National University of Ireland, Maynooth
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From Toxic Industries to Green Extractivism: Rural Environmental Struggles, Multinational Corporations and Ireland’s Postcolonial Ecological Regime
No full textIn this article, we analyse the political ecology of Ireland’s industrial landscape in the current era
of digital capitalism, which has been posited as the primary engine of an oncoming “green” eco-modernisation via smart technologies. As our research has found over the past several years (see
Bresnihan and Brodie 2021a, 2021b, 2023), far from representing benevolent contributors to the
planetary transition away from fossil fuels, digital corporations are poised to become primary
beneficiaries by funnelling accumulation through green transition strategies into and through their
proprietary infrastructures. In what follows, we unravel the ways in which this does not represent
a necessarily new development in Ireland, but rather a historical and continuous transition within
Irish environmental governance that facilitates the accumulation strategies of multinational
companies via a model of foreign direct investment (FDI)-led state development. In so doing, the
Irish state not only participates in these activities as they implicate Irish territory within these global
extractive regimes, it also enrols Irish land, labour and infrastructure into them in geographically
uneven ways. But, at the same time, there have been a multitude of historical and contemporary
examples of civil society objection and outright popular resistance to this development model,
representing points of friction at which environmental contradictions are negotiated and contested
across local communities and the state in often ambivalent way
Make me good…just not yet? The (potential) impact of the Adequate Minimum Wage Directive.
No full textThe Adequate Minimum Wage Directive has proven to be one of the most contentious pieces of EU labour legislation, with a variety of opinion on what impact the Directive may have, its significance, and its implications for labour relations regulation across the EU. This contribution focuses on the implications of the Directive for collective bargaining coverage in the EU, and takes a broadly optimistic view of what the impact of the Directive might be by using the example of Ireland as a case study. Ireland is one of the countries with a relatively low collective bargaining coverage rate, where measures will be required to promote collective bargaining. However, more broadly, the Irish journey in recent years seems to mirror that of the EU Institutions. From an emphasis on austerity measures and pressures to de-regulate following the financial crisis, allied with judicial decision-making which seemed to favour economic rights over social rights, to a “paradigm shift” of a (re)emphasis on social Europe, and on collective rights. The paper looks at the impact the Directive (pre-transposition) has already had in terms of social dialogue and collective bargaining, before turning to consider some of the transposition challenges. In the concluding section, the paper reflects on some lessons that might be of wider application across the Member States
MotherHack: Creative coding as an artist‐mother
No full textEnmeshed in the materiality of caregiving, becoming a mother changes how one relates to the world and others. These changes involve how a mother as subject is defined by others through cultural and societal idealizations of motherhood and parenting norms, but also through the leaking boundaries between the mother and other subjects as she is attuned to the needs of caregiving. In this analysis, I consider maternal subjectivity in terms of working as an artist‐mother, defined as an artist who is also a mother and whose practice does not distinguish between these roles. In particular, I focus on the process of my development of a creative coding project, Emergent , during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Through this analysis of the process of developing Emergent , I attend to the questions of maternal subjectivity that arose through its production, drawing from the embodied experiences of working as an artist‐mother, in order to understand maternal subjectivity through the practice of computation. Here the work of producing art becomes the means of considering maternal subjectivity differently through embodied experience, as the labor affiliated with care‐giving is entangled with the process of art making
The burning armchair: can jurisprudence be advanced by experiment?
No full textIs the field of general jurisprudence catching up – or is it simply getting distracted? Whereas legal philosophy has always featured claims about the content of the folk concept of law, it is only in the last few years that it has begun to self-consciously test those claims. Kenneth Himma’s recent review of this effort in Jurisprudence is a milestone: it reveals X-Jur as having progressed to the point of attracting broader philosophical attention, and it challenges X-Jur’s practitioners to persuade those not already convinced of the potential of alternatives to the analytic method. I take Himma’s critique as an opportunity to sketch some preliminaries for a theory of experimental jurisprudence, considering, in turn, the nature of jurisprudential truth, the role of expertise, and how empirical data might best be interpreted to help adjudicate claims about the content of the folk concept. I conclude with a brief discussion of the field’s future
Screening race, streaming Frenchness: Women of colour on French Netflix
No full textThis article builds on the emerging scholarship on Netflix productions and French series to analyse questions of racial visibility and feminine representation in two series: Dix pour cent/Call My Agent!(France Télévisions/Netflix, 2015–2020) and Plan cœur/The Hook-Up Plan (Netflix, 2018–2022). The first section focuses on Dix pour cent’s Sofia Leprince, a mixed-race receptionist and aspiring actress, andthe ways in which she serves to highlight the lack of Black actors in French cinema. The second section analyses Plan cœur’s Charlotte Ben Smires, a young woman at a career crossroads who offers a paradoxical perspective on the place of Maghrebi descendants in – and their relationship with – France. Overall, the author sexamine how Dix pour cent and Plan cœur, two series featuring strong women of colour, navigate racial visibility in universalist French contexts. These series speak back to a striking historical absence of actors of colour – especially women – from French television screens, yet they are nonetheless circumscribed in persis-tent norms of republican universalism and thus racial colour-blindness. This article examines this paradox to determine whether these successful contemporary series can truly offer ‘narrative renewal’ within the confines of republican representation norms
The College Connect: How-to-guide to Group Mentoring
No full textSéamus Heaney once wrote that poetry is the art of giving tongue to
other people’s silence. Used wisely, this Guide will help people give voice
to their strengths and sustenance to their spirits.
Early in the guide the word osmosis appears. This reminds me that
oftentimes change can and does happen in quiet and hidden ways.
The cumulative effect of reflection on experience, honest conversations,
attentive listening, trial and error, building relationships, testing world
views are all elements in this osmosis. Something is quietly working away
under the surface and suddenly we discover that we are changed and
the way we look at ourselves and others has changed. We look at the
world differently and see all sorts of possibilities for change.
The Guide encourages the creation of a learning community where all
contribute and all receive. Everyone matters. The processes outlined
suggest that no one knows it all and no one knows nothing. Everyone’s
experience is valued and respected and knowledge from beyond the
group is used to validate and challenge existing perspectives.
The pioneering social psychologist Kurt Lewin is credited with coining
the term Group Dynamics. He did not coin the phrase Group Mechanics.
The Guide honours that insight by providing sufficient structure and
direction as well as encouraging spontaneity, emergence, the creation
of new knowledge and multiple possibilities.
The Guide does not pretend that democratic, collaborative learning is a
predictable, linear process with predetermined outcomes. This kind of
learning can be challenging, exciting, surprising and unpredictable
The mental health needs of social work students: findings from an Irish survey
No full textIt is important to consider the mental health of social work students
to promote their wellbeing and to ensure they are prepared for the
potential stressors of practice. This cross-sectional survey of social
work students (n = 240), the first of its kind on the island of Ireland,
provides findings on mental health and a range of associated issues
which can help to improve student welfare; the content of social
work courses; social work practice; and so, outcomes for service
users. The article discusses implications for the delivery of social
work education internationally
Decadal Predictability of Seasonal Temperature Distributions
No full textDecadal predictions focus regularly on the predictability of single values, like means or extremes.
In this study we investigate the prediction skill of the full underlying surface temperature distributions on global
and European scales. We investigate initialized hindcast simulations of the Max Planck Institute Earth system
model decadal prediction system and compare the distribution of seasonal daily temperatures with estimates of
the climatology and uninitialized historical simulations. In the analysis we show that the initialized prediction
system has advantages in particular in the North Atlantic area and allow so to make reliable predictions for the
whole temperature spectrum for two to 10 years ahead. We also demonstrate that the capability of initialized
climate predictions to predict the temperature distribution depends on the seaso
Analysing the Impacts of Dynamically Evolving Selection Policies in Monte Carlo Tree Search Through Evolutionary Algorithms
No full textThis thesis presents an innovative exploration into the synergy between Monte Carlo Tree
Search (MCTS) and Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs), focusing on the evolution of selection
policies within MCTS. MCTS, a powerful and versatile algorithm, has seen widespread
adoption in various domains, from strategic gaming to robotics, due to its ability to
effectively navigate large and complex decision spaces. However, the adaptability of its
selection policy, a critical factor in its performance, remains a challenging aspect that
demands further research.
The primary aim of this work is to investigate how evolutionary processes can be
harnessed to adaptively evolve MCTS’s selection policies online, thus enhancing the algorithm’s
efficiency and robustness in different problem landscapes, as well as in different
stages of the search. By integrating EAs into MCTS, this thesis explores the dynamic and
context-aware exploration of the search space, potentially surpassing the performance of
traditional approaches.
The thesis lays the groundwork for understanding the fundamentals of MCTS and
EA embeddings for online decision-making. It offers a detailed survey on the integration
of MCTS and EAs, particularly focusing on enhancing MCTS’s selection policy without
prior exposure to the domain.
A series of test problems, including the Function Optimisation Problem and proposed
simplifications of the board game Carcassonne, provide a platform to evaluate the interaction
between MCTS’s tree policy and game tree characteristics. Empirical analyses
of evolved selection policies are presented, comparing them with traditional MCTS and
Minimax approaches and assessing their performance.
The thesis aims to contribute significantly to AI and decision-making algorithms by
advancing the integration of evolutionary strategies within MCTS. It focuses on developing
adaptable and effective selection policies, examining the role of every aspect of
the evolutionary processes, and refining EA integration for enhanced decision-making
efficiency in MCTS