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Adoption of digital transformation from a firm’s creation to decline: the role of China’s mass entrepreneur and innovation campaign
No full textFollowing the global economy’s shift toward a digital-based system, the significance of digital transformation (DT) at the firm level has become increasingly important. Accordingly, this study aims to enhance understanding of a firm’s DT by examining the varying impacts ofirm life cycle (FLC) stages on DT adoption. We consider the impact of the mass entrepreneur and innovation campaign (MEIC) on this relationship. Based on the data of China A-share non-financial companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2010 to 2020. The baseline findings reveal that firms in the growth stage are likelier to adopt DT than firms in the introduction and decline stages; however, DT adoption in the maturity stage is uncertain. MEIC encourages DT adoption during the introduction, maturity, and decline stages. Furthermore, the univariate test demonstrates a relative enhancement in DT after implementing MEIC, underscoring its role in effectively allocating resources within the firms to embrace DT. This study’s results are robust across various estimation techniques and instrumental variables. The empirical results offer insights into policy implications, highlighting the factors shaping firms’ DT adoption decisions at different FLC stages and endorsing resource-based and agency theories.</p
Differential impact of adopting Islamic banking: A quasi-experimental approach
No full textThis study examines the treatment effect of the adoption of Islamic banking system in Pakistan. Compared to traditional banks, the distinct involvement of Islamic banks in real trading, along with its risk-sharing attributes, necessitates an examination of whether these differences impact economic growth. We applied a novel quasi-experimental research design using the synthetic control method (SCM) to examine the incremental effect of Islamic banking adoption on economic growth from 1990 to 2022. Results confirm that the Islamic financial system contributed differentially to economic growth in Pakistan, compared to the control group (51 countries), in the post-adoption period. The counterfactual effect on economic growth is estimated to be between 23 % and 32 % compared to the countries where Sharia banking is absent. The results are consistent and robust to alternative analysis, SCM with additional covariates, and placebo tests. The results also provide crucial implications for countries and central banks to implement Sharia-based banking, complementing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 8.</p
Toasties and Tips
No full textResearch Background Toasties and Tips is a relational art project at the intersection of relational art, participatory practice, and food-based creative research. Drawing on relational aesthetics (Bourriaud, 2002), participatory art (Bishop, 2012; Kester, 2004), and community-based pedagogies, the project explores ephemeral, semi-guided micro-conversations — short, structured (two–three minute) exchanges that are meaningful, playful, and information-rich. Food operates simultaneously as a medium of pleasure and a catalyst for engagement, enabling spontaneous, situated knowledge-making and revealing affective and relational dimensions of urban life. Research question: How can ephemeral, food-embedded micro-dialogues generate knowledge about sociality, cross-cultural exchange and participatory urban life? Research Contribution In the live performance event, participants received a free delicious toastie paired with a curated tip—local knowledge, hacks and cultural prompts—initiating semi-structured, short reflective conversations. Over six hours I delivered roughly 300 toasties and tips, producing an accumulative field of practice-based insight. My contribution is to articulate and operationalise a micro-temporal model of relational practice that treats ultra-brief, food-mediated encounters as legitimate research sites. Unlike existing relational or social practice models that prioritise durational participation, this approach positions three-minute exchanges as primary moments for mutuality, co-creation and affective individual and cumulative insight. Research Significance Toasties and Tips @Lipstick+ Bread was presented within the Frugal Canteen at the City North Shared Futures Festival, curated by Long Prawn, supported by RMIT University, the City North Social Innovation Precinct (CNSIP), the City of Melbourne and Regen Melbourne. Festival funding totalled AUD 65K (AUD 45K CNSIP; AUD 20K City of Melbourne). I engaged with cca 300 participants over six hours. Peer-review indicators and evidence include: curatorial selection by recognised practitioners (Long Prawn) within an institutionally backed festival; competitive civic funding; public dissemination via RMIT channels and event listings; and collaborative presentation alongside practitioners in culinary social innovation and food systems.</p
ALUO_KUHNA (ALUO_KITCHEN)
No full textResearch Background ALUO KUHNA (ALUO_KITCHEN) emerged from an artistic research and experimental pedagogical process during the winter semester 2024/25 within the special seminar Food, Art, and Design: Critical Social Practices with Pleasure at Academy of Fine Arts and Design at University of Ljubljana, led by Dr. Oliver Vodeb. Open to students, staff, and the broader public, the seminar applied community-based and participatory methods, emphasizing collective reflection, experiential learning, and the creation of an open space to test postdisciplinary models of artistic and design research. Food functioned as both medium and method, enabling hands-on investigation of social, cultural, and institutional dynamics. Research SignificanceALUO KUHNA enacts institutional critique of the academy through postdisciplinary knowledge in art and design. Developed during Dr Vodeb’s visiting research professorship, drawing on the frameworks of Debord (1967) and Baudrillard (1981), and operating on the borders of the in/formal, the project explores how food, pleasure and social practices operate within academic institutional hierarchies. It moves beyond critique, producing speculative “recipes” for relational interventions into the institution, fostering new forms of relationality among students, teaching/research staff, and technical-administrative personnel. The work interrogates existing hierarchies and proposes alternative relational structures while linking these dynamics to broader societal, cultural, and ecological concerns. Research Contribution The Artist Book publication is advancing the academy’s capacity for sustainable, interdisciplinary research in art and design. ALUO KUHNA enacts theoretical frameworks—Debord’s spectacle and Baudrillard’s simulation—through embodied, food-based participatory practices, generating actionable knowledge about relational, socially engaged, and postdisciplinary methodologies. The publication itself is designed to function as a key medium: a manual, provocation, and inspiration for infrastructuring collaborative interventions within the academy. When printed and distributed, it is designed to facilitate new forms of relationality, enabling students and staff to experiment with alternative institutional structures.</p
GHSCI policy and spatial indicators analysis and reporting example: Te Whanganui a Tara / Wellington, New Zealand
No full textThis repository includes PDF and code versions of a notebook and accompanying configuration files and data designed to introduce applied usage of the Global Healthy and Sustainable City Indicators (GHSCI) software to analyse and report on policy and spatial urban indicators for healthy and sustainable cities for Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, New Zealand. The example was developed for the 21st International Conference on Urban Health (ICUH 2025), hosted in Wellington on 17-21 November 2025.Higgs C, Lowe M, Turner R, Heikinheimo V, Adlakha D, Resendiz E, Boeing G, Liu S, Hinckson E, Schipperijn J, Sallis J, Cerin E, Giles-Corti B. 2025. Policy and spatial indicators for healthy and sustainable cities in diverse urban contexts: tools for analysis and reporting. 21st International Conference on Urban Health. Wellington, New Zealand. 19 November 2025.The resources for running this analysis includePDF / code notebook tutorial (GHSCI_NZ_Wellington_demo.ipynb / .pdf)Example configuration files (NZ_Wellington_2025_*.yml)Data (inputs and output resources including reports generated as a result of running the analysis)The analyses included in the example are defined in the following configuration (.yml) files for analysing spatial healthy cities indicators of the urban region of Wellington using three different official population datasets published by Stats NZ (respectively SA1 administrative counts, a 250m grid, and a 1km grid):NZ_Wellington_2025_SA1.ymlNZ_Wellington_2025_250m.ymlNZ_Wellington_2025_1000m.ymlRepeating analyses using different datasets or parameters can help us to better understand the implications of our choice of data for our results. This kind of sensitivity analysis is useful for understanding the degree to which results obtained are contingent on the methods used and assumptions about which data best represents urban realities.To follow along with the tutorial,install Docker Desktop and the GHSCI software following our Wiki directionscopy the above configuration files to the GHSCI software process/configuration/regions/ sub-foldercopy the GHSCI_NZ_Wellington_demo.ipynb notebook file to the process foldercopy the NZ folder to the GHSCI software process/data sub-folderrun the GHSCI software according to the linked directions by entering 'lab' to start Jupyter Lab, and open the GHSCI_NZ_Wellington_demo.ipynbusing the file browser.The input data includes a range of open datasets published under CC BY 4.0 licences, as detailed in the datasets.xlsx spreadsheet.</p
The Mourning After: Grief as a social practice for hopeful futures
No full textBackground: From ecological grief in the face of climate crisis (Cunsolo & Ellis, 2017) to the devastation of war and the loss of human and more-than-human loved ones, our mobile devices increasingly mediate how we witness and express mourning. Grief is everywhere—an embodied, affective, and socially mediated response to loss that shapes everyday life (Breen et al., 2022; Jacobsen & Petersen, 2019; Lund, 2021). While everybody grieves differently, inequalities around the right to grieve and socially acceptable forms of grief—especially non-death loss—continue to persist. Judith Butler has highlighted the role of what is “grieveable” as reflecting social and cultural norms (Butler 2016,2020). Some lives and losses are deemed more grievable than others, and some forms of mourning are deemed more appropriate than others. Contribution: The Mourning After invited reflection on grief as personal, shared, and collective through artworks, installations, and workshops by leading Australian and international artists. The exhibition, curated by Larissa Hjorth, expanded grief literacy, creating spaces for conversation, connection, and new rituals of mourning that addressed personal, cultural, ecological, and political grief. Presented at RMIT Design Hub Gallery (July–September 2025), it drew over 1,500 visitors and 300 workshop participants. The public program co-curated by Tamara Borovica (Lead), Larissa Hjorth (Co-lead), and Katrin Gerber (Co-lead), consisted of 26 workshops and produced grief literacy tools and ongoing open-access resources co-designed with partners from academia, community, and industry, including including from Grief Australia, Melbourne University, Monash University, QUT, Black Dog Institute, University of Queensland. Significance: The project received $1.000,000 from the Australian Research Future Fellowship in 2023. The Design Hub exhibition was profiled widely in the community and among industry, including articles by Grief Australia, Palliative Care Victoria, Death Education and more. A social media campaign following the public program attracted 2000+ visible interactions (comments, likes, shares) across the projects and the team’s social media pages.</p
The Community Reading Room
No full textResearch Background The Community Reading Room (CRR), is an ongoing social practice research project that emerged from an identified community need for a dedicated collection and space where First Nations, Black, and global Indigenous artists of colour could connect with each other and access an archive of books and ephemera that privileges the creative practices of their kin, ancestors, and peers. The CRR collection and associated curated programming has been presented at Colour Box Studio (2013), Footscray Community Arts Centre (2014), Arts House (2017), Testing Grounds (2017 & 2019), Metro Arts (2022), the Centre for Contemporary Photography (2023) Counihan Gallery (2023) MADA Gallery (2024) Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery (2025) and engaged with public programming events with the Emerging Writers Festival (2017/19) MPavilion (2021) and RISING: Melbourne (2023) Research Significance The research significance lies in its dual function as both archive and active community space, fostering life-affirming environments for creative communities of colour while challenging dominant narratives about whose knowledge, histories, and creative practices are valued and preserved. Research Contribution The Community Reading Room addresses a fundamental gap in mainstream literary practices, collections, and spaces by engaging with reading communities that have been historically excluded from these environments. The project creates what Bolatagici terms a "counterspace"—an alternative framework for critical dialogue and creative practice that operates outside formal institutional structures. The Community Reading Room exemplifies a research methodology that is simultaneously artistic, pedagogical, and activist—creating tangible resources and spaces while generating new knowledge about community-based archival practices and the politics of representation in cultural institutions.</p
Data-driven methods in risk assessment of public-private partnership projects
No full textPurpose Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are an increasingly popular method for delivering public infrastructure projects, but they face significant risks that can impact their success. Effective risk assessment is crucial for mitigating these risks. This study aims to explore the application of data-driven methods, including artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, for risk assessment in PPP projects. Design/methodology/approach This study systematically reviews 30 peer-reviewed journal articles sourced from academic databases, including Scopus and Web of Science. The literature review focuses on the utilisation of traditional statistical models, machine learning (ML) algorithms and initial applications of deep learning (DL) for risk assessment in PPP projects. Findings The findings indicate an increasing trend in employing data-driven approaches for PPP risk assessment. Traditional statistical models, ML algorithms (e.g. random forests and neural networks) and some initial applications of DL have been used. However, the use of advanced DL and natural language processing (NLP) techniques remains limited. Challenges identified include data availability and quality issues, subjective biases, limitations in model specifications and difficulties in generalising findings across contexts. The integration of explainable AI (XAI) methods to enhance the interpretability of complex models is also lacking. Research limitations/implications The findings highlight the need for further research into advanced AI techniques, especially DL combined with NLP and XAI methods, to harness data complexities and deliver transparent risk assessments for PPP projects. Practical implications This research demonstrates the potential of AI techniques to enhance risk assessment in PPP projects. Traditional models often fail to address the complexity of risks, while AI, combined with XAI, provides more transparent and actionable insights. This integration improves decision-making and project outcomes and offers more effective risk management for public and private stakeholders. Originality/value This study provides a novel contribution by systematically reviewing data-driven risk assessment methods in PPP projects, an area with limited exploration of advanced AI techniques like NLP. The research fills a critical gap in the literature by highlighting the need for interpretable AI models to improve the transparency and practicality of AI applications in PPP risk management.</p
Understanding the regulatory grammar of sepsis-causing Staphylococcus aureus bacteria using contexualised DNA language models
No full textTo efficiently and accurately understand, detect, and treat sepsis, we require a deep understanding of how its underlying biological systems work. Conventional methods struggle to provide a detailed view of both the functional and regulatory elements orchestrating a system-wide response to pathogenic infection. Our approach was to use a streamlined process: First, we used multi-omics integration to create a functional-omics signature at the single molecule level, employing sparse Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (sPLSDA). Then, we turned to genome Natural Language Processing (genomeNLP) to identify correlated features and discover regulatory motifs in bacterial promoters. This novel method utilised specialised language models trained on DNA sequences. Our approach is distinct from traditional methods as we did not rely on predefined biomarkers and motifs or focus solely on short-range context. As a result, we (a) pinpointed multi-omics signatures with single molecule-level precision and (b) uncovered regulatory patterns for both novel and established regulatory motifs governing the omics signature. Ultimately, we presented a comprehensive systems-level view of five sepsis-causing Staphylococcus aureus bacterial strains, revealing hierarchical gene regulation in genome structure, ncRNA control, metabolism, and antibiotic resistance. We additionally note that our approach is agnostic to organism type and can be applied outside of a sepsis system.</p
Greenery from apartments: quantifying and comparing views with residents' perceptions
No full textWith urban densification and the proliferation of high-rise structures, residents’ apartment views are getting obstructed from surrounding nature, especially greenery. Existing approaches often rely on simplified proxies or aggregated building- or floor-level metrics which does not capture individual-level variation. Most of them use coarse spatial data or subjective self-reports, lacking the granularity and precision to quantify the greenery visible to each resident from their own living space. This study introduces a conceptual and methodological framework for objectively modelling green views at the individual apartment level. Our Apartment Greenery View Measure was developed and assessed by (1) geocoding individual observer positions at window-level within apartment buildings, (2) implementing GIS-based three-dimensional viewshed analysis using high-resolution environmental datasets to objectively quantify views, and (3) examining agreement between modelled views and 445 residents’ self-reported perceptions using the green-to-grey ratio. The method was applied to 30 apartment buildings across Melbourne, Australia. Findings reveal variability in green view exposure by building height, floor-level, and apartment orientation. A moderate correlation (r = 0.556, ICC = 0.521) shows the agreement between objective and perceived view measures, with 39.1% participants overestimating and 60.9% underestimating their views. This underscores the need for objective, standardised measures that move beyond perception alone. The workflow supports aggregation at multiple spatial scales, from individual units to floors and buildings, providing a flexible framework for assessing visual green equity citywide. This provides a scalable, low-cost tool for planners, designers, and health researchers seeking to integrate visual greenery into urban housing, policy, and equity-focused interventions.</p