh’s essay demonstrates that Sumner adopted the language of caste from missionary accounts of caste hierarchy in India; that he used this information to argue that there was an oppressive analogue at home: racial caste; and that, accordingly, Sumner’s conception of abolition included the dismantling of racial caste and the cultivation of interracial republican association.
Ramesh's research advances the field of political theory in the following ways. First, it offers new insights into a figure well-known to American historians but less so to political theorists: Charles Sumner. Second, it speaks to broader debates in the humanities about the contribution of the American abolitionists to democratic theory. Third, it excavates an entirely neglected dimension of Sumner’s thought – namely, his engagement with Hindu caste and the conception of racial caste in America that he developed on the basis of this engagement. Fourth, it contributes to nascent but fast-growing literature in intellectual history and political theory that emphasizes the importance of the transnational circulation of ideas in the development of political concepts central to our lives today.
As medically-assisted dying becomes more widely legalised, nurses are going to be presented more frequently with requests for access to that end-of-life service. Legislation in nearly every jurisdiction where assisted dying is legal does not recognise the role of nurses in providing access to this service. Yet nurses can influence the process and outcome of how a request is initially managed, since nurses are the professional who most frequently receive the initial request for access. This study of Australian nurses will build on existing research to identify the predictors for how a nurse intends to respond. There are many ways to respond to such requests, and even more influences that guide the selection of a response.
Nursing educators will benefit from the outcomes of this research. A significant theme that emerges from studies about nurses' participation in assisted dying is a lack of preparation for managing this encounter. Lack of preparation does not mean being unaware of protocols, where they exist, but rather not having the communication strategies when a patient requests help to hasten death. What the nurse communicates in this moment depends on the cognitive rehearsals for what to say, in other words, what the nurse intends to say. Simulation exercises are becoming routine in nursing training for specific procedures as simulations can incorporate evidence into clinical actions. Understanding the predictors of intentions to respond can provide evidence for developing learning modules that simulate effective communications at the end-of-life.
Daphne Choi argues that there needs to be a systematic organisation of the green and sustainable programs implemented in prison in order to facilitate offender changes and desistance. Otherwise, such programs will represent nothing more than a cost-saving scheme for prisons, with no additional benefits for the prisoners or the wider community upon release of those prisoners. Choi’s thesis therefore endeavours to establish a sustainability model that would fit into the penal setting for promoting desistance, then applying that model to the field of criminology and modelling onto current prison practice. The potential impact and effectiveness of this new sustainability model will be exemplified by two types of sustainable practices: therapeutic horticulture programs and animal programs. The impact of these practices on promoting desistance post-release will be uncovered, providing a new hypothesis about the potential impact of these programs during and after incarceration.
While no existing studies have built a link between sustainability and desistance or provide an understanding of desistance from a sustainability perspective, Choi's research offers a theoretical contribution to the penology promotes desistance in prison. This is done through examining the impact of sustainable prison programs on desistance and hence providing a practical model for the development of future sustainable programs. Choi's work uniquely indicates how offenders have changed and developed their desisting journey according to the hypothesised sustainability model through investigating the reported benefits of the two types of sustainable practices. A theoretical model that can help direct prisons towards more effective practices instead of current traditional and less effective way of rehabilitating offenders can then be developed to improve the effectiveness of penal rehabilitation and offender reintegration.
The Spanish language abilities of bilingual Latinx youth in secondary schools have been measured through various indicators of proficiency: grammar competency, functional language use, and literacy. Several studies highlight the problematic tensions that arise around issues of identity, variance, equity, and power when proficiency fails to embrace the literacy practices that bilingual Latinx youth bring to the Spanish classroom. García’s manuscript uses Spanish curricular materials as a point of entry to examine dominant discourses of proficiency that circulate Spanish classrooms and the role of literacy in those discourses. Using a racioliteracies perspective and policy discourse analysis, García identifies two dominant discourses of proficiency and demonstrates what each implies for the development of proficiency amongst bilingual Latinx youth. García argues that these discourses of proficiency are informed by classist and racists forces and are complicit in the reproduction of dominant language and literacy hierarchies that discursively re/produce two dominant subject positions available for bilingual Latinx students in Spanish classrooms.
García’s work offers important insights into two fields of study: applied linguistics and literacy. Bilingual Latinx students, often times referred to as heritage language students, have been the source of much contention in second language acquisition and bilingual education research fields based their heterogenous nature and need for language development approaches that fit their needs. García challenges the curricular materials made available to educational actors via dominant curricular materials, considering the extent to which research-based recommendations are appropriated in ways that continue to marginalize a student population that has historically received little attention. The theoretical orientation of this manuscript provides a critical analysis of differentiation strategies and deciphers the racial tensions that undergird them. It posits that literacy, as a construct, is complicit in the guising of these detrimental effects. In doing so, García provides the field of literacy with a concrete theory of subject formation, responding to various calls for such an approach in critical literacy studies.
Greaves’ book examines Arctic security and environmental change from the perspectives of two states—Canada and Norway—and the Inuit and Sámi peoples, respectively, who reside within them. It explores two related questions: Why, has environmental change not been constructed as a security issue by Arctic states? In particular, why has environmental change not been constructed as threatening within state policy when it is understood and articulated as such by Indigenous peoples who live within the Arctic region? Drawing from extensive primary and secondary research, this book bridges insights from across the disciplines of international relations, political science, and environmental studies to examine how environmental changes, state policies, and Indigenous peoples interact to produce different meanings of ‘security’ in the Arctic region.
Greaves' book makes three main contributions. First, it maps out official understandings of Arctic security and environmental change in Canada and Norway historically and in the early-21st century. It then contrasts these with how Arctic Indigenous peoples understand security and its relationship to the natural environment. Finally, it offers a revised account of how security issues are socially constructed to explain why Indigenous understandings are excluded from official state policies. The book contributes to a decolonized conception of Arctic security by highlighting Indigenous perspectives that have been marginalized within dominant security discourses and practices. Its conclusions call into question conventional understandings of environmental change and Arctic security, and underscores the limitations imposed on marginalized groups’ abilities to advocate for their survival and wellbeing.
Traditionally, a gene has been defined as a specific DNA sequence that, by default, contains at least 300 base pairs. Based on this historical idea of gene configuration, DNA units shorter than that, so-called short ORFs (sORFs), have generally been ignored. In her research, Ina Hollerer aims to elucidate the functions of thousands of formerly neglected sORFs in yeast during meiosis, the specialized cell division that produces germ cells in eukaryotes, including sperm and egg cells in humans. Given that meiotic principles are highly conserved between yeast and mammals, Ina hypothesizes that these short genes also play a role in human development. Her research will hence reveal a new set of functional DNA units and will help to redefine our current understanding of a “gene.”
Hollerer's studies on sORFs in yeast meiosis will reveal a new set of formerly neglected functional DNA units that challenge our current understanding of a “gene.” This will be a door-opener for future research, which will no longer be able to dismiss short DNA units as non-functional. Her studies will also help to better understand the complex process of meiosis. Meiosis is very error-prone in many organisms but the underlying causes are poorly understood. Aneuploidy, the presence of an abnormal number of chromosomes as a result of a meiotic error, is observed in 10–30% of human fertilized eggs, usually leading to miscarriage. Ina believes that studying the regulatory elements that control meiotic progression in yeast will help to understand what causes these errors in higher organisms.
Women who immigrate to Canada arrive with bodies shaped by their natal cultures and often with different understandings of health and illness. But what happens when Canadian health care standards are imposed on the global body? Not only are there reported problematic health outcomes for women with female genital cutting (FGC) accessing health care in many Western countries, but their cultural context may not be considered in their medical treatment. There is still a gap in the literature for understanding the social relations that contribute to the experiences that women with FGC face in health care systems across the West. Danielle Jacobson aims to address this gap in the literature by using a methodological approach called Institutional Ethnography (IE). Having already started her research, she is in the process of identifying social relations involved when women with FGC use Toronto’s reproductive medical system. Danielle began in the lived experiences of the women by using qualitative, one-on-one, open-ended interviews. The purpose of her manuscript is to communicate her above thesis research on the reproductive health care interactions between women with FGC and their doctors in Toronto.
Danielle's thesis work contributes to the field since she grounds the research in women’s experiences to better understand the sequence of events (the social relations) that may lead our reproductive health care system to fail women with FGC. Her research is aimed at improving Torontonian medical practice for immigrant women in an integrative and innovative way—an emerging challenge as immigration across the globe increases. Although it is admirable that Canada accepts immigrant populations, we still need to work toward providing adequate reproductive health care for non-Western bodies. With this work, Danielle hopes to contribute to the movement toward a more inclusive Canadian health care system for immigrant women, beginning in Toronto. She also take a reflexive approach to her work, not only about her own positionality, but also about the women’s positionality and the power dynamics at play due to differing social locations. Danielle hopes to take steps to improve the reproductive healthcare experiences and outcomes of immigrant women with FGC by expanding the knowledge of how immigrant women with FGC in Toronto experience healthcare, working toward health systems solutions that better support Toronto’s diverse population of women.
Morreti’s project, The Best Weapon for Peace: Maria Montessori, Education, and Children’s Rights,is an intellectual biography that recovers Maria Montessori’s pacifist work in relation to both her educational activism and the broader international conversation on pacificism. Though Montessori was a well-known pacifist in her day, historians have generally considered her writings on peace as secondary to her pedagogical work—a side intellectual project for a woman more concerned with the practical goal of educating youth. But Moretti argues that the cultivation of world peace was, in fact, the primary motivation for Montessori’s educational project. Moretti draws from war-and-society studies, and the history of humanitarianism, as well as a broad range of unpublished archival material, repositioning Montessori’s work on peace from the margins to the center of her philosophy.
Scholarly work on Montessori is restricted to biographies and monographs that reassert the educator’s place in a line of so-called great women. Often compiled by Montessori disciples, these texts neglect the breadth of her thought and how it was informed by the debates on children’s and refugees’ rights, war prevention, and what would later be called post-traumatic stress disorder rehabilitation. Moretti contextualizes Montessori’s writing on pacifism, conflict prevention, and children’s rights within the larger global debates on these topics, highlighting the numerous conflicting forces that inspired her over time. The Best Weapon for Peace rethinks Montessori’s wide-ranging intellectual legacy, showing her to be not only an influential educator, but a thinker, female intellectual, activist, and above all, pacifist.
Research shows that persons with intellectual disabilities are particularly vulnerable to different forms of violence, particularly sexual violence. The criminal law responds to this in a protectionist manner by adopting a strict approach to determining whether a person with intellectual disability has the capacity to consent to sexual intercourse in sexual offence cases. The courts have placed so much emphasis on protection that they have essentially taken away the sexual autonomy of persons with intellectual disabilities in the same breath. Msipa’s work criticizes the test used by the courts in South Africa to determine capacity to consent to sexual intercourse and seeks to suggest an alternative approach aimed at striking a balance between protection and autonomy.
Msipa works to advance thinking in the area of the sexual rights of persons with intellectual disabilities. In particular, Msipa’s work contributes to existing scholarship by formulating an alternative approach that better strikes the balance between the need to protect persons with intellectual disabilities from abuse and respect their sexual autonomy. This work will impact positively on persons with intellectual disabilities themselves but will also have an impact on the development of the law and thinking in this area.
Iyabosola Busola Oronti’s manuscript,Hypertension Diagnosis and Management in Africa Using Mobile Phones: A Scoping Review (co-authored with Leandro Pecchia), aims to determine the scope of work done on hypertension diagnosis and management in Africa, with emphasis on interventions using the mobile/smart phone. Target 3.4 of the United Nations (UN) and World Health Organization (WHO) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seeks to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by one third. Untimely death from NCDs has become a major source of concern in Africa, and the leading risk factor worldwide attributable to death is hypertension. It therefore follows that controlling the incidence of hypertension in Africa will significantly reduce the burden of disease by developing new solutions which are more effective and easier to sustain.
Historically, control and management of hypertension are linked to antihypertensive drug use and hospital visits. More recently however, hybrid therapy regimens are emerging for providing reliable and cost-effective access to health services. This research seeks to create an effective and affordable horizontal model/platform for the design and deployment of medical devices and interfaces that will optimize the diagnosis, monitoring and management of NCDs using ICT, 3D Printing, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), with particular consideration for the peculiar dynamics of low resource settings (LRS). Medical devices design and development will clearly benefit from the adaptation of mobile device interfaces and applications for expanded diagnostic functions, thus presenting opportunities for hypertension control in Africa and globally.
Besides négritude, the term verrition, a hapax legomenon that appears at the very end of the Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939–1956), is perhaps the most contested and ambiguous signifier in Aimé Césaire’s celebrated long poem. Calhoun's essay presents new linguistic and literary-historical evidence related to verrition and offers an original reading of the poem’s final stanza. Specifically, the essay elaborates an “articulatory” paradigm for rereading the text of the Cahier. Attending to the semantic and formal dimensions of Césaire’s preoccupation with the physiology of human speech and its metaphors illuminates some of the most important sections of the poem and provides an interpretive framework for understanding a number of Césaire’s neologistic, technical, or archaic usages.
Calhoun's essay sheds new light on a much-studied text, making sense of a term (verrition) and set of tropes that have long puzzled scholars and readers of the Cahier. Participating in a recent, energized return to the text of the Cahier–—in the wake of a new bilingual edition with a masterful translation by N. Gregson Davis and notes and commentary by Abiola Irele——the essay makes an original contribution to scholarship on Césaire and the text of the Cahier,elucidating how language and the body interact in Césaire's poem in more complex ways that has previously been acknowledged.
Colleen Campbell’s research examines Black women’s medical decision-making in obstetrics using qualitative data from New York City. The issue of maternal health disparities has recently sparked a national conversation on reproductive health inequalities and obstetrics violence in the United States. Medical settings are often characterized by asymmetrical encounters between providers and patients, where meaningful informed consent becomes a vacuous procedural exercise operationalized through a consent form. In obstetrics, women patients are particularly treated as objects of medical power, not agents, of their medical treatment. Campbell's research project examines how Black women specifically negotiate decisions over interventions during birth, including their navigation of informed consent and their experience of routine acts of coercion, mistreatment and obstetrics violence. Campbell's project also examines a key juxtaposition to informed consent, namely informed refusal, which also serves as a heuristic device for uncovering Black women’s medical subjectivity and agency. Informed refusal not only illuminates obstetrics as a site of contestation, it also sheds light on an important counterbalance to the asymmetrical power relationships within obstetrics. Lastly, the project interrogates how medical distrust, which is produced by social and historical forces, medical abuse and biomedical racialization, informs contemporary relationships in obstetrics.
Campbell's research makes contributions to several fields of scholarly inquiry, including sociology of race and ethnicity, medical sociology, and law and bioethics. Importantly, it challenges the current public framing of maternal health in the U.S. as a problem of biological race, as opposed to, (obstetrics) racism. Public health discourse often pathologizes Black women by framing them as high-risk bodies that are justifiably over-medicalized because of underlying biological characteristics. This research challenges and critiques this discourse by instead centering the structural, institutional and interpersonal dimensions of obstetrics violence and racism in the U.S.
Jinsoon Cho's manuscript, State Merit-Based Scholarship Programs, Affirmative Action Bans and the Quality of College Freshman, examines how the race-based affirmative action policies and merit-based scholarship programs affect the academic quality of college freshmen in the United States. Affirmative action policies give preferences to college applicants from underrepresented race/ethnic groups in order to increase their upward mobility. Similarly, state merit-based scholarship programs are implemented for the purpose of broadening student access to higher education and increasing college completion rates. However, there are consistent issues regarding the effectiveness of the education policies, since studies have shown that race-based policies in higher education mostly benefit affluent minorities, not the minorities that typically do not have ready access to higher education due to financial difficulties. Cho's manuscript investigates the effectiveness of the education policies by estimating the change in race/ethnic composition and SAT scores of college freshmen.
Cho's work contributes to education economics in several respects. First, Cho examines if the education policies achieve the objective for those who are in need by investigating the causal impact of educational policies on the quality of incoming college students both overall and separately by race and ethnicity on the national level. Secondly, Cho's work provides insights on the size of the impact of education policies by examining the causal impact of such policies using the racial/ethnic composition and SAT scores of incoming college students.
Adolescents living in South Africa face a high risk of experiencing sexual violence. Nationally representative data on child abuse shows that one in three South African teenagers (15-17 years) have experienced some form of sexual violence. Following the victimization, survivors make important decisions, such as whether to seek support from formal service providers (e.g., the legal, medical and mental health system as well as community victim services) or disclose the incident to informal supporters. However, adolescent survivors are constrained in their help- seeking attempts. Whereas they are expected to increasingly act independently, teenagers are not yet as mature and autonomous as adults and thus, find themselves in a complex situation of increasing rights, limited agency and denied vulnerability. Therefore, it is imperative to further understand their thinking, decision-making and behavior.
Adolescents undergo unique developmental processes characterized by evolving abilities and capabilities as well as changing needs and desires which sets them apart from both children and adults. Yet, limited research exists that directly engages with adolescent women who have experienced sexual violence. As such, Eichstedt's research contributes to the victimological scholarship by capturing the subtle nuances of their decision-making and responses to sexual victimizations. South African teenagers sit at the bottom of the social hierarchy which limits their ability to exercise agency and navigate post-assault response services. Considering the high number of sexual offences experienced by young women and the lifelong impact of this form of victimization, the importance of Eichstedt's research relates to its contribution for theory, practice, and law-making.
Sandhya's doctoral thesis explores the impact of the 1989 Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act (PoA), one of the globally most stringent anti-discrimination laws, on the lives of Dalits (former ‘untouchables’) in Rajasthan, India. She examines the administrative, material, and socio-economic dynamics that shape local Dalit engagement with courts and law enforcement and the mobilization of the PoA by local politicians and activists. She analyses what emotional and social imaginaries the concept of a legally sanctioned battle against inequality can engender, and which notions of justice and restitution arise from them. Finally, Sandhya's work considers the production of legal evidence as a process of socially situated knowledge construction and shows how prejudice can be hidden in legal demands for certain kinds of documents and behaviour.
Sandhya's research is positioned at the intersection of anthropology and critical legal studies. Although legal anthropology is an established part of the discipline, anthropologists have rarely engaged with the problems and opportunities that arise when social movements targeting structural violence are translated into anti-discrimination legislation and move to the courts. Sandhya's work elucidates what happens when communities, characterized by deep socio-economic disparities, become equal litigants in the courtroom. This opens up new questions about evidence, comparability, and truth. Her thesis brings political and legal anthropology in contact with the anthropology of emotion, trauma, and memory. She shows how law—an arguably dry, technical mechanism of dispute resolution—can become complicit in the production of trauma, yet also open up new horizons of hope.
Krause's manuscript documents an experiment that results in a new conceptualisation of language classrooms. Theorisations are catalyzed by long-term research in township English classrooms in South Africa. Here (and globally), language teaching is built on the notion of languages as separate entities and aims at mastering standardised codes. Accordingly, English teaching in townships is failing. Underperformance in standardised tests makes learners appear removed from standard linguistic norms. But are township English classrooms spaces of linguistic deficit, given that residents’ day-to-day languaging is heterogeneous and creative? Taking this heterogeneity seriously, Krause asks: What does language education in Khayelitsha look like through an analytical lens that is not a priori structured by separate languages? In her analyses, Krause does not use linguistic terms that imply a view of languages as discrete entities. Engaging with classroom and interview data, Krause develops new vocabulary to see differently. Khayelitshan English classrooms then emerge not as spaces of deficit but of specific linguistic possibilities. Teachers order these possibilities via a linguistic sorting practice: 'relanguaging'. Its discovery fundamentally changes the way we think about language (classrooms).
Krause demonstrates how existing concepts of language (re)produce blind spots for analysts because they build on a conceptual conflation of linguistic features and named languages, stemming from classical linguistics. Her thought experiment responds to ongoing scholarly efforts to disinvent languages and develop concepts more appropriate for capturing actual language practices. Contributing to sociolinguistics, Krause conceptualizes languaging as a spatial practice and draws on and advances the inchoative notion of spatial repertoires currently discussed in studies investigating spaces like restaurants and gyms. This work makes spatial repertoires relevant for describing linguistically regimented institutional spaces. For applied linguistics, the relanguaging model provides a theoretical critique of ‘translanguaging’ for dichotomizing fluid languaging and standard languages. This covers up the relationality of these dimensions of language, hiding particular didactic techniques and potentials existing in township schools – spaces usually described as ‘peripheral’ and ‘deficient’. Relanguaging puts these schools center stage, showing what could be learned from them globally.
Eugenio Luciano’s research article constitutes a critical translation (Italian to English) of an excerpt from the nineteenth-century Italian geologist Antonio Stoppani's second volume of Note, originally published in 1867. The excerpt translated is Chapter XV, “Neozoic Epoch: Anthropozoic formations.” This chapter constitutes a written source of outstanding value, in that it represents the first instance where a fully scientific characterization of the “Anthropozoic” is given. The translation includes a critical introduction to the geological research context of the nineteenth century, to Stoppani's biography and research, and to Note. Furthermore, the article provides a dedicated section outlining the differences and similarities of the “Anthropozoic” with the recently proposed “Anthropocene” Epoch.
The “Anthropozoic” has regained popularity as a result of the recent interest in the “Anthropocene,” namely, a proposed geological epoch determined by the impact of humankind. Scholars immediately linked the two terms, initiating a debate whether the “Anthropocene” constitutes a theoretical singularity, or its predecessors—such as Stoppani's “Anthropozoic”—anticipated much of its novelty. However, this ongoing debate has not yet delivered a critical translation of perhaps Stoppani's most fundamental writing on the matter, namely, his characterization of the “Anthropozoic.” Luciano’s work seeks to fill this gap by bringing an internationally accessible critical translation of the text that would constitute a valuable work for the new-born field of “Anthropocene studies” as well as the history and philosophy of geology.
Saskia C. Quené´s study provides a detailed analysis, contextualization, and interpretation of 'gilded grounds' in late medieval and early renaissance panel painting. Focusing on Fra Angelico—who took the advantages of the gilded ground seriously while incorporating theological and scientific knowledge (optics, geometry, physics)—her research helps to rethink the ways in which we perceive medieval and renaissance painting. First, she examines the relationship between gilded grounds, planes, and figures in Fra Angelico's Madonne dell' Umiltà to demonstrate the complexities in which the layered picture plane represents. Exploring the reception of the gold ground as an antipode to the reintroduction of perspectival techniques between 1300 and 1500, she proposes new readings of Angelico´s famous depictions of the Annunciation to Mary. Third, she investigated the light-reflecting material in the context of the depiction of Paradise, critically discussing long-standing assumptions connecting the gold ground iconographically to the heavenly realm.
Within the field of art history, Quené´s manuscript contributes to the research on materiality and artist's materials, to the study of spatial representation techniques in the Late Medieval and Early Renaissance era, as well as to the study of Fra Angelico. Extensive gold leaf applications have been summarized under the anachronistic term 'Goldgrund' or 'gold ground' from the 18th century onwards. The term constituted a desideratum in art historical research and neglected the various ways in which artists used gold leaf as an artistic material in late medieval and early renaissance art. Her study will fill this gap.
Noëlle Rohde’s doctoral work is positioned at the intersection of anthropology and philosophy and has two main objectives. Firstly, to ethnographically explore students’ lived experience of being graded in the context of German high school education and secondly, to draw on the empirical insights for fashioning a social epistemology of quantification which informs an ethics of numbers. The school mark is both powerfully invested, playing a pivotal role in determining an individual’s academic and economic opportunities, and an inescapable component of most students’ everyday realities around the world. Understanding how students navigate a context in which there exists a direct, compulsory and decisive link between them and “their numbers” is the main objective of Rohde's project.
Research on the lived experience of being graded generates insights into a key component of young people’s lives. An ethnography of grading gives a voice to students and is thus an important contribution to the otherwise largely technical discourse around assessment in education. Moreover, it can be observed on a global scale that quantification with similar characteristics as grading is becoming more significant in the algorithmic age. Investigating the social dynamics of grading offers insights into these vexing, seemingly ‘new’ issues. Ultimately, the ethnographic work will be distilled into an “ethics of numbers” which was called for ten years ago but has never been realized despite the growing need for such a conceptual foundation.
Mayumi Sato’s project,Anti-Racism in the Digital Age: Everyday Resistance against the Prison-Industrial Complex, aims to reframe our understanding of modern anti-racist praxis against the prison industry. Through a critical and participatory approach, Sato explores how digital technologies reimagine resistance to mass incarceration to formulate new sites of anti-racist protest. Counter-narratives and counter-storytelling disseminated in the digital sphere from marginalized epistemologies can be examined as everyday sites of resistance that normalize new ways of humanizing people who are disenfranchised and unable to communicate with the 'free world.' By examining the channels through which prison justice activists organize, locally and globally, Sato’s research raises underrepresented counter-narratives protesting incarceration and racism to the fore, and unearth new articulations of anti-racist resistance in the digital age.
Due to the emergence of mass incarceration in the Global North, there has been increasing scholarly attention to visible resistance efforts to the prison-industrial complex from inside and outside prisons. But what about the everyday and lesser-visible micro-resistances to carcerality and racism? While mass incarceration disproportionately targets racialized people, there has been little scholarly attention on how citizens mobilizing in digital space, a space that embodies an uneven access divide along racial lines, counteract the racialization of carcerality. Sato’s research contributes to sociological scholarship by looking at the more subtle forms of anti-racist defiance in online spaces that dismantle systems of oppression by normalizing the counter-narratives and efforts of prison justice organizers from a grassroots perspective.
Soboslay's 'Hope in Uncertainty’ examines the ongoing tussle between ethics and aesthetics in contemporary community arts and cultural development practices. Its practice-led methodology addresses care ethics against practice frameworks in order to bring new interdisciplinary perspectives to the field. The notion of an iterative ‘vulnerable authority’—adaptive and responsive to circumstance—brings a compelling dimension to the reflection on feminist care ethics and demonstrates where latent capabilities of care can be exercised. Five case studies address the design of policies and infrastructures that enable or disable care in our projects-in-community. Soboslay's thesis argues for the alignment of the concept of vulnerability with notions of receptivity and reciprocation, rather than through definitions based on deficit and need, demonstrating new ways of enabling participant capabilities.
Soboslay challenges the values of our contemporary audit culture by examining what constitutes care in our practices on the ground. It provides a meta-analysis of key terms such as authority and agency, identifying ways received frameworks (such as ‘applied theatre’) muddy the significance of uncertainty, mess, responsiveness, and multiplicity of forms and processes which can be more respectful to the vibrant and diverse latent capabilities in our communities. Soboslay's thesis identifies that Feminist Care Ethics pays better attention to the key skills of responsiveness, reciprocation and ‘vulnerable authority’ that can generate new aesthetics, in iterative practices that create form as they go. Such perspicacity constitutes an ecology of care—a new term that the thesis contributes to the field.
To preserve the entitlement of Indian property connected to reserve lands, section 89(1) of the Indian Act prevents the seizure or attachment to property on reserve. However, a creditor is also unlikely to grant credit to Indigenous debtors, who require access to capital for Indigenous economic development initiatives, if the creditor cannot enforce its security interest. While there is some case law that has ruled that an individual can waive section 89(1) exemption, it is unresolved in Canadian law whether a Band can waive this exemption. This research argues that to circumvent the Indian Act, the power to waive exemption should be afforded to Bands. This is consistent with Indian laws in jurisdictions such as the United States which permit tribes to waive sovereign immunity.
In legal scholarship, the unique nuances of Indigenous economies and the laws that constrain them has received some limited analysis to date, but is largely under-developed. The extent to which legal scholarship can contribute to legal reform in this area has been obscured by some of the more pressing social justice issues related to Indigenous peoples. This research reflects on how improving Indigenous economies can be a means to overcome historical injustice. The role of provincial and federal policy and law makers is critical to achieving economic justice for Indigenous peoples. As such, the research advocates for legal reform as it relates to laws that impact Indigenous economies. Given the current interest in reconciliation in general, this research could have a significant impact on Indigenous legal scholarship.
Earth’s global geological circulation drives the plate-tectonic cycles of continental drift over hundreds of millions of years and the changing pattern of continents profoundly influences the evolution of life on our planet. The global circulation is driven by the sinking of old and dense oceanic plates into the underlying weaker and buoyant mantle material. Roberta Carluccio’s research for the first-time compiles worldwide observations reporting a very thin and weak layer embedded at the boundary between the Earth’s strong oceanic plates and the underlying mantle and simulates the impact of this layer on plate tectonics and deep mantle dynamics. Carluccio’s work shows how layers embedded in the Earth’s deep interior influence the complexity we observe in natural systems for which little predictive and holistic modelling exists.
The theory of plate tectonics is successful in explaining the broad picture of Earth’s evolution; however, it cannot alone explain why particular geological events happen or predict the specific time or location of an earthquake or a volcanic disaster. In recent decades numerical modelling has become an essential tool in geosciences since rapid progress in technology offers new and exceptional possibilities in the development of multidisciplinary approaches. Carluccio’s research uses numerical models that draw upon knowledge of physics, mathematics, chemistry, geology and computer science to simulate the Earth’s deep interior dynamics and its feedback on plates surface motion. Carluccio’s work provides a novel conceptual framework to reinterpret the geological record of plate-margins, with broader implications for better understanding the evolution of the Earth’s dynamic system.
Suzanne’s research looks at the representative action, a centuries-old procedure underlying the history of class actions and group litigation in England and Canada. The two countries have interpreted the device differently, and this explains their contemporary differences. Canada has class actions, where one person can represent a whole group, whereas England has group litigation orders, requiring each person to sue individually. Seen by many as a historical curiosity, the representative action provides key insights into issues facing class actions today. In Canada, Indigenous groups use representative actions for declarations of their rights. In Ontario, representative actions may fill the gap left by recent restrictive legislation. In England, where class actions are only narrowly available, representative actions have provided a crucial pathway to accessing justice.
The representative action procedure has received some attention in class actions scholarship, but it has been overlooked in recent decades due to more pressing discussions of class action reform worldwide. In addition, the theoretical and doctrinal discussion of the procedure has been fairly limited, and has generally not considered the unique way in which representative actions have historically been used for the litigation of rights held by a group. Suzanne’s research uses historical and empirical study, as well as theoretical and doctrinal analysis, to demonstrate how the representative action can inform the study and practice of class actions today. Her research shows how, in both England and Canada, the procedure can supplement and inform existing reform initiatives and aid in the enforcement of group rights.
Theory-of-mind (ToM) or mentalising refers to our cognitive ability to track and reason about others’ mental states. As the beginning of ToM processing, Level-1 visual perspective-taking (L1VPT) means that people can track what others can and cannot see. However, there is a debate about L1VPT processing. Specifically, adults are slower to judge the number of dots they can see when an avatar sees a different number of dots. This consistency effect is interpreted as an evidence of implicit mentalising- adults track others’ visual perspective even when it is task-irrelevant. The submentalising account however argues the effect reflects attentional orienting. Fan’s work seeks to make headway towards resolution of the debate by marshalling new evidence to dissociate the two competing accounts.
Fan’s findings provided new evidence for evaluating the implicit mentalising versus submentalising debate, which we hope to give scientists further insight into the processing mechanism of L1VPT and processing systems for ToM. Furthermore, researchers may compare whether normal adults and psychopathic patients show different performance in L1VPT processes as psychopathic individuals have deficits in efficiently and implicitly taking others’ visual perspective. This may be even beneficial to further understand their deficit in social behavior related to dysfunction in L1VPT ability, which then lay a solid foundation to figure out some effective interventions to help psychopathic patients improve their social behaviors.
Growing Up Latinx: Young People Troubling Constructions of Citizenship, Rights and Legality in the United States features the stories of Latinx youth coming of age in the U.S., amidst an anti-immigrant political climate, and a sociocultural context that misrecognizes young people as apolitical, acritical, and naïve. The book offers a counter-hegemonic perspective of Latinx youth development through sociopolitical citizenship perspective. Through Latinx youth reflections of their lived experiences, their hopes and dreams, and a sense of belonging, readers are invited to re-think citizenship, rights and legality in the United States alongside Latinx youth stories, voices and experiences. Who is a citizen? What does citizenship mean? What are the implications of having – or being denied – citizenship? These are some of the questions answered through an ethnography of Latinx youth experiences growing up in a low-income working class community in the Central Coast of California. Rethinking citizenship to support the sociopolitical citizenship development of Latinx youth is possible when institutions and adults acknowledge and support the agency and power of young people. In particular, the cultivation of contexts that afford opportunities for Latinx youth critical consciousness, identity development, socioemotional awareness, and political engagement, especially for Latinx youth in immigrant and mixed-status families. Growing Up Latinx calls upon readers, educators, scholars and youth advocates to witness how Latinx youth challenge and trouble U.S. society’s views about who they are as young people and what they are capable of; it offers a humanizing story of Latinx youth in the U.S.
Growing Up Latinx is the first to bring together the disciplines of social-community psychology and Latinx Studies with Critical Youth Studies. The scope of this book is multidisciplinary, engaging key perspectives within these three disciplinary areas. The threaded intersections of these disciplines stand to benefit and serve scholars, academics, practitioners, educators, youth and Latinx community advocates who are interested in learning about the unique experiences of Latinx youth coming of age in the United States. Especially among Latinx young people growing up amidst a social and political context that is fret with deficit perceptions of youth, Latinx communities, and an ongoing anti-immigrant and anti-Latinx sentiment. Specific to the field of psychology, Growing Up Latinx offers a nuanced analysis of Latinx youth development, their sociocultural contexts, and their sociopolitical learning and wellbeing. As for the disciplines of Latinx Studies and Critical Youth Studies, Growing Up Latinx brings together the perspectives on race and ethnicity with age, along with other social categories, such as immigration status to describe and illustrate via stories how racism and adultism/ageism shape Latinx youth understandings or meaning-making of citizenship, rights and legality, including notions of belonging and inclusion. The implications and value of this book extend beyond academia as well, given the narrative and ethnographic story-like approach that characterizes its writing.
In “Platform Politics: Netflix, the Media Industries, and the Value of Reality,” Glick examines how Netflix has embraced documentary as a way to cultivate a socially conscious brand. The conglomerate’s character-driven house style and restrictive distribution policies raise awareness about pressing injustices, but ultimately neutralize the films’ rhetorical charge and curb the possibilities for community engagement. This chapter is part of a larger book which explores how the rise of neoliberalism and shifts in the media industries galvanized an interest in documentary on both the left and right of the political spectrum. As documentary proliferated across platforms and was put to use by social movements, it came to occupy an increasingly contested space in the public sphere, transforming the relationship between Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Washington D.C.
“Platform Politics: Netflix, the Media Industries, and the Value of Reality,” as well as the larger book manuscript from which this chapter is drawn, makes three central contributions to cinema and media studies. First, this project attends to the social context in which documentaries emerge. Too often documentary scholarship focuses solely on the close reading of individual films and filmmakers. Second, the chapter and book historicize how digital tools and online platforms at once democratized filmmaking and led to a crowded, disinformation-filled media landscape. Third, this project models interdisciplinary engagement with different kinds of sources. Braiding together archival sources, industry trade press articles, close analysis, and interviews elucidate how documentaries shape communities’ understanding of themselves and the surrounding world.
No One Knows their Blood Type is Jamjoum’s English-language translation of Maya Abu al-Hayat's Arabic-language La Ahad Ya'rif Zumrat Damih. The novella was originally published in 2013 by Dar al-Adab (Beirut), one of the premier publishing houses in the Arab world. It was widely praised in reviews published in several Arab countries, as well as by literary scholars who have consulted Jamjoum’s unpublished translation, which received honorable mention from PEN America’s PEN-HEIM translation grant (2017).
The story centers around Jumana who, together with her sister, was born to a fashionable Lebanese mother and a violently abusive Palestinian father, a PLO guerrilla leader in civil war-era Beirut. Each of the women in the family narrate different chapters, and the chapter told from the father's perspective is told through Jumana's voice (ie that of the author herself). Each chapter is also set in a different city at a different time. It begins in present-day Jerusalem, with the simultaneous death of her father in circumstances that lead Jumana to question her biological paternity. The following chapters take the reader back to Jumana and her sister’s childhood in Beirut, Amman and Tunis before her return to Jerusalem. In the penultimate chapter, Jumana discovers that her only possibility for a DNA test to determine the truth is through an Israeli laboratory, and gathers the courage to travel to West Jerusalem to contract their services.
This text does not aim to argue for the humanity of its characters, or outline the brutality of colonialism or the rights of the colonized, or to illustrate the cruelty of gender oppression. It takes these facets of the workings of power as its starting point. It responds to the traditional Palestinian literary and historical narrative by re-centering it around the female body (rather than the battlefields of anticolonial resistance and postcolonial historiography). In doing so, the text forces the reader to reckon with such questions as: what value is an anti-colonial movement when it is at the expense of its people’s autonomy over their own bodies? Why do we lionize the figure of the revolutionary militant when that militant is invariably transformed into a monster to those they supposedly cherish? Why are questions about motherhood and fatherhood, love and friendship not at the core of conversations about liberty and freedom? If they were, how would that change our conception of resistance?
The text questions the notion of truth in its relation to identity and belonging. The plot highlights blood and nationality as de facto determinants of human relations that allow borders and bureaucracies to administer what is at the core of social bonds. By the end of the story, we can’t help but see these determinants as flat, superficial and even coercively imposed. We are left with nothing but stories, secrets, songs, rumors and lies that emerge as somehow far more concrete components of belonging, even if conflicting, confusing, half-forgotten and often untold.
Kouyoumdjian’s work explores diasporic composers, their work, and their relationships to "home," identity, folk influences, and survivor's guilt. As the daughter of refugees who came to the United States as a consequence of the Lebanese Civil War, and as the granddaughter of refugees of the Armenian Genocide, topics of political/social conflict and one's relationship to "home" have played a large role in Kouyoumdjian’s music. While Kouyoumdjian does not label herself as a "political" composer, she do consider herself an empathetic human being, and has thus dedicated much of her compositional work to amplifying the stories of people who may not be in a position to safely speak up for themselves due to sensitive tensions in their environment. Kouyoumdjian dissertation will explore the degrees to which this may or may not be similar to other composers of the diasporic community.
There is very little documentation and literature on contemporary composers/immigrants. Often, classical music literature explores Nationalism around composers like Stravinksy, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, etc. Even the term "Nationalism" feels antiquated in 2020. Some diasporic composers may be highly influenced by their heritage and some may push against it in hopes to be more "American," but the existing literature does not explore these ideas in relationship to the psychology of "survivor's guilt." Do composers feel pressure to preserve their heritage through art making? Do they feel they must make the most of their freedom of expression because generations before did not have access to it? Is there processing of previous generations’ trauma through art making?
Language is often conceived as the vehicle in which legal norms could embed itself. Yet, the law hinges on social and political metaphors that require latent understanding of temporal societal constructs. These complex relations and interactions are encased and deployed in a specific and technical grammar. What would happen if legal texts are written in symbolic, numeric form as opposed to natural language? The project applies linguistic modelling and natural language processing technology, as well as statistical models of context, to deconstruct legal texts to their constituent components. The intent is to build an expert system predicated on alleged rules of legal reasoning. The preliminary hypothesis is that a component analysis, using a variety of techniques, would expose the inherent patterns hidden within legal language.
Existing literature in this domain focuses on the implications of legal technology as a systemic replacement of legal reasoning. While this type of research is valuable, it redirects focus from the nuances of legal processes. Instead, a dive into the translation process – from natural language to code –asks the deeper questions on the underlying operation and mechanics of law. Changing the medium in which the law is written could invoke a necessary shift in the epistemic roots of legal constructions. The project, therefore, investigates whether language is beyond a simple vessel. The field of law and technology would benefit from an analysis at a micro-level. It offers a richer dialogue on the sociological implications of computational law and its potential for the broader legal ecosystem.
Transportation represents a substantial part of the US economy, as well as every family’s budget, but continues to be based on an inefficient system that is focused on the individual use of automobiles. Eduardo Marino’s doctoral thesis studies the problems that ensue due to increased mileage and societal costs, explores the use of shared and/or connected vehicles as a solution to reduce the number of vehicles, and studies the interactions between supply and demand with new cost functions for the vehicles in the future. Marino uses an agent-based simulation system as the framework, along with an algorithm to match vehicles and drivers, to optimize the system from the point of view of the vehicles under socially-beneficial new scenarios envisaged in the future.
Marino’s research is part of a transformational study which not only encompasses an analysis of new and promising transportation scenarios, but also has impacts in the society, economy, and technology. It aims to contribute to ameliorating the current problems of congestion and costs in transportation systems, presents possible alternatives based on shared and/or autonomous vehicles, and analyzes the challenges they may bring. The national transportation sector can benefit from the analysis of new scenarios with the use of autonomous and shared systems. Marino’s contributions will also be in terms of solutions of lower costs and environmental damage, which would benefit the society. In this process the work will also lead to opportunities for new companies to use this framework to design efficient shared-vehicle fleet systems.
Saori Mita’s doctoral research investigates how male homosexuality has been represented in British spy fiction from the 1950s to the 2010s, in multiple media, including literature, film, television and theatre. British culture has historically associated spies with homosexuality, mainly due to the betrayal of the Cambridge Spy ring from the 1950s to the 1970s, and the wider Anglophone world has seen an association between homosexuals and Communism due to the hostile Cold War atmosphere created by McCarthy’s Red Scare. Her research investigates how this history is reflected in the spy genre from the Cold War to the present, in which male homosexual and spy identities intersect as “queer,” in that both are considered discreet and criminal, existing outside of the heteronormative order.
Mita’s research benefits the study of spy fiction by filling a gap in the investigation of homosexual representation. Although espionage and homosexuality have been a palpable undercurrent of many fictional works, very little explicit research has been done on this topic. Her research will offer both a chronicle of the evolution of the genre’s sexual representation and a theory of its representation of homosexuality as a spectral phenomenon. In addition to this, her research contributes to the field of gender studies of literature, film, television, and theatre. Spy fiction occupies a central position in British popular culture, and by exploring this genre in terms of homosexuality, this research will identify the role which same-sex desire has historically played in the British cultural imagination.
Sahgal's study, 'The Certainty of Tax: Fiscal Relations in Somalia', examines how fiscal relations emerge in more fragile contexts where the very idea of a centralised authority, such a state, is either suspect or contested. In Somalia, in particular, private sector actors have begun paying the state a nominal amount as corporate taxes. This even though some of the conditions considered necessary for mobilising revenue are not found in Somalia, i.e. the state currently does not have a monopoly over coercion, enjoys limited legitimacy, and is unable to deliver on its commitments. Adopting a qualitative approach, this study investigates the validity of three alternative explanations. Specifically, it asks, if relations are an outcome of elite bargains based on preferential access to political privilege, if they are a result of mediated exchanges for resolving collective action problems, or if they are motivated by cultural norms and Islamic values of moral propriety.
Reflecting on these questions, the study hopes to contribute to the broader theoretical debate on conceptualising fiscal relations in fragile and conflict-ridden environments. This is of significance as prevailing concepts of taxation do not fare well in explaining the experience of more fragile polities. By investigating an alternative set of explanations, this research will aim to offer more empirically grounded theses for modelling fiscal relationships. In advocating for the possibility of observing tax relations in contexts where order is maintained by a variety of institutions and actors, this study will also add to the burgeoning field of literature, which questions the "ideal-typical notions of the state" and is instead preoccupied with interrogating the substance of 'real governance'.
Remaking Capitalism in Twentieth-Century Brazil: A Global History explores Brazil’s pivotal but understudied experiment with corporatism in the 1930s and 1940s, a model promising a “third path” between free market capitalism and communism. The book shows how corporatism transformed the Brazilian state into an agent of economic development, and explains why it matters that this transformation was engineered under an authoritarian regime. Centered on the Estado Novo dictatorship under Getúlio Vargas, this book contends that corporatism generated a model of development dependent on uneven and unequal citizenship, in which economic interests – and not individuals – organized and petitioned through the state. It examines state-led efforts to reorganize the national economy in comparative and transnational frameworks, drawing upon related events in the Portuguese Empire under a dictatorship also called “Estado Novo.” This book recovers a forgotten chapter in the history of capitalism, positioning Brazil as a privileged vantage point from which to study twentieth-century struggles over laissez-faire capitalism and state-directed economies, democracy and authoritarianism, or internationalism and nationalism.
Remaking Capitalism in Twentieth-Century Brazil: A Global History contributes to the history of capitalism as well as to the study of law and society in Brazil. The study of corporatism is typically absent from histories of capitalism, or sidelined as the façade of authoritarian, nationalist, and inward-looking regimes. With Brazil, however, we see the long-lasting consequences of corporatism, and how it was not so different from other experiments with the mixed economy following the Great Depression. Where historians tend to treat state-led development as a post-1945 process, this work argues that corporatism constituted the legal and technical toolkit for the rise of economic planning in the 1930s. As one of the first works to study the economics of corporatism, it follows the circulation of legal and economic ideas across the Atlantic, taking seriously the legal systems designed by authoritarian regimes. By using trials of economic crimes, for example, we see how people navigated – or evaded – new institutions, and how corporatism influenced citizens’ ideas of economic justice and the role of the state in economic life. By illuminating the ideological clashes of interwar decades – free markets versus government planning, liberalism versus fascism, democracy versus dictatorship – the lessons drawn from Brazil can be useful for understanding why these tensions have resurfaced in our contemporary society.
Abigail Wiese investigates what performance as a medium affords us in better understanding shame's affect in the post-apartheid South Africa. The study asks how performance can facilitate a way into knowing how bodies experience, relate to and process shame through identifying performance as a means to navigate an often difficult, evasive and deeply subjective experience. Performance is centralised in the inquiry and a qualitative Practice-led/Research-led (PLR/RLP) design with autoethnography as a primary research method is employed. Wiese analyses post-apartheid South African theatre productions, performance art pieces, and visual artworks developing a theoretical and practical discussion around how shame and its affect is worked out in live exchanges between object/performance/assemblage and audience reflecting on the cultural forms of post-apartheid South Africa. In working autoethnographically the affective in-betweens of writing, performing and researching are spoken to, highlighting the temporal dynamics of process-driven work and the confused, unknown and often shame-felt realm in research production.
Wiese’s offers the first study of shame’s affect through the medium of performance in post-apartheid South Africa contributing to the development of a post-apartheid South African performance aesthetic with regards to affect, shame, embodiment and modes of meaning-making. The centralisation of performance in case study analyses begins an articulation into understanding how shame traffics in embodied day to day interactions while attempting to give a language to better identify and voice silenced, repressed and buried experiences. Key South African performances which are current and reflective of the shifting social-political landscape are analysed benefiting studies in anthropology, sociology and psychology. Wiese’s centralisation of the autoethnographic voice in methodology helps to resituate the often discredited area of audience meaning-making by including the analysis of what is internally performed during data collection and the writing process. This study contributes to the growing fields of performance studies, affect studies and shame theory.
The project studies arbitration in the United Kingdom from the perspective of global legal pluralism. Arbitration hence appears as an instance of institutionalised legal pluralism. Yet, this model can be disrupted by non-state conceptions of arbitration, which may cause difficulties to state law, and the courts’ reasonings based thereon. To illustrate this, the project studies the much-debated Jivraj v. Hashwani ([2011] UKSC 40), which concerned Ismaili arbitration in commercial matters. In this case, the courts had to apply employment-equality law in an arbitration context, yet against the background of Ismaili arbitration, which turned into a conflicted adjudication between arbitration law and employment-equality law. The paper argues that this is because UK arbitration law relies on a secular, commercial, conception of arbitration, from which Ismaili arbitration substantially differ. In this respect, UK arbitration law stands as an example of legal pluralism that acknowledges normative multiplicity but fails to embrace the cultural diversity entangled therewith.
This project contributes to the interdisciplinary development of several areas of legal research. Firstly, it associates global legal pluralism––understood as a theoretical framework that accounts for contemporary normative phenomena better than a monist conception of law––with cultural studies of law, which contend that state norms are grounded on foundational assumptions that are not universal, such as secularism. Secondly, the project uses this association to rethink the branches of state law that involve some forms of legal pluralism, but that are invisibly supported by monist and secular assumptions, including the conceptual partition between economy, politics, law, and religion. Such branches of law notably cover arbitration law and conflict of laws.
Adolescent girls with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their caregivers are challenged during pubertal transitions, particularly with menses onset. Neurodevelopmental disorders are disabilities primarily affecting the function of the brain and neurological system, such as ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, and intellectual disabilities. Over 50% of caregivers report concern and anxiety related to menses onset and seek medical advice. Caregivers’ concerns often include their child's ability to manage menstrual hygiene, pain, or mood changes associated with menstruation, increased caregiver burden, and their child’s vulnerability to sexual abuse and potential pregnancy. Menstrual management planning and education from healthcare providers is key to ensure quality of life for these girls and caregivers. Hopkins investigates the use of a shared decision-making model that will ensure delivery of consistent patient education regarding what to expect with onset of menses and options for menstrual management. Shared decision-making between the healthcare provider, caregiver, and child focuses on clear communication about patient-centered goals in effort to improve decision quality and overall health outcomes.
At present there are no decision-making models available for gynecological care of females with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Hopkins’s study of shared decision-making for menstrual management in girls with neurodevelopmental disabilities lays the groundwork for further investigation in her program of study aimed to define standards of care, adapt care delivery to fit patient and caregiver needs, and ultimately, improve overall patient health outcomes. Nursing and other health-related fields will benefit from this work aiming to inform comprehensive, evidence-based care for girls with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their caregivers.
In La Poétique du dépassement. Une nouvelle critique des littératures antillaises et indianocéaniques contemporaines, Jeanne Jégousso propose a new approach to theorizing contemporary Francophone literatures. She traces through these texts a “poetics of dépassement.” Édouard Glissant is the first one to use this word, dépassement, to analyze literature. The problem is that he stops short of concretely defining its role. After defining the poetics of dépassement, Jégousso uses it to understand modern works by authors from the Caribbean and Indian Ocean archipelagos who move away from the traditional narrative techniques of European literature, just as they move away from characteristic themes of twentieth-century Francophone literature. The critical approaches that traditional Francophone studies makes available to us are insufficient for these modern texts. A new approach is needed.
Not only does this book-length study illuminate overlooked aspects of Édouard Glissant’s oeuvre, it helps us understand the innovative and important works of contemporary authors underserved by approaches that predate them. Since its emergence, Francophone Studies have been a compartmentalized discipline. This tends to overlook global literary trends. To see these a simultaneous approach is needed. That is why this book puts contemporary Caribbean literature alongside literature from the Indian Ocean, and puts these alongside literature from the often-forgotten Union of the Comoros. By revealing unnoticed global literary trends in the French speaking world, this study, then, not only argues for a comparatist, transnational, and transcultural understanding of literature, it takes up works of Comorian literature rarely studied in the Western hemisphere.
Kennedy's work analyzes how two recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions may have expanded Canadian courts’ ability to answer novel questions of law on motions to strike, and whether this is a positive development. The article begins by placing such motions in the context of recent attempts to use procedural law to facilitate access to justice. The two recent decisions are then doctrinally analyzed to determine the extent to which they have changed the law. The subsequent use of such motions since the decisions is then empirically analyzed compared to their use prior to the decisions. Finally, it is analyzed whether these are normatively positive developments. It is concluded that they largely are, and can facilitate access to justice and uphold the rule of law.
Given the access to justice crisis plaguing Canada's justice system, there has been significant advocacy for summary procedures being used to facilitate prompt resolution of actions on their merits without a full trial. This article analyzes how this can, has, and should be done through deciding questions of law of motions to strike, specifically through: doctrinal analysis of how the law may have changed through two recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions; empirical analysis of how lower courts have approached motions to strike before and after those decisions; and normative analysis of whether these developments are satisfying. In light of this analysis, use of motions to strike to answers questions of law – specifically with the goal of facilitating access to justice – will be more informed.
In 1923 in Wilmington, Delaware, the city’s education board converted School No.5 from a white to a “colored” school. Upon this transfer, the school board declined to address the school's myriad hazardous conditions. Black education, nevertheless, flourished there for another thirty years, an occasion that has heretofore been nearly forgotten. Therefore, this article exams this systemically underserved institution, which eminent Delaware philanthropist Pierre. S. du Pont overlooked in his donation scheme targeting the First State’s Black schools. Recovering School No.5’s life as an ordinary “colored” school, we analyze its significance to the Black community it served and offer a centennial perspective that considers the school's long-range implications for Black education in Delaware. Oral history interviews with alumni informed analysis of the school’s thin archival record.
To the fields of history of education and African American history, we contribute an account demonstrating the importance of recovering unremarkable Black schools such as Wilmington’s School No.5; we do so to further a more comprehensive understanding of African American education and to underline essential Black stakeholders, whom adulations of P. S. du Pont’s philanthropy have hitherto overshadowed. Our examination of a virtually unknown school integrates Black education in Delaware into the broader historiography of Black education and white philanthropy, which in Delaware was shown to undermine African American agency and self-determination. Furthermore, we highlight more recent developments in Black K-12 education in Wilmington, underscoring the continuum of failed education policy at the hands of white philanthropists and wider free-market forces.
There has been increasing knowledge about autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in high-income countries, however, there is little knowledge and focus on clinical interventions in low- and middle-income regions, such as Africa. Furthermore, there is a need for feasible ASD intervention in sub-Saharan Africa. As a class of early ASD intervention approaches, naturalistic developmental behavioural interventions (NDBIs) are emerging as best practice. However, research that underpins NDBIs is largely based on evidence from high-income, monolingual, English-speaking, middle-socio-economic status participants. To effectively deliver NDBIs in multicultural, multilingual, low-resource African contexts, it is important to understand the everyday routines of children with ASD in these contexts. This study, therefore, seeks to characterize the distinctive features and context of caregiver-child dyadic interactions in a low resource South African setting.
Early behavioural intervention can result in the long-term improvement of cognitive abilities, social skills, language, and adaptive behaviours in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Naturalistic developmental behavioural interventions (NDBIs) can be a feasible and contextually relevant option for early ASD intervention in low- and middle-income settings, if well adapted. This study will provide fundamental knowledge on the dyadic interactions that occur between young children and their caregivers in a low resource South African setting. In addition, the study will broaden our understanding of the naturalistic context in which caregiver-child family routines occur. In doing so, this study can enable NDBIs to be contextually relevant and to be tailored to more diverse groups of children living in other low- and middle-income countries.
This project explores how Italian law regulates embryonic processes under the 40/2004 Act and emphasizes the ambiguity with which Parliament refers to the embryo, the conceived, and the newborn. This paper helps to detect the uncertain nature of embryos in the legal system. In light of this ambiguity and the development of biotechnologies, the problem of correctly categorizing the legal status of the human embryo constitutes a challenge for courts and academics. Over the last few decades, the use of biomaterials has increased but the law has remained unchanged. As a result, Italian judges have been facing a new kind of legal reality that cannot be adequately addressed through existing doctrine, which has in turn required them to rely on new perspectives originating from outside of the law. In order to overcome the uncertainties in the Italian system, this project adopts a context-based approach in accordance with which the status of the embryo differs across its development stages. This approach is the result of a structured analysis that takes into account the laws on burial, artificial contraception, abortion, suppression of embryos, the difference between the “conceived” and the “non-conceived” in the Civil Code. The overarching objective of this paper is to propose a new legal conception for the human embryo as res extra commercium.
Sahgal's study, 'The Certainty of Tax: Fiscal Relations in Somalia', examines how fiscal relations emerge in more fragile contexts where the very idea of a centralised authority, such a state, is either suspect or contested. In Somalia, in particular, private sector actors have begun paying the state a nominal amount as corporate taxes. This even though some of the conditions considered necessary for mobilising revenue are not found in Somalia, i.e. the state currently does not have a monopoly over coercion, enjoys limited legitimacy, and is unable to deliver on its commitments. Adopting a qualitative approach, this study investigates the validity of three alternative explanations. Specifically, it asks, if relations are an outcome of elite bargains based on preferential access to political privilege, if they are a result of mediated exchanges for resolving collective action problems, or if they are motivated by cultural norms and Islamic values of moral propriety.
Reflecting on these questions, the study hopes to contribute to the broader theoretical debate on conceptualising fiscal relations in fragile and conflict-ridden environments. This is of significance as prevailing concepts of taxation do not fare well in explaining the experience of more fragile polities. By investigating an alternative set of explanations, this research will aim to offer more empirically grounded theses for modelling fiscal relationships. In advocating for the possibility of observing tax relations in contexts where order is maintained by a variety of institutions and actors, this study will also add to the burgeoning field of literature, which questions the "ideal-typical notions of the state" and is instead preoccupied with interrogating the substance of 'real governance'.
Cross-jurisdictional citations between courts and tribunals have been extensively explored. There exists an abundance of material about constitutional courts, where the practice is commonly denominated as rule “transplanting” or as judicial “dialogue.” There is also a growing interest in international adjudicative bodies. Most often, however, these instances are viewed as departures from the accepted way of deciding cases. “Why should French courts be concerned with a German decision?”, for example. The practice suggests that there are no definitive criteria determining what past decision can pass as precedent, or what precedent best fits a legal system. Accordingly, this research asks two main questions: (i) What do we know about cross-jurisdictional citations? (ii) What are these instances telling us about adjudication as a global practice of law?
As the world changes at a fast pace, so must the rules that govern it. Although law is the product of a political process, it is easier for national courts and international tribunals to respond to these changes than it is for policymakers to reconcile diverging interests. By deconstructing some common misconceptions about cross-jurisdictional citations, this research argues that it is beneficial and sometimes necessary for judges and arbitrators to be open to using cases that have been decided in another jurisdiction. In doing so, it aims to advance the existing knowledge on the matter by shedding light over the role that courts and tribunals have in the transformation of law, both locally and internationally, as mechanisms of governance and social change.
Elena’s master’s thesis examines how family resources, roles, and relationships are shaping undergraduates’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic at the intersections of social class and race. This research draws from in-depth interviews with Black and White undergraduates from working- and upper-middle-class backgrounds who attend a single elite private university. The study aims to understand (1) how undergraduates and their parents have provided assistance to one another to mitigate disruptions caused by the pandemic, (2) how parents and children understand and experience this assistance, and (3) how assistance given or received shapes students’ pathways through the transition to adulthood.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and exposed long-standing racial and socioeconomic inequalities, including within institutions of higher education. Although previous research shows that privileged parents leverage financial, social, and cultural resources to secure advantages for their children during college, we do not know how parents may be employing family resources to mitigate harm caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, we do not know how college students themselves may be providing assistance to parents and other family members in response to the pandemic, or how these exchanges of support matter for students’ pathways through early adulthood. These processes have important implications for inequality and warrant scholarly attention. By illuminating how family resources, roles, and relationships are shaping undergraduates’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to deepen sociological understandings of the family as a site of social reproduction and to inform equitable policies and practices in higher education.
Vriens’ dissertation examines two Sonatas à Violino Solo by the violinist and J.S. Bach associate Friedrich Wilhelm Rust (1739–1796). These pedagogical works are valuable because they are structurally and conceptually modelled on Bach’s influential works for unaccompanied violin, collectively titled Sei Solo. Though Sei Solo is widely performed, fundamental questions remain about how violinists performed these works during Bach’s own time. Rust’s skill as a violinist, biographical connections to the Bach family, and didactic intent make his Sonatas an unprecedented window into the performance of Sei Solo and other violin works within the Bach circle. Vriens assesses Rust’s violin-playing techniques through archival study, comparative analysis, and performance using an original 18 th -century violin and bow.
Researchers in the field of historically informed performance have consistently demonstrated a wide gulf between how 18th-century music is performed today and how it was performed by its original musicians. These differences affect virtually every aspect of music-making, from the physical construction of the instruments to choices of tempo, tuning, and ornamentation. By examining the pedagogical works of this Bach associate, Vriens’ research establishes new data points which both correlate and challenge existing Bach performance practices. In turn, these findings offer new artistic and academic tools to inform present-day performances of Bach's violin music. Simultaneously, this work illuminates Rust’s works as intriguing and artistically stimulating additions to the violin repertoire.
Feminist foreign/aid policies, or variations thereof, have been emerging across the globe in various states of progression since 2014. But do these approaches go far enough in challenging the deeply rooted inequalities within the global aid ecosystem, a product of centuries of empire-building, deeply embedded in masculinized, neoliberal Western constructs? With continuing calls to decolonise aid and development, a sector increasingly being challenged for its entrenched 'whiteness', is the feminist label simply 'crafty sloganeering' or a 'glossy feminism of convenience' which masks wider systemic inequalities and injustice? In Aotearoa New Zealand, Nanaia Mahuta has become the nation's first indigenous female Minister of Foreign Affairs who has committed to look to 'different types of solutions' drawn from Aotearoa NZ's indigenous perspective. Angela Wilton explores what new imaginings this approach can offer the international development sector. How can indigenous approaches to foreign policy and feminist principles challenge current paradigms and bring about the kind of transformational change feminism sets out to embrace?
Research focused on feminist aid policies is relatively nascent due to emergence of these approaches internationally over the past six years. Feminist academic work varies in its assessment of feminist foreign policy agendas; for some, “feminism has been co-opted for neoliberal economic ends; for others it remains a critical force across the globe” . Research that questions the global aid ecosystem and challenges the enduring nature of neoliberal, postcolonial development is numerous and varied, as is work that looks to alternative post-development theoretical (and practical) constructions, including intersectional and decolonization approaches. Aotearoa NZ also has rich and varied academic research as it relates to indigenous rights, self-determination, imperialism, colonial systems of power, and indigenous justice. What is absent in the literature is how these strands could be woven together to create new approaches to (feminist) international cooperation policy and practice, grounded in endogenous epistemologies and shaped by indigenous leadership and approaches. In this manuscript, Wilton sets out to explore what might be possible.
On September 2, 1945, the Japanese Imperial Army surrendered to the Allied Powers and approx. 600.000 Japanese soldiers were taken to Siberia as captives. Today, more than 2000 documents from former Japanese POWs have been written and published. The testimonies show how cultural activities, such as singing, sports, or drawing, helped to ensure that the inmates did not lose hope and were a welcomed distraction from labor work. Although these activities were partly initiated by the detainees themselves, Soviet authorities also used them for indoctrination. Using source material such as song books, memoirs, and illustrations, Geber is focusing on the cultural activities the Japanese POWs engaged in and assesses their significance as distractions from camp life as well as effective tools of Soviet propaganda.
Surprisingly, the topic of Japanese POWs in the Soviet Union after World War II is not well researched. Particularly cultural activities and art objects are neglected by historians and can be considered a “blind spot” in Japanese history, as well as in the history of Russo-Japanese relations. Geber conducted research in Kazakhstan and Japan, and interviewed former Japanese POWs, thus making new source material available. She also obtained access to rare song books that have not been the focus of scholarly attention until now. Her research is not only situated in Japanese and Slavonic studies, but also profits deeply from her education in Cultural Management as well as in East Asian Art History.
Cedomir Ignjatovic’s manuscript, FlowQ: the joy of applying yourself provides step-by- step protocols to bring flow theory into practice, tools to apply flow theory among educators, and encourage joyful application of self in everyday educational settings. The flow concept - joyful absorption in application - has international appeal in sports, leisure, and daily work settings. And yet the flow concept has not been effectively translated into the everyday lives for working adults, educational staff, or teachers. FlowQ aims assist in flexible and contextual application of flow skills amidst the challenges that arise in daily work settings. With a practical and user- friendly focus, the aim is to bring the vision of the accessibility and applicability of the flow concept to life.
The FlowQ manuscript initiates ‘Flow 2.0’and a focus on latest systems and behavioral sciences whilst simultaneously expanding the practical accessibility and applicability of existing tools on optimal human attention and experience. Having a strong applied focus and utilizing both practice and research insights in Clinical and Educational psychologies, FlowQ aims to address the information transfer barriers of previous static and rigid translations of flow theory. With a specific focus on educators, techniques informed by Dialectical behavior therapy, attachment theory, self-efficacy and mnemonics domains are utilized to assist in daily efforts to joyfully engage and apply their personal best.
In the fourth decade of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Black women ages of 26-44 are disproportionately impacted. Yet, we know little about how Black women, particularly young women, experience illness, disability, and inequality while participating in and leading social movements. Ill Erotics: Black Caribbean Women and Self-Making in Times of HIV/AIDS examines how the politics of HIV care and self-making meet in young HIV-positive Jamaican women’s lives as they shape their daily experiences, intimate relationships, and political organizing. Jolly contends that women negotiate erotic autonomy and pathologizing discourses of HIV containment, two seemingly contradictory impulses, as they navigate the broader landscapes of HIV/AIDS activism, reproductive justice, and health. Using ethnography, oral histories, critical race and feminist theories, Jolly uncovers how they build empowerment and self-care around disability, class oppression, severe impoverishment, and lack of access to health care.
Ill Erotics offers three primary contributions. First, it expands the geographic and thematic scopes of studies of race, racism, gender, and health in American Studies, which rewrites new scripts of American culture that foreground cultural analyses of transnational black subjects. Second, it calls for an expansion of intersectionality to theorize HIV in robust ways that are attentive to Black women’s lived, felt, and fleshy experiences. Third, it contests the male-centric focus on political leadership and common notions of political participation by shifting focus to a broader array of activities rooted in women’s everyday grassroots practices. Together, these interventions speak to broader issues of intimacy, HIV prevention, and inequality in ways that are relevant to the experiences of U.S. women of color and Afro-diasporic women while encouraging new sites and subjects of scholarly inquiry and political mobilization.
The United States is one of the only United Nations member states that has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This manuscript will present a persuasive argument for why the US should move to ratify the Convention. The argument will center on analysis of where current US legislation falls short, in addition to identifying concrete ways in which the ratification of the CPRD could help protect the rights of Americans with disabilities. To further support the argument, there will be examination of the positive progress that has been made in countries that have ratified the convention. The analysis will conclude with policy recommendations that would demonstrate a greater commitment to the rights of Americans with disabilities moving forward.
The manuscript will benefit human rights legal scholarship by examining the significance of international standards in the United States’ legal context. Furthermore, it will contribute valuable research and analysis to the under-discussed rights of people with disabilities. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) only entered into force in 2008, so there is space for scholarship surrounding the Convention to be strengthened and deepened. While disability is not rare, this community can be particularly vulnerable to discrimination by and through the legal system. An extensive analysis of the US laws pertinent to disability rights, in combination with a legal argument for the ratification of the CRPD, could help advance protections and advocacy for the rights of Americans with disabilities.
Until recently, much of the scholarship on eighteenth-century vernacular capitalism in India focused on male entrepreneurs. This research uses micro- history as a methodology to foreground the role of propertied women as economic agents in this period of economic growth. It examines how they participated in the colonial agrarian economy of northern India as heads of households, as people with credit and authority in the community and as managers of their family concerns and businesses. This project traces the ways in which the matriarchs forged valuable deals with officials, taking advantage of a multi-centered and diffuse colonial administration. It suggests that a gendered reconstruction of economic activity in this period expands our understanding of vernacular capitalism and colonialism in eighteenth-century in India.
This research contributes to historiographical examinations of vernacular capital in eighteenth-century India. It outlines the networks of affect, authority, commerce, and credit which spanned household, community, and state. The project explores the place of kinship ties and caste-based activities in late eighteenth-century commercial relationships that were yoked to the needs of an expanding colonial state. In doing so, it weaves women into the history of the transition to colonial rule. It shows how maintaining gender as a lens expands our understanding of the social history of economic transactions in eighteenth- century India.
This study evaluates the geochemical and isotopic signatures of a deep subsurface, high temperature, and hypersaline brine from Moab Khotsong gold and uranium mine in the Witwatersrand Basin of South Africa to explain brine evolution over geologic time and to explore microbial metabolisms supported under these uniquely formed constraints. The Moab Khotsong brines were found to be Ca-Na-Cl dominated, and to have non-meteoric 18O and 2H values suggesting long residence in the subsurface, and to contain organics of with abiotic isotopic signatures. Additionally, the high radiolytic activity of this system may generate enough H2 to sustain chemolithotrophic microorganisms. This study and future analyses will explore this potentially long-isolated brine system where abiotic geochemistry may support a low biomass microbial community at the fringes of habitability.
This research will allow the first opportunity to understand how an abiotically dominated high temperature, highly radiogenic, and hypersaline subsurface environment that has been hydrologically isolated over geologic timescales can inform extremophile microbial habitability. Not only will this study explore unique thermodynamic constraints on microbial metabolic pathways, but it will provide a reference for future studies considering organic carbon and microbial characterization in hypersaline and low biomass sites. An understanding of how the unique geochemistry of these brines may support life under these extreme conditions provides necessary preparation for exploring bioenergetic support for chemotrophic life in similarly saline extraterrestrial subsurface environments, which could include analogous environments beyond Earth, such as under the Martian crust or the ice crusts of putative ocean satellites.
The subject of Ortega's research is: "Flamenco aesthetics and costumes in relation to tourism in Spain during the Franco regime". The aim is to study the use of flamenco by the Franco regime and flamenco aesthetics and costumes as tourist propaganda. The study is focused on the aesthetics as an image of Francoism and tourism from the 1950s to the Transition. Therefore, the different aesthetics and costumes surrounding flamenco, the way Franco used flamenco, the image that was created, the creation of a Spanish brand as a result of flamenco, etc. Flamenco was an essential element in the promotion of tourism and used a flamenco commercial aesthetic close to kitsch that has been and is very present in tourist, commercial and cultural advertising tools.
Despite the fact that flamenco is part of the heritage of humanity and Andalusian culture, the resources for its research are so scarce that it is not even possible to date its beginnings. It is an art and a musical genre closely linked to culture and society, with a very long history and which has been used as a protest song, from the gypsies who worked the fields to the singers who fought against Franco's repression. This research aims to open up new avenues of research into flamenco, which are so necessary in order to get to know and discover this culture and way of life that is so familiar and which is sold as our "Spain brand" but about which so little is known.
Many landfills do not meet adequate environmental and groundwater protection requirements. They can pose a risk to the environment from fires caused by arson or spontaneous combustion. This poses a major hazard that could contaminate the nearby environment and endanger nearby residents. Studies on the toxicity of waste transformed by fire in a wild landfill in Sosnowiec (Poland) will allow to assess the potential risk for the environment resulting from the migration of pollutants generated by fire. The collected samples for the study will be analyzed using gas chromatography- mass spectrometry (GC-MS) as the main analytical method. During the analysis particular attention shall be paid to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), synthetic organophosphates, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and other low and high temperature degradation products of the plastics.
The research area is related to the discipline of Earth and Environmental Sciences and related to environmental chemistry, hydrogeology and geochemistry. The topic is an answer to the underestimated problem of burning landfills in Poland and in the world. The study of changes in the toxicity of waste during a fire and the subsequent impact of the migration of these substances on the ground and water environment will allow for better management of waste deposited in landfills in the future. Perhaps some substances should not be combined because of their subsequent hazardous effects in the transformation and further transport of pollutants. The topic is novel, interdisciplinary and has great potential for publication, and will allow to broaden the knowledge in the presented scientific fields.
The Vero cell line is the most used continuous cell line for viral vaccine manufacturing with more than 40 years of accumulated experience in the vaccine industry, emerging as an important discovery and screening tool to support the global research and development efforts in this COVID-19 pandemic. However, the lack of a reference genome for the Vero cell line has limited our understanding of host-virus interactions underlying such affinity of the Vero cell towards key emerging pathogens, and more importantly our ability to re-design high-yield vaccine production processes using Vero genome editing. Thus, Marie-Angelique’s PhD research project aims to explore the interactions and phenotypes at play during virus infection of Vero cells in order to fully characterize them and to exploit them to develop a tool for improved virus vaccine production.
The Vero cell line is used as a platform for various studies ranging from virus vaccine manufacturing to virus culture for other applications and has the potential to become a cost-effective, high throughput platform globally accessible through gene editing to increase virus production and to achieve high yield production and robust scalability of processes. Thus, by providing a reference genome for Vero cells and through deep quantitative profiling of infected cells this study will pave the way for widespread application of genome analysis and editing tools for the Vero cell line. Considering the use of Vero cells in vaccine manufacturing processes and in particular the acceptance of this cell line by regulatory authorities, successful applications of genome editing can significantly improve virus production and ultimately lower the cost of vaccine manufacturing.
As the number of Africans in China increases, host communities have had to deal with the challenge of diversity and inclusivity with which it brings. Knowledge about Africa(ns) in China or the absence thereof contributes to how they are viewed, (not) interacted with within their host communities. With increased mobility between Africa and China, how Africans in China are viewed, depicted, and treated have been the subject of minor diplomatic rows between some African diplomatic officials and China and has the ability to impact the overall relations. Media has been and remains an important space for consciously and unconsciously (mis)informing the wider population. Taking popular media as producers and circulators of knowledge about Africa(ns) in China, this project examines its role in (re)production, (re)circulation of (perceived) knowledge of Africa prior to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and how these forms of knowledge have persisted, been reproduced, and recirculated despite regime, political and economic changes after the establishment of the PRC and its implications for current relations.
This project challenges the temporality of knowledge that makes it into and are popularised by various forms of Chinese media. It traces various forms of knowing Africa within the historical, socio-cultural, and socio-economic contexts within which they are created and circulated. This becomes increasingly important with the rising interest in research on people-to-people interactions which is driven by (mis)information of the other. It also argues against exceptionalism by examining continuity. Through rhetorical circulation, China’s representation of Africa feeds off and into global flows of knowledge. This project contributes to understanding people-to-people research within Africa-China relations. In the wake of Black Lives Matter movements and Anti-Asian sentiments and shootings, a reflection on one of the roots of discrimination, particularly the role of knowledge in how we 'other' people from different racial, ethnic, socio-economic backgrounds has implications beyond China.
Nebo's research focuses on ancient Athenian drama and its reception in contemporary Italian, Greek, and Yugoslav cultures. The archive that he has assembled for his dissertation includes mostly unpublished reworkings of ancient Greek tragedy adapted for theatre and film in the former Yugoslavia—as well as in Greece and Italy—that take the Yugoslav wars as their thematic backdrop. stands simultaneously outside an imagined ‘West’ and neatly enclosed inside of it, flanked as it is by Italy to the northwest and Greece to the southeast. The erstwhile federation and its disintegration represent a fraught object of European identification whose vector runs counter to a notional geo-cultural continuity with ancient Greece rooted in the neo-Hellenizing narratives of the Western imagination. In establishing a dialogue between ancient and contemporary plays, his project collapses old models of centers and peripheries; rethinks the debate around community, identity, and trauma in a postcolonial framework; and advances a theory of translation.
His project is situated at the intersection of classical studies and comparative literature. Until recently, Classics was a discipline chiefly interested in reconstructing, through zealous philological analysis, the meaning of ancient texts within their literary, sociopolitical, and historical context of production. While this is still a predominant approach, more and more attention is being paid to the afterlife of these texts: what are the different ways in which these texts have been received an interpreted over time? What awareness do these texts bring to the contemporary contexts in which they are read? How do contemporary readings of these texts map onto their ancient context of production? His research seeks to answer this kind of questions. To do so, he proposes to produce awareness not only about the contemporary Italian and Balkan theatre culture, but to advance concurrently the academic discourse about ancient Greek Tragedy.
Land Cinema in the Neoliberal Age studies a global corpus of films made in the 1970s and 80s that constitute contributions to Marxist and environmental thought during the rise of neoliberalism. Taking experimental and activist films from countries including Japan, Chile, Britain, and the US, as vivid social barometers and historical testimonies, it argues that land, plant life, and agricultural labour came to occupy a privileged position in the social imaginary during this time of sociopolitical change. Cultivating land through gardening or farming, and producing cultural representations of it through film, became means of ecosocialist resistance for many filmmakers across the world. Land Cinema sheds light both on these filmmakers’ political visions - and oversights - and debates around social and environmental justice today.
The project contributes to film studies through original archival research drawn from under-studied collections, some of which are yet to be catalogued and/ or translated into English. Many of its case studies are women, or people of colour, who worked outside mainstream film networks and have not received due critical and academic attention. The project places its eight case studies in complex conversations that nuance transcultural understandings of aesthetic and political practice. Framing these films as witnesses and protagonists of cultural history, it speaks to adjacent fields of spatial research, including visual cultures, political economy, area studies, human geography, and anthropology. Its discussion of a formative period in environmental consciousness is striking in its relevance to the climate emergency today.
The phenomenal growth of bibliography in and around James Joyce's texts is a curious detail that compels serious scholarly attention. For nearly a century, Joyces work has attracted the concerted attention of an inordinately large number of textual, scholarly, critical, and interpretive studies. The tradition of critical commentary has been addressing a rich diversity of topics. The commentary and commentators on these topics range from, but are not exclusive to, studies on the narrative (Tindall, Beckett, Burgess, Burrell); literary and other sources (Ellmann, Atherton, Kenner); themes and style (Tindall, Hodgart, Beckett, Burgess); and language and language philosophy (Beckett, Ellmann, Attridge). Besides these, concordances (Hart); character indices (Glasheen), plot summaries and guides (Campbell, Tindall, Gordon, Hodgart, Tindall, Epstein); annotations (McHugh, Sandulescu); and full-length journals dedicated to Joyceana have incrementally added to the bulk of published research on this single work. The intended purpose of Jinan Ashraf’s study titled “After Joyce: Continuities and Ruptures in the Modern Indian Novel in English” is to explore the possible problems and challenges that might issue from examining James Joyce's interface with India through a close examination of his legacy and influence on Indian Modernist writers who take 'after' Joyce: in the 'tradition' of Joyce but also 'following from' Joyce.
As most emerging writers in English in colonial India were beginning to perceive, the conflict in the ‘method‘, ‘form', ‘function’ and ‘end’ of the modern novel may well arise from the tradition of the English novel that pioneering Modernists in India had inherited as part of the colonial legacy. There was a felt need to depart from the extremely derivative models that Renaissance writers in India had inherited and imitated— models imported, tried and tested from the West.The manuscript examines emerging and rearticulated conceptions of women's subjectivity in the modern Indian novel in English and the specificities of the historical and social context of women's literary production in early twentieth-century India. In examining the works of Rashid Jahan and Iqbalunnisa Hussain, among other writers, Jinan Ashraf attempts to bridge the gap between the relatively neglected area of Indian Anglophone writing by women writers from the margins and Joyce Studies through a comparative and developmental study of James Joyce’s legacy on the modern Indian novel in English.
Reducing Burnout, Increasing Psychological Flexibility, and Improving Work Performance in Developmental Service Workers During a Global Pandemic: An Application of Brief Online Self-Guided ACT, aims to design and implement a cost-effective and time-sensitive delivery mode of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) during the COVID-19 pandemic. While known to be traditionally delivered in-person, ACT is regarded as a flexible and malleable therapy that can be modified to serve the needs of various populations in various contexts. Research underscores the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on frontline workers, especially in matters concerning burnout and work performance. Kristina’s work aims to investigate a new avenue of therapeutic care that can be more feasible and complementary to frontline workers in the helping field.
As the COVID-19 pandemic catalyzes therapeutic services to shift to virtual settings, Kristina is determined to contribute to the field in ways that serve workers in the helping profession in meaningful ways. While ACT has been previously delivered in independently brief, online, and self-guided formats, the field has yet to document the impact of an ACT intervention that consists of all of these aspects simultaneously. Drawing mainly from the work of Andrew Hayes as well as Jenkins and Ahles, Kristina designed a web-based modularized version of ACT for personal support workers who provide direct support to individuals with a wide range of disabilities. Kristina further expands the scope of this topic by responding to the current need for accessible, flexible, and cost-effective therapeutic interventions.
The consumer welfare standard has become the guiding principle of EU competition policy and the default test in assessing mergers in EU antitrust law enforcement. Although the phrase is suggestive of a broad analysis that considers general concerns of consumers, the consumer welfare standard is more and more singularly focused on the impact upon price of a merger. As a result, this emphasis upon economic criteria has led the European Commission to marginalise other public interest considerations such as gender and racial equality, dispersion of power amongst market actors, and other factors related to social inclusion. The project will thus evaluate whether the consumer welfare standard should be amended to include public interest considerations alongside efficiency, with specific reference to gender, race, and social inclusion.
The focus on price effects has weakened the law’s ability to deal with some of the most serious anticompetitive harms. The aim of the project is to demonstrate that the purely economic approach adopted by the Commission fails to incorporate all considerations and values of the modern consumer, and to develop an alternative framework that invokes public interest factors to improve consumers’ overall welfare. The result, it is hoped, will be a more egalitarian system that works for all interest of consumers and society as a whole, rather than merely serving markets and those companies able to provide the lowest prices.
This dissertation sought to understand the sustainability problems of institutions built or developed through foreign aid funding in fragile and post-conflict contexts. It used decentralised development planning institutions in fragile and post-conflict contexts called village development committees (VDCs) as cases. The research integrates case study embedded with mixed-method research design. Evidence shows that in West Africa, local development institutions are not independent and self- sufficient. They don’t have the capacity and inputs of their own necessary to exercise the powers and responsibilities bestowed on them as coordinating entities of the multilevel planning process at the village level. Also, there is a short supply of inputs from their environment such as materials/logistics, monetary, human, information, and knowledge resources that VDCs require to facilitate the production of outputs.
In the literature, the sustainability problems of institutions built/reshaped through foreign aid in developing countries point to either the character of donor agencies involve in the business of institution building/development, the nature of institution-building itself or both. Findings of this study adds a fresher perspective to the literature on the sustainability issues of institutions built/developed through foreign aid funding in developing country contexts especially those of fragile and post-conflict. By focusing on the sustainability linkages between the internal competencies and strategies of local institutions and their interaction with the various stakeholder groups in their environment. For the fact that it studied decentralised development institutions as cases, the findings contribute to decentralisation reform literature and community-driven development theory and practice particularly in fragile and post-conflict contexts.
Downey's dissertation asks what is required to sustain effective legislative power over policymakers over time. How can the people, as sovereign, employ expertise without losing democratic power? She answers this question by way of an in-depth exploration of a particularly important case: monetary policy. The creation and allocation of money is, alongside the use of coercive force, the state’s most potent form of power. It is also an especially overt example of policymaking driven and controlled by elites. By wrestling with what it would actually look like to democratize monetary policy Downey's dissertation develops a democratic theory of monetary policy and advances a more general account of the political theory of policymaking.
Downey's research centers on the democratic theory of policymaking. This is, in and of itself, a contribution. There is much scholarship examining why democracy matters, categorizing democracies, and debating what democracy is, but there is little on what is required in the practice of democracy. Downey's work fills this gap by exploring the normative dimensions of the ways in which democratic states actually make policy. Furthermore, in using monetary policy to develop democratic theory and democratic theory to analyze monetary policy Downey contributes to both disciplines. Politics focuses on how we determine the rules we live by, economics on how we produce the goods and services we need to live. Downey's research demonstrates that how we produce influences how we can govern, and vice versa.
Fossil fuel subsidies are pervasive and tenacious policy instruments that act as a negative tax on carbon, hindering the transition to clean energy, dampening the impact of carbon controls, increasing pollution, and straining public budgets. Evan’s research aims to develop an understanding of how domestic institutional configurations contribute towards the persistence of fossil fuel subsidies. Essentially, he is interested in exploring how institutional change affects the form and function of these subsidies. Changes in political institutions and fossil fuel subsidies will be examined as an emergent process whereby newly forged institutional configurations alter the policy instrument and vice versa. In pursuing this line of enquiry, he seeks to develop new insights on how to bring about sustainable and equitable energy transitions.
Evan’s project is anticipated to contribute to his field by augmenting existing policy process theory with historical institutionalist understandings of policy change. Studies on fossil fuel subsidy reform, thus far, generally focused on the exogenous and predominantly economic factors that pressure governments to swiftly instigate policy change. Exogenous factors, though critical to understanding the phenomenon, must ultimately be processed through endogenous political institutional machinery that has the potential for more incremental and overlooked forms of change. Moreover, reform commitments made by countries at international summits do not demand full dismantling, therefore, his theoretical framework accounts for ongoing and partial policy dismantling, in addition to the real possibility of a policy rollback.
The black middle-class of South Africa has been the subject of academic and media fascination since the democratisation of South Africa almost 30 years ago. However, this attention has the tendency to portray a one dimensional and homogenous image of the black middle-class that frames it as an illegitimate class that is lazy, shallow, parasitic and lacks ethics of a bona fide middle-class. Through the lens of food and food culture, that utilises Bourdieu’s class capital theory, this thesis undertakes a phenomenological exploration that presents a nuanced and complex group of people who are not only heterogeneous, but are rebuilding and constructing their sense of self, dignity and distinct identity amid a vastitude of complications that are a result of colonialism, apartheid and post-colonial politics.
This thesis contributes to the growing scholarship and literature of food and food culture from a humanities perspective. It demonstrates a critical relationship between food, the self and society. Secondly, this thesis contributes to the minor studies that are aimed at complicating the mainstream characterisation of the black middle-class. Thirdly, this thesis addresses some of the shortcomings of research on this group to date. For example, most studies on the black “middle-class” of South Africa tend to focus on the intersectional politics of the black “middle-class” at the low end of the spectrum, they have largely ignored the foundations of the black middle-class during apartheid, as well as, they have mainly focused on the middle-class of Soweto as a representative of all black South Africans.
Global warming has become a matter of concern as it has caused devastating impacts on the earth including, but not limited to, frequent wildfires, drought, and intense storms. Global warming occurs when carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases collect in the atmosphere and absorb sunlight, thereby increasing the temperature. The construction industry accounts for approximately 40 percent of CO2 emissions annually. Therefore, researchers have endeavoured to replace concrete and steel structures with timber buildings owing to the benefits of wood to the environment. For instance, wood from managed forestry stores CO2 as opposed to emitting it. Having said that, wood is a brittle material and thus, timber structures are susceptible to earthquakes if they are not combined with absorbers of seismic energy.
When combined with energy-dissipating devices or connectors, timber shear walls have proved to be very effective in protecting timber structures against severe earthquakes. This research is focused on the development of a robust low-cost wood-based seismic energy-absorbing shear wall for timber structures. Once the wall is developed, building designers at seismically active cities around the world would significantly benefit from this easy-to-install wall by being able to design and construct seismic-resistant timber structures. This will be phenomenal progress in the building and construction sector towards the reduction of global warming.
Laurent's research expands our knowledge of cognitively diverse artists and better situate their practices within contemporary art discourse as well as the larger art historical context. This interdisciplinary research —focusing on exhibition histories and curatorial narratives, gender theory, and crip theory—and will include contextual research into modern and contemporary art movements which include or allude to cognitively different artists: Outsider art, Art Brut, naive art, Impressionism and Expressionism. Laurent asserts these artists' unique impact on culture and artistic production, the art market, and the globalized art world.
As our entire culture reckons with the pressure to incorporate “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility” strategies, the academic world has a part to play in leading the way towards a more inclusive picture of Art History, highlighting specifically the role that cognitively diverse artists have within it. The goal is to shift contemporary global mindsets and renew the conceptualization and analysis of what contemporary art is, who is creating it, and why. Acknowledging divergences and conversing around the evolution of a minority cultural practice can only benefit the global Art History methodology and iconography. The ambition of this project is to lay an impactful and galvanizing ground for scholars, artists, collectors and curators to re-approach and re-critique Outsider Art, and rethink ableism in Art History.
Pichnicka-Trivedi’s project focuses on the process of constructing Otherness, performed through 21st century Vampire Narrative. The project applies the tools of structural semiotics in the context of a comparative analysis of a large corpus of texts. The aim is to explore the various forms in which con-temporary Vampire Narrative can embody the social and political relations within and between West-ern and non-Western cultures. In particular, the very notion of Westerness as a "transparent familiarity” is subjected to critical scrutiny.
Pichnicka-Trivedi subjects the field Vampire Narratives to structural semiotic analysis, for only the analysis of narrative structure, as a whole, can reveal the full meaning of the narrative. Pichnicka-Trivedi’s perspective is new not only in its methodology and particular focus (i.e., combining science, ecology, and (post)humanism), but also in its comparative dimension. To date, there have been very few studies concerning Eastern European Vampire Narrative. Further, there is no Western Vampire Narrative analysis which attempts to adopt a non-Western standpoint (i.e., postcolonial deconstruc-tion from the point of view of the peripheries). Nor have there been any studies which explore the mirroring of Western and non-Western narratives. Pichnicka-Trivedi’s project is fulfilling an important gap in this domain of cultural and social narrative studies.
Nate Tilton’s project aims to explore the ways that disabled Pasifika veterans create novel forms of care to fill in the gaps in care they experience from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). VA Hospitals across the US provide in and out-patient care, including emergency care. Yet in Guam, for its 24,000 veterans, there is only one community VA center: the VA Guam Community-Based Out-Patient Clinic which offers limited in-patient care. In response, Pasifika veterans have sought and advocated for alternative sources of healthcare and disability representation. Pasifika veterans have responded by directly filling these gaps in care by creating NGOs centered around veteran’s health, technology, and community. Through virtual ethnography and participant observation, Tilton examines the complex socio-economic, administrative, and community dynamics that shape disabled Pasifika veteran’s engagement with the VA and community NGOs led by Pasifika veteran activists.
Tilton’s research is situated at the intersection of disability, citizenship, and military anthropology. Understanding veterans’ lives from the perspective of disability anthropology allows him to consider a veteran’s own agency in their care and treatment, as well as connections to their community and how their community influences care decisions and options. Furthermore, in addition to anthropology, he is contributing to Pasifika studies. Currently, there are ethnographies that seek to understand Pasifika peoples and cultures and case studies that seek to understand the impact of the US military on Pasifika peoples and land. There are no ethnographies that focus on Pasifika veterans and position them as the primary interlocutors.
The aim of this project is to show how some genetic studies, conducted in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest relate to the social, political, and cultural life of the Kichwa natives, who provided their blood and saliva samples. In this manuscript, Volpi will show how social players’ imaginary and scientists’ products are susceptible to continuous negotiation and reciprocal transformation. Volpi, therefore, answers some fundamental questions: can traditional knowledge contribute to the generation of genetic data? Are the human relations built by geneticists in the field able to guide them in their selection of samples? Are the Kichwa’s political choices affected by the new biological findings? And, finally, can indigenous beliefs about humanity, kinship, and history be shaped by the western scientists’ “new truths”?
This project makes an innovative contribution to anthropological theory by building connections between different disciplinary fields. On the one hand, it helps to bridge the gaps between cultural and biological anthropology, by focusing on a complex network of relations, dynamics, and knowledge which belong to a twofold natural-cultural dimension. On the other hand, it calls for a new dialogue between Amazonian studies and anthropology of science. This ethnographic case highlights, in fact, the need for a new approach to the study of the social uses of DNA in the Amazonian region: in a cultural context in which memory, intentions, and care belong to the same material order as blood and saliva, the “biological datum” can be interpreted in a peculiar way, by social players involved.
To date, children's experiences during the COVID pandemic have received little attention. Even less is known about the experience of migrant undocumented children, who are racialized, undercounted, and considered burdens on society. Drawing from geographies of care and Latin American Feminisms, this paper indicates how youths’ political acts of care are critical in the survival of their families, peers, and society. They have sacrificed their well-being and future in the process of "caring to belong." Through conversations with recent migrant youth, this paper examines undocumented youths' socio-cultural and spatial care practices in various spaces: home, workspaces, the virtual, and the public sphere. Findings reveal that youth demonstrate their care to belong through connecting their families to new environments, taking care of siblings while family members work, some have become essential workers to support their families financially, and others have joined community migrant organizations to demand dignity. and respect during the pandemic.
This paper provides three contributions. First, this article expands on critical youth studies’ research on agency and identity formation. Second, while research on children, media coverage, and social media have focused on the education and mental health dimensions of children’s lives, this paper goes beyond that to examine the pandemic from youth’s own point of view. For example, their experiences working in and outside home spaces, navigating family struggles, and performing activism to change their situations. Third, this paper focuses on racialized undocumented migrant youth. Hence, it sheds light on a group neglected in the pandemic. Without attention to children’s agency during the pandemic, attempts to identify interventions and supports for vulnerable migrant child populations are limited. All these contributions speak to how everyday intimate forms of resistance were overlooked during the pandemic, especially in populations like migrant youth.
Contributing to the burgeoning research-field of German-Indian intellectual relations in the twentieth century, Arnab’s PhD project shows how Interwar Germany had reshaped the understanding of nationhood in British Bengal. It also analyses why such intellectual relations created an alternative version of political action and political community within the anticolonial rhetoric of late-colonial British India. These intellectual and political connections with certain prominent German political categories (such as Germanism, Aryanism, Anti-Semitism, etc.) were forged in a Bengali search for an alternative European modernity beyond the direct colonial relationships between the British Empire and India. Using a plethora of sources available in several South Asian and West-European languages, Arnab’s work contributes to the global intellectual history of twentieth-century Internationalisms by juxtaposing an ethno-linguistic mode of internationalism of two language-communities (German and Bengali) with parallel processes of diverging political internationalisms such as Comintern, Global Fascism or liberal universalism.
Arnab’s research, in its core, interrogates as to where were the discursive boundaries of certain European political debates in the early twentieth century and where was the limit of European history? The existing mode of history-writing about German-Bengali relations hitherto neglected the fact that alongside communicating in English/German/French, the Interwar Bengali intellectuals also extensively wrote in several Indian languages to locate the globally-circulated political languages within a longer history of Sanskritic ethical-legal-political frameworks known to their immediate Bengali/Indian audience. Therefore, going beyond the dominant mode of European history-writing, this project asks, even before translating their political ideologies between British India and Continental Europe, how did these intellectuals manage to maneuver translating between everyday languages? Drawing on a wide range of sources and concepts derived from the language-worlds of Bangla, Hindi, Sanskrit, English, German, French and Italian, Arnab’s dissertation takes up this methodological challenge and enriches the critical discussions around globality and entanglements beyond their apparent Euro-American frontiers.
Over the last 20 years, as the mining sector grew, the Colombian economy has become more reliant on the extractive development model, consisting of the exploitation of natural resources that encompasses mining, hydrocarbons extraction dams, harbors, and agribusiness. On the other hand, since Indigenous Peoples' territories are rich in minerals and biodiversity, some of those extractive industrial activities take place in their territory, disrupting their livelihoods, cosmogonies, and natural resources, which are intrinsically elements of their identity. As a result, Indigenous Peoples experience the emergence of identities created in resource extraction and how such identity transformation prompts new forms of social organization and resistance against extractivism. Several mining titles and infrastructure concessions are being requested and granted in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta's region, the ancestral and sacred land of four Indigenous Peoples. As a result, multiple socio-environmental conflicts have arisen, negatively affecting Indigenous Peoples' territories and culture.
The research focuses on two main questions. First: how the Arhuaco people’s identity emerges through their interactions with different normative orders in the particular context of industrial extractivism. And second: how their approach to resistance has changed, in tandem with their identity. Such dialogue will provide a framework for understanding the dynamics of imposition of and resistance against the law. Furthermore, in virtue of its original methodology, this research can make a relevant theoretical contribution to other fields of law and legal anthropology. Finally, by embedding this research in a collaborative process, this study will serve as a base for context-specific recommendations to assist state and non-state actors in adopting more adequate Indigenous-oriented policies. It will also offer insights into contributing to Indigenous Peoples’ awareness of their institutional environment and political organization, exploring concrete tools to defend their culture and land, and affirming the significance of their traditional knowledge.
Fundamental particles which characteristically resemble the axion are a widely theorized explanation for the dark matter observed in the Universe. In this work, Nicholas DePorzio seeks to quantify how well the properties of such axionic particles can be measured through their imprints on cosmological structure formation. Axionic particles can possess extremely small masses with corresponding de Broglie wavelengths that extend to galactic scales. This work presents a detailed accounting of how this axionic resistance to localization manifests in the spherical collapse process of galactic structure formation. This study produces a description of how axionic particle properties manifest a scale dependence in the galaxy bias and generates predictions for how well these fundamental properties can be constrained by upcoming measurements of the galaxy bias.
The particle nature of dark matter and dark energy remain open questions in physics, serving as iconic examples of the incompleteness of our understanding of Nature at its most fundamental level. Gravitational interactions of dark matter with familiar forms of matter offer insight into the properties of these elusive substances. Studying the distribution of galaxies allows us to learn how matter is distributed at many points in cosmological history, but accurate models of the galaxy bias are prerequisite for this. With a massive expansion of galaxy observations expected in the next decade, thoroughly explored bias models, like the one proposed in DePorzio’s work, will enable physicists to fully utilize these powerful datasets to identify the particle nature of dark matter.
Michaela's research investigates the environmental setting that hosts the oldest evidence of terrestrial life on Earth-- in 3.5-billion-year-old hot spring deposits in the Dresser formation, Pilbara Craton, Western Australia. She uses modern hydrothermal analogues in other areas of the world (New Zealand's Taupō Volcanic Zone and Yellowstone National Park, U.S.A.), and younger Phanerozoic fossilised systems (Argentinian Jurassic and Coromandel Miocene deposits), for comparisons. She also researches possible impact spherules, deposits that would have formed when a giant meteorite struck Ancient Earth. If an impact origin is confirmed, this would be the oldest evidence of an impact event in the geologic record. Her research also aids in understanding the Origin of Life on Earth, and the possibility of life on other planets, such as Mars.
Michaela's research is providing groundbreaking discoveries within her field of Astrobiology. Her work on the oldest evidence of terrestrial life on Earth in 3.5-billion-year-old hot spring deposits (textural biosignatures), has promoted a new Origin of Life hypothesis. Here it is suggested early life formed in warm- hot spring- pools. Furthermore, these biosignatures are aiding in determining the best environments to search for life on other planets. Particularly Mars, as the red planet had water, volcanism and hydrothermal environments at the same period as early Earth. Already, NASA and ESA planetary mission scientists have visited her field area to examine the ancient terrains of the Dresser Formation, using this site as an analogue for possible biosignature sampling for their current and planned rover campaigns on Mars.
Essex is undertaking an interdisciplinary project to create a specific analytic avenue for the study of transmasculinity. Beginning with narratives of the transgender child, the project evolves into close readings of the diaries of Lou Sullivan, a pioneering trans man who passed away from AIDS in 1991. Utilizing hybrid critical prose and multimodal writing, Essex’s work combines experimental poetic interventions, theoretical analysis, and literary close readings. Grounded in Queer Theory and Childhood Studies, the project engages affective and theoretical interventions in Masculinity Studies and Trans Studies, reading Lou Sullivan’s negotiation with and pursuit of masculinity, and how and from whom he accessed and received care. Essex’s approach performs a reach backwards, considering this reaching as a form of queer kinship which extends across temporal bounds.
Trans Studies is itself an emerging and evolving discipline, utilizing “informal,” affective knowledge within analytical methodologies. To extend this reach, Essex seeks to utilize Queer Archival Methods to engage Sullivan’s archive, gathered by Susan Stryker, to analyze and investigate Sullivan’s activist and literary contributions. Essex’s work applies theories which specifically consider the child, the trans person, and the masculine person, to explore the diaries’ dimensions. Essex seeks to offer a synthesis of several fields, with a specifically transmasculine orientation as a site of analysis. Essex applies these combined frameworks to his reading of Sullivan’s diaries seeking to both insist on Sullivan’s import in Queer Hisotry, and to specifically orient this study towards transmasculitity, to generate a theoretical subject on which there are few scholarly texts.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and recent political climate have immensely impacted international students in post-secondary institutions. In order to reduce the spread of the virus, the administration issued a change in the policy on July 6, 2020 stating that international students are not permissible to continue to stay in the United States if only taking online classes for the fall 2020 semester. More than 20 states, including the District of Columbia, filed multiple lawsuits in an attempt to block the policy change, and as a result, July 6, 2020 Policy Directive was rescinded on July 14, 2020. Very few studies have mainly focused on the impact of COVID- 19 and immigration policy change on marginalized populations in the United States. Thus, this cross-sectional study aims understand the mental health status, distress level, and optimism among international students with respect to the unexpected challenges, COVID-19 and immigration policy.
It is expected that this study will make a unique contribution to successfully address mental health of immigrant populations by analyzing the long-term effects of policy changes and the disease outbreak on international students in the United States. The findings will suggest positive coping strategies and needed support/resources for their psychological well-being and successful academic progress. For international students to be able to successfully complete their degrees in the United States, advocacy requesting beneficial immigration policy and practice should be carefully planned. Lastly, this study will raise public awareness about an urgent need to scale up evidence-based mental health interventions and preventive strategies to address the mental health of vulnerable student groups during future unexpected disruptions to their education.
Hensel Songs Online is an open-access digital resource that immerses performers into the rich repertoire of songs composed by Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn). The resource brings together Hensel's nearly 250 songs for the very first time, providing singers and pianists with the materials needed to make performances and recordings. The songs are published in multiple keys to suit all voice types and are free to download as PDFs. Hensel Songs Online is also being prepared as a printed edition, consisting of 3 volumes. These will be self-published, offering a physical copy of the scores for performing musicians and enriching any sheet music collection. As a composer who was restricted access to the publishing and performing professions to a great extent during her life, Hensel Songs Online is breathing life into a valuable, yet long-neglected repertoire.
Hensel Songs Online is a valuable resource for scholars and performers (amateur and professional). Nearly 100 of the songs available on the website have never been published, and previously, those songs that were available have only been available across disparate pricey volumes of varying quality. The materials being made available will have a considerable affect on the field of performance, as musicians will be able to explore and programme this new repertoire - this will be especially valuable to students, whose institutions are increasingly requiring the performance of music by female and BIPOC composers. Scholars will also benefit from the resource as a means to explore the song repertoire without lengthy processes of transcription from archived manuscripts. It is incredibly useful to have all of the songs in the same place, as it offers a unique perspective and overview of the collection as a whole.
In Guatemala, different civil society organizations (CSOs) — which include a wide array of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and grassroots movements — support communities to design, fund, and implement ‘micro-hydroelectric’ projects. Several factors determine the effectiveness of these supposedly ‘win-win’ projects, including contract types, funding sources, organizational hierarchies and ownership models. My research will investigate how Guatemalan CSOs working on small-scale hydropower contribute to building participative forms of community ownership within historically dispossessed Indigenous and peasant communities. My results will inform new ways of organizing the ownership of small-scale renewables by providing a map of the organizations and funders working around small hydropower production in Guatemala and discussing their role in building energy alternatives that represent vehicles of environmental and social justice in a post-conflict setting.
My research will contribute to the studies on energy democracy, a research agenda that has opened the discussion on the different roles that state and civil society actors might play in building alternative energy systems. I will provide valuable reflections on the main challenges and opportunities around community-led energy production in a post-conflict country, where CSOs have played a vital role since the 1996 Peace Agreements. Furthermore, within studies on geographies of development, the themes “energy” and “civil society” correspond to different streams of inquiry, even though both topics critically address contemporary geographies increasingly concerned with climate change mitigation and social justice. My work will bring together interdisciplinary studies engaged in the overlapping area of energy transition and CSOs.
Biodiversity and food production are preserved and enhanced by bees. Multiple stressors, however, threaten bee health. A major one is chemical: bees are simultaneously exposed to multiple pesticides that can cause both lethal and sublethal adverse effects. Risk assessments and most research efforts on bee health focus however on lethal individual effects, ignoring possible combination or sublethal (i.e., behavioral) effects. Investigating the lethal, sublethal, and combined toxicity of pesticides on bees, our project explores neglected side-effects and risks. It integrates literature review, laboratory experiments, and field monitoring approaches to provide comprehensive and harmonised results. These efforts facilitate the implementation of more comprehensive risk assessments, ones that standardize approaches, and consider sublethal and combined effects.
Our research demonstrates how much we don't know about the sublethal and combined effects that pesticides have on bees. Our new methods and approaches allow innovative analysis and interpretation of the impact of pesticides on bees and the environment, allowing for new insights on pesticide ecotoxicity and risk. Highlighting areas of concern and critical knowledge gaps in research and risk assessments, our research proposing an integrative approach that better accounts for real-world complexities. This project emphasises the need for a more refined and holistic assessment of pesticide risks that do not only focus on lethality, towards a healthier environment for bees.
Mengqi Wang’s manuscript, The Rigid Demand of Homeownership in Urban China, examines the cultural politics of home-buying in China by tracing the concept of gangxu 刚需 (rigid demand), meaning people’s absolute need of private homeownership. To endorse mortgage use in 2000, the state media coined the term “rigid demand” to refer to—and to construct— people’s need of housing that could only be met through market mechanisms. Later, the “rigid demand” discourse became a part of everyday usage as various actors appropriated it to express an entitlement to homeownership. Newly wed couples, in particular, claim to have a “rigid demand” so they can start a family. Tracing “rigid demand,” this research explores the contradiction of state capitalism of China in the housing sector.
This book contributes to the critical scholarship of capitalism that pays attention to the full range of social relations and productive powers as part of the conditions on which accumulation happens. I argue what stands out from the capitalist development of China’s housing market is how the paternal state inserts its figure into the popularity of “rigid demand” through developmental projects and promises of “common prosperity.” The real estate practices examined in this research aspire to harness the prosperity that appears to be delivered by state capitalism. In doing so, they weave together heterogeneous logics of accumulation to help establish economic linkages that create the housing market and call on the government to realize its obligation towards the people with a “rigid demand” for homes.
Niovi Zampouka’s research is situated at the intersection of Comparative Literature, Slavic studies and Modern Greek Studies and focuses on the transnational and translational dimensions of literary canonization in the context of the Greek-Soviet literary relations. Her doctoral thesis explores a twofold canonization taking place within the Soviet world literature and translation project: the appropriation of Socialist Realism by Greek literary production and the canonization that operates through ideological translation and paratextual framing in the course of the selection, translation, introduction and reception of Modern Greek literature in the Soviet literary field. In parallel with the narratological dimension the project considers sociological aspects of translation and translatorial agency by drawing on primary source materials, which shed light on a hitherto uncharted area of Greek-Soviet literary and translation history.
The thesis provides the first broad and systematic comparative study on the transmission, translation and reception of Modern Greek literature in the Soviet Union. Conducted from a comparative historical and cultural perspective, the study goes beyond the simplistic explanatory model of unidirectional political or literary ‘influence’ by setting the Greek and the Soviet literary fields in transtextual and translational relation to each other. In this respect it constitutes both an interpretive case study research and a bibliographic reference work. By combining methodologies of literary, cultural and translation studies, it provides a theoretical framework and a methodological paradigm for the investigation of translation and reception of foreign literature not only within the Soviet context but also in political and ideological contexts in general.
Laura’s dissertation examines the understudied, unintended negative consequences of the foreign aid discourse on the aid beneficiary themselves. This research addresses the relationship between foreign aid's self-help discourse and structural violence, which is understood in terms of alienation (Galtung, 1990). Laura understands alienation as the internalization of the economic agent idea and the disconnection of the individual from their sense of agency against alternative opportunities for development in the system around them. This study addresses the question: What is the relationship between foreign aid's self-help discourse and individual sense of agency? She examines the discursive power structures used in foreign aid and the potential role it plays in sustaining inequality. She conceptualizes foreign aid as a complex system and hypothesizes that the foreign aid self-help discourse prompts aid beneficiaries to understand their opportunities for development as constrained by their individual capabilities. Looking specifically at Colombia, Laura uses discourse analysis and interpretive phenomenological analysis to examine documentary and interview data and process tracing to analyze the chain of events connecting foreign aid discourse with structural violence. With a stronger understanding of the causes of inequality, policy-makers will be better equipped to avoid reinforcing it, thereby addressing the underlying obstacles for peacebuilding, security, and development.
The relevance of Laura’s research to the field of international development is that it advances a deeper understanding of the causes of inequality and the different ways structural violence can be present in global policy for development. With few exceptions, foreign aid and structural violence are studied as two independent phenomena. In analyzing the processes connecting the two phenomena, Laura’s study sheds light on the dynamics along the aid chain that can be conduits for the entrenchment of poverty and marginality in the Global South. As she strives to link the individual aid beneficiary with foreign aid global policy structures and evaluate whether such policy has psychological implications for aid beneficiaries' decision-making at the local level, her findings are likely to generate insights for praxis. If aid policy's soft power is found to incentivize patterns of behavior that, instead of expanding people's opportunities, situate their economic conditions around their individual responsibility given their capabilities, empirical evidence will offer a more nuanced understanding of the structural violence dynamics that might leverage the continuation of conflict. Furthermore, Laura’s contribution lies in the theorization of foreign aid as a complex and intersectional system. In understanding the disaggregation of power implicit in the foreign aid dynamics, her research analyzes four channels of power, which Collins and Bilge (2016) call interpersonal, cultural, disciplinary, and structural domains. This approach is fundamental to uncover discursive dynamics that play a role in shaping beliefs and behavior that can deepen the roots of conflict while sustaining inequality.
In this new manuscript, the properties of Dark Matter candidates are constrained through the gamma- ray observations of Starburst Galaxies (SBGs). Experimental observations have provided compelling evidence about the correlation between the gamma-ray observations and star-forming activity (bottom-up contribution). What is more, we know that SBGs are characterized by halo of Dark Matter which can potentially provide a top-down contribution to the gamma-ray contribution given by star- forming activity. Therefore, we expect both contributions to be involved in the explanation of their gamma-ray measurements. In this contribution, a statistical analysis is performed on current gamma- ray data to put constraints on possible gamma-ray contribution coming from dark matter candidates.
The field of study of this manuscript is multi-messenger astronomy. This is the branch of Astrophysics which tries to quantitatively constrain the properties of astrophysical sources and dark matter through simultaneous observations of cosmic-rays, gamma-rays, neutrinos and gravitational waves: the so called “messengers”. This manuscript is fundamental for multi-messenger astronomy to understand cosmic-ray transport mechanisms occurring inside SBGs and quantify the properties of dark matter candidates. This constitutes a completely new approach to constrain dark matter properties as well as better understand physical processes involved in Starbust Galaxies. This will open a new window for multi-messenger astronomy, paving the way for new astrophysical studies.
Arundo donax, giant reed or laleh is a plant co-habiting with humans in many different ways in ab-bandans (ɑːb bændɑːn), a type of human-made wetlands formed throughout the southern shores of the Caspian Sea in Iran - as an ancient method for sustainable water management and irrigation system. These ecosystems are shaped in close contact with plant societies and primarily through rice plantations that have reinforced the development of ab-bandans. pantea explores the mutual cultural heritage of humans-plants through the lens of lalehva, an instrument made out of laleh. Both the biological and aesthetic properties of the plant shape the musical heritage of the area, yet remain unacknowledged for their agency.
By re-exploring the musical heritage of the region through the life of lalehva, this works contributes to the Vegetal Turn: History, Prospects, and Applications of the Vegetal Turn: Plant Minds, Persons, Relations, and Rights volume (Di Paola, forthcoming 2023) by acknowledging plants as agent and sentient beings who individually and collectively shape and co-create cultural relationships with humans. By situating the more-than-human in the artistic research process, this artistic research aims at contributing to embracing new definitions and conversations and consequently developing new co-constitutions of research and inquiry in the face of environmental crisis.
This research studies a series of misunderstood issues relating to wills and inheritance law in England from c. 1450-1540. This research outlines several key features, including the development of the English will, an analysis of the under-investigated relationship between local and national law, while noting the importance of society for the legal development of wills and inheritance law. Some topics include the rights of children to receive goods and property even if disinherited; the ability of married and widowed women to make wills and a comparative study of their contents; and how the courts deal with issues such as perjury or embezzlement of testator’s goods. The relationship between local customs and their understanding of wills has yet to be sufficiently addressed in society leading up to the English Reformation. The project studies law as it occurred in society and embodies this approach differing in both material and methodology from previous legal studies.
This project contributes to the interdisciplinary development of several areas of legal research, including inheritance law, legal history, and canon-common law relations, while reshaping the perceived partition between history, politics, law, and religion. This research provides a detailed case study in the regional variations throughout England, wherein inheritance law and practice significantly differed. Such differences include the administrative capabilities of married or widowed women and if husbands could be compelled to leave property to a spouse or children. Stemming from theoretical differences, these local customs altered the day-to-day administration of inheritance law and wills. This project sheds light on the importance of wills while broadening legal understanding of the dialogue between local and national systems of law in a tumultuous and transitional period. Analysis of written sources and surviving wills provide a new understanding of the approaches taken by lawyers in the drafting, administration of wills, and court decisions.
The Northeast US LME is one of the fastest-warming regions in the world and it has also undergone dramatic change in response to historic overfishing. Assemblage shifts in the Northeast US Continental Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem (NES LME) have previously been characterized, however, these assessments were conducted prior to an unprecedented pulse disturbance marine heatwave event in 2012. After the 2012 marine heatwave event, ocean temperatures have remained above the historic mean and the NES LME experienced at least one additional heatwave. This research project quantified the assemblage change across the NES LME as a whole and within its distinct sub-regions historically. A new method to analyze the change in community assemblages, a community trajectory analysis, a multivariate tool that utilizes geometric analyses and comparisons of community trajectories to quantify the shifts in dynamic beta diversity within the NES LME over the last 50 years was used.
Our current understanding of the Atlantic marine ecosystem will further perpetuate mismanagement unless our predictive models and assessments are further informed to account for community-level changes as proposed within this project. This research investigates how we can improve quantitative models to characterize and understand the mechanisms of species distribution shifts in response to climate change. This computational work has direct management implications through the further calibration and improvement of predictive models. Furthermore, the analysis used in this project has yet to be applied on this spatial scale within a marine system and provides a novel approach to understanding marine communities.
With the defeat of the Confederacy came a dissolution of the material and social structure of the southern bourgeoisie. This manuscript analyzes early American concepts of private property and linear time and how these conceptualizations were integral in establishing a white plantocracy in the US south. Upon the collapse of the American slave trade, former plantation owners experienced existential crises around land, time, labor, and race. This manuscript asks: What were the assumed futures of racial capitalism in the late 19th century and how did they change during the Civil War? What ideological conceptualizations survived into the 20th century and how do they shape our understanding of race, time, and land ownership in the present?
US progress narratives have unintentionally reified a racialized linear time that recognizes progress as a forward movement from ‘uncivilized’ to ‘civilized’. Black Studies has a foundational political spirit which ultimately works not only to describe the world, but to affect change on institutions of domination and oppression. This manuscript can help the field better understand temporality via its Western conceptualization and thus more accurately participate in political organizing by critiquing the intricacies of US progress narratives rather than reiterating them.
Firms often attempt to reflect age, gender, and/or racial diversity in their promotional material. At the same time, recent social movements such as BlackLivesMatter (BLM) or MeToo have raised the awareness of social inequalities and biases that are omnipresent in our everyday lives. This research investigates racial diversity in U.S. advertising both in terms of supply—how diverse are the ads presented to consumers, and in terms of demand—how do consumers react to diverse vs. less diverse ads. The authors further explore how the diversity in advertising has changed around the BLM protests surrounding the murder of George Floyd. The results suggest that social movements like BLM can spill over to advertising and that there is a positive trend of diversity representations in advertising.
Most studies investigating diversity representation in advertising solicit attitudinal and intentional measures, using lab experiments, which may not translate to actual purchase behavior. This study contributes to the existing research by conducting, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first examination of diversity in advertising using tens of thousands of advertising images and investigating their effect on actual customers’ behavior (click-through rates). The longitudinal data originate from a leading content discovery platform, including several billion consumer impressions and respective click-through rates for each ad. Combined with scalable machine learning algorithms the study can take a holistic perspective on diversity, investigating simultaneously different aspects of diversity (age, gender, race) and their interactions, as well as dynamic effects related to recent social movements such as BLM.
Hodgins is an Australian student currently undertaking her Master'ss of Archaeology and Heritage Management at Flinders University. Her thesis research centres on the remote Northern Territory Aboriginal community of Barunga, located on Jawoyn Country, exploring the impacts of government housing on Jawoyn uses and understandings of domestic space. Established as Beswick Creek Native Settlement in 1951, transitional huts were erected to house Aboriginal community members at Barunga. Born out of the Australian Federal Governments assimilationist policies of the 1950s, transitional huts consisted of as little as a single corrugated iron room, dirt flooring, and no additional amenities. The huts were designed to be a practice ground for assimilation into Western suburban life. The project will gather the household histories of Barunga community members and Traditional Owners, as a means of mapping the Jawoyn experience of domestic space before, during and following the implementation of transitional housing.
Little archaeological research has been conducted into the impacts of early Australian government housing on remote Aboriginal communities. Hodgins’ thesis project will not only provide the community at Barunga with a record of the history of housing in the community as well as the individual housing histories of community members, but also facilitate key insight into the impacts of housing on Jawoyn epistemology and ontologies. Additionally, the study will utilise backcasting as a method with which participants may voice their desires for the long-term improvement of infrastructure at Barunga as well as demonstrate the value of employing backcasting as a method in broader community archaeological research.
Jenny’s pilot study aims to develop a culturally-adapted instrument (Preferences for Everyday Living Inventory-Korean; PELI-K) for assessing daily preferences in Korean long-term care settings. Understanding nursing home (NH) residents’ preferences is a cornerstone for planning and providing person-centered care (PCC). In contrast to the increasing need for high-quality PCC among the older population in South Korea, there is no standardized, item-based instrument in Korea. Furthermore, the ingrained influence of Confucianism in Korean society makes older adults hesitate about expressing their needs. The lack of structured instruments and socio-cultural context prevent Korean NH residents from taking advantage of PCC. To distribute the benefits of PCC to Korean older residents, Jenny’s project expands and adapts a preference assessment tool in a specific Korean social and cultural setting.
Developing PELI-K is a stepping stone for taking a holistic approach in Korean long-term care settings that currently lack systematic guidelines for providing PCC. Incorporating individual preferences into care practice can improve the quality of care and residents’ quality of life and this leads to satisfaction among the residents as well as their family members. Care providers can utilize a core set of items within an organization with multiple service delivery lines as a metric for care quality management and improvement. In the long run, it will be beneficial for forging meaningful relationships between NH residents and providers. Policymakers can effectively control the quality of long-term care with a standardized tool at a national level and develop relevant legislation through evidence-based advocacy.
This paper offers a unique methodological approach by implementing the OTD intermediation chain as the formulation of a structured analysis into the evaluation of the effectiveness of regulation. Furthermore, the comparison between Canada and the EU is rarely performed, even though the two jurisdictions have many analogies that make for a compelling discussion, and differences that offer an inimitable opportunity to learn from each other. Lastly, most publications focus on macroprudential regulation when discussing systemic risk. This research is distinct in that it analyses conventional regulation in a systemic risk context. By shifting the focus, this thesis will argue that regulators must acknowledge, review, and implement systemic risk considerations into conventional law for there to be effective control of systemic-related issues in the OTD intermediation of complex financial products.
This research will use the originate-to-distribute (OTD) model of financial intermediation to analyse the systemic implications present at each stage of intermediation and critically evaluate the conventional regulation in Canada and the European Union that govern those stages. Systemic risk regulation focuses primarily at the macroprudential level. This could lead to substantial missed opportunities to have a meaningful impact on systemic risk reduction. The inclusion of systemic implications in the drafting of conventional regulation would be beneficial to the avoidance of further build-up of systemic risk in the financial system and could potentially prevent catastrophic financial and economic consequences in the future. This project aims to answer significant questions on how the two jurisdictions structure and implement their regulation across the banking, securities, and insurance sectors, whether each intermediation stage is regulated, to what extent, what significant gaps exist, and how they can be addressed.
What is the relationship between what we know and what we are able to imagine? Poets and neuroscientists have long wrestled with the inadequacy of the metaphorical frameworks that govern our understanding of the brain and the mind. Nevertheless, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the mutuality between the histories of twentieth-century poetry and neuroscience. Lorenzo Bartolucci’s dissertation focuses on the context that fostered neuroscience’s birth, the mid-century United States, to explore the extent and the deeper cultural ramifications of this cross-disciplinary nexus. To that end, it examines how encounters between American poets and neuroscientists actively shaped the evolution of a new conceptual and imaginative framework to grapple with one of their most elusive objects of inquiry: the idea of the self.
How often have neuroscientists embraced conceptual shifts issuing directly from the poetic imagination of their time? And what might such cross-pollinations reveal about how we understand ourselves today? Despite decades of interest in the philosophical affordances of cognitive theories, such questions are still waiting to be addressed. Bartolucci’s research investigates them by tracing the rich but largely unexplored synergies that connected and informed the work of American poets and neuroscientists over the course of the twentieth century. In this way, it reframes the study and the scope of poetic discourse along the timeline of the history of neuroscience, modeling a viable approach to questions wherein the concerns of literary scholars, historians, and scientists do not simply overlap, but must be addressed in dialogue with one another.
Nebo's research focuses on ancient Athenian drama and its reception in contemporary Italian, Greek, and Yugoslav cultures. The archive that he has assembled for his dissertation includes mostly unpublished reworkings of ancient Greek tragedy adapted for theatre and film in the former Yugoslavia—as well as in Greece and Italy—that take the Yugoslav wars as their thematic backdrop. stands simultaneously outside an imagined ‘West’ and neatly enclosed inside of it, flanked as it is by Italy to the northwest and Greece to the southeast. The erstwhile federation and its disintegration represent a fraught object of European identification whose vector runs counter to a notional geo-cultural continuity with ancient Greece rooted in the neo-Hellenizing narratives of the Western imagination. In establishing a dialogue between ancient and contemporary plays, his project collapses old models of centers and peripheries; rethinks the debate around community, identity, and trauma in a postcolonial framework; and advances a theory of translation.
His project is situated at the intersection of classical studies and comparative literature. Until recently, Classics was a discipline chiefly interested in reconstructing, through zealous philological analysis, the meaning of ancient texts within their literary, sociopolitical, and historical context of production. While this is still a predominant approach, more and more attention is being paid to the afterlife of these texts: what are the different ways in which these texts have been received an interpreted over time? What awareness do these texts bring to the contemporary contexts in which they are read? How do contemporary readings of these texts map onto their ancient context of production? His research seeks to answer this kind of questions. To do so, he proposes to produce awareness not only about the contemporary Italian and Balkan theatre culture, but to advance concurrently the academic discourse about ancient Greek Tragedy.
What is the relationship between what we know and what we are able to imagine? Poets and neuroscientists have long wrestled with the inadequacy of the metaphorical frameworks that govern our understanding of the brain and the mind. Nevertheless, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the mutuality between the histories of twentieth-century poetry and neuroscience. Lorenzo Bartolucci’s dissertation focuses on the context that fostered neuroscience’s birth, the mid-century United States, to explore the extent and the deeper cultural ramifications of this cross-disciplinary nexus. To that end, it examines how encounters between American poets and neuroscientists actively shaped the evolution of a new conceptual and imaginative framework to grapple with one of their most elusive objects of inquiry: the idea of the self.
How often have neuroscientists embraced conceptual shifts issuing directly from the poetic imagination of their time? And what might such cross-pollinations reveal about how we understand ourselves today? Despite decades of interest in the philosophical affordances of cognitive theories, such questions are still waiting to be addressed. Bartolucci’s research investigates them by tracing the rich but largely unexplored synergies that connected and informed the work of American poets and neuroscientists over the course of the twentieth century. In this way, it reframes the study and the scope of poetic discourse along the timeline of the history of neuroscience, modeling a viable approach to questions wherein the concerns of literary scholars, historians, and scientists do not simply overlap, but must be addressed in dialogue with one another.
The ‘Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia’ cross-curriculum priority of the Australian national and state education systems has been proposed for about a decade. Currently, it is necessary to evaluate the extent to which this ‘priority’ been addressed and implemented - in the field of music education - and in what ways and to what effect. This project aims to investigate various aspects of the current incorporation and representation of East Asian music in the teaching and learning programs of New South Wales educational institutions, at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. It seeks to gain a clear understanding of the factors that contribute to the extent of inclusion and the nature of representation of these musical cultures in NSW education.
This study is a comprehensive attempt to understand the extent of inclusion of East Asian music into the Australian educational programs. It responds to the implementation of the Australian cross-curriculum priority, “Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia”, fills a gap in current understanding and research on culturally diverse music education and serves as a precedent for enhancing Australian students’ knowledge and understanding of diversity within and between countries in the Asian region, developing knowledge and understanding of music in Asian societies, and deepening connections between Asia, Australia and the rest of the world. Also, it potentially paves the way, or at least advocates, for the increased incorporation of East Asian music and cultural traditions into Australia and other parts of the world.
Some transcription factors (TFs) are retained in mitotic chromatin and mark specific genomic sites, a mechanism termed "mitotic bookmarking". Mitotic bookmarking preserves cellular identity in vitro, but its importance for the development of a living organism remains elusive. Hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) undergo drastic changes in cell cycle during development, suggesting a role for bookmarking. This work addresses mitotic bookmarking of the hematopoietic TFs GATA2, GFI1B and FOS during HSPC generation. GATA2 alone remains bound to mitotic chromosomes and bookmarks a subset of its genes. Degrading GATA2 in mitosis in vivo impairs HSPC generation in mouse embryos and placentas. Overall, this study reports GATA2 as a bookmarker critical for hematopoietic development and demonstrates that TF-mediated bookmarking is essential for cell-lineage specification in vivo.
Until now, all efforts were allocated into studying mitotic bookmarking in vitro, forsaking the role of this epigenetic mechanism in vivo. This manuscript describes an approach for transcription factor elimination during mitosis in a living organism and its consequences. It points the way for the identification of novel bookmarkers critical for the specification of other somatic lineages. This way, the manuscript contributes to the fields of Epigenetics and Developmental Biology by adding another layer of information to the current knowledge on the transmission of epigenetic memory in cell division, during hematopoietic development. These findings will also be of great interest to a broader scientific community as they will propel the generation of valuable tools for understanding the molecular control of cell fate decisions in vivo.
Stories of Toronto residents and organizations attempting to protect the social, cultural, and economic diversity of their communities by redefining how land is used and developed in the face of gentrification, corporate development pressures and financialization of real estate, are being echoed throughout the city. Land trusts are alternatives to traditional residential and/or commercial land ownership removing properties from the speculative real estate market. Right to return and right to remain policies are also instruments intended to protect local community interests. For Toronto’s Little Jamaica, the above-mentioned tools may mitigate its current displacement and gentrification, caused by the Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit (LRT) construction, and address the corporate development pressures and the financialization of real estate within the area.
How the field of journalism stands to benefit from Chelsea Birks’ research is that she is taking a solutions-based approach to the problem of social and cultural displacement, gentrification, corporate development pressures and financialization of real estate within Toronto using Little Jamaica and the negative impact the LRT construction has had on the community as a case example. Solutions journalism is an approach to news reporting that focuses on the responses to social issues as well as the problems themselves. Solutions stories, anchored in credible evidence, explain how and why responses are working, or not working. The goal of this journalistic approach is to present people with a truer, more complete view of these issues, helping to drive more effective citizenship.
Amanda’s manuscript "Placing Property: A Legal Geography of Property Rights in Land" investigates property's roots through the lenses of landscape and spatial justice. What has been absent from previous historical surveys of property rights in land is considering the role of place (landscape), or more specifically the denial of place (spatial injustice) to property’s formation. "Placing Property" contends that the classic hallmarks of present-day property (its individuality, exclusivity, and alienability) emerged when property diverged from landscape, or the locally specific web of relationships that once contextualized land and land claims. The current placeless property paradigm thus has no basis in physical reality. "Placing property" aims to situate property in its proper geographic context to examine its true impact on land, people, and the common law.
This research aims to make a number of contributions to property scholarship. As a legal geographical analysis of the property concept in the common law, it asserts place as central to the narrative of property formation. It pre-dates property's origins, before Locke, to the customary practices of pre-feudal Scandinavian landscapes. It restores the spatial parameters of the property theories of Locke, Blackstone and Marx with reference to the landscapes of North America, England, Ireland and the Caribbean respectively. It crosses the indigenous divide, considering a range of communities across the former British Empire and their enduring relations with land. The project thus contributes to the decolonization of property law and critiques of property's unsustainability, by uncovering law’s role in place destruction via property creation.
Mary Lucia Thao Darst’s manuscript combines an interdisciplinary mix of economic and sociological theories to analyze the development of music networks and career success in eighteenth-century Austria, Italy, and England. The manuscript starts from the question, what if networking or professional connections played a larger role in determining career success among musicians in eighteenth-century Europe than music historians previously thought? In five case studies, the manuscript establishes the manner in which musicians and music scholars accessed networks and then leveraged them for professional opportunities.
Scholars have recognized the significance of networks in a variety of contexts in the eighteenth century. Musicology benefits from the project as it makes economic and sociological theories or ideas directly relevant to music. The project helps address the question “how does ‘canon’ form?” through examining practical considerations, such as types of professional resources were available to a successful person compared to an unsuccessful person. In turn, this research creates a framework for discussing historic issues of accessibility which can assist twenty-first century musicians and scholars with addressing arts inequality today.
The purpose of this manuscript is to describe a research study that evaluated the effectiveness, efficiency, and feasibility of a novel strategy to prepare early childhood teachers in the delivery of evidence-based behavior management practices. Specifically, this study evaluated the effects of sending emailed prompts to remind early childhood teachers how to deliver effective instructions. Results indicated the following: (1) emailed prompts resulted in teachers improved instruction delivery; (2) instruction delivery spontaneously generalized across all children within the classroom; (3) children's compliance with teachers' instructions improved and maintained across time; and (4) teachers rated emailed prompts as highly preferred, effective, and efficient.
The field of school and child psychology stands to benefit from this study in a few important ways. First, this study demonstrates the effectiveness of emailed prompts to train early childhood teachers to deliver effective instructions. Given that noncompliance with teachers' instructions is one of the most pervasive problems faced in education, this study is important because it offers a practical strategy to prepare teachers to prevent child noncompliance. Second, this study offers a feasible approach to prepare early childhood teachers to deliver evidence-based practices, as emailed prompts require very little time and resources. Finally, results of this study delineate an efficient method of training, in that all teacher participants began to spontaneously deliver effective instructions across all children in their classrooms.
Marco Letta and colleagues present the Machine Learning Control Method, a new impact evaluation approach for time- series cross-sectional data. We focus on a peculiar econometric setting in which there are treated units but no control group. In this setting, most of the popular impact assessment methods cannot be deployed, as they rely on the availability of control units. To recover causality in such a setting, we recast counterfactual building as a forecasting exercise: using pre-treatment data and machine learning algorithms to predict a no-COVID scenario, we estimate treatment effects as the difference between counterfactual and actual outcomes. We apply this approach to assess the effects of the Covid-19 crisis on territorial income inequality in Italy, one of the countries most severely affected by the pandemic.
We focus on a neglected field of study in applied econometric research: to our knowledge, the Machine Learning Control Method is the only impact evaluation methodology for time-series cross- sectional data in an econometric setting in which there is no control group (for instance, because all units in the sample receive the treatment, or due to spillovers across units). In such situations, researchers cannot employ well-known impact evaluation methodologies such as difference-in- differences or the synthetic control method. By relying on algorithmic counterfactual forecasting, our approach enables researchers to estimate not just average treatment effects, but unit-specific treatment effects even in such challenging settings. Besides, the distribution of treatment effects can then be summarized for different subsamples to recover treatment heterogeneity across categories of particular interest.
This new manuscript aims to recover and analyse unstudied Francoist censorship files on lesbian pulp fiction from the Spanish Archivo General de la Administración (AGA). Since little literature for and about lesbians was easily accessible during the 50s and 60s, this genre became the only lesbian literature available to the general public and queer women of all backgrounds at the time. However, it did not reach Franco’s Spain, nor did it fully reach democratic Spain. As this popular body of literature contributed to the visibility of queer women in the Anglo-Saxon community, this paper aims to analyze why it was barely translated into Spanish and the consequences this may have had on the invibisilization of lesbianism in Spain. It also aims to study the few novels that were translated and how they were translated.
This line of research intends to study and analyse the censorship, reception and (non)translation of a complete corpus of relevant lesbian novels written in English that were banned in Spain or were published being subject to censorship. Censorship and translation studies in Spain have barely focused so far on the great number of lesbian voices that were silenced by the Francoist regime, many of whom were never translated into Spanish or whose partially censored work continues to circulate unstudied. Herein lies the importance of such project for this field of research, also fostered by the urgency to offer representation for a minority group that still fights for visibilization and normalization. This project will "recover” silenced lesbian voices and therefore contribute to the study and translation of Anglo-Saxon female novelists into Spanish in order to shape a real history of the translation movement of women's writing in Spain.
Fenland Pilgrimage is a literary history of St Guthlac of Crowland, the hermit most often associated with the fens – the low, flat area in the East of England whose waterways wind out to the Wash. Winding its own way from the medieval to the modern, this study traces Guthlac’s eighth-century origins to his later resurgences. Insights from ecocriticism, reception theory and pilgrimage studies shape the questions asked of a range of texts, whether they be monastic narratives, medieval romances or modern novels. Readers of this monograph will meet a variety of pilgrims, from the monastic to the mercantile, from the medieval to the modern, from the fenland-based to the fenland-beyond. But however many pilgrims they meet, they will meet as many Guthlacs.
In its radically longitudinal span, this study will forge links between the disciplines of medieval studies (the study of medieval cultures), and medievalism studies (the study of the reception of medieval cultures in the post-medieval world). It offers a methodological alternative where the medieval and modern are placed on a continuum of reception, giving insights into the preoccupations of a wide range of readers and writers across time. Additionally, by focusing on the fens, this project not only brings our attention to the precarity of wetland landscapes themselves, but also directs the scholarly gaze away from urban centres and onto regional peripheries. Such locales are important centres of textual production and reception — worthy destinations for Guthlac’s pilgrims, medieval or modern.
Internal migration patterns in both Ghana and Nigeria have tended to be more rural-urban – that is North-to-south migration, since the second half of the 20th century. While this form of migration brings some advantages to the migrants in terms of better life opportunities, it also increases their vulnerability to ill-health due to the differences in their personal health profiles, values and beliefs, and that of their host environment. This is further worsened by other individual and national health system barriers that impede their access to healthcare services. The study aims to examine rural-urban migrants’ access to healthcare services in Ghana and Nigeria, their coping strategies, and identify effective health systems interventions to bridge the health disparity gap between rural-urban migrants and the host population.
Health inequalities or unequal distribution of health resources between different population groups particularly for poor and marginalized communities still exist. Despite several efforts to eliminate disparities in almost all areas of care, the consistent increase in the migration of people within and/ or across national borders has worsened the situations. Global Urban Health seeks to identify and manage risk factors for health in big cities particularly in urban planning as well as challenges from migration in low-and-middle income countries. Also, with specific focus on analysing environmental health risk factors and socio-economic determinants of health in urban areas. It is hoped that findings and interventions identified from my research will complement the aims of my field of study towards addressing and improving health in urban areas.
Jacqueline’s dissertation “Cartoon Networks: Animation and Conglomeration From Turner to AT&T” examines how the aesthetics of popular American television animation transformed as its distribution shifted from cable to digital platforms across eras of media conglomeration from the 1990s to the present. She argues that the understudied object of television animation offers new perspectives on the history of the American television industry and media conglomeration. Animation indexes media conglomeration because it is freighted with corporate labour and logics within its own images. Jacqueline uses television animation in particular because the animation object provides a trackable lineage throughout major mergers in Hollywood history, from television programming to production.
Television animation is generally understudied in both television and animation scholarship. As it’s typically made with lower budgets than theatrical animation, television animation has historically been neglected. This bifurcation between theatrical and television animation has structured animation scholarship for decades, and resulted in a lack of attention to television animation and its generative approaches. Jacqueline’s thesis addresses gaps within both animation studies and television studies by examining how television animation’s formal features inform us about an ever growing industry transformed by shifts in distribution from cable television to streaming. She posits that instead of a being a marginal form, television animation is central to how we can understand media industries today. This thesis also contributes scholarship on understudied interstitial elements of television.
In France, EU migrant Roma have the right to housing and the state has the legal duty to integrate or evict migrants from its territory, but it is city governments that have the knowledge and experience to house migrants. In this context—when the capacity of the city and responsibility of the state are misaligned—what determines housing provisioning for EU migrant Roma? The argument is that city councils that craft empowerment policy frames and simultaneously develop stakeholder coordination between municipalities and local NGOs, provide sufficient housing options for EU migrant Roma. These city councils are less influenced by potential backlash from their electorate in the wake of their policy decisions. Their success is bolstered by local associations’ contribution as a source of knowledge and trust between the housing provisioners and beneficiaries. However, while cities can perpetuate empowerment discourses, they can also perpetuate threat discourses. Which discourses city council perpetuates matters because each discourse signifies its own policy logic and co-produces options for housing. Using NVIVO discourse analysis of city stakeholder interviews, municipal/metropole archives and online municipal/metropole deliberations on housing policy across three cities in France and the U.K., this research describes how variation in stakeholder networks and policy discourses effect housing integration for EU migrant Roma families. The dual purpose of this project is to contribute to both the academic understanding of urban democratic governance and urban housing policy implementation for vulnerable and difficult-to-house populations.
This project will contribute to Political Science in two ways. The first is a theoretical contribution. Most integration/migration literature uses state-level policies, micro-foundations such as attitudes towards migrants, or meso-level explanations such as labor market outcomes to explain when integration efforts are successful (Enos 2014; Adida et al. 2016; Kymlicka 2012; Joppke 2017—with some exceptions: Ireland 2004; Good 2016; Pugh 2018; de Graauw 2016). This project emphasizes the role of policy discourses and stakeholder networks. While funding, amount and type of housing stock and local attitudes matter, in contexts where city councils are adequately funded, what matters most with housing for vulnerable groups is the policy argument and the stakeholder network that supports these groups. The second contribution is more relevant to the Laura Bassi scholarship ethos. This project will further develop the interpretivist school within Political Science. The interpretivist sensibility is woven throughout the project; therefore, through my methodology and my writing style I hope to demonstrate the utility of an under-utilized but increasingly better-understood analytical sensibility that has a role to play in social science broadly and political science, specifically. For example, in this project “housing policy” is not taken for granted, instead it is treated as a constructed concept that is co-created through the stakeholders’ experience in the process of providing housing and that therefore arises inductively from archives, city council meetings and the experience of social workers and families who receive housing. This is the major contribution of my work from which my field of study stands to benefit.
Dr. Sibel Ebru Yalcin is a biophysical chemist exploring the surprising electron conductivity of the soil bacterium Geobacter. These bacteria produce tiny filaments called “nanowires” that conduct electric currents. In environments without oxygen, nanowires enable bacteria to “breathe” by transporting electrons across bacterial biofilms to where electron acceptors are available. However, until recently, it was a mystery how these bacteria could send electrons over distances >100-times their size. Traditional structural methods were insufficient for probing individual protein nanowire structure and function, so Dr. Yalcin developed a new imaging tool to study microbial nanowires. Her team discovered that nanowires are comprised of chains of cytochrome-heme proteins (Cell 2019, Nature Chem.Bio. 2020, Nature 2021).
Recent discoveries by Dr. Yalcin and her colleagues resolved two decades of confounding observations in thousands of publications that thought of these nanowires as pili filaments (Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 2020). By correlating cryo-electron microscopy with Multimodal Chemical and Functional Imaging (Physical Biology, 2020) combined with a suite of electrical, biochemical and physiological studies, the team found that, rather than pili, nanowires are composed of cytochromes OmcS and OmcZ that transport electrons via seamless stacking of hemes over micrometers. Dr. Yalcin also discovered that, when subjected to an electrical field, these bacteria produce OmcZ nanowires that transmit electricity 1,000 times more efficiently than OmcS nanowires, paving the way for a new field of electrogenetics. Dr. Yalcin’s work showed that nanowires can withstand harsh environments, creating a unique opportunity to develop highly resilient materials with potential applications for sensing, synthesis, and energy production. The strength and conductivity of these nanowires, coupled with the ability of bacteria to repair themselves, may enable the development of durable, self-healing electronics from living cells.
Armanc works at the intersections of sexuality, race, and value in Germany and wider Europe. In his dissertation titled, “Pedagogies of Flesh: Sexuality, Race, and Value in the Sex Education of Postcolonial Germany,” he looks at how something as widely celebrated as comprehensive sex education might have racializing effects and reproduce Whiteness. Based on his 3-year-long field research in Berlin, a city known by its progressivity when it comes to sexuality, Armanc’s dissertation is an ethnography of sex educators, professional and volunteer, the methods and materials they employ, and the discursive field of immigration and Whiteness they engage with or refuse to do so. By interrogating sexual pedagogy as a scientific field from which sex educators draw their authority, his work turns to tensions between science, value, and civic education.
Armanc’s work engages directly with the discussions of decolonization in sociocultural anthropology. A discipline that continually suffers from its relationships with colonialism, sociocultural anthropology has dominantly been interested in “other” cultures outside the so-called West. In this division of labor between sociocultural anthropology and other disciplines, the “West” is considered theoretically knowable, while the Rest requires ethnographic knowledge production. In his work, Armanc questions these theoretical assumptions through ethnography, questioning notions of progress and value-free science, underlining the colonial legacies that are alive and well in Europe, and suggests that Europe itself must be ethnographically researched for a true decolonization of the discipline. In doing so, he joins scholars who have brought Whiteness and its different articulations at present under ethnographic scrutiny.
Victorious rebel groups face formidable postwar challenges. Rebel victors inherit states fractured by war and are vulnerable to the resurgence of armed conflict. While some victors succumb to renewed conflict and regime breakdown, others successfully reconstruct powerful states and durable regimes. Sean Paul Ashley's project advances a novel theory to explain this variation. It argues that postwar orders are rooted in rebel victors’ wartime institutions. Some rebels create extensive wartime institutions to govern both fellow combatants and civilian populations in war zones. Victors that built a wider array of wartime institutions enter the postwar era with greater military cohesion, civilian support and administrative skill. These advantages help victors construct durable postwar regimes and states. Statistical analyses and case studies of rebel victors across Africa support the theory.
Ashley's manuscript makes two central contributions to the existing literature on war and post-conflict order. First, it challenges a key position in the civil war termination literature – that by destroying rivals outright, rebel victory produces strong regimes and lasting peace. This is an optimistic characterization of the post-victory context. Even though rebel victors are the “last man standing”, victors initially stand on dangerously weak states. For lasting order to be restored, rebels must not only destroy states – they must also recreate them. Second, it identifies the path whereby victorious armed groups can achieve political stability after episodes of state failure. Wartime institution-building lays the foundations for robust postwar regimes and resurrected states.
Dzah’s project, Reimagining Sustainable Development in International Law, critically examines how Africa contributes to reconceptualising and revitalising sustainable development. By engaging with law and interdisciplinary literature, it proposes ecological law, ecological integrity and ecocosmologies as the bases for reorienting the law on sustainable development. This study proposes a return to non-Western legal normativity as a basis for reimagining sustainable development in international law. This legal revitalisation focuses on eco-legal philosophies in remaking sustainable development from the standpoint of ecolegality; where ecological integrity renews the conceptualisation and operationalisation of sustainable development as ecological law. While this project highlights Africa as its analytical pivot, its arguments and propositions are useful beyond Africa as they illuminate the blind spots in the global pursuit of the law on sustainable development.
This pioneering research makes an original contribution to international and comparative law as it adds value to knowledge at the intersection of international law, sustainable development, customary law, and Indigenous cosmologies. It is unique in approach as it is founded upon law, politics, and history in the context of the contribution of Africa and its peoples, their experiences, and customary and Indigenous law in respect of sustainable development while using a Third World Approaches to International Law-inspired analysis. It does this by investigating the prospects of turning to alternative conceptions in plural schemes of law relative to sustainable development. In this respect, this study assesses how non-Western law can be mainstreamed into international law in the remaking of the concept of sustainable development.
Latin America is ageing rapidly. In reaction, governments in the region are reformulating their social protection policies. In 2022, Costa Rica passed a national long-term care law. A discussion developed on how to provide such care, whether through public or private in-kind benefits or through cash-for-care (CfC) to beneficiaries. CfC has been used in developed countries with various outcomes. However, there are still no evaluations of its effects in middle-income countries. This article assesses the impact of an experimental CfC pilot programme (randomised control and experimental groups) on female caregivers before and after the intervention. The results indicate that, in this context, CfC has no significant impact on their integration into the labour market, their training, their affiliation with the social security system, or their ability to take time for themselves. However, there was a positive effect on the funding of basic needs and the mitigation of factors predicting burnout.
Despite the fact that Latin America is the most unequal region in the world and has the highest rate of ageing, research on long-term care policies is limited. The increasing prevalence of functional dependency resulting from accelerated ageing and epidemiological transformation makes the implementation of new long-term care systems in Latin America inevitable. In June 2022, Costa Rica became the only middle-income country in the world to pass a law to initiate the implementation of such a national system. This research compares the design of Costa Rica's new long-term care system with systems in Europe, Oceania, Asia, and the Americas and identifies useful lessons for the development of other LTC systems in the Region. Four aspects are analyzed: the legal framework, access and coverage, types of services, and costs and financing. A review of scientific literature and national and international reports has been carried out between 1 January 2000 and the first day of April 2022. The emerging model follows the main trends in international experience. It´s progressively universal, prioritizes home-based care, includes technological tools, creates quality benchmarks for services, incorporates cash transfers for family caregivers, implements respite services and develops caregiver training. However, this research reveals that international evidence shows that underfunded models have low coverage and limited services diversity. Limited fiscal generosity, the absence of new sources of financial resources and legal weaknesses jeopardize the scaling up, development and sustainability of the new Latin American model. Its implementation will set an example for other countries in the region.
Little is known about how the class of atmospheric petrochemical gases known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) impact individuals in Toronto, Canada, cumulatively over the long-term, despite extensive scientific evidence of their toxicity when inhaled. Reflecting on two years of fieldwork, this journal article manuscript provides a summary overview of my dissertation ethnography, which combines archival data, medical chart review, participant observation, and over 72 interviews amongst patients with chronic environmental illness, and amongst tenants experiencing renoviction (displacement via renovation). It introduces the original concept of volatility—the disruptive and disorienting relational impacts of VOCs on everyday life—to discuss how uneven exposures to VOC are characterized by volatile experiences that have affective, social, and economic dimensions, which intensify illness and displacement.
Situated at the intersections of sociocultural anthropology and feminist science and technology studies (STS), the concept of volatility benefits theoretical discussions about chemicals and toxicity. It shows how for atmospheric petrochemicals with limited scientific studies of long-term health effects, toxicity is limited as a lens of analysis, as it excludes fuller understandings of context-specific relational dynamics. As all petrochemical VOC toxicity is to some extent volatile, but not all petrochemical VOC volatility is toxic, volatility allows an expanded attention to, and articulation of, the ways hierarchies of identity and difference (race, class, gender, and ability) structure uneven petrochemical exposures. An historical longitudinal perspective contributes valuable perspectives about the future of fossil-fuel based chemical production, and uncertain intergenerational impacts of petrochemical exposures.
Moore's work is based on the view that educational institutions are sites of capitalist production in modernity. He draws heavily on Lacanian psychoanalysis and ideological criticism—as well as Marxist feminism, Žižek’s Hegelian philosophy, and applications of feminist science and technology studies—to investigate the psychic relationship of gender, sexuality, and mathematics in educational settings, and the role this relationship plays in social reproduction more broadly under capitalism. His dissertation performs a Lacanian ideology critique of existing literature on gender in mathematics education. The paper for which he was selected as a Bassi Scholar argues that the capitalist mode of school forces the creation of the signifier ‘woman,’ which is then reified through neoliberal and postmodern research on gender in mathematics education.
Moore’s overarching project contributes to the field of mathematics education research by problematizing ideological commitments made by researchers and society generally regarding the purpose of teaching and learning mathematics, as well as the purpose of “equity” research (specifically research on gender) focused on students' achievement of success in mathematics. By taking a psychoanalytic and psychosexual approach to the role of social identities (such as gender) in mathematics education settings, Moore’s work offers a critical counter-narrative to the prevailing neoliberal fashions in mathematics education research that disavow (or in most cases, ignore) the role of the unconscious and desire in structuring relations of sexual difference with respect to mathematics—a language of pure signifiers that represents a peculiar and psychically unique educational content.
Throughout the nineteenth-century, the Spanish Empire feared the Haitian Revolution’s influence reaching its Caribbean colonies. The Spanish Empire consequently implemented the Decree of Graces in 1815 to mollify possible insurrections by people of African descent fighting for abolition and independence. An influx of European immigration to Cuba and Puerto Rico during the early nineteenth-century redefined the islands’ cultural, political, and racial landscapes. This project explores how mixed-race Puerto Rican Creoles navigated the Caribbean’s shifting racial politics. Moreover, this project argues that some mixed-race Creoles, like the Afro-Puerto Rican poet Francisco Gonzalo “Pachín” Marín, utilized the Caribbean’s fluid racial politics to denounce the anti-Black social order and advocate for pan-Caribbean unity. Transnational bonds of solidarity became vital components of nation-building processes as Cubans and Puerto Ricans of African descent mobilized against slavery, anti-Blackness, and colonial rule.
This project provides new insights into Caribbean and Latin American studies by highlighting Black leadership within Cuban and Puerto Rican revolutionary movements. Cuban and Puerto Rican anti-colonial movements have often been whitewashed. Yet, the Spanish Caribbean's liberation movements would have been unsuccessful without people of African descent’s leadership and participation. This research consequently illustrates how Afro-Cuban and Afro-Puerto Rican revolutionaries negotiated the Caribbean's racial politics as they traversed its waters in pursuit of sovereignty. How Cubans and Puerto Ricans of African descent freedom fighters forged Afro-diasporic bonds of solidarity proffers new interpretations of the nineteenth-century Spanish Caribbean's liberation movements, nation-building processes, and cultural narratives of nationality.
Nabulsi's thesis explores the paradox of resistance as it is felt by Palestinians. This paradox highlights how resistance practices can simultaneously resist and reproduce forms of domination. The paradox is reflected in the realm of emotions. It is often felt as an ambivalence—a wavering between feeling powerful and inspired, and feeling acquiescent and despondent. Palestinian graffiti and hip-hop music are the two sites through which this felt paradox is analysed. In doing so, the thesis argues that a felt attachment between the Palestinian body and the (home)land of Palestine is fundamental to the practice of Palestinian resistance. This suggests that, in decolonial struggles, a preoccupation with the paradox of resistance obscures something vital—the affective connection to the land over which these struggles are fundamentally waged.
Several fields of study stand to benefit from this research, across its two primary scholarly contributions. First, it brings insights from emotion and affect studies into the study of decolonial resistance. This offers a unique contribution to Palestine studies, Indigenous studies, decolonial studies and settler colonial studies. It opens up space in these literatures for exploring further the resistant and dominating power of emotion. Second, it articulates a decolonial politics of emotion, providing an important direction for research in emotion and affect studies. In particular, it forwards an innovative decolonial research approach that can be employed in further research on emotion, power and resistance. In short, it charts a path for further research that seeks to harness the resistant power of emotion for decolonisation.
Ollila's “Network of Conflicts” examines the difficulties the Sámi people living in Northwestern Russia faced when trying to exercise their legal rights in the 2010-2020s. The project’s aim is to dismantle colonialist practices in the context of the rights of indigenous peoples and thus highlight the suppression of minority groups in Russia. The study brings together several different practices related to the exercise of the rights of the Sámi people living on the Kola Peninsula and examines the material collected from news articles and interviews with an emphasis on legal pluralism. The project deals with the topic presented above through three main themes that emerged from the interviews, these themes are bureaucracy, environment, and economy.
The traditional territory of the Sámi, Sápmi, extends from the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland to northwestern Russia. As the minority, less than 2,000 Sámi, live in Russia, the difficulties faced by that group are less-known. My study shows that the means practiced by the Russian state and local authorities to control and monitor the rights of the Sámi create a path to assimilation, difficulties in Sámi traditional culture, suppression, and persecution of Sámi politicians and activists. Research emphasizing the colonial nature of the laws and their effects on the lives of the Sámi in Russia is a topic that has not been studied much in Southern Finland. Thus, the study aims to spark a wider discussion about the topic in question and its seriousness.
In several classical physics systems, the whole can be obtained as an exact copy of each of its parts, which facilitates the study of a complex system by looking carefully at its elements separately. Reductionism usually offers simplified models that make problems easier to solve, but as Feynman cleverly stated, "there's plenty of room..." but this time on the mesoscopic scale. With this project, we wanted to unveil the nature of a particular topological object: skyrmions, potential candidates for a new kind of informatics systems (from quantum transmitters to spintronics all-optical devices). Proposed in the sixties and experimentally found last decade, today the focus is on deriving them in several areas from constant section fiber bundles on the nano/quantum scale.
Despite its intrinsic interest in the context of promising physical demonstrations of mathematical conjectures, applications for skyrmions could be better studied when its full description is purely analytic. Efficient laboratory experiments for small, local, stable magnetic solutions as binary data encoders for nanomagnonics communication, such as racetrack carriers or magnetoresistive random-access memories, require a more careful consideration of smoothness, topological protection, or anisotropic superexchange phenomena for precise applications in quantum entanglement or optical microscopy and superresolution displacement metrology. Furthermore, current simulations of these reconfigurable pseudo-particles in the quantum regime based on exact diagonalization and Monte Carlo techniques are ad-hoc and computationally inefficient approaches in the absence of an analytical model.
There is arguably no symbol more capable of garnering public sympathy and mobilizing political action than the child. This dissertation studies the history of representations of childhood in France between 1900 and 1940, a key moment in the history of feminism, demography, and reproductive rights. Marked by flagging birth rates, this period witnessed the rise of a powerful pronatalist movement to increase the French population by shoring up the traditional nuclear family. This project examines how pronatalist organizations created new representations of childhood to enliven debates over issues like family size, contraception, and parental duty. It then traces how these representations changed understandings of childhood across France and its empire. What was French childhood and which children were most capable of embodying it?
Historians have highlighted the importance of female imagery to the pronatalist movement. As they have demonstrated, pronatalists often posited the crisis of “depopulation” as one of gender dysphoria, arguing that France was in decline because women had abandoned their feminine duties. If the mother was the salvation of France, the so-called new woman was her ruin. Inspired by calls from childhood studies scholars to view chronological age as a vector of power akin to gender, the dissertation applies the methods of gender critique to analyze invocations of “the child” in pronatalist rhetoric and imagery. Using previously unstudied sources and revisiting old ones through a new lens, the dissertation shows how concepts of childhood were used alongside gender to animate pronatalist arguments and propaganda.
Lahoma Thomas’ manuscript, Seeing from Da Yaad: Black Women and the Politics of Respect, examines the relational dynamic between everyday residents, dons (i.e., leaders of criminal organizations), and the Jamaican state. Specifically, the manuscript analyzes the context in which the relationship between dons and residents takes place, a context shaped by a colonial history and patterns of domination, particularly with respect to race, gender, and class. The manuscript weaves the political perspectives of a set of actors – poor and socially marginalized Black women living in urban Jamaican communities – whose voices are rarely heard. The text raises fundamental questions about power, marginalization, state violence, and political legitimacy.
Seeing from Da Yaad: Black Women and the Politics of Respect, makes two key contributions. First, the manuscript develops an original account of how Black histories and ongoing experiences of anti-Blackness shape how Black people view and experience their political subjectivity in post-slave and post-colonial societies. Second, it presents a new methodological framework: a Black Feminist Interpretivist Approach. This interpretivist frame offers us a disaggregated approach, one which creates space for the specific voices of poor Black women, grassroots women, and other marginalized women. The key analytical contribution of the 2 approach is it introduces complexity into our understanding of the constitution of political subjectivities.
How do autocrats maintain responsive without provoking further social unrest? Using ethnographic data collected from participant observation with a town government in China, Tian documents how the local government exploits what Tian call responsive preemption to preempt foreseeable escalation of dissidence and demands. Autocrats utilize responsiveness to gather information and maintain legitimacy. Yet authoritarian responsiveness simultaneously triggers excessive political demands that local states do not seek to resolve. Tian's project seeks to illuminate on how the authoritarian state on the ground deals with contradictions associated with authoritarian responsiveness. Depicting daily interactions between the officials and petitioners in the petitioning system in China, Tian demonstrates that grassroots state officials resort to three tactics that constitute responsive preemption: conditional concessions, empty gestures, and bureaucratic procrastination.
Tian's study seeks to make the following contributions. First, echoing existing studies of authoritarian politics, this article shows that authoritarian institutions are more than window dressing. Rather than equivalents to democratic practices, or altogether performative, this article demonstrates that authoritarian responsiveness can be neither performative nor substantive. In this study, Tian shows that authoritarian rulers deploy responsiveness to sharpen their repressive tools. Second, Tian's study shifts the focus on policy-level changes found in macro-level works to micro-level interactions between the state and society. While depicted as omnipotent and strong in popular imagination, authoritarian states, particularly when disaggregated in different levels, can in fact lack such state capacities. Tian's project demonstrates that grassroots-level state practices can be full of tensions and contradictions.
Yabo's project seeks to analyse international law’s responses to the disproportionate impact of climate change on the third world. There have been multiple efforts by global policymakers to address the inequality in climate resilience between the Developed world and the Developing world. However, some of these efforts are proving to be ineffective. Adaptation and mitigation funding promises are not being met, and we are heading to a stage where adaptation is becoming impossible. For example, an island that has completely submerged underwater due to sea level rise cannot be recovered and the same goes for farmland that has been permanently lost to desertification. The project adopts a de-colonial approach to examine the flaws of international law in remedying inequality in climate resilience between the developed world and the third world.
Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) is a critical school of thought in international legal scholarship which seeks to re-examine the colonial foundations of international law. While TWAIL has gained prominence in the fields of international human rights law and public international law, existing literature which specifically adopts a TWAIL to analyse the inequality in climate resilience between the third world and the developed world is sparse given the scale of the problem. The project adopts TWAIL methods to analyse, critique, and reconstruct the international climate change regime in the context of adaptation and mitigation in the third world. It rethinks current approaches and examines whether a TWAIL perspective can provide more integrated solutions to the problem.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) provides guidance on childhood vaccinations via the early childhood immunization schedule to protect children against 15 vaccine-preventable diseases by 19 months old. ACIP guidance includes parameters of when vaccine doses should be administered, which is critical for disease protection. However, current national measures for childhood vaccination coverage, calculated annually via the National Immunization Survey – Child (NIS-Child), do not consider the timeliness of vaccinations. Instead, NIS-Child uses a dose-counting method, which masks many undervaccinated children. Although the dose-counting method is necessary to assess vaccination coverage, the current project will use NIS-Child data to quantify overlooked undervaccinated children that received doses before the minimum age and minimum dose interval requirements, referred to as invalid doses.
Improved measurements of national vaccination coverage estimates that incorporate adherence to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) parameters for childhood vaccinations are necessary to identify overlooked subpopulations of undervaccinated children. The current project will contribute to public health by establishing methods to adequately measure undervaccination during early childhood and disparities in vaccination coverage that will inform targeted strategies in populations that experience inequities in early childhood vaccine access.
Serrano horse (Equus caballus) is an indigenous breed found in Spain’s Sierra de Guadarrama range. These horses have been largely left to live independently for the last 60 years after generations of use as farm or military animals. Unfortunately, Spain’s free-ranging horses are declining due to habitat fragmentation and persecution for perceived competition with grazing livestock. To conserve this ancient breed, Rewilding Europe relocated 11 individuals to a protected site in Guadalajara, Spain during June 2022. Typically, conservation efforts like this do not incorporate pre- or post-release monitoring nor factor in individual animals’ behaviors and perception. This study’s objective was to assess how the assembled horses coped with their new physical and social environment and to develop a behavior-based welfare assessment protocol for proactive management.
Rewilding and similar relocation initiatives may lack the resources to implement pre- and post-release monitoring of the animals involved, especially if the release area is difficult to traverse or the animals are elusive. If monitoring is deemed feasible, it typically involves intermittent population counts or indirect presence checks which can indicate animal survivorship. My project is one of the few to implement a psycho-ecological approach wherein the lived experiences and social dynamics of relocated animals are closely observed. Additionally, this project will at once offer important data on a threatened, understudied horse breed and will contribute to our knowledge of wild animal wellbeing, which is decidedly lacking in the body of published literature.
Findley’s Master’s research aims to better understand how gender-diverse (e.g., trans*, Two-Spirit, gender non-conforming) people engage with change through climate emotions and their non-normative genders. Climate emotions, such as grief, anxiety, and hope, are feelings in response to change. Findley proposes that gender-diverse people have unique perspectives on change through experiences such as transitioning identities, subverting stereotypical gender roles, and being subjected to transphobia. Through interviews, literature reviews on gender diversity and climate emotions, and the use of queer and trans* methodology to situate their work, Findley explores how gender-diverse people’s experiences with change in terms of gender might provide unique perspectives about change in terms of climate and corresponding emotions.
“Climate emotions are related to resilience, climate action, and psychological well-being," (Pikhala, 2022) making them an important intervention in the climate crisis. Most climate emotions research implies universality (i.e., everyone feels the same climate emotions); however, climate change effects differ based on identity (Anschell, 2021). Therefore, climate emotions might also differ based on identity. This study increases representation of gender-diverse people in climate emotion research. Conversations surrounding gender-diversity are often framed by trauma and difficulty, skewing narratives toward negativity and excluding hope and action. Similarly, discussions surrounding climate change and resulting emotions tend to be “doom and gloom” (Kelsey, 2020), impeding resilience and positive change. This study initiates nuanced, solutions-oriented discussion about gender-diverse climate emotions and provides insights into climate resilience for all.
According to the Greek concept of oikonomia (“household management”) found in theoretical writings by the authors Xenophon and Aristotle, women as wives play a central role in the success of household management, since they are charged with managing the household’s internal resources. It is therefore difficult to assume that they did not possess and apply economic/administrative knowledge and skills, contrary to simplistic pictures of women in the domestic sphere relegated to loom work or to the function of mothers. The examination of dramatical text from the classical period reveals not only the strong self-representation of female- characters as smart house managers, but also occasional sketches and mentions of working women or women dealing with money. To shed light on this still underexplored topic, the paper examines the three Aristophanic comedies that focus on figures of female-citizens, i.e., Thesmophoriazusae, Lysistrata, Ecclesiazusae.
Since these plays are interpreted mainly on the whole rightly as political/utopian criticism, the incidental combination of economic (in its broader sense) aspects and the feminine dimension has not yet been sufficiently considered and has received only scattered attention by critics in the framework of commentaries. Starting from the texts, the paper offers a reappraisal of aristophanic portrayal of women’s behavior towards labor and wealth by investigating which kind of stereotype and not-stereotype economic knowledge and tasks are assigned to female citizens of Athens, and suggests possible interpretations in the frame of Aristophanes’ dramaturgy.
In this study, Hlatshwayo and colleagues adopt an intersectional lens to explore and to theorise the complex experiences of Black women academics in a research-intensive university in South Africa. Hlatshwayo and colleagues purposively recruited ten Black women academics, ranging from early career academics, lecturers to senior professors in the field. Hlatshwayo and colleagues relied on the intersectionality to theorise Black women academics’ challenges in navigating and negotiating their belonging in the university. Semi-structured interviews were used as a data generation method to illicit the narratives/ stories/ experiences of Black women academics. The findings revealed two things. Firstly, they revealed that a large number of the research participants are what we could call “accidental academics” in higher education due to the nature of entry and access to the university. And secondly, the findings also showed the important role of both formal and informal mentoring in higher education as a catalyst in helping Black women academics access, negotiate and potentially succeed at university.
Osteoarthritis is the most typical arthritic disease, affecting 10% of men and 18% of women over 60 years of age worldwide. Yet, no effective treatment has been discovered. The disease is characterised by severe cartilage degradation caused by the loss of chondrocytes within the articular cartilage. This results from the disruption of cartilage homeostasis, associated with an age-related decline in the main cellular degradation pathway, called autophagy. Maria’s group have identified a molecule that monitors autophagy and presents an attractive target for the potential treatment of osteoarthritis. Her work elucidates the role of this pathway in the development and progression of the disease, aiming to harness this molecule as a drug target and assess the expression of the candidate in osteoarthritic preclinical models and patients.
Population ageing has significantly impacted multiple society sectors, including labour forces and financial resources. Although the advances in ageing research have been recognised with the discovery showing that humans are living longer, research on age-related diseases is still ongoing. For instance, conditions such as osteoarthritis develop later in life and have no treatment. Nonetheless, studies investigating the role of advanced age in the development of osteoarthritis are limited. Maria’s project, which examines the molecular processes that deteriorate with age and lead to disease susceptibility will enable her to develop novel therapeutics to treat osteoarthritis. This will help provide a better quality of life to the people possessing the disease and will also provide a link for investigating and treating other age-related diseases.
The valence of linguistic contexts has been shown to influence learning of neutral words. However, little is known about whether valence of a word and its linguistic context have independent or interacting effects on word learning. Lana employed a word learning paradigm, where participants read emotionally charged texts containing emotional words and were then tested on their orthographic and semantic learning, to investigate this effect. Results showed a strong effect of word emotionality on quality of learning and a weaker independent effect of context emotionality. The results point to two independent sources of successful novel word learning, which had different cognitive underpinnings: positivity of the novel word and its linguistic context. These findings expand the current understanding of embodied lexical representations.
Lana’s research provides novel insight for theories of embodied cognition, particularly in identifying the degree to which concepts depend on experiential information. There is disagreement among theories of embodied cognition on how dependent lexical processing is on sensorimotor systems, with several accounts suggesting that in addition to sensorimotor information, linguistic context and affect can influence lexical processing. By using a word learning paradigm, this research experimentally investigates this claim.
Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease (ADPKD) is a genetic disorder that causes cysts to form and enlarge on the kidneys which results in end-stage renal failure. It is caused due to mutations in either PKD1 or PKD2 gene that encodes for polycystin-1 (PC-1) & polycystin-2 (PC-2) proteins, respectively. Currently, there is no cure for ADPKD. Understanding the network of polycystin proteins can reveal how their functions change upon mutation and provide targets for therapy. This research aims to study interactions of these proteins in healthy cells and compare it to how their interaction changes in the mutant cells that are responsible for causing ADPKD. This study involves screening and validation of key proteins that can be targeted to reduce the renal cysts proliferation and thus provide newer treatment options.
Interactions of polycystin proteins are poorly understood as well it's contribution in ADPKD remains largely unknown. ADPKD drastically reduces quality of life as well as survival in adult patients. This research focuses on studying cells under live cell conditions using a novel method that not only ensures the original micro-environment of the cells remain intact but can also screen large numbers of proteins in one go. This allows one to get a clearer picture of how these changes would eventually unravel in the human body to be able to find better therapeutic drugs. This research will help uncover novel proteins which are not yet documented in the ADPKD database to expedite the process of finding effective therapy for this disease.
This research explores musical identity through the author’s practice as a classical guitarist. It responds to enduring myths of the western classical tradition in which much is known about the lives and practices of composers, while the performer's identity as creative personage has been overlooked and rendered "inaudible". The author examines how the sonic self may be amplified and foregrounded through a process of commissioning, performing and recording new works for solo guitar. The research brings together performance, musicological and social research by drawing on fields of artistic research and narrative inquiry to propose a methodology of musical narrative inquiry - a transformative practice in which the author makes sense of experience both musically and narratively.
The study contributes to the fields of performance, musical cultures and musicology through innovative artistic methods that challenge normative classical practices. New knowledge resides in both the written exegesis and artistic outcomes from the project, including new repertoire and recordings. These outputs analyse and challenge narratives of classical guitar performance, genre, and collaborative composer-performer relationships. The research offers entry points into examining the pedagogy of musicology from the performer's perspective. Music performance research stands to benefit from these process-driven and practice-based insights, as well as by the new additions to classical guitar repertoire unbound by ideologies of classical music history. The thesis contributes to the growing body of artistic research outputs that interweave textual and creative material in non-traditional formats.
Bivalve molluscs hold a great biological and socio-economic importance, yet their sex determining mechanisms are still overlooked. Up to now, it appears that both environmental and genetic factors play a role in bivalve sex determination, but the exact molecular mechanisms and regulatory networks are still unknown. Thus, I am now trying to elucidate various aspects of bivalves sex-determination related genes by applying an integrative and comparative approach. In particular, I am using bioinformatic pipelines to survey from publicly-available bivalve genomes the major gene families that are usually associated with gonad differentiation in animals in order to characterize their molecular evolution patterns, their phylogenetic history and genomic structure. In the future, I will also make use of wet lab experiments to understand how sex-determination related genes participate in gonad commitment and differentiation.
Up to now, bivalve sex determination has been usually studied in single species of socio-economic importance. With this project, I'm attempting to enlarge our knowledge of the process by using for the first time a phylogenetic-aware and integrative investigation of putative sex-determination related genes, also accounting for understudied bivalve species. The results provided by this research project may help to decipher some of the hottest spots in bivalve biology, such as the mechanisms underlying their gonad differentiation. This research project may also help marine biologists to study the link between reproduction and mass mortality events in both natural and farmed populations of bivalves in the frame of the immunity-reproduction trade-off. The outcomes of the project may also aid the aquacultural industry in optimizing the production and the exploitation of natural seed banks in order to face the growing demand of bivalves as a sea food.
Mental health law standards for involuntary hospitalization and treatment vary significantly across Canada. This is both concerning, where fundamental rights are at stake, and indicative of a fundamental conceptual dispute – over when a measure is autonomy enhancing and when it is a violation of fundamental rights. This confusion impedes both effective mental health care and the meaningful protection of liberty and bodily integrity. This project seeks to bring needed conceptual clarity to mental health law using an autonomy lens. It investigates competing theories of autonomy in current law and their complicated relationships with equality and psychosocial disability. It then argues that a relational approach to autonomy could help dissolve the perceived conflict between autonomy and care, orienting us instead to the creative pursuit of autonomy-respecting care.
Mental health law standards for involuntary hospitalization and treatment vary significantly across Canada. This is both concerning, where fundamental rights are at stake, and indicative of a fundamental conceptual dispute – over when a measure is autonomy enhancing and when it is a violation of fundamental rights. This confusion impedes both effective mental health care and the meaningful protection of liberty and bodily integrity. This project seeks to bring needed conceptual clarity to mental health law using an autonomy lens. It investigates competing theories of autonomy in current law and their complicated relationships with equality and psychosocial disability. It then argues that a relational approach to autonomy could help dissolve the perceived conflict between autonomy and care, orienting us instead to the creative pursuit of autonomy-respecting care.
Entitled “Accursed Races: (Anti)Blackness and Queer/Trans Modernity,” Míša’s dissertation asks: What does it mean for contemporary analyses of race and sexuality that generations of European gay men conceived of homosexuality as an “accursed race” (Proust)? “Accursed Races” critically investigates why sexual deviance was once defined on racial terms, across such diverse domains as German sexology, French gay liberationist politics, and African American literature. Drawing interdisciplinary connections across these areas, Míša argues that modern queer and trans* identities were historically constructed in fraught relation to discourses of “race” that emerged in the afterlives of racial slavery and colonialism. They further argue that, while we no longer tend to see queerness or transness as intrinsically racial categories, our conceptions of gender and sexuality today remain haunted by this racialized history in ways that Black, queer, and trans* studies have yet to fully address.
“Accursed Races” offers new ways to understand the relationship between race and sexuality, by analyzing how racial and sexual identities have historically co-evolved. While Black, queer, and trans* studies have developed many diverse frameworks to describe how race and sexuality relate (from intersectionality to assemblage theory), most scholars start from the assumption that race and sexuality are analytically separate, albeit intertwined, categories. By returning critically to historical contexts in which homosexuality was constructed as a race, Míša demonstrates how modern (homo/trans)sexuality emerged through discourses on racial “degeneracy” that positioned Black flesh as the lowest degree of sexual difference. This forgotten genealogy sheds new light on how race and sexuality are (re)constructed today.
Taylor's project will comprise of a literature review with respect to creativity as a means of navigating our way through loss, grief and trauma. Creativity can become a “holding bay” for loss, grief, and trauma, providing a peaceful space to relax or escape. It can provide a means of reconnecting, “re-threading” the strands of well-being and inter- connectiveness with life and with others. It can become the nurturer, the therapist, with a capacity to heal. It can provide a means of recording out journeys. Where creative flow is ruptured by loss, grief, and trauma, it can provide a space for regeneration and meaning- making. What happens in the creative process that allows loss, grief, and trauma to become interwoven with life?
Her project will contribute to the field of counselling by recognising the potential range of strategies and resources available to counsellors and others who work in that therapeutic field. It generates potential for enriching the range of possibilities that people might use when facilitating coping and healing. It helps people to live with loss, including living loss, and the ambiguity of life experiences. Elements of loss, grief and trauma incorporated in this project include ambiguous loss, disenfranchised grief, complicated grief, chronic sorrow and vicarious traumatization.
Born in Cuéllar, Spain, Ildefonsa Teodora de la Torre y Rojas — better known by the pseudonym Alfonsa de la Torre — was a poet and playwright who wrote during Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, when creative works by women and other marginalized groups were either banned or heavily censored. Just as de la Torre demonstrates that her writing is a form of both introspection and outward exploration, translating her is an intimate process that gives new life to the original. This manuscript is a collection of selected works, specifically three poems by de la Torre that have been published during varying times of her life: “Cinématica evolucionista”/ “Evolutionary Kinematics” from Plazuela de las obediencias (1969), “Encuentro con el amor” / “Encountering Love” from Oratorio de San Bernardino (1950), and Oda a la Reina del Irán / “Ode to the Queen of Iran” (1948).
De la Torre's work covers themes like gender, sexuality, and spirituality, and even though her Oratorio de San Bernardino won the Spanish National Award for Poetry in 1951, de la Torre is rarely recognized even in Spain, now deemed “the forgotten poet.” She has also never been translated into English. Her unconventional poetry does not follow any particular meter or rhythm but includes lyrical and emphatic love professions to queens, an elevated register with sprinkles of neologisms, references to plants and herbal medicine, and a tour of geographical locations from Italy to Egypt to the Amazons. Thus, de la Torre’s work is extremely innovative, daring, and entertaining. She brings readers along as she finds acceptance in otherness, an intrepidity that is even more impressive knowing that she wrote during a time of hatred. Her work deserves to be resurrected.
The study focuses on the so-called patere and formelle – a large group of marble reliefs from medieval Venice. Placed prominently on the facades of the city’s medieval merchant houses they are still visible today: a strong reminder of the contacts these families had with Byzantium and the Islamicate regions in the 12th and 13th centuries. Made from imported Greek marble and featuring ‘orientalizing’ motifs these sculptures are to be understood as an artistic product of the Serenissima’s commercial ties in the Mediterranean and beyond. Ella Beaucamp examines the patere and formelle both in their local-Venetian context and in a broader transcultural perspective. Taking into account approaches from economic history and stylistic classifications but also dealing with chronological orders and with questions of “spolia” she traces the transmission of motifs across media and religious or geographic boundaries. It becomes evident how in their material and in their imagery the reliefs are closely connected to the individual family’s trading activities in the East: On the walls of their palaces the patere and formelle functioned as kind of identity markers for the Venetian patrician merchant class and, at the same time, they gave expressio to the self- image of the city as a sea-oriented trading power.
So far, the patere and formelle been mostly neglected in art historical studies. Although they form one of the largest object groups in medieval Venetian art, the main study on the reliefs dates from the 1980s and is therefore outdated. Through her research Ella Beaucamp was able to shed new light on this important example of secular sculpture in terms of their functions and aesthetics. Second, the few studies that exist on the patere and formelle have not recognized their aartistic importance. In line with art history’s traditional positioning of Venice as a ‘Byzantine’ or as an ‘Islamic’ city, the reliefs are often described as the solely result of an Eastern influence. In this reading, Venice takes on the role of the passive receiver of styles, without an identity of its own. The reliefs in particular, however, show how the city made conscious use of artistic inspiration and materials from the East to create a new, innovative form of façade decoration. Last, the study highlights how the patere and formelle challenge the conventional focus of European art history on architecture and two-dimensional images: On the walls, the reliefs oscillate between immobile façade decoration and portable sculpture. At the same time, they are provided with images taken from objects made from very different media (silk, ceramics, ivory). Their analysis therefore must take place from a perspective which transcends art historical boundaries between disciplines, media and genres.
William Gladstone was Victorian Britain’s iconic liberal statesman, renowned for championing the rights of oppressed peoples from Ireland to Armenia. Gladstone’s relationship to the abolition of slavery, however, was complicated by his father John Gladstone’s status as one of the wealthiest slave owners in the British West Indies. This article analyzes the Gladstone family’s relationship with slavery and the politics of abolition. It explores how father and son profited from slavery, justified its practice, and gradually accepted its abolition on terms favorable to slaveowners. Studying the Gladstone’s shared values and interests reflects the countervailing pressures of liberal, imperial, and evangelical politics in the age of abolition which accounted for the successes, limitations, and unanswered injustices of emancipation in the British Empire.
This article remedies neglect of slavery in Gladstone scholarship, illuminates the discursive middle ground of “amelioration” in debates over abolition in Britain, and clarifies the tangled lines connecting religious revival, liberal politics, and plantation economies, in the web of the British Atlantic. The Gladstones’ longevity, influence, and complicated positions on slavery make them fitting subjects to analyze the evolution and limitations of British abolitionism. Rather than recounting a traditional narrative of steady progress from agitation against the slave trade to abolition of slavery or dismissing the abolition movement as fundamentally cynical or romantic, this article highlights the ambiguities inherent to debate over slavery’s future and the multiplicity of ideas and interest which contributed to the outcome of emancipation.
Sofia Di Sarno-García’s study revolves around the application of telecollaboration projects for the acquisition of Spanish-speaking students' pragmatic competence and intercultural communicative competence (ICC). It aims to demonstrate how these two competencies are inextricably interrelated, and one cannot be acquired without the other. To foster participants' pragmatic competence and ICC, three different six-week telecollaboration projects were coordinated between Spanish-speaking learners and English- speaking learners, and a control group that did not participate in any telecollaboration project was set. By adopting a mixed-methods approach, the results demonstrate that the students who participated in the telecollaboration projects outperformed those in the control group in terms of apologies acquisition. The strong connection between the gains in terms of pragmatic competence and ICC is also empirically demonstrated.
Di Sarno-García’s project constitutes a valuable contribution to the field of Applied Linguistics as it provides recent research on an under-investigated field, namely, second language pragmatic acquisition in Computer-Assisted Language Learning and telecollaboration. In particular, the speech act of apologies has not been widely investigated, especially in the Spanish setting of English as a Second/Foreign language. Furthermore, the study covers an existing gap in the literature by providing empirical evidence on the strong relationship between pragmatic competence and intercultural communicative competence.
Every year, around 1.7 million people worldwide receive a diagnosis of breast cancer. The emotional and financial impact of this disease on families and economies is significant. Among these cases, a specific subgroup called triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) represents approximately 10-15% of all breast cancer instances. What sets TNBC apart from other breast cancer subtypes is its lack of receptors to estrogen, progesterone and epidermal growth factor. because of this, TNBC doesn’t respond well to targeted treatments, which leads to a higher occurrence of the cancer spreading to other parts of the body, resulting in unfavourable outcomes. Understanding TNBC at a molecular level is crucial for improving patient survival prospects. TNBC tumours have a unique characteristic of increased vascularization, facilitated by processes like angiogenesis and vasculogenic mimicry (VM, the formation of vascular structures by cancer cells).
Recent research conducted by the Bonder lab has unveiled a captivating discovery: TNBC cells proficient in VM exhibit higher expression levels of adhesion molecules that attract specialized immune cells to control the anti-tumour response. Importantly, these findings are supported by in vitro and in vivo experiments. The study delving into the role of adhesion molecules, specifically in TNBC, holds considerable promise to generate new knowledge and the potential to drive significant advancements in the development of new treatments. Moreover, manipulating the function of these molecules might hold the key to enhancing the body's inherent defence mechanisms against cancer.
This manuscript aims to explore a neglected element of the “primitivist” curiosity during the rise of European modernism. Drawing inspiration from the historiographical concept of “inverse primitivism” (Herbert Uerlings), it intends to illuminate moments of destabilization in the construction of European identity following from experiences of alterity. These experiences, however, no longer refer to the encounter with non-European forms of cultural expression, as it was inherently shaped through hegemonizing illusions and projections. Instead, it pertains to the inversion of the ethnological gaze, which turns inward to self- observation, inevitably leading to sensations of self-alienation or more precisely, instances of “self-defamiliarization”. The manuscript carves out how from this shock, allowing one to perceive that which is one’s own as foreign, historical insights into the cultural determination of human perception and cognition emerge.
The objective of the manuscript is to offer a programmatic contribution to the field of the history of knowledge (Wissensgeschichte). This field investigates the intersections and reciprocal influences among literary history, art history, and the history of science. Through the investigation of cultural expressions of “self-defamiliarization”, it seeks to map out the circulation of anthropological and ethnological epistemes during the rise of European modernism. In presenting its main argument, the manuscript sheds light on an antecedent field of later relativist and deconstructivist schools and aims to delineate some previously overlooked (dis-)continuities in intellectual history. It accomplishes so by bringing to attention a wealth of largely unknown “ethnologizing” writings, such as for example those of Ludwik Fleck.
Constructing robust age estimates and age models for archaeological sites is essential for accurately interpreting the past. South Africa, in particular, is an area of interest due to its rich archaeological record and evidence of early modern human behavior. However, due to unreliable age models, understanding the timing of specific human activities throughout this region has been difficult. For this study, Jayde demonstrates how cryptotephra, or microscopic volcanic glass, can help refine age models at archaeological sites throughout South Africa. This study will focus on the geochemical signature of the Youngest Toba Tuff, a 74,000-year-old eruption, at multiple localities in the region and demonstrate how it can be used to test the age models at each site.
This project will make key contributions to the field of archaeology by demonstrating how extremely low abundance (10 shards per gram) cryptotephra can be used to date archaeological sites. Typically, cryptotephra deposits in other regions will have ) 100 shards per gram of sediment. However, due to advancements made by our research team, this technique can now be applied to areas without a rich local volcanic record (i.e., low-abundance deposits), dramatically extending the geographic range of this technique. Because of these advancements, this research will provide a tool that can help produce high-resolution age models where it was previously not possible.
Miranda’s manuscript, The Coloniality of Happiness, explores how one can and should understand black wellbeing in a world structured by racism and coloniality. Using the sociodiagnostic method of Frantz Fanon, this project examines how Afro-diasporic subjects face systematic un-wellness under “disordered” socio-political arrangements. Firstly, Miranda examines how depression for Africana people can be the result of racist and colonial psychosocial structures named the “coloniality of happiness.” Secondly, this project examines how these conditions affect how Cabo Verdeans experience depreson. Thirdly, his project compares conventional conceptions of suicide against Africana conceptions of “flight” and “life-risking” resistance. Lastly, this project examines how Africana people have responded to “disordered” political orders by constructing “ecstatic communities” that combat and offer alternative models of well-being for Africana people.
This manuscript contributes to philosophical examinations of well-being while having several implications for political theory, philosophy of psychiatry, and contemporary Africana thought. The presupposed basis of optimality—or achieving health, happiness, and sanity—has long been crucial in grounding political arrangements and relationships, as well as psychological health. By bringing political theory and psychiatry together, this project reveals the theoretical entanglements between “well-being” and “disorder.” Significantly, this project also advances Africana modes of well-being that have occurred and continue to occur within “disordered” political arrangements, defined by antiblack racism and coloniality. This manuscript thus provides beneficial contributions for laypersons, theorists, psychiatrists, and philosophers concerned with the quest for wellness under compromised political systems.
Plant roots produce endogenous electric fields which result in characteristic current profiles. It has been suggested that pathogens might use this electrical signature to identify roots. The oomycete pathogen Phytophthora palmivora is known to have electrotactic zoospores which swim towards the positive pole when exposed to an external electric field in vitro. We use the model system P. palmivora - Arabidopsis thaliana to explore the use of electric fields for crop protection. We showed that different configurations of external electric fields can be used to reduce P. palmivora root infection without affecting root health.
Sustaining the rising global population requires an increase in food production while processes such as climate change and desertification are reducing the amount of cultivable land available. Focus needs to be placed on increasing crop yields per m2. Plant pathogens are major culprits behind reduced yield, thus developing methos to prevent pathogen infection is imperative. Crop protection strategies currently in use rely on chemical pesticides that can have adverse effects on the surrounding environment. Furthermore, current research on pathogen-plant interactions mostly focuses on improving plant resistance after infection has already occurred. Our research focused on understanding pre-infection dynamics, a topic often neglected. By investigating electrotaxis we opened the doors to a novel and environmentally friendly preventative crop protection strategy based on external electric fields.
By juxtaposing under-studied voices of diasporic South Asian and East African women, Jhani Randhawa’s “Creative Refusal” aims to develop a grounded theory on how women’s intimacies are forged through complex affects and languages of care in the shadow of race, class, religious tradition, and colonialism. Considering the interstices between documentary poetics, mythography, and experimental fabulation, Randhawa centers under-studied voices—particularly of queer women across Swahili, Urdu, Punjabi, and English-language worlds—whose works respond to contemporary militarized inflection points, framed in the multiple wakes of the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent, the anti-colonial Kenyan independence movement, and the Southall Race Riots in London. Randhawa’s research asks how a subject’s failure or refusal can render unreliable narrators nevertheless reliable agents of history.
Jhani Randhawa’s project—which applies theories of borderland studies, queer spirituality, and anti-casteist ecofeminism—aims to disinter those instances among women in literature where generative (or destructive) ways of imagining, (un)knowing, (ir)reconciling, and forging relation succeeded in expanding aesthetic, political, linguistic, and spiritual concepts of the situated body. Through archival and experiential modalities, Randhawa appraises transoceanic memories and modes of women’s defiance in order to address gaps in cultural knowledge surrounding contemporary diasporic Black and Asian friendship and political solidarities, specifically in Britain, in the postcolonial anthropocene. Randhawa’s research is in dialogue with scholars such as Anandi Rao, Alyoxsa Tudor, Eunsong Kim, Jack Halberstam, Mel Y. Chin, and Sara Ahmed who take an interdisciplinary approach when encountering gendered relationships in literature and performance.
"In search of their own voice. The Swahili Novel of Tanzanian Women in a Half-Century Perspective" provides detailed analyses of contemporary Swahili novels by various woman authors published between 1966 and 2017. The research are contextualized and located in specific historical moments and socio-political phenomenas (such as the socialist ideology of Ujamaa). The main focus of the research are the narratives created around the concept of gender, its socio-cultural meanings and significances. The studies conducted also take into account the intellectual and philosophical tradition of Swahili society, which includes concepts such as utu 'the essence of humanity', aibu 'shame', 'disgrace' and heshima 'honor', 'social respectability'. These are central to understanding the value system, social norms and communicative behavior of Tanzanian society.
The research provides the most comprehensive and detailed description of Swahili contemporary novels of women writers. To date, there has been no scientific publication discussing this subject. The great majority of publications on Swahili have focused on the work of prominent male writers, who are recognized by the international academic community. The research of Izabela Romańczuk is pioneering internationally. Being a literary study, it also joins the strand of studies on African philosophies. It discusses the crucial philosophical concepts in Swahili such as utu 'humanity', 'morality'. Contemporary Swahili intellectual and philosophical thought has not been studied in the context of gender, and the women's branch of it has been largely disregarded.
Sonic Resistance: Dominican Music and Racial Identity analyzes intersecting Dominican racial, ethnic, and religious identities by exploring music and music cultures from 1961 to the present. In the book, I will highlight different aspects of a progressive movement I call afrodominicanismo, focusing on the mobilization of Afro-Dominican music to negotiate and contest official constructions of a Euro-Christian Dominican identity in the aftermath of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship (1930-1961). When studies of Dominican national identity mention music, they often emphasize how merengue music has been used to epitomize Dominicans’ European roots. Sonic Resistance, instead, explores how Afro-Dominican music genres have challenged and destabilized these essentialized notions of Dominican identity and have opened doors to new understandings of Dominican identity.
In the last decades, a new movement of scholarship has historicized the social construction of race in the Dominican Republic and its diaspora, dismantling Dominican official national discourses that reduce and/or deny associations of Blackness across all Dominican social classes. While this scholarship revises Dominican historiography, research is still needed to understand how racial identities are displayed and negotiated through the everyday experiences of music. Sonic Resistance utilizes music to examine the cracks in the nation's project and its dominant histories. As opposed to other forms of expression—words, laws, political actions—music reveals a tacit and ambiguous expression of Blackness that indirectly destabilize and confront elite notions of Dominican Whiteness and express a uniquely Dominican mixed culture, which includes Blackness.
In 2022, five faculty from the UNBC School of Education began a research project called Climate Education in Teacher Education (CETE). Our research question asked: How are climate education strategies, developed across Canada to support novice teachers teaching climate education to their students, being implemented into practice by UNBC pre-service teachers in northern B.C.? The paper explores the UNBC teacher education program’s diverse realities, design processes, and incorporation of climate change education into practice. We will offer preliminary findings and emergent realizations and reflect outwards to consider how our work might confluence with other climate change education efforts in other teacher education programs.
Our work contemplates the roles of action and hope in climate change efforts and invites others to explore a climate change education journey in their own context. We sense the paper to be an important contribution for gaining perspective on how Teacher Education programs across Canada include and emphasize climate change education. Particularly, we position our work within B.C. local realities and shifting priorities, including effective modelling of how B.C.’s Curriculum (2023) supports climate change education imperatives. The paper aims to shift practices around climate change education and to allow CETE to further investigate the impacts of climate change education on pre-service teachers in the UNBC program, along with graduates moving from UNBC into their early teaching careers.
This doctoral dissertation investigates "Dalla parte delle bambine" (Milan, 1975-1982) by Adela Turin, the first Italian feminist publishing house for children’s literature. Despite the international success of Adela Turin’s feminist publishing house “Dalla parte delle bambine,” there is a surprising dearth of studies on this subject. This interdisciplinary research aims to fill this gap, engaging with the thriving field of the study of children's literature from a gender perspective. To write this thesis, Travagliati has thoroughly studied a unique archive focused on Turin’s activities, as well as interviewing various ""Dalla parte delle bambine""’s illustrators and the author’s colleagues and son. The candidate, in addition to proposing a quantitative and qualitative analysis of Turin’s picturebooks, was therefore able to reconstruct the history of the publishing house, study the worldwide circulation of its books, write the author’s biographical profile, and examine ""Dalla parte delle bambine""’s reception and legacy."
In this paper, Agnik will primarily emphasize the methodologies adopted to create the modern nation of India. The paper analyzes the visual culture of modern India, which played a significant role in the development of the country. Agnik argues that the intellectuals and political thinkers referred to pre-colonial imperial ideas and material culture, while constructing the visual culture of modern India. The new visual culture was constructed by examining the material cultures and imperial policies of some handpicked indigenous empires of South Asia, while the other existing empires and princely states were forgotten. The paper attempts to find the reasons behind the incorporation of these ideas in the nation building process, further elucidating the role of the policy makers, transnational actors, intellectual ideas, and western sciences, in the creation of the new imagery. The glorification of the pre- colonial spaces and the isolation of the existing imperial ideas led to repercussions which affected the nation building process. While the new visual culture based on the religious ideas of Buddhism and the principle of ahiṃsā (‘nonviolence’), served the political ambition of the newly independent country and its leaders, but failed to fulfill the socio- political requirements of the colonial princely states, affecting the incorporation of the princely states into the democratic structure. Thus, the study of these debates exposes the gaps experienced in the nation building process of India and the subjugation of the colonial princely states in modern India.
The following research project is significant for the field of studies as it also intends to identify the intellectual networks and agents responsible for the emergence of the modern nation of India and Afghanistan, which contributed towards the development of South and Central Asian identity. Existing scholarship refers to the contribution of the transnational European and Western agencies, highlighting their contribution in underlining the premodern cultures of Afghanistan, India, Central and South Asia. In this project, Agnik will discuss the significance of the indigenous agents, playing an essential role in constructing the narratives associated with the various archaeological investigations. The project will further elucidate the ideological debates, initiating primarily between the Francophone and Anglophone world, which reached its zenith during the Cold War period. While critically engaging with the French, English and Soviet scholarship, Agnik will attempt to highlight their contribution in the Indo-Afghan nation building program along with their participation in reconstructing the premodern cultures of India, Afghanistan, Central and South Asia.
The process of racialisation, or how groups gain racial meaning, has long been of central concern to sociologists. Much of the scholarship on racialisation presupposes the importance of phenotypic indicators in a group’s racial formation. This theory paper that draws on secondary sources argues that this relationship is not so straightforward when we consider the case of South Asians and demonstrates that racialisation is about much more than skin colour and phenotype. In particular, it shows that religion, rather than phenotype, has been fundamental to the racialisation of South Asians. This is in line with contemporary scholarship that theorises about how cultural practices, such as religion and language, can be racialised and speaks to a growing sociological interest in the colonial, postcolonial, and contemporary relationships between race and caste.
This theoretical analysis makes contributions to several fields of scholarly inquiry, most importantly the sociology of race and racism and South Asian studies. Within the field of the sociology of race and racism, using the case of South Asians, this paper challenges the common-sense and scholarly discourse of phenotypic ways of understanding racial classification to show that racialisation is about more than race. Further, it speaks to Maghbouleh’s (2020) research on the relationship between Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) populations and their contentious and tenuous relationship with whiteness that is complicated by their Muslimness. This research raises interesting questions about the ways in which Muslims belonging to different races – Black, South Asian, and MENA – are racialised. In the field of South Asian and diaspora studies, this paper demonstrates how other systems of stratification, such as caste, get transformed in the diaspora.
"Umalusi is tasked with quality assuring and accrediting independent schools in South Africa, offering the National Curriculum Statement leading to the National Senior Certificate qualification. Fowler’s study examined the impact of Umalusi's quality assurance and accreditation process on sixteen principals and teachers from four diverse independent schools. This study revealed that the participants did not believe that Umalusi positively impacted the quality of education. Due to a lack of governance regulation for independent schools, principals and teachers shoulder governance responsibilities, adding to administrative workloads and distracting from core teaching and learning functions. Umalusi's accreditation process is seen as hindering new school establishments with complex procedures and high fees, and it is criticised for applying a perceived higher accountability standard to independent schools compared to public ones.
Independent Schools (ISs) in South Africa play a crucial role, yet misconceptions persist, such as their being elitist and economically inaccessible. Fowler’s study addresses this gap, engaging teachers and principals from diverse ISs to explore their perceptions of quality assurance processes and Umalusi's effectiveness. The research highlights the structural and cultural diversity of ISs and provides valuable insight into how ISs adapt to provide quality education in a rapidly changing South African society. It emphasises the limited scholarship on ISs and Umalusi, making a significant contribution by directly involving teachers and principals from varied communities. The study underscores the necessity for Umalusi to advocate legislative amendments for accrediting special needs schools that modify the curriculum, which is currently restricted by Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement regulations."
"The project aims to discuss the term 'Middle East,' its origins, whom it stands to benefit, and who is harmed by its consistent usage. In doing so, the lens of the Western gaze can be removed from how these artifacts, histories, and teachings are portrayed and displayed. Interpreting museums as a tangible manifestation of many discursive issues laid out in the text. The general premise of the project is that Museums have evolved into non-productive modes of exhibition and more of an expensive method of archival of the physical. The aim is to design a space to present these findings through text and accompanying visuals to foster curiosity, spark conversation, teach, and exhibit the work as a whole rather than in a vacuum. In tandem with this book is a workshop space to un-make the notion of the Middle East portrayed in Western media and academia.
This is one of many opportunities to shed light on non-European architectural thought and expression modes. The term 'Middle East' is problematic for many reasons; by re-writing the narrative and viewing the Middle East differently, we can start to reference that architecture as valid design case studies. From the physical standpoint of looking at museums and exhibitions, there is also the issue of false narratives driven by financial gain, also leading to an issue of accessibility. By de-institutionalizing this structure, there is an opportunity to create a more accommodating framework for this content. That framework must be flexible and transferable, interactive as a catalyst for conversation and information, and above all else, it needs to be accessible. The text is a foundational resource, but it goes beyond providing QR codes at each chapter's end. These codes link to the text, offering online visuals, videos, and references, enhancing accessibility and allowing continual updates for a dynamic learning experience."
"Title: "Racial Capitalist Climate Patriarchy: Gendered Systemic Oppression in the Global Climate Crisis" This article investigates the systemic nature of the planetary crisis of climate breakdown, pinpointing global capitalism as its fundamental driver, intertwined with patriarchy, race, and colonialism. The research highlights the disproportionate impact of climate change on women, especially indigenous and global southern women, a critical yet overlooked facet in canonical feminist literature on systems of oppression. My central inquiry revolves around understanding how and why climate change discriminates globally. I respond with the "Racial Capitalist Climate Patriarchy—" a framework that integrates environmental destruction into the foundational “interlocking” systems of racism, capitalist exploitation, and gendered oppression, offering a stronger theoretical foundation to explain the fundamental systems responsible for climate crises' disproportionate effects on marginalized genders and impoverished communities (Combahee River Collective 1977). Through an extensive literature review, this work identifies a historic divide between ecological feminism and early intersectionality. It underscores the need to bring these branches into a more integrated understanding of the climate crisis's impact on gender- marginalized, racialized, and economically disadvantaged communities worldwide.
This research significantly benefits interdisciplinary fields, notably women and gender studies, environmental studies, and global studies. It fills a critical gap in canonical feminist literature on structural gendered oppression, reshaping theories to embrace environmental challenges. This understanding propels feminist studies toward advocating for intersectional gender-centered approaches to climate crisis responses. In environmental studies, the research introduces the "Racial Capitalist Climate Patriarchy." By integrating “climate oppression” into interconnected structural systems, it offers a robust framework to explain the historical factors driving a climate crisis that disproportionately affects gender-marginalized, racialized, and impoverished groups. In global studies, it enhances an understanding of climate change's global impact on marginalized communities. Advocating for more integrated and all-encompassing foundations to ecological feminism and intersectional theories, it provides vital insights for global policymaking, activism and theorizing."
"The Snake in the Library: Turkish Literature in the French Republic of Letters presents a new facet of French Orientalism at the dawn of the Enlightenment. Covering the period from the establishment of the first movable-type printing press at the Ottoman court in 1727 to the publication of the Comte de Caylus’s Contes orientaux in 1743, this study elucidates previously unexamined debates about the existence and value of “Turkish literature” within France. In this manuscript, Haddad argues that expansive beliefs about literature among French scholars and travelers to the Ottoman Empire conflicted with a French literary market oriented towards a narrowly defined “Turkish style,” resulting in an Enlightenment Orientalism that severed cultural continuities forged among French and Ottoman elites.
Haddad’s manuscript questions the Enlightenment’s role in shaping today’s readers’ understanding of world literature. Current debates in the field of World Literature address the ways in which texts acquire the status of literature in a world literary market. Haddad’s research enlists the notion of World Literature as a general framework to discuss how “Turkish Literature” was defined. By showing that the Muslim subject was at first integrated into a European “Republic of Letters” through a broad articulation of literature only to be excluded by a narrow, disciplinary reframing of literature in the Enlightenment, Haddad offers a precedent to the suppression of Muslim cultural expression in the idealized citizen of the Fifth Republic."
"In the realm of sustainable construction materials, alkali-activated geopolymers have emerged as a promising alternative, showcasing the potential to mitigate carbon emissions through enhanced carbon sequestration. This research focuses on investigating the carbon sequestration potential and physico-mechanical characteristics of alkali-activated geopolymers, utilizing dolomite as the primary precursor and ground-granulated blast furnace slag as the secondary precursor. The activation of the geopolymers will be accomplished using a combination of sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide, providing an innovative and environmentally friendly approach to material synthesis. To understand the impact of accelerated carbonation on the developed geopolymers, a comprehensive series of investigations will be conducted after 7 and 28 days of exposure, comparing the results with a control mix devoid of accelerated carbonation. Furthermore, the examination will extend to include physical, mechanical, durability, and microstructural analyses, shedding light on the transformative effects induced by accelerated carbonation. The accelerated carbonation process will be followed by heat curing, adding an additional layer of complexity to the study. By assessing the materials under different conditions, this research aims to contribute valuable insights into the performance and sustainability aspects of alkali-activated geopolymers, paving the way for their integration into environmentally conscious construction practices. The outcomes of this study have the potential to inform the development of novel, eco- friendly building materials with enhanced carbon sequestration capabilities and robust mechanical properties.
How the field of study stands to benefit from this research: The field of civil engineering, particularly in the domain of sustainable and green construction materials, stands to gain substantial benefits from my research on alkali-activated geopolymers with a focus on carbon sequestration. As the construction industry grapples with the imperative to reduce its carbon footprint, the development of novel materials with a net-zero impact becomes paramount. The utilization of dolomite and ground granulated blast furnace slag as precursors, coupled with the environmentally benign activation alkali solution of sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide, reflects a significant stride towards sustainable construction practices. By specifically addressing accelerated carbonation effects on the developed geopolymers, my research contributes critical insights into their carbon sequestration potential. This knowledge is pivotal in advancing the quest for materials that not only offer robust physico-mechanical characteristics but also actively contribute to carbon capture. The findings from this study will inform the civil engineering community on the viability and performance of alkali-activated geopolymers under accelerated carbonation and elevated curing temperatures, offering a tangible pathway for the integration of such materials into construction projects with a reduced environmental impact. Ultimately, the outcomes of my research have the potential to revolutionize construction practices, providing the industry with greener alternatives that align with the global imperative to achieve net-zero carbon footprints. The significance of these advancements extends beyond the laboratory, influencing the future of infrastructure development by fostering a more sustainable and environmentally conscious approach within the realm of civil engineering."
"High rates of opioid prescribing and related harms are a great public health concern globally. A rise in the prescribing of opioids has been largely attributed to their escalating use for chronic non-cancer pain in primary care. Yet, there is little understanding of individual opioid prescribing patterns in these settings. Monica Jung’s PhD thesis titled, “Using healthcare data to understand patterns of opioid prescribing in primary care” addresses this gap through an extensive program of research primarily comprising of pharmacoepidemiological studies. These studies analysing large healthcare administrative datasets using group-based trajectory modelling, multinomial logistic regression analysis and time series analysis methods collectively demonstrate real-world evidence that may contribute to a more nuanced understanding of opioid prescribing in primary care.
This thesis identified key factors that lead to different patterns and trajectories of opioid prescribing and deprescribing (or tapering) in patients with non-cancer pain. Specifically, demographical factors (e.g. socioeconomic status), characteristics of opioids (e.g. long-acting opioids), and comorbidities (e.g. depression) were found to be associated with long-term opioid therapy. Of note, the finding that twice as many patients tapered opioids with a gradual rate compared to those tapering with a faster rate challenges conventional guidelines. The outcomes of this work uniquely contribute to the evidence base to inform clinical guidelines, policies and strategic responses that are tailored to specific high-risk populations. Through understanding the safe and effective prescribing of opioids, this research ultimately aims to reduce morbidity and mortality, and healthcare burden in our society."
"The USA, China, and the EU are the largest digital economies in the world. The way they regulate their respective digital market provides inspiration for the digital regulation elsewhere in the world. Based on the theory of “regulatory convergence” in the digital economy coined by Ma in 2023, this article studies the convergence in the anti-trust regulation in the USA, China, and the EU. It argues that the convergence is reflected on three dimensions: objectives, approaches, and power struggles between regulators and regulated firms. This article compares the anti-trust regulation of the three regions in the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s. The preliminary finding is that over time, the anti-trust regulation demonstrates greater similarities along all the three dimensions. This article explains the regulatory convergence by three factors. First, with the globalization of the digital economy, large platforms increasingly adopt similar growth paths. Therefore, they tend to create similar dilemmas for national governments. Second, nowadays, the outcomes of the geopolitical competition are influenced not only by the economic power of a state, but also by its regulatory power, namely its capacity to curtail the negative externalities of the digital economy. Third, while tech firms were vehemently opposed to the state regulation, nowadays they show a more cooperative attitude towards it. Moreover, exasperated by tech firms’ excessive economic (and political) power, citizens welcome more proactive state intervention. With the support of firms and citizens, regulators can forcefully rein in the monopoly activities of the digital behemoths.
This article is inscribed into the perspective of the international political economy. The existing literature has extensively discussed 3 issues of the anti-trust regulation in the digital economy: 1) the reasons for which the latter is more likely than other economic sectors to produce anti-competitive effects (the “Matthew Effect”); 2) the characteristics of the monopolistic practices of the digital market; 3) the anti-trust regulatory approaches introduced by national governments to curb the negative effects of the monopolistic practices of large platforms. However, in-depth cross-country comparisons of the anti-trust regulation are lacking. This article remedies to such academic lacuna by comparing the anti-trust regulation in China, the United States and the EU. The comparative perspective will greatly benefit policymakers. It enables them to learn from the anti-trust practices of the largest digital economies in the world, and to reduce regulatory costs related to the lengthy trial and error process. In addition, this paper enlarges and complements the research agenda on the regulation of the digital economy. While the existing literature justifies the proactive anti-trust regulation by the negative externalities of the anti-competitive practices of the behemoth platforms, this article explores a different research path by adopting the perspective of international political economy. More precisely, it investigates the role of the interstate policy learning and the intensive geopolitical competition in pushing national governments to adopt similar digital regulation policies."
"The indication for a medicine is the reason for its prescription and use. In a hospital an indication should always be provided in the prescriptions, as it links the medicine to the reason for use in a consistent and accessible location. This reduces prescribing error and improves communication between the patient, prescriber, and other health professionals. Use of an electronic prescribing system allows the free text indication field in prescriptions to be made compulsory, supporting prescribers to document an indication. However, compulsory fields risk inaccurate information being recorded. The aim of the project is to evaluate the effect on prescriber behaviour of making the indication field compulsory for all medicines in the hospital prescribing system.
Health informatics is an emerging area of research. With increasing use of electronic systems, large quantities of electronic data available for research use. However, data are siloed and require linkage to answer clinical questions. In this study, four data sources were linked to evaluate prescriber behaviour using electronic health data. The basis for this data linkage can now be used for future research in the local health region. The study uses linked data to investigate the impact of a compulsory field on deprescribing and appropriate medicines use. Outcomes not commonly reported in literature, such as rates of dose change and medication cessation are investigated. It is rare for robust data at such a large scale to be available to answer questions related to these outcomes."
"The manuscript focuses on nurses’ decision-making and justifications for acting morally courageously in ethical conflicts. Moral courage is essential in contemporary nursing because there are shortages of nurses and changes in healthcare organisations, and ethical conflicts arise daily. Morally courageous nurses can enhance the quality and ethical sustainability of care. The manuscript presents the results of a narrative inquiry. The data were collected from fourteen registered nurses with individual, in-depth interviews and analysed with a narrative holistic analysis. Individual responsibility-based, professional ethics-based and emotion-based decision-makers were identified according to their justifications for morally courageous acts. The justifications were based on individual, contextual and organisational perspectives. The ethical conflicts and morally courageous acts are also described in the manuscript to illustrate the justifications holistically.
This study is situated in nursing ethics. The results provide new viewpoints on nurses’ decision-making when aiming for a morally courageous act, enhancing a deep understanding of their justifications for morally courageous acts in situations where it is required from nurses. The main results indicate that finding justifications for a potentially morally courageous act is a complex process. Also, decision-making and acting morally courageously in ethical conflicts require ethical competence and functioning collaboration among nurses and other professionals. This study is a part of a doctoral study, in which the concept of a nurse’s moral courage will be defined in a hybrid model concept analysis. The definition and manifestation of nurses’ moral courage will contribute to the conceptual, theoretical basis of nursing science."
"This doctoral thesis explores the role played by magazines in the artistic scene of New York City during the eighties among the appropriationist artists famously known as the “Pictures Generation”. The aim of the research is to take the art magazines not only as a vehicle for the legitimation of discourse and as an alternative space for the production of new ideas, but as the ideal media that shared —in its printed nature— the characteristics of the appropriationist process, understood as a conceptual practice. This will rediscover an art history that has been told so many times, always through the lens of postmodernist theory but never through the significance of the print culture and its circulation around the burgeoning cultural scene of the East Village.
This doctoral thesis contributes to the discipline of art history by expanding its scope to other academic fields like visual studies, material studies, and periodical studies by using an alternative methodology that challenges the hegemonic and theory-driven view of artistic practice. This interdisciplinarity will discover the crucial role of the magazine as a provisional avant-garde for artists, as well as a legitimation channel for art critics. Furthermore, the research aims to open up the recent academic disciplines of periodical and magazine studies, going beyond the logocentric approach to recover forgotten aspects like the materiality and tactility of the print, the semantics of graphical relations, the phenomenology of the reader, the visuality of the text and some other features that have always been present, but remained peripheral."
"Dr Elena Sottilotta’s scholarly emphasis is on the cultural, historical and gendered dynamics that influenced the collection and transcription of popular traditions in the nineteenth century. Her research explores how the processes of gathering folk and fairy-tale narratives were influenced by nineteenth-century ideologies, cultural identities and linguistic thought by focusing on the works of women writers and folktale collectors. As such, her research is tied to socially and culturally relevant dimensions, such as women’s studies, the preservation of cultural heritage, regional versus national identities, and creative storytelling. Her critical perspective lies at the intersection of women’s and gender studies, the history of folklore and fairy-tale studies. Her studies thus seek to unearth non-canonical figures and narratives in the European fairy-tale tradition by paying attention to neglected women writers, collectors and storytellers.
The field of fairy-tale studies is thriving. Despite the traditional emphasis placed on well-known collections, there is a growing interest in under-explored narratives that challenge the most common assumptions about folk and fairy tales. This field of study will therefore benefit from such research because of its novelty and original perspective."
"Between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, humanist writers disrupted established narratological codes pertaining to ways of narrating underworld journeys. In doing so, humanist writers provided a literary response to the historical developments that shaped their times. The manuscript explores how the infernal journeys evolved from hybrid mythological voyages to Hades and ancient Christian apocalyptic tours of hell to journeys that present their destination as a cave or mine instead. As a cave, the subterranean world can be investigated using sciences such as speleology and petrology, which categorize gems and metals to determine their potential use for humans. Ultimately, these texts reflect upon the turn of the underworld into an explorable, analyzable, and subduable object of interest to humans.
Narratives on journeys to the abode of the dead constitute a crucial element in various cultural contexts. As such, narrating afterlife encounters nurtures a connection to the dead and seems to address a fundamental human need to know where and how the dead sojourn. So far, research conducted on literary underworld journeys has primarily focused on ancient times up to the early fourteenth-century commentaries on Dante’s Divine Comedy, as well as afterlife journeys between the mid-sixteenth and twentieth centuries. However, a study of infernal voyages in fifteenth-century texts remains a desideratum. To address this, the manuscript analyzes alternating narrative patterns of fifteenth-century underworld journeys, particularly considering the rendering of Greco-Roman infernal iconography, Christian notions of hell, and earth’s lower spheres."
This project, In the Black: Figures of Racial Capitalism, intervenes in the debate surrounding the value of Black figurative art by providing a holistic understanding of the role of the art market. In it, Luke investigates the figurative interventions Black Bay Area emerging artists adopt to navigate the financial pressures of the art market when Black figurative art has renewed market value. The research focuses on multimedia (sculpture, painting, photography, and film) works from four contemporary emerging artists: Woody de Othello, Trina Robinson, Stuart Robertson, and Adrian Burrell – each of whom are ethnographic case studies which chart how artists adapt their representations of the Black figure in response to their perceptions of Black art’s value in the market.
It is an age-old adage that art is priceless, but the truth is far more complicated. In fact, the buying and selling of art exacts a monetary, and also deeply personal price, especially on the artists who make it. The artists’ responsive strategies, referred to here as acts of visual marronage, reorient frameworks of value. As a result, their artistic choices disaggregate frameworks of Black art’s value. Luke constructs four theoretical camps where Black art is valuable: 1) as a vehicle to support Black culture 2) to consume for its exoticized difference 3) to support multicultural efforts of diversity 4) as an asset for financial investment. As the first project to deconstruct the means of Black art’s value in the contemporary art market, this project helps reveal the limitations of previous discourses on representation and propose alternative strategies for creating Black art under racial capitalism.
"This manuscript aims to explore the gravitational wave signature of compact binary systems. While the final phases of compact binary coalescences are highly nonlinear, the nonrelativistic inspiral phase can be systematically analyzed using Effective Field Theory and perturbative techniques. This manuscript seeks to extend the work in Nonrelativistic General Relativity (NRGR) to calculate the scattering amplitude of soft gravitational radiations with a gapped compact binary treated as a worldline defect with localized internal degrees of freedom (DOF). To keep track of the radiation reaction, an iterative calculation at the level of the action is introduced. The manuscript seeks to understand the dependence of scattering on DOFs such as the spins, masses and electric charges of the compact object components.
The scattering amplitude of gravitational waves from the compact binary systems has not been calculated using NRGR before. This project will contribute in the following ways: 1. Provide accurate predictions for the dynamics of compact binary in a gravitational background, comparable with future experiments; 2. Provide an analytic tool and theoretical basis for future endeavors, such as the theoretical understanding of dark matter accretion around compact binaries and gravitational wave signatures of many-body systems. More generally, comparing to the potential results derived with other methods and understanding the reasons of potential discrepancies will propel a better grasp of the fundamental physics and mathematical structure behind."
The main propeller for designing innovative and optimized materials is a thorough comprehension of the material's properties, interactions, and mechanisms at the micro/nanoscale. Such understanding is also crucial for materials employed in clean energy electrochemical systems such as fuel cells and electrolyzers to yield them more cost and performance effective. Advanced electron microscopy and spectroscopy techniques, collectively termed materials characterization tools, offer the advantage of facilitating the said purpose by direct visualization and valuable data that is not easily interpreted without further analysis. Manual extraction of useful information from this dataset is known to be exceptionally time- consuming, complicated, and subject to involuntary bias. Consequently, to address such challenges, this research aims to develop and implement innovative, fast, and reliable image and data processing frameworks. These frameworks aim to leverage data science, data analytics, and deep learning algorithms to facilitate the automatic recognition and post- characterization quantification of either insufficiently studied or unexplored microstructural parameters/features within the electrochemical systems to build meaningful structure- performance correlations. These microstructural parameters and features include but are not limited to particle sizes and their distributions, electrode layer thicknesses, pore and agglomerate sizes, the contact area between two different material components, average connected region sizes, etc. A rigorous study of these parameters can promote advancement in clean energy systems by providing a critical technical base to effectively grasp the complexity of multi-component electrochemical systems and optimize them constructively.
The cost breakdown analysis for low-temperature fuel cells and electrolyzers demonstrates that a significant portion of the total cost (>40%) is associated with the materials used in these devices. This explains the narrative of how important material optimization is within the realm of these technologies. This material optimization hinges on automatic and precise material characterization and analysis, which are the core objectives of this research. It aims to enable the scientific community to analyze and interpret complex microstructural data by reducing the analysis time from days to minutes or even seconds. Such efficiency in handling complex and large characterization data is expected to fast-track the process of rapid identification of issues and serve as a base for designing or optimizing materials used in these devices. Thus, it could help scientists achieve superior electrochemical performance, efficiency, and durability and advance the commercial viability of such devices. From a broader perspective, this progress is crucial for promoting cleaner and sustainable alternatives to help the planet combat adverse climate impacts from using non-renewable resources.
The proposed manuscript is about a review survey for the 3D Semantic Segmentation (3DSS) of point clouds and also the second chapter of the PhD dissertation of Thodoris Betsas. To be more specific, the scope of 3DSS is to assign a semantic label to each 3D point, indicating the category in which the 3D point is included e.g., vegetation, concrete, road etc. First and foremost, the research is focused on the categorization of the 3DSS methods into subclasses with common characteristics. There are two broad categories of the 3DSS methods, the "traditional" and "deep learning" ones, the former refer to those that use handcrafted features while the later to those that learn to extract the features from the data without the user involvement. After deep research on the field by reading previous review papers as well as several algorithms the 3DSS methods are organized into five categories the (i) Point (ii) Dimensionality Reduction (iii) Discretization (iv) Graph and (v) Hybrid based methods. The proposed manuscript has an analysis of each category including an indicative explanation of methods for each of them. In addition to the 3DSS analysis a brief description of the available datasets is contained. Finally, a fruitful discussion about the advantages, disadvantages and open issues is included. To sum up, the proposed manuscript is an in depth analysis of 3DSS methods, aiming to contribute to the further understanding and improving of the 3DSS methods.
The ISPRS defines Photogrammetry as "the science and technology of extracting reliable three- dimensional geometric and thematic information, often over time, of objects and scenes from image and range data". As a PhD candidate in the field the proposed manuscript aims to contribute to the further understanding and improving of the 3DSS methods to expand the thematic information and to exploit it for a better usage of the geometric data.
The aviation industry has been male dominated since the early years of aviation. Universities offering aviation-related degrees are experiencing the same issue today. While female enrollment at universities in the United States is increasing steadily over the years, the same cannot be said at universities that offer aviation and/or STEM-related degrees. The purpose of this study is to research and collect data at an aviation university to determine factors that could be contributing to the gender gap and what solutions could be integrated into the university to make females feel supported as a part of the university community Surveys and interviews were conducted with female undergraduate students in three degrees with the lowest enrollment at the research site. The surveys and interviews were focused on whether female students feel supported at the university, if they experienced gender bias at the university, and what they want and need to feel part of the university community as a female. After analysis of all data collected, the research showed that female students mostly feel supported by the university; however, they have experienced gender bias by students and faculty which affected some of their college experiences negatively causing decrease in retention, enrollment, and progression into specific aviation career fields. The findings showed the gender bias experienced was isolated by certain students and faculty, and not a systematic issue with the entire university and seemed to be mostly unconscious or generational bias.
The purpose of the project was to identify why a gender gap exists at the university and how it can be fixed. Through this research and data collection, the university now has the information needed to implement changes to decrease the gender gap in aviation education. Decreasing the gender gap at the university would increase female enrollment, retention, and graduation rates. This affects the university positivity in that enrollment brings in more money for the university which allows for expansion and improvements as well as impacting the industry positively. The aviation industry is experiencing a gender gap as well as previously discussed. By increasing females in aviation education this increases the number of females entering the workforce in aviation careers. These slight changes at the university can have greater impacts in the aviation industry which is a global industry. Other aviation universities are experiencing the same gender gap. With further research in this area, other aviation-related universities could implement similar or the same changes to increase female enrollment, retention, and graduation rates. These increases positively impact the gender gap in the aviation industry. It is a collaborative relationship between increasing females in aviation education and aviation careers.
This research entitled "They Left Islam As an Arrow Passes Through the Game: Anti-Khārijite Traditions in the Hadith Corpus and their Historicity" aims to investigate the historical information from hadith traditions dating from the 10-13 centuries CE pertaining to Khārijite, an early-Islamic opposition group, mostly active in the 7th and 8th centuries CE. By analysing the transmission (isnād) and contents (matn) with an isnād-cum-matn analysis and examining the geographical and ideological information of the Common Links, this study anticipates dealing with the following questions: who are the prominent figures who circulated the sunna that was hostile to the Khārijite movement in the early fitna period during the Umayyad caliphate? And what does their information tell us about the political ideologies in certain regional traditions by spreading the "Prophetic traditions"?
The dissertation may contribute to Early Islamic History and Hadith Studies. In terms of Early Islamic History, the findings of the studies might provide information about the socio-political relations between specific figures or ideologies and Khārijite. The study could be a reference for future studies to understand whether a specific geographic tradition acted hostile to Khārijite and spread an anti-Khārijite agenda by circulating the hadith tradition. On the other hand, despite its widespread, this tradition was never given any attention in Hadith Studies. By applying isnād-cum-matn n analysis to study the Common Links, the dissertation not only applied a method that could ensure the dating and the figures are relevant to the tradition but also shed new light on understanding the context of political agendas in the formative period of Islamic political thoughts.
In 2020, there were about 281 million international migrants in the world. As migrants resettle into host countries, they face various difficulties in health care access, education, public services, and well-being due to legal restrictions, language barriers, and other challenges. Han’s project aims to explore the differential infant health outcomes among immigrant children in the United States. Han will use multivariate linear regression models to understand the degree of heterogeneity in low birth weight and preterm birth outcomes across major ethnic groups of immigrants. Han will also investigate the variation in health outcomes between migrants and natives within each ethnic group and compare these variations across ethnic groups. Through this analysis, she will further investigate social determinants of health that may affect migrant birth outcomes.
Migration studies is a growing field of research, especially with the rise of migrants and refugees globally. One study found that children of immigrants in the United States were more likely to be from families with income below the official poverty threshold, to live in overcrowded housing, and to have parents with very low educational attainments (Hernandez 1999). Meanwhile, research on the birth outcomes of migrants is growing but limited. Through this project, Han hopes to contribute to the literature as she analyzes the birth outcomes of immigrants from different ethnic groups and explores the sociological contexts in which these health outcomes may vary. Han’s research will offer new insights into several aspects of migration including the social determinants that affect migrant health.
Eleonora Guadagno's research provides a comprehensive overview and insights into women's roles in viticulture in Italy. It explores the challenges, stigmatizations, and processes of "glassing" that women navigate, portraying them not just as laborers but as creators and stewards of diverse, often marginalized spaces. By anchoring the discourse in EU normative and official data sources, the text maps the associations and entities promoting women's viticulture, examining production and valorization on a national scale. This dynamic narrative aims to offer a holistic understanding of the complexities and nuances of women's participation in viticulture, serving as a catalyst for future insights and inquiries, and encouraging deeper reflections on the subject.
Guadagno's research is significant for the field of geography as it highlights the spatial dynamics and intersectional challenges faced by women in Italian viticulture. By examining women's roles in creating and stewarding alternative, peripheral, or marginalized spaces, it adds a vital dimension to the understanding of human geography and cultural landscapes. Anchored in EU norms and official data, the study offers a robust framework for analyzing the spatial distribution and impact of women's contributions to viticulture. It fosters critical engagement with the intersectional dynamics shaping women's experiences, promoting a deeper appreciation of the diverse roles they play within the geographical and cultural ecosystem, thus enriching the discourse in geography.
Heart failure is a widespread problem worldwide, but the lack of specific treatments has created an urgent need for the development of new therapies. Previous studies have shown that accumulation of the DNA damage response (DDR) in human cardiomyocytes play a detrimental role in the development of heart failure. This underscores the importance of understanding cardio-specific DDR and can potentially pave the way for innovative treatments. Our main goal is to elucidate the regulatory mechanisms of cardio-specific DDR by combining human iPS cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPS-CMs) with CRISPR screening.
Our cardiology research sheds light on the molecular mechanisms of heart failure and the relationship between cardio-specific DDR. Through this research, we also aim to establish novel heart failure treatments by regulating DDR. Through CRISPR screening, we have attempted to identify DDR-related gene candidates as potential therapeutic targets, providing a new avenue for therapeutic development. By utilizing hiPS-CMs and cutting-edge gene manipulation techniques, our research not only advances basic understanding but also holds promise to improve clinical outcomes for heart failure patients.
For phenomenological and theoretical purposes, many general Feynman Integrals(FIs) need to be calculated. The mainstream method on the market to compute FIs can be divided into two steps. In the first step one reduces all FIs to a small set of bases, called master integrals (MIs) and in the second step one calculates these MIs. Both of the two steps are found to be very difficult for current cutting-edge problems.The auxiliary mass flow (AMF) method is a newly emerging method, which computes FIs by setting up and solving differential equations with respect to an auxiliary mass term. The virtue of AMF is that its boundary conditions are simply vacuum bubble integrals, which can be more easily calculated. The astute observation in the project is that combine the AMF method with the loop-descending relation, integration is totally bypassed in determining FIs. It is a surprising and exciting discovery!
As a result of the observation, all Feynman integrals, having any number of loops, can be completely determined once linear relations between FIs are provided. Therefore, FIs computation is conceptually changed to a linear algebraic problem. Examples up to 5 loops are given to verify this observation. FIs with any dimensionality can now be calculated with the method in the thesis, thus physical processes can be computed directly with a given small value of the dimensional regulator. In this way, the efficiency of perturbative calculation can be significantly improved. Furthermore, the method is applicable for a general theory, like non-relativistic theory with dimensionality equals three.
This paper represents a feminist conversation about a cross-reading analysis of an erotic Nancy Drew fanfiction story by two critical friends/scholars. They embarked on a project to converge their expertise and explore their personal literacies and pedagogies anew, through text and together. They first historicize their shared embodiments of Nancy Drew through childhood experiences with these stories and how they informed their gendered and professional identities. Then, they analyze a single resonant Nancy Drew fanfiction ‘smut’ story, especially critically considering its content note before moving to making meaning of qualities such as its representation of queer culture(s). Finally, they explore this text as an example of intimate writing, reflecting on how they encounter and respond to such creative expressions in their teaching.
This Nancy Drew fic provided an entry point for playing with text and thinking in ways that sometimes feel unavailable. What resulted was a hugely generative conversation that aided the authors in considering the impact of children’s literature and fanfiction on their literacies autobiographies, practicing cross-analysis of a text that uniquely spoke to their expertise and challenged them anew, and provided a site for sorting through how they encounter intimate writing in their teaching. As such, the authors encourage scholars in related fields to engage in similar collaborative projects and hope that it might speak back to multiple audiences, including but not limited to: children’s and YA literature studies, sex education, literacy education, fan studies, and feminist research.
This manuscript explores the changes in the meaning of the word slow, both in Italian and English, from the beginning of the Slow Food Movement (SFM) up to 2023, with a particular focus on the evaluative language adopted to promote the Slow Movements. Since 1986 and the SFM, technology has led people towards multi-tasking, while back-to-the-past trends are increasingly evident as seen in the Slow Movements. While the notion and impact of slowness have been studied in different areas such as food, medicine and education, slow itself has never been analysed linguistically. The main aim of this project is to explore the semantic changes and perceptions of the word slow both in Italian and in English through diachronic corpora, selected blogs and websites, and questionnaires.
The concept of slowness is becoming a relevant and ethical topic related to what is organic, local, and sustainable. This work has filled a gap in literature by not only analysing the diachronic change of the meaning of the word slow both in Italian and in English, but also by proving a specific analysis on the promotion of the benefits of Slow Movements. Results show how a loanword can be recontextualized and re-sematicised in a host language, yet come to influence the meaning of the word in its language of origin. Thanks to the Slow Food Movement, the loanword slow has been carrying a positive connotation and new meanings related to the field of wellbeing and sustainability, which have then been adopted in English-speaking contexts."
Controversies around mannerism and around art sociologist Arnold Hauser are particular cases of a general problem: the establishment of a common framework of scientific rigor for the social sciences. The study explores their alignment with epistemological debates, while trying to contextualize them in the fierce struggle for survival of its protagonists: exiled intellectuals, seeking a place in the institutions of the host countries, in an environment marked by the Cold War, and by a rigid process of disciplinarization that had lost the utopian thrust from which it was projected at the beginning of the century. With this, we try to contribute to recent efforts to reassess exiled intellectuals such as Hauser. Perhaps we may find, in his supposed dilettantism, his resistance to specialization and institutional orphanhood, traits that suggest a possible model in times in which the omnipresence of terms such as 'interdisciplinary' or 'multidisciplinary' are the correlate of their effective absence. From particular episodes of twentieth-century intellectual history, the plot threads —the need for heterodoxy and outsiderness; of denying an optimistic vision of progress; of verifying that any pretense of a system has something dishonest, being more rigorous the renunciation of certain types of rigor— are deployed towards their most general thematization: with their desire for systematization and formal rigor, the utopias and myths of the modern naturalize capitalism, spurred by an archaic drive: denying historicity. If utopias and systems make it easier to deal with an elusive legacy, they do so by simplifying and dehistoricizing us.
The study is a point of departure for further development of suggestions by Hauser in relation to the problem of modernity, ultimately linked to the problem of mass art and education through art. Hauser encourages to seek the solution to this complex in two interrelated concepts: 1) the existence of an outsider intellectuality, rootless, orphan of tradition and institutional framework on which to rely, but also free of the obstacles and limits imposed by the conventions of that protective context; and 2) the growing importance of forms of production based on collage, comparable, in many aspects, to what in the postmodern context was defined as post-production. In a world of specialization and limited methodological frameworks, only the outsider, through montage, is capable of seizing the entire creative process. This way of understanding the solution to the fragmentation of the modern world through its reunification in pastiche is, in many ways, diametrically opposed to the notion of a systematic refoundation of the world into a new unitary totality —a project more akin to certain inherited visions of the modern, institutionalized by the end of the fifties in disciplines such as architectural studies. It is necessary to continue questioning how academic and museum activities institutionalize avant-garde movements that, in their day, were a minority activity, and to continue explaining the mythological content that, in these contexts, we confer to expressions such as “modern movement”. The hidden keys to latent trends in the total panorama are often found in apparent peripheries.
Modeled after the work of Black feminist anthropologists and trans theorists, the dissertation project takes a multimodal ethnographic approach to ask how Black and Indigenous LGBTQIA+ communities contest, reaffirm, and otherwise imagine their place in the nation. Following several performance collectives and artistic movements throughout the North-Northeast region of Brazil, the dissertation analyzes creative embodiments that upend colonial logics. The project uses documentary filmmaking to document the artists’ search for sustainable, liberatory relations with one another, urban environments, and other-than-human beings. These relations unify creatives at the geographic and epistemic fringes of Brazilian society as they transgress the racial-gender-sexual norms of Christian morality. By documenting resonances in regional linguistic, visual, and movement repertoires, the dissertation offers new vocabularies stemming from Black : Indigenous expressions of bodily autonomy.
This collaborative, multimodal dissertation project diverges from the dominant gender-sexual discourse about Brazil, overwhelmingly authored from the perspective of white scholars from the global north. Black transnational feminists and LGBTQIA+ scholars complicate these analyses by detailing racialized experiences with sexual labor, housing injustice, racial socialization, police brutality, oral traditions, and afro-indigenous spiritualities. Though expressive cultural production is often incorporated into these analyses as a space for critical imagination, this project specifically engages ethnographic filmmaking and creative writing as sites for practicing freedom. In other words, the dissertation details the work of culture as one of embodiment: strategies for training the mind, body, and spirit in the present to materialize the worlds one wishes to inhabit in the future.
Ritchie’s manuscript examines the poetics of contemporary intermedia, where two or more different artistic media combine to create a work of art both between and beyond the artwork’s component media. A focus on intermedial poetics after 1970 allows for a reconceptualization of the role of ‘resistance’ in poetry. His manuscript shows that, rather than resisting from one side of a prescriptive dichotomy, intermedial poetry negotiates the power structures of its socioeconomic moment, both revealing the contradictions of its development and representing and enacting subjectivities and socialities that reimagine the conditions which gave rise to its expression. Within this framework, poetic texts are sites of social interactivity, helping to form new relationships among artists and their multiple publics.
The manuscript makes a novel contribution to both literary studies and performance studies. Its hypothesis tests the assumption that poetry is a literary form that needs to be decoded and assigned a fixed meaning, proposing instead that poetry is a collective social activity. The fields of both literary studies and performance studies benefit from this research by taking seriously the rise of digital and networking technology, which has altered the phenomenology of the social sphere in which literature and performance art circulate. Reintroducing the potential for literature to make effective social critique, Ritchie’s research presents a timely and necessary counter-narrative to critical discourses that foreclose this possibility. His unifying theme of intermedia presents an innovative contribution to the study of contemporary poetry.
This study delves into the impact of the right to culturally adequate accommodation in national legal systems. This right is particularly pertinent for minority groups, such as members of the Irish Travelling Community, some of whom view living in trailers and caravans as an integral part of their cultural identity. However, ambiguity surrounds this right’s content and scope. International human rights bodies, such as the United Nations Human Rights Committees and the European Court of Human Rights have interpreted this right in different manners. This study aims to compare and contrast how both human rights bodies have defined and developed the right to culturally adequate accommodation and proposes strategies to advance it, while reflecting the necessity for harmonization in international human rights law.
This research contributes to research on international human rights law by examining the contours and scope of an underexplored right. Clarifying the meaning of this right would be beneficial to academics and activists alike. By comparing the divergent approaches to the development of the right to culturally adequate housing, this research sheds light on how different human rights institutions may develop diverging practices or conceptualizations of the same right. This provides insight into how these differences may impact the realization of the right in domestic settings. In addition, by connecting the right to culturally adequate accommodation with other human rights, this study aims to identify areas for further development, thus benefiting international human rights law research.
Has the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic in British Columbia (B.C.), Canada fairly represented the potential contribution of traditional and complementary medicines? Using Chinese medicine as an example, this project investigates the issue of medical pluralism in B.C.’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite B.C.'s cultural mosaic, practitioners of traditional and complementary medicines were sidelined during the COVID-19 outbreak. Chinese medicine practitioners faced restrictions hindering their support during the pandemic. Their offer to aid the healthcare system was dismissed. This project aims to analyze the marginalization of medical pluralism in B.C. within the colonial context. Through exploration of the practical experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, it aims to elucidate the challenges faced by communities that rely on and practice Chinese medicine in B.C.
The absence of discussion on the colonization of medical practices from various cultural traditions in Canadian public health discourse perpetuates the marginalization of medical pluralism. This marginalization is exacerbated by disciplinary and biopolitical power structures, subtly normalizing their exclusion. This project contributes to the field of public health by shedding light on these issues. It aims to influence social policies by emphasizing the importance of recognizing diverse medical traditions within communities, challenging the misconception that multicultural acknowledgment conflicts with effective public health policies. Additionally, it provides a record of the pandemic's impact on communities practicing Chinese medicine in B.C., offering often-overlooked insights. This endeavor represents a critical step towards acknowledging and valuing the contributions of unorthodox medical practices within B.C.'s healthcare landscape.
Despite prior advancements, the progress of health equity for African Americans in the US has hit a plateau. Researchers are now delving into how social factors impact biological processes, particularly inflammation, which plays a pivotal role in health outcomes. Understanding the mechanisms behind inflammatory responses has prompted a call for more nuanced approaches, with emerging evidence highlighting the role of epigenetic changes in explaining these processes. Surprisingly, many studies have overlooked the potential influence of epigenetics on health disparities within these populations, often attributing differences solely to race. Recent findings underscore the significance of epigenetic pathways in linking social factors to disease risk. However, studies examining inflammation in African Americans remain scarce, with few accounting for environmental and social factors in their analysis.
This study tackles a persistent question in biological and medical anthropology: how do environmental factors, like stress, influence health and well-being? Anthropological research has long suggested that environments shape our bodies and health outcomes. Despite this, the precise biological mechanisms at play have remained elusive. Through a cross-disciplinary approach, my study connects theoretical frameworks on health, disease, and the environment with biological processes, shedding light on how environments impact health on a molecular level. By integrating insights from anthropology, public health, biology, and related fields, the study embodies a holistic approach, blending ethnographic and biological methodologies to provide a comprehensive understanding of this complex interplay.
Beretta’s manuscript investigates the reception of Sappho in 1970s Italian queer activism alongside the establishment of Sappho studies in the Italian academy. Spanning activist groups such as the Brigate Saffo and magazines such as FUORI!, the manuscript looks into Sappho and her poetry as agents of queer identification across different spaces, political and philological, in 1970s Italy. Starting with a close reading of the 1973 article “La Tuta di Saffo,” the projects connects this particular reception of Sappho to the Italian feminist movement and the papyrological discoveries of Sappho’s poetry, arguing that these three aspects produced a form of embodied philology that moved between the academy and the streets and in which one single signifier—the poetry of Sappho—became a prism for queer and academic self-identification.
The manuscript expands the geotemporal scope of Sappho reception studies, which usually privilege anglophone contexts. It also shines a light on the interconnectedness of feminist/queer activism and classical philology through its focus on the Italian countercultural movement, illuminating the intertwined politics of classical reception and sexuality in postmodern Italy. By highlighting a unique modality of engaging with Sappho’s poetry, the manuscript also allows for a broader reconsideration of classical philology that moves away from understanding it exclusively as the study of the Greek and Latin language.
Financial covenants, which use financial information to determine control rights in corporate loan contracts, are frequently amended (Roberts, 2015). Despite the strong evidence, prior literature has not found an explanation for the high frequency. In this paper, the author offers a model of debt covenant amendments and structurally estimates it using data on amendments of financial covenants in U.S. companies' loan contracts. The model offers three conditions under which financial covenants get amended: (1) the degree of contractual incompleteness is high, (2) non-contractible post-contract information is highly predictive of the future, and (3) the costs of amendments are small, while the costs of misallocating control rights are high. The estimation results suggest the first and the third forces play a major role, while the role of the second force is limited. The author calculates that the amendment option ex ante saves about 2.32% of control misallocation cost.
In South Africa criminal justice system, the use of plea bargain negotiations in criminal matters conforms to the principles of alternative dispute resolution. In particular one of the primary processes negotiations is used in negotiations for a plea bargain between state and defence attorneys. Further, the principles are informally suggested by the judiciary in criminal cases between legal practitioners, thus the accused legal representatives and the prosecution. In other instances, the judiciary may even enquire from the parties if they would be amenable to alternative dispute resolutions. This involvement of the judiciary has however been observed in matters involving minor offences. In the effort to transform the South African legal system, a new trend on alternative systems have been introduced in to civil courts.
The research introduces new methods of adjudicating criminal matters. This research will assist with the transformation of the legal system and incorporate the Africanisms in the legal systems and preserve the relationships of individuals. The research will have the potential to reduce criminal offence in that an outcome of rehabilitation maybe reached or arrived at with the inclusion of parties involved. This will make the parties in criminal matters confident in the legal system as most of the time, the victim who is replaced by the state feel isolated from the court proceedings. The research will also assist with the congested rolls in criminal matter as well as awaiting trial offenders in holding cells. With the co-operation of all parties involved, the introduction of alternative dispute resolution will reduce the commission of crimes.
In this study, Sofia Nupponen aims to unravel the complex layers of generational trauma that permeate the lives of the characters in Tommy Orange’s Book Wandering Stars (2024). Furthermore, she aims to seek connections between said generational trauma and addiction, from which many of the characters suffer. By delving into their personal stories, she seeks to uncover the subtle and overt ways in which the legacy of forced assimilation and colonization continues to shape their psychological, social, and cultural realities, including the birthing of addiction. This involves a thorough examination of the characters' interactions, their internal struggles, and their efforts to reclaim and preserve their heritage amidst the lingering shadows of historical oppression. A key component of her research is to explore how Orange's narrative techniques and literary devices effectively convey the pervasive sense of dislocation, loss, and resilience experienced by the characters. In this study, Sofia will analyse how the novel's structure, language, and symbolism contribute to a deeper understanding of the intergenerational transmission of trauma and the ongoing quest for identity and belonging. Through this analysis, her research seeks to contribute to the broader discourse on the long-term effects of colonization on Indigenous communities. By highlighting the specific experiences depicted in Wandering Stars, Sofia aims to underscore the importance of acknowledging and addressing historical trauma in contemporary discussions about reconciliation, cultural preservation, and healing within Native American communities. In conclusion, this research endeavors to provide a comprehensive and nuanced interpretation of Tommy Orange's Wandering Stars, illustrating how the novel serves as a powerful testament to the enduring impact of generational trauma from assimilation and colonization, while also offering a narrative of strength, resistance, and cultural continuity.
The study of Tommy Orange's Wandering Stars through the lens of generational trauma from assimilation and colonization offers significant contributions to the field of literary studies. Literature has the unique ability to evoke empathy and provide insight into different perspectives. This research underscores the importance of storytelling in conveying the human aspects of historical trauma. By bringing attention to the characters' struggles and resilience, the study promotes social awareness and empathy, encouraging readers and scholars to engage more deeply with the social justice issues reflected in literature. It provides a multi-layered understanding of how literature serves as a powerful medium for expressing and processing historical and cultural traumas. By analyzing Wandering Stars, this research enriches the appreciation of contemporary Indigenous literature. It highlights how modern Native American authors articulate the complexities of their cultural heritage and lived experiences. This focus encourages a broader recognition of Indigenous voices in the literary canon, promoting a more diverse understanding of American literature.
The purpose of this manuscript is to investigate the iron isotopic composition of the bulk silicate (crust+mantle) Earth (BSE) using a set of pristine mantle rock samples. Iron isotopic measurements were performed on a suite of mantle rocks exhumed in Tariat, Mongolia that met many chemical estimates for the bulk mantle. In geology, iron isotopic compositions are measured with respect to a geological standard representing the isotopic composition of chondrite meteorites, considered the building blocks of planets. Obtaining sample compositions that are distinct from chondrites implies a process that fractionates iron isotopes has occurred. The results of this study indicate that the BSE is analytically identical to chondrites, indicating that billions of years of planetary evolution have not resulted in a non-chondritic BSE.
Many knowledge gaps remain in our understanding of the chemical and isotopic evolution of rocky bodies. This study examines the present-day iron isotopic bulk silicate composition of Earth, one possible endmember in planetary evolution. This is important because in order to understand how a planet has evolved, its current state must first be constrained. This feeds into a related, in-progress study which examines iron isotopic fractionation on early differentiated planetary bodies in the solar system. By integrating processes that fractionate iron isotopes in bodies with respect to planet size, core formation, redox state, pressure, and temperature, this continuous body of work will contribute to a growing body of knowledge on terrestrial body evolution applicable to our solar system and others.
The paper studies the gendered body and its appearance in retail work in a shopping mall in Hyderabad, India. It argues that employment in this sector requires working on one’s body to produce a ‘presentable’ body by grooming so as to fit the ideal, feminine body. The body, thus, becomes both a process as well as a site. The study points out how this aesthetic labour caters to the male gaze through stylized uniforms and make-up. The presence of the mannequin and its dressing is also analysed to understand how it perpetuates stereotypes of the ‘ideal’ feminine body. Understanding these processes in the context of service work, shows how patriarchal capitalist regimes impose norms of appearance on the bodies of the shop-floor employees, especially women.
Contribution of the project to the field: This research focusses on emotional and aesthetic labour and their reproduction, which has extensive scholarship within the ambit of gender and work. While emotional and aesthetic labour in have often been analysed from a feminist perspective, underscoring the patriarchal male gaze in their constitution and rightly so, the current work is interested in unpacking the these processes through understanding the mundaneness in their day to day repetition and reproduction. It aims to contribute to the scholarship on gender and labour by focussing on the everyday micro processes at the level of the individual rather than only at the systemic and structural factors.
Identity plays a critical role in the political scene and is of importance to the understanding of political systems in the Arab world. Identity-framed disputes have been common in Arab countries. The case studies of Libya and Syria show the consequences of decades of utilizing identity as a political tool to manipulate and control the state. The authoritarian systems established by previous regimes in Libya and Syria have had profound effects on the way these conflicts have unfolded. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, these countries have erupted into civil conflict, but the lack of social cohesion predates the Arab Spring and can be credited to the manipulation of identity by the political elite of authoritarian systems who have further contributed to the ethnic fragmentation of their respective states.
Identity is a highly debated issue in the study of political science. The research scope of this study is the dynamic use of identity within authoritarian systems. There are different notable issues when analyzing the concept of identity. Its effects on civil conflict, society, and nationalism merit further study. Identity can have an effect on the political stability of a country. This is contingent to how identity is utilized within the state by the political elite. While the notion of identity manipulation has been discussed, its effects merit more in-depth analysis and the application of the results on the chosen contemporary case studies as they transition into a new development in their state evolution. This research will help shed light on the tactics of authoritarian resilience and civil conflict. This is especially critical in understanding the political systems of Syria and Libya and the potential repercussions for post-war state reconstruction.
The monograph Contemporary Perspectives on Female Ageing: Insights from Erica Jong (Routledge, 2025) focuses on discourses of female ageing as represented in American writer Erica Jong’s oeuvre. The book guides readers through Jong’s journey from her earliest writings - her ground-breaking novel Fear of Flying (1973) - to her most recent works. The book’s uniqueness lies in its interdisciplinary nature and the fact that there are no previous studies that have examined Jong’s work from a life course perspective in one concise book format. This monograph brings to light the often-unspoken complexities of growing older, intimate relationships, mother-daughter bonding, sexuality, body politics, and later-life creativity, among other topics. It contributes to critical humanities-based research in age studies, intersecting with gerontology, social sciences, medical humanities, women’s studies, travel writing, and literature. It will appeal to students and scholars researching life writing, ageing, gender, and contemporary literature, as well as to readers interested in Jong’s work.
Due to an increase in human longevity, there has been a growing interest in ageing. The notion of later life as a period marked by loss, frailty, or decay has shifted towards viewing old age as an enriching stage that entails active and healthy lifestyles. Yet, at the heart of Western understandings of ageing, growing older is still perceived through negative lens. The gendered and socioculturally constructed nature of ageing, along with the double standard of ageing, especially marginalises older women, who constitute the loneliest and most socially isolated segment of society. However, just as these constructs have been created, they can also be dismantled. Cultural and literary gerontology helps us better understand the multifaceted nature of ageing, and how it is represented and negotiated. Jong’s later works address important concerns that affect older women, especially the baby boomers, and show that many age-related fears are conditioned by sociocultural contexts and dominant discourses that can be contested.
This research entitled “Chartist Practice and Marxist Theory” aims to illustrate the historical truth of Chartist movement in 19th century of Britain for Chinese academia, clarify the differences between the practice of Chartists and the theoretical programme by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for British at the time by analyzing the prophecies of Marx and Engels based on the original Marxism of Marx and Engels as a whole, and finally give a philosophical understanding of the relationship between theory and practice. The methodological backbone of this research is a pair of concepts: determinate -- exemplify, any determination from theory, including philosophy, must be based on the example illustrations of reality and in the end on the intuition (i.e., the direct grasp) of the individual.
The contribution of this dissertation may contains two parts. Given that current Chinese scholars are lack of a relatively neutral perspective for the studies of Chartist Movement, Marxism and their relationship, and the main stream of British history research does not really care the very connections and differences between Chartist practice and Marxist theory, as a result, neglects a chance to deal with the significant issue of the relationship between practice and theory of Chartism and Marx and Engels, this research could, first of all, show a new point of view on Chartist dual legacy both for British working class and Marxism; secondly, give solid arguments on the general relationship between theory and practice and reveal the heterogeneities of them.
Laura Bassi
Born in Bologna in 1711, Laura Bassi was the first woman to take up a professorship in Europe and the second to earn a doctorate. Her extraordinary career as an academic spanned nearly five decades, for much of which she was a galvanizing figure for the scientific culture of eighteenth century Europe. Bassi’s admirers included the likes of Voltaire in France, who preferred Bassi’s academy to that of London’s, and Dorothea Erxleben in Germany, the first woman to earn a medical doctorate, who notably found inspiration in Bassi’s fierce struggle for equal opportunity for women. Bassi's career culminated in her succession to the chair of physics (then known as natural philosophy) at the University of Bologna in 1776—a role in which her husband, Giuseppe Veratti, was her assistant.
The Editing Press Laura Bassi Scholarship is named in her honour, in part with the intention of supporting work undertaken against the grain of the disciplinary fashions of academia.
For further reading on Laura Bassi, see:
The Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio di Bologna (in collaboration with the Stanford University Libraries) has compiled a digital archive of Bassi’s family papers, available here.
For further reading on pioneering women academics, philosophers in particular, see:
TB Dykeman (ed), The Neglected Canon: Nine Women Philosophers (Springer 1999)
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If my application is successful but my topic subsequently changes, will I still be able to draw on the Scholarship funds for editorial assistance?
Yes, provided that the new topic is related to the topic reflected in your initial application.
Can I submit my application by e-mail?
We are no longer able to accept applications by e-mail, so please use the application portal.
I was unable to upload one or both of my application document(s), or would like to update my application document(s). Can I do this by email?
We are unable to accept application documents by email without breaching our impartiality rules. If you were unable to upload your document(s), please try the application portal again with a different browser. In the event that you paid the voluntary administrative fee with your first attempt, please select the fee waiver option in subsequent attempts.
The application portal is not accepting my documents even though they are in the right format and under 5mb. What shall I do?
This sometimes happens with certain PDFs. We recommend saving a size-reduced version even if the documents are under 5mb and then trying the portal again.
I have submitted my application but have not received a confirmation of receipt. How can I ensure that my application was received?
If you have already checked your junk box and placed the Editing Press domain (editing.press) on your mail setting's whitelist, please try submitting again using an alternative email. If you have not received an automated confirmation of receipt, we cannot guarantee that your application has been received (we are unable to access the database of applicants before the closing date in order to check manually).
I have more questions, how can I get in touch?
You may submit your queries to scholarships@editing.press. Provided that the answer to your question is not indicated in the FAQ above, please allow three days for a response. Please note that we will not be able to answer enquiries about the Bassi Scholarship within five days of an application deadline. We would therefore urge candidates with questions to get in touch with us well before the deadline of the funding round for which they are applying.