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“No idle sightseers”: The Ulster Women’s Unionist Council and the Ulster Crisis (1912-1914)
Get PDFThis paper examines the role of the Ulster Women’s Unionist Council (UWUC) during the Ulster Crisis. When the UWUC was founded in 1911 dominant gender norms constituted the organization as an auxiliary of the male-dominated Ulster Unionist Council. However, within a year of its establishment the UWUC was the largest women’s political organization in Ireland. Yet the literature related to Ulster unionism and twentieth-century Irish politics and history has constituted the UWUC as a marginal Ulster unionist organization. This paper seeks to contribute to redressing this. It argues that the UWUC was not an “idle sightseer”, or passive observer, of the Ulster Crisis; rather it played a significant role during the Ulster Crisis and in constituting Ulster as a distinct and united polity
The Duty and Pleasure of Memory: Constance Markievicz
Get PDFThe year 2018 marks a hundred years since the proclamation of the Representation of the People Act and of the Qualification of Women Act by the UK Parliament. It also marks a hundred years since a woman – Constance Markievicz – was first elected in Westminster. A protagonist in the Irish fight for independence, serving almost five years in prisons in England and Ireland, Markievicz devoted her life to political and civil reforms. She became a member of the first Irish Parliament, and in 1919 was nominated Secretary for Labour, thus making also the first female Cabinet Minister in Europe. Women like her contributed to make history and were often the victors, but somehow became marginalised in official chronicles or went lost in the folds of time. Long trapped in the selective mechanisms of collective memory, these women are finally being acknowledged their fundamental role in the shaping of modern nations. Where Markievicz is concerned, the duty and pleasure of memory prompts the work of people engaged in reassessing and promoting her legacy. Two such examples are Olivia Crichton-Stuart, a great-great child of Markievicz’s, and Constance Cassidy-Walsh, since 2003 co-owner of Lissadell House, the Gore-Booths historical property, to which she and her family have since committed. What follows is an informal conversation with both
Trauma Stories as Resilience: Armenian and Irish National Identity in a Century of Remembering
Get PDFThis paper explores the intersection of trauma, memory, and identity through the lens of resilience. Here we take resilience in its multiple, even conflicting meanings and resonances – encompassing continuity, persistence, and adaptation. Through the case studies of centenary commemorations in Armenia and Ireland and Northern Ireland, we highlight the ways in which the memory of traumatic historical events both reproduces and challenges dominant narratives of identity. The resilience of memory – its ability to adapt and evolve even as it lays claim to continuity – marks commemoration as a form of haunting, a return with difference that always disrupts the very borders it is deployed to secure. By focusing on resilience understood as the counter-memory that challenges the silencing and overshadowing of mainstream memory, we conclude that it manifests differently in such different cases, and find a surprising point of similarity: the resilience of memory is that it remains. Regardless of claims to timelessness or modernization, the vital function of memory is to persist, to linger, as the trace of the ashes of the conflicted past. In the two cases we look at, the resilience is expressed through counter-memory politics. Through this reflection on two very different cases, we gesture towards a theory of commemoration as resilience that has political implications for post-conflict and post-trauma states
Urban densification and energy efficiency in Smart Cities - the VerGe project (Switzerland)
Get PDFThe issues of building densification and land conservation are much debated in local development policies and are related to the rational use of local environmental and climate resources. The paper proposes a critical reading of the research project that ISAAC Institute of SUPSI University (Switzerland) carried out on these themes by analysing a case in the municipality of Lugano Paradiso. The project analyses the effect of the urban transformation in terms of energy and solar access. The proposal of the case study was aimed at highlighting the importance quantifying some of the important consequences of local planning strategies can have on energy and the environment so as to contribute to assess their impacts to meet sustainable criteria and possible improvement actions
Measuring the complexity of complying with phytosanitary standard: the case of French and Chilean fresh apples
Get PDFNowadays, complying with technical, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regulations and standards is becoming more and more demanding due to their proliferation and increasing complexity. Consequently, increasing requirements in plant health protection and food safety can lead to a loss of competitiveness in countries that are major exporters of fresh products, causing a redistribution of the market shares in certain sectors. Exporters complying with regulatory standards benefit from better market access and avoid boarder rejection or product downgrading but incur additional costs due to additional procedures and paperwork. This is the case for French apples producers which are losing competitiveness compared to the Chilean ones on foreign markets. This situation can be partially explained by the difficulties of French exporters to comply with international SPS requirements. The aim of this article is first to make a compilation of phytosanitary requirements facing French and Chilean exporters of fresh apples, then to propose a score (hereafter phytosanitary score) which allows to assess the degree of complexity of these SPS requirements. This score is interesting as it synthesizes qualitative information in a metric which can be easily used in quantitative analysis. The results show that even if France and Chile are rather close in terms of SPS requirements, Chilean apples exporters are more capable to comply with foreign SPS requisites than the French ones
Rethinking post-graduate training in the age of distraction. The experience of the course “Digital competences at school”
Get PDFThis article introduces the course “Digital competences at school”, held at the University of Florence in the academic year 2016-2017 as a case of post-graduate training. The course was mainly delivered online and was based on a gradual collaboration process including project-based work. Participants were about thirty. They were mostly teachers showing very different levels of engagement, which led rethinking the initial methodological model. In particular, the collaborative aspect, which was rather demanding in terms of time and commitment, was redesigned in more sustainable forms, enhancing the idea of a shared teaching presence.Ripensare la formazione post-lauream nell’era della distrazione. L’esperienza del perfezionamento “Le competenze digitali nella scuola”Il contributo presenta come caso di formazione post-lauream il corso di perfezionamento “Le competenze digitali nella scuola”, realizzato presso l’Università degli Studi di Firenze nell’anno accademico 2016-2017. Il corso era erogato prevalentemente online ed era improntato a una progressiva collaborazione in ottica di project-based work. I corsisti sono stati circa una trentina, per lo più provenienti dal mondo della scuola, ed hanno avuto modalità di partecipazione molto differenziate, che hanno portato a rivisitare il modello metodologico iniziale. In particolare, l’aspetto collaborativo, risultato piuttosto oneroso in termini di tempo ed impegno, è stato ripensato in forme più sostenibili, valorizzando l’idea di una teaching presence condivisa
A Rounder Sense of Purpose: developing and assessing competences for educators of sustainable development
Get PDFA Rounder Sense of Purpose is a three-year European Union-funded project. In its first phase has developed a concise set of educator competences for the teaching of education for sustainable development based on a more extensive framework developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in 2011. An important factor in promoting the use of such competences is having a means to assess them. The project has used an assessment approach based on the peer review of dialogue stimulated by brief presentations with follow-up question and answer sessions. Dialogue is assessed in terms of horizontal and vertical learning. This paper reports on an action research exercise based on this assessment approach involving over twenty student volunteers. Initial findings suggest that the approach may provide an efficient and effective means of assessing affective learning in relation to sustainability education. Lo studio europeo A Rounder Sense of Purpose per sviluppare e valutare le competenze per gli educatori dello sviluppo sostenibileIl progetto di ricerca dal titolo A Rounder Sense of Purpose, della durata di tre anni, ha sviluppato, nella sua prima fase, un sintetico set di competenze educative legate all’insegnamento dei temi dello sviluppo sostenibile. Esso ha come riferimento il quadro sviluppato dalla Commissione economica per l’Europa delle Nazioni Unite nel 2011. Un mezzo per promuovere l’utilizzo di tali competenze è rappresentato dalla predisposizione di dispositivi per la loro valutazione. L’approccio utilizzato nel progetto di ricerca per la valutazione si basa sulla peer review e sul dialogo, stimolati da brevi presentazioni con sessioni di domande e risposte di follow-up. Il dialogo è valutato in termini di apprendimento orizzontale e verticale. Il presente articolo intende riportare una attività di ricerca-azione che ha inteso sperimentare questo approccio valutativo, con il coinvolgimento di oltre venti studenti volontari. I risultati preliminari suggeriscono che l’approccio adottato può fornire uno strumento efficiente ed efficace per valutare l’apprendimento affettivo in relazione all’educazione alla sostenibilità