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Exploring asymmetric roles in mixed-ability gaming
No full textThe landscape of digital games is segregated by player ability. For example, sighted players have a multitude of highly visual games at
their disposal, while blind players may choose from a variety of audio games. Attempts at improving cross-ability access to any of
those are often limited in the experience they provide, or disregard multiplayer experiences. We explore ability-based asymmetric
roles as a design approach to create engaging and challenging mixed-ability play. Our team designed and developed two collaborative
testbed games exploring asymmetric interdependent roles. In a remote study with 13 mixed-visual-ability pairs we assessed how roles
affected perceptions of engagement, competence, and autonomy, using a mixed-methods approach. The games provided an engaging
and challenging experience, in which differences in visual ability were not limiting. Our results underline how experiences unequal by
design can give rise to an equitable joint experience
Particularizing adaptation to non-predominant hazards: a history of wildfires in County Donegal, Ireland from 1903 to 2019
Get PDFRecent years have seen a historical turn in research on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. This has included a call for historical research that particularizes adaptation in specific locations. This paper responds to this call by using newspaper archives to construct a history of wildfires in County Donegal, Ireland. This study goes beyond existing research that particularizes adaptation, by using this history as a lens through which to evaluate current adaptation policy. In doing so it uncovers problematic mismatches between the experience of local communities living with wildfire hazards and current climate change adaptation policies. National adaptation policy in Ireland presents uncontrolled wildfires as a largely new and unfamiliar hazard that requires innovative management approaches. However, newspaper archives reveal that local communities have adopted a variety of adaptive practices for wildfire hazards for over a century, and that these practices have coevolved with shifting economic, social, political, and cultural contexts. This paper also introduces the concept of non-predominant hazards, that is hazards that are often overlooked, forgotten, or neglected. Historical research on non-predominant hazards can play an important role in making visible trajectories of adaptation for such hazards. This study also points towards how deeper particularization studies that examine the long-term usage of specific adaptation practices can also be used to test the effectiveness of these practices through time, and to offer lessons for contemporary adaptation. These results have implications for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation to non-predominant hazards in a variety of contexts
Changing the game in esports research: Registered Reports at the International Journal of Esports
Get PDFAll is deep: all is shallow - literary springs, wells and depths, from Shakespeare to ecocriticism
No full text‘Self’ ( ziji ), ‘others’ ( taren ) and ‘collective’ ( jiti ): friendships at school embedded with China's Confucian–collectivist sociocultural values
Get PDFFriendship, an important type of interpersonal relationship, has been studied in various disciplines. When studying friendship, sociologists highlight the importance of placing friendships in context to build up a connection between friendship, a type of interpersonal relationship between individuals, and the surrounding social and cultural environment. In sociological studies of friendship, children's friendships in the Chinese context have not been explored thoroughly. To contribute to closing this gap, this article places children's peer friendships in a rural Chinese primary boarding school context and focuses on exploring Chinese Confucian–collectivist sociocultural values that emerged in these children's daily practices of peer friendships
Cultural heritage and histories of the Northern Namib: historical and oral history observations for the Draft Management Plan, Skeleton Coast National Park 2021/2022-2030/2031
No full textThis report shares documented information for indigenous cultural heritage and histories associated with the Northern Namib, designated since 1971 as the Skeleton Coast National Park. The paper draws on two principal sources of information: 1) historical documents stretching back to the late 1800s; and 2) oral history research with now elderly people who have direct and familial memories of using and living in areas now within the Park boundary. The research shared herein affirms that localities and resources now included within the Park were used by local people in historical times, their access linked with the availability of valued foods, especially !nara (Acanthosicyos horridus) melons and marine foods such as mussels. Memories about these localities, resources and heritage concerns such as graves of family members remain alive for some individuals and their families today. These concerns retain cultural resonance in the contemporary moment, despite significant access constraints over the last several decades. Some suggestions are made for foregrounding an understanding of the Northern Namib as a remembered cultural landscape as well as an area of high conservation value, and for protecting and perhaps restoring some access to sites that may be considered of significant cultural heritage value. Such sites include graves of known ancestors and named and remembered former dwelling places. The material shared here may contribute to a diversified recognition of values for the Skeleton Coast National Park for the new Management Plan that will shape ecological and heritage conservation practice and visitor experiences over the next 10 years
Light and transparency: the art exhibition for the reopening of the renovated Bonn Cathedral [group exhibition]
No full textAfter four years of renovation, the cathedral basilica will reopen its doors to the public on 31 October 2021 with a festive high mass and - as a novelty - with an art exhibition. Under the title "Light and Transparency", the Foundation for Art and Culture is showing selected works by Monica Bonvicini, Anthony Cragg, Heinz Mack, Mariele Neudecker and Gerhard Richter in the empty church.
To fill a medieval church interior – at least temporarily – with contemporary art opens up unusual, exciting perspectives: On the one hand, the claim of the sacred space, in which one assumes the presence of God, challenges art and asks for its meaningful power. On the other hand, art poses existential questions by questioning certainties of faith and traditions and offering alternative perspectives.
For three months, the artists will take over the sacred space for themselves and reinterpret it. Her light installations, paintings and sculptures evoke enlightenment and dazzle, opaque massiveness and transparent lightness, silence and conversation in a variety of ways. In their own way, they invite us to engage in an exciting dialogue between church, art and society
Raising regional academic voices (alongside data) in higher education (HE) debate
No full textAs agendas for data-driven measures of excellence dominate policy in UK Higher Education (HE), we argue that the generic structure of national policy frameworks virtually silences regional voices. This furthers a territorially agnostic discourse about universities, downplays institutional history and purpose, risks concealing innovative practices, and fails to tackle entrenched inequalities. In response, we point to the value of live, place-based debate in HE institutions to highlight distributional inequity, raise local voices and connect these with national policy. Yet even as we compiled this article about HE debate, the Covid-19 pandemic took hold globally, cancelling face-to-face meetings, by necessity. We therefore draw on a postdigital perspective, as we share our individual dialogues in support of debate, via collective writing, against this new backdrop of social distancing and widespread uncertainty. We may not currently be able to convene our Midlands HE Policy Network (MHEPN) debates in person, but we can voice the essential part that regional universities play in connecting global technological and biological change, with local social projects, citizens and industry. Postdigital theory offers one route to understanding that Covid-19 does not sit apart from other political economic challenges in HE and beyond, that we need to debate simultaneously
Idealising the predator [essay]
No full textHow did certain French intellectuals get away with preying upon young girls, shamelessly, in public and over decades