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Rule of law: beyond the rhetoric
No full textAnalysis of the importance of the rule of law both nationally and internationally
Ambient literature and the language of place
No full textAmbient literature raises questions about the future of reading, particularly about forms of situated, mobile reading afforded by digital technologies where a reader is invited to examine the peripheries of an immersive, digital experience. This literary form—where story, either fiction or non-fiction, is rooted in place and accessed using a smartphone—not only contains the authored words that are presented to a reader on a screen but also the subtler language found in the surrounding environment, which can also be “read.” The interplay between these two languages—the authored narrative and the language of place—can be used to create immersive digital literary works that make use of data and require readers to engage with context and situation as part of the reading experience. A reader of a work of ambient literature experiences not only words but also context and situation as part of the reading experience. There are many unique aspects of both ambient authorship and reading practices—including the role of physical movement, unpredictability, and the blurring of boundaries between author, reader, and environment. Therefore, a definition of this digital literary form must consider the complex relationships between data, place, and story in shaping both the reading experience and the process of authoring
The power of praising bees - acoustic pasts, echoed futures: auralgraph from !Huidi-ǁgams, Omaruru, 1954
No full textWhen do we listen as we hear?
Can we glimpse history while listening?
In Acoustic Pasts, Echoed Futures, a loose series curating recordings from the Basler Afrika Bibliographien Archives, the reader is invited to listen to historical recordings—speech, song, music, natural sound, or noise—to tease the ear, move the soul or body, and bear witness to the futures of past worlds. The echoes of ‘pastness’ are convergences of the oral, the sense of hearing, and technology. Past aural worlds—compressed and mediated on wax cylinders, magnetic and other tapes or records in mp3 or WAV formats—provide sonic tracks, cracks and soundscapes, voiced anger, scintillating laughter, and raptured dancing
A Bayesian active learning approach to comparative judgement within education assessment
No full textRevitalising the musical past of the Nogai through song: a contemporary interpretation of the Epic of Edige through Nine Rhapsodies
Get PDFThe Nogai people are an indigenous Muslim Turkic-speaking ethnic group in Russia, descended from the nomadic horsemen of Central Asia, with a culture that boasts a proud and resilient history. The Nogais – ‘moribund tribelets’ (Shelemay, 1990, p. 299) – have traditionally inhabited the Great Caspian Depression, an area where the echoes of their ancient melodies still resonate. Their narrative and musical traditions, once central to their identity, now face decline due to inconsistent practice, adaptation, and engagement with contemporary audiences. This research explores the creation of Nine Rhapsodies about Edige, an album that reimagines and revitalizes the traditional Nogai epic song Edige using attributes of contemporary musical production. The Nogai people are an indigenous Muslim Turkic-speaking ethnic group in Russia, descended from the nomadic horsemen of Central Asia, with a culture that boasts a proud and resilient history. The Nogais – ‘moribund tribelets’ (Shelemay, 1990, p. 299) – have traditionally inhabited the Great Caspian Depression, an area where the echoes of their ancient melodies still resonate. The epic song recounts the deeds of Edige, (1352–1419), an eminent historical figure often hailed as the ‘Nogai Genghis Khan’ and the founder of the Nogai Horde, and engaging with it within this context is crucial, given its position as a foundational cultural text that was banned under Soviet rule, an act that severed a vital link in Nogai oral tradition. By synthesizing creative practice, historical texts, ethnographic and autoethnographic methodologies, this project not only documents but actively reinterprets Nogai musical heritage, seeking to reignite intellectual and artistic engagement with it. The new album serves as both a creative intervention and a preservation effort, extracting archetypes, key characters, and recurring themes from surviving fragments of the epic. Given my position as a Nogai insider, the project is inherently autoethnographic, bridging scholarship and artistic practice. By collecting, reimagining, and recontextualizing Nogai music, this research celebrates and sustains an endangered culture for future generations, standing on the shoulders of those who have sought to keep the Nogai legacy alive. As such, the project functions as a catalyst for exploring broader ideas of cultural revival, reclaiming the banned text, and embedding it into context of wider contemporary musical culture(s)
The poverty-crime nexus revisited: absolute poverty, relative poverty, and crime rates in 105 countries
Get PDFCriminological writing on the poverty-crime nexus has suffered from a lack of engagement with academic work about the definition of poverty. Furthermore, researchers who have connected nations’ crime rates to their poverty levels have tended to use infant mortality rates (a health outcome variable) as a proxy for poverty. This article presents findings from the first study of cross-national crime differences to use measures of “absolute” poverty (% with purchasing power under $1.90 per day at 2011 prices) and “relative” poverty (% with income below 50% of the national median). Both measures correlated positively with rates of assault/mugging, stealing, homicide, and intimate partner violence against women. Relative poverty is closely connected to inequality, while absolute poverty is closely connected to low socio-economic development, so the findings are consistent with the view that economic inequality is generally criminogenic whereas modernisation is not
Blank, light, respectable, useful: nineteenth century orphan bodies
Get PDFDiscovering a scrapbook in the archives of a Victorian Orphanage raises questions as to how the children in these institutions were represented. This paper argues that such images frame a particular version of the inmates of Muller Orphan Homes, Bristol, as a collective, a ‘caste apart’ whose worth is displayed here as visual representations of key-circulating discourses regarding respectability, usefulness, productivity and whiteness. The photograph in question provides a striking picture of docile, servile, nimble and fit bodies; it suggests their potential to be quiet, respectable, mouldable servants, apprentices and dressmakers, neatly and seamlessly fitting their allotted economic, social and cultural space. It presents these children for the imperialist gaze, ‘othered’ in these photographs as both functional, servile, ‘blank’ docile bodies and ‘spectacular’ objects of lurid fascination and sentimental sympathy
"Today people want sensationalism": dialogic ethics of authorship, imperialism and genre conventions in 'Cannibal Holocaust' (1980)
No full textEmbodying the Eerie: an investigation of the Eerie as a dramaturgical concept in processes of directing devised performance
Get PDF'The Strange Geometry of Time', 'Dwelling', and 'This Is the Land' were three productions that formed the practice-based elements of a study exploring the Eerie as a dramaturgical concept in devised performance practice, through an emergent process that does not determine and outcome but extends dramaturgy beyond the known and knowable. The first of three devised performances, 'The Strange Geometry of Time', was presented at the University Theatre, Bath Spa University, in June 2018, before touring to the 'Dreams Before Dawn Festival' in Paris in July 2018 and returning to the University Theatre, Bath Spa, in November 2018. 'Dwelling', a site-specific intermedial performance, was presented at The Anglican Chapel, Arnos Vale Cemetery, Bristol, in October 2019. 'This Is The Land' was presented at The Rondo Theatre in Bath in 2022 and toured to the RITU festival in Liege that same year. It was also presented at The Anglican Chapel, Arnos Vale Cemetery, Bristol, in 2022, and The Network Theatre, part of the VAULT Festival, in London, in 2023. The productions were developed by a professional company, engaging public audiences in theatres and non-theatre sites in the South West, London, and Europe.
The devising and directing practices are informed by a range of theoretical studies that consider theatre and performance from philosophical, historical, and theoretical perspectives. Central to the project is Mark Fisher's theoretical analysis of the Eerie, which provides a lens through which to explore the dramaturgy of the eerie in practice and contributes to an embodied knowledge of the eerie in performance practice. Alice Rayner's (2006) study of theatre as a memorial practice provides a lens through which to examine the materiality of the theatrical elements as eerie material doubles. Joslin McKinney's (2015) consideration of the agency of objects in the context of scenography and her analysis of the 'agential object' informs the agency of the materiality of objects, the performer's interactions with objects, and how objects interact as performative agents.
Performance theory is brought into dialogue with theories of spectrality and hauntology, acknowledging Derrida (1994). It draws on Fisher's tradition of hauntology 92014), which Coverley (2020) expands upon, to explore hauntological time in performance. Fisher's concept of the eerie presence or absence of the past, as ghosts of the 'no longer' and ghosts of the future, 'not yet', and 'lost futures' (Fisher, 2014), frames the dramaturgy of time and space. The conceptualisation of time informs the dramaturgy of time and space in relation to abandoned sites, places, and landscapes, which are constructed through what Lehman (2006) defines as visual dramaturgy.
Chapter 1 introduces these methods of practice and explores how the agential object interacts with the performers, drawing on Fisher's concept of the eerie outside and non-human agencies, which connect with theories of spectrality and hauntology. The chapter explores how the dramaturgy of the eerie materiality of stage objects and costumes expands the concept of agency in performance. Chapter 2 extends Fisher's ideas of the 'outside' to a site-specific intermedial process; the methodology is informed by Fisher's observations of the eeriness of abandoned sites and connects with spectrality theory's spatialisation of ghosts and hauntings. Heholt's (2016) 'affect of place' and Irwin's (2007) 'intangible presences) inform the ensemble's improvisations of place in eerie sites. Rayner's theory informs how the performance memorialises the spectral past as a site of unforgetting. Chapter 3 examines Fisher's observations of the eerie liminality of absence and presence as they inform performative ways of projecting ghostly figures and sound technologies in imagined landscapes. Macfarlane's observations of resurgence of the eerie in the contemporary moment inform the ensemble's improvisions of landscapes, as well as the directorial choices that reference eerie folk culture as spectral presences in the landscape. Lehmann's postdramatic theory offers an analysis of visual dramaturgy, which underpins the compositional techniques that defocalise theatrical elements through an assemblage of components. The nonlinear composition resists narrativising and a sequential progression of time to generate an eerie theatricality of the 'outside'; a site beyond the knowable