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Regeneration through Collaboration
No full textGenerational renewal and succession planning must tackle the challenge of aging farmer populations. Collaborative farming may be a solution, but requires greater research and planning from policymakers
Ferdinand Levy: A Harlem Renaissance Dubliner and De-Colonial Cosmopolitanism
No full textFlashes from the Dark was the 1941 debut by Jamaican poet Ferdinand Levy, published in Dublin while he was a medical student. It brought something of the Harlem
Renaissance to Lower Baggot Street. Despite favorable reviews by Irish poets such as
Austin Clarke and others, Levy has vanished from literary posterity. His many passions—literary, political, musical—situate him at a properly intersectional literary history of mid-century Dublin, and he critiques the particular structure of systemic racism
in 1930s and ’40s Ireland. Levy’s “decolonial cosmopolitanism” mounts a challenge to
nationalist tendencies within the mainstay of Irish postcolonial thinking, a factor in his
occlusion. His awkward poetics—wavering between a belated signature of the Harlem
Renaissance and parodies of English sonnets and ballads—constitutes “mimicry” in
Homi Bhabha’s sense—destabilizing white discourse with “flashes from the dark.
Data mobilities: Rethinking the movement and circulation of digital data
No full textThe mobility of data has been variously described as data: flows, streams, journeys, threads,
transfers, exchanges, and circulation. In each case, the mobility of data is conceived as a
movement from here to there; that data moves along a chain of receivers and senders.
However, we contend that the metaphor of a data flow (or stream, journey, etc.) does not
reflect well the sharing and circulation of digital data. Rather, data replicate (copies), with the
original source retaining the data and a new source gaining it, and data proliferates
(multiplies) and diffuses across systems and sites when made openly available. As data
replicate and proliferate they are transformed through processes of data cleaning, data
wrangling, data fusion and enrichment, producing new incarnations of the source data.
Moreover, data does not replicate and diffuse alone, but with companions, such as other data
(e.g., metadata, derived data) and information (e.g., documentation, visualisations). The
replication, proliferation and diffusion of data is facilitated by seams (interface/connection points between systems) and aided by metadata, standards and protocols, and hindered by
frictions and vulnerabilities. We illustrate our argument through a case study of the planning
data ecosystem in Ireland
The role of organisational- and country-level factors in the volume and public visibility of business and management research
No full textUsing a multilevel modelling approach to analyse a novel dataset of academic publications
at all business schools in 11 European countries, this paper finds that the influence of organisational- and country-level contextual factors on researchers varies considerably based
on the type of institution and the development level of the country they are located in. At the
organisational-level, we find that greater spatial connectivity–operationalised through proximity to nearby business schools, rail stations, and airports–is positively related to scientific
research volume and public dissemination (news mentions). While this result is significant
only for high-income countries (above EU-average 2018 GDP per capita), this is likely
because the low-income countries (below EU-average 2018 GDP per capita) examined
here lack a ‘critical mass’ of well-connected universities to generate observable agglomeration effects. At the country-level, the results indicate that in high-income countries, less prestigious schools benefit from higher rates of recent international immigration from any foreign
country, providing a direct policy pathway for increasing research output for universities that
aren’t already well-known enough to attract the most talented researchers. In low-income
countries, recent immigration rates are even stronger predictors of research performance
across all levels of institutional prestige; more open immigration policies would likely benefit
research performance in these countries to an even greater extent. Finally, the paper’s
results show that, in low-income countries, a composite measure of a country’s quality of life
(including self-rated life satisfaction, health, working hours, and housing overcrowding) is
positively related to research outcomes through its interaction with school prestige. This
suggests that the lower a country’s quality of life, the more researchers are incentivised to
produce higher levels of research output. While this may in part reflect the greater disparities
inherent in these countries’ economic systems, it is noteworthy–and perhaps concerning–
that we have observed a negative correlation between country-level quality of life and
research performance in low-income countries, which is particularly felt by researchers at
less prestigious institutions
Being in Reference to the Person: Christos Yannaras and the Ecclesial Event.
No full textThe central aim of this dissertation is to offer a focused study on Christos Yannaras’ unexplored
response to Martin Heidegger’s onto-theological critique of metaphysics, with the further intention
of advancing Yannaras’ proposal as a possible way forward from the metaphysical impasse of
Western nihilism in the emerging field of Continental philosophy of religion. Accordingly, this
essay sets out to address the following questions: how and in what way can Yannaras’ response
overcome the metaphysical impasse of Western nihilism as illuminated by Martin Heidegger?
Further still, this inquiry gives rise to the following question: how in and what way does Yannaras’
response contribute to contemporary post-Heideggerian discourse? In response to the first
question, this essay will argue that Yannaras’ response to Heidegger’s critique is able to overcome
the metaphysical impasse of Western nihilism by A) arguing that the historical unfolding of
nihilism is an event that must be restricted to the Latin (Western European) philosophical tradition
alone, and thus neither accounts for nor applies to the non-Western, Hellenistic tradition of the
Christian East, which he summarizes as the philosophical tradition of the Greek Church Fathers.
Second, and for this reason, Yannaras is able to B) present the tradition of the Greek Church
Fathers as capable of successfully overcoming the nihilistic implications of Heidegger’s
fundamental ontology insofar as he believes it to offer a non-essentialist, testimonial metaphysics
of ecclesial existence which is not derived from the onto-theological structure of value-laden
metaphysics, but is capable of being known and validated through praxis, participation, and
intersubjective experience. In response to the second question, I will then argue that C) Yannaras’
ontological understanding of ecclesial existence offers a key methodological hermeneutic which
would allow for richer discourse amongst Christian thinkers within the post-Heideggerian field of
Continental philosophy of religion insofar as it would not restrict phenomenological discourse
within Christianity to theology or religion, but would open the possibility for Christian experience
to be discussed ontologically within the discipline of philosophy proper
Assemblage theory, data systems and data ecosystems: The data assemblages of the Irish planning system
No full textThe work of the state has been transformed by digitalisation and datafication, with paper systems increasingly complemented and replaced by digital data systems. While much research has been undertaken on the effects of these data systems on e-government and e-governance, relatively little critical attention has been paid to the ontological nature of the data systems themselves, how they come into being, operate, iterate, and work in conjunction with other systems. In this paper, we build on work that understands the nature of data systems as data assemblages; that is, as being thoroughly socio-technical in nature, emerging and unfolding contingently, contextual and relationally through material and discursive practices and processes. We extend Kitchin (2014) and Kitchin and Lauriault’s (2018) notion of a data assemblage through an engagement with assemblage theory, and detail how data systems are articulated and scaffolded into being, and scaled into a functioning data ecosystem, which is conceptualised as an assemblage of data assemblages. We illustrate the utility of this reconceptualization through an analysis of the development and control function of the Irish planning system, which is composed of a number of interlinked data systems used for managing the entire planning process from seeking planning permission, monitoring construction, to completed property
On your marks, headset, go! Understanding the building blocks of metaverse realms
No full textIn 2011, Business Horizons published the social media honeycomb article to help managers and scholars understand what was, then, a new form of media, along with its various platforms and how to engage with and learn to use it. Today, we face similar challenges and opportunities with the metaverse as we try to discover how to attract, enable, serve, and capture value from users in the virtual world. In this article, we introduce the concept of a metaverse realm (i.e., a specific type of metaverse space and community) and present the metaverse honeycomb model to explain the functionalities and affordances for different metaverse realms. We present two applications of the honeycomb model to show how shifting attention to immersive functionalities can characterize various metaverse realms. To conclude, we outline how the model could be used to strategically evaluate metaverse realms in terms of their external fit (i.e., the who-what-how of realms), internal fit (i.e., the trade-offs and synergies of realm functionalities), and life cycles (i.e., roadmapping and directing realm evolution)
How the Principle of Humanity in International Humanitarian Law can inform Weapons Regulation in Outer Space
No full textActivity in Outer Space has increased significantly in recent times, with new Space
actors and new technologies emerging. This has resulted in Outer Space becoming a
crowded and tense environment in which the possibility of the use of weapons grows
ever nearer. The consequences of such weapons use in Outer Space would be felt by
humankind as a whole.
The law that governs the conduct of armed conflicts, and the use of weapons during
these periods of conflict, is International Humanitarian Law (IHL). However, weapons
regulation in IHL struggles to keep pace with the development of weapons technologies
which can be used in Outer Space. In addition, International Space Law (ISL) does not
prohibit the use of all weapons in Outer Space. This research addresses this gap in the
ISL and IHL frameworks with regards to the regulation of weapons use in Outer Space.
IHL was founded on the basis of four principles – distinction, military necessity and
proportionality, all of which stem from the central principle of humanity. It was in the
Martens Clause of the 1899 Hague Convention II that this central principle of humanity
was referenced as providing guidance and applying in the absence of express legislation.
Therefore, the principle of humanity is currently addressing this gap by providing a
minimum standard of protection based on the considerations of what is in the interests
of humanity with regards to the regulation of the use of weapons in Outer Space.
This research forms recommendations for express regulation, from the perspective of
this central principle of humanity, as it is premised that this approach will inform
regulation with a view to protecting humankind from the consequences of the use of
weapons in Outer Space
Social movements and hegemonic struggle
No full textAntonio Gramsci’s Southern Question and Lyons Theses, written just before his imprisonment by Mussolini, are fundamental resources for social movements seeking to resist the rise of the far right and to construct a different social order. Here, hegemony appears primarily in terms of broad social alliances, defining a particular form of capitalism under the leadership of a given ‘historical bloc’. The task for activists in this context is to find ways of disrupting these alliances and to construct new ones on a different basis, ‘from below and to the left’. The chapter draws on examples from Gramsci’s own race-and-class organizing practice and is illustrated with tools from activist training workshops
District energy modelling for decarbonisation strategies development—The case of a University campus
No full textUniversity campuses can be considered as microcosms of urban districts, since they are typically located within or near a city and have a significant impact on the surrounding area. Moreover, they have a high energy consumption due to the large number of buildings, facilities, and services that use energy for transportation, heating, cooling, and lighting. This makes university campus as testing facility for decarbonisation strategies that can be replicated in other urban areas. The present study discusses a decision-making framework based on a digital twin model for analysing decarbonisation strategies of University College Dublin in Ireland. The thermal and electricity networks of the university campus are modelled to analyse the current status of energy consumption and associated carbon dioxide emissions. Five future development scenarios are explored to identify the optimum pathway for decarbonisation. Conclusions show that the campus can achieve a 10% reduction in emissions without the need for new generation units, while introduction of a new biomass CHP unit would increase this reduction to 17% compared to the baseline. Furthermore, Coupling this with the installation of 3 MW of solar photovoltaic, the calculated campus potential, a total reduction of 26% can be achieved