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Reinforce, reform or rupture? The future of the European Convention on Human Rights
No full textIn May 2025, nine states led by Denmark and Italy issued a letter calling for an “open minded conversation” about whether the European Court of Human Rights has gone “too far” and protected the “wrong people” in its interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights in migration cases. The initiative is widely viewed as an attempt to pressurise the Court to adopt ever-more conservative approaches and scapegoat it for domestic political discontents. In the UK, two parties, Reform and the Conservatives, have committed to withdraw from the Convention on the false prospectus that it would enable the suppression of irregular migration. Elsewhere in Europe, withdrawal has not reached the mainstream of politics, although the risk of contagion is ever present. Meanwhile, calls for “reform” are multiplying and, as we write, rumours are swirling about what the next intergovernmental initiative will be. Neither the group of nine nor other political leaders have elucidated what they seek to reform, how and why. What does seem clear is the intent to change something. This blog outlines the options – whether for reform or use of existing mechanisms – that have been mooted by commentators or in reporting of these so far secretive government manoeuvres. It does so in the spirit of evidence-based scrutiny that should underpin any discussion of reform of Europe’s 75-year-old human rights architecture
Case 3: Digital badges in higher education: next steps
No full textSince their advent in the education sector in 2011, digital badges have become a popular tool used in higher education to recognise competencies, boost engagement and offer a means to verify granular skills relevant to employability. Despite the growing adoption of digital badges in the United Kingdom, employers continue to encounter difficulties in appreciating their value and seamlessly integrating them into the recruitment process. While some initiatives, such as the UK’s Royal Society of Arts’ Cities of Learning, demonstrate the vast potential of digital badges with successful local employer collaboration, engagement in the wider job market remains limited. This case study provides a reflective analysis of the development, implementation and key challenges of digital badges. It highlights the need for standardisation, stronger local employer partnerships and clearer articulation of competencies. In addition, it asserts that a national higher education-driven framework could help ensure consistency and build trust in badge issuance, making them more valuable and sought after by employers. Arguably, government-backed initiatives could play a crucial role in promoting their acceptance within the job market. In the meantime, the onus is on higher education institutions to foster employer awareness and engagement through advisory boards, skill-based collaboration and training workshops, which could enhance badge visibility and utility. Future research should continue to explore employer perceptions of digital badges and investigate their potentially evolving role in hiring decisions
Headscarves and the wrong balance: neutrality and business v freedom of religion and non-discrimination
No full textTo date, the CJEU has decided 6 cases concerning women who wanted to wear a headscarf at work for religious reasons but who were prohibited from doing so by their employer, losing their jobs as a consequence. Achbita, Bougnaoui, Wabe and Müller, LF and OP. There was no evidence that the wearing of the headscarf in any way prevented them from doing their job. Apart from OP, all other cases concerned private employers and here the freedom to conduct a business as recognised by Article 16 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights played an important role. The judgments in these five cases suggest that the employer’s right under Article 16 can trump the right of the employee to freedom of religion as guaranteed by Article 10 of the EU Charter. In OP, where the employer was a municipal council, the CJEU held that the principle of neutrality of the public service can do the same. Although the CJEU made some general and abstract comments about the importance of freedom of religion, it did not really address what the bans, in practice, meant for the individual women involved. Neither did the CJEU pay any attention to the possibility that these neutrality rules could constitute sex, race and/or intersectional discrimination. The CJEU thus provide little protection for the rights of headscarf wearing Muslim women
‘It’s not necessarily a social space’ − Institutions, power and nature’s wellbeing benefits in the context of diverse inner-city neighbourhoods
Get PDFUrban nature is widely known to provide wellbeing benefits to people and communities, but evidence particularly from diverse and disadvantaged contexts suggests that these benefits are not experienced equally by all. This paper unpacks this complexity by focussing on how urban nature is interacted with to produce relational wellbeing on two diverse inner-city housing estates undergoing regeneration in London, UK. We focus on the role of both formal institutions and the perceptions that people form of spatial features and their meanings and functions, and the manner in which these intermediaries shape human-nature interactions and the co-production of nature’s wellbeing impact. Our findings from quantitative and qualitative data demonstrate that urban nature contributes to all aspects of a five-dimensional notion of wellbeing. But social housing residents’ and young peoples’ ability to experience these benefits is limited. Informal mechanisms of social control such as perceptions of ownership of space and its appropriate uses, and fear of conflict and crime limit the extent to which residents access greenspaces and the activities within them. Together with formal institutions such as tenancy types, housing targets and criteria for optimisation of site allocation, they produce hierarchies of use of public greenspaces and reinforce existing divisions between people of different demographic and socio-economic status. The findings underline the need to facilitate the establishment of shared and inclusive norms concerning access and appropriate uses of natural spaces in housing and greenspace delivery
How many ways are there to measure a tree? – an experiment in cross-disciplinarity
Get PDFThis article takes a transdisciplinary approach to a relatively simple-sounding task – tree measuring. It asks the question, ‘How many ways are there to measure a tree?’, in order to provoke a discussion of our different ways of knowing. It attempts to engage a reader in thinking about disciplines and what they do. It does so by sharing insights from a project in which diverse scholars, practitioners and children came together for the common purpose of producing engaged knowledge. The experience of reading the article should prompt questions about whose knowledge counts and why, and the value of university research that is engaged and grounded. We conclude with a question of what kinds of measurements matter and why. The article takes the reader through different disciplinary perspectives, from science to social science to poetry, and, in that process, engages with the ‘how’ of disciplines in terms of real-world problems
Emotional labour in journalism: a systematic review
No full textThis chapter focuses on emotional labour in journalism – efforts that journalists exert when they manage emotions that arise in relation to work in order to satisfy professional requirements of their roles. It reports the systematic review of scholarship in English language engaging with the concept of emotional labour in the context of journalistic work drawing on the SPIDER approach and following PRISMA guidelines. The analysis of this literature reveals a sharp rise of interest in this practice and area of study since 2020 and the Western-centredness of the scholarship. Trauma reporting, experiences of online abuse, challenges of everyday work and working conditions are identified as key triggers, while individual-level processing of emotions is found to be the most frequently employed emotion management strategy. Burnout, anxiety, stress, and self-censorship are most commonly reported consequences of emotional labour. The chapter ends with the agenda for future research
Two feminist performances at and against the statue of John Bright, Rochdale, England
No full textThis chapter discusses two artistic interventions on and against the statue of mill owner and politician John Bright: the performance and photo essay ‘Monument to Working Women’, by Shirley Cameron, Monica Ross, and Evelyn Silver, part of the residency Triple Transformations, Rochdale Art Gallery, 1985; and Gut Feelings Meri Jaan, 2021, by Jasleen Kaur and project collaborators, consisting of three films and a book. These art practices did not quite demand that Bright must fall but enacted a critique of whiteness and patriarchal industrial capitalism directly onto the statue, disrupting the appearance of public consensus that monuments to the great and the good serve to uphold.
Triple Transformations is approached as an example of feminist performance that refuses to untangle industrial production from social reproduction, acknowledging that the two remain intertwined, especially for working-class women. ‘Monument to Working Women’ involved a procession by the three artists to the statue of John Bright, Rochdale mill owner and Liberal MP, in Rochdale’s Broadfield Park. Ambiguously dressed in overalls and pinnies, the artists’ makeshift uniforms, which closely resembled those of the women factory workers in Rochdale, evoked both the labour of cleaning, domestically and professionally, and factory work, referencing the transformation of one of Rochdale’s mills into a factory producing cleaning products, and the changing role of women in industry. Cameron, Ross, and Silver did not, nevertheless, clean Bright but re-inscribed his legacy onto the tall plinth with quotes from his speeches in Parliament: signs reading ‘our work, his glory’, ‘his profit, her labour’, and ‘her poverty, his reward’ where held up to passers-by, waived in front of Bright’s marble face, and finally pasted onto his plinth. More than 35 years later, Jasleen Kaur and her collaborators also chose Bright’s statue as a site and symbol of Rochdale’s collective, idealised, and profoundly exclusive identity. Kaur invited a group of women and gender non-conforming people from Rochdale’s Pakistani, Bengali and Punjabi communities to join her in a series of online conversations examining and responding to the contents of the local history archives at Touchstones, where they and their ancestors were largely under/unrepresented. In one of the films produced for Gut Feelings Meri Jaan, Kaur and her collaborators are seen washing Bright’s statue with yoghurt — a living culture. Archives and statues are set against and challenged by human bodies as carriers of history, feelings, and bacteria, digesting history into something decidedly unmonumental but fiercely dynamic
The future of T Levels
No full textstudent awareness and recruitment | progression to higher education and employment | employer awareness and participation | priorities for work placements | geographical disparities in access to provision | fulfilling skills gaps | addressing barriers to participation
The agenda will also focus on priorities for T Levels, with recently announced requirements relating to T Level placements, including reduced hours and remote learning. Sessions will consider the potential impact of new measures on recruitment and retention, and further approaches to improving student satisfaction and increasing enrolment of students in the T Level Foundation Year and T Level programmes. Delegates will look at working with employers to improve work placements and student progression, including into higher level apprenticeships and employment, and engaging with employers in rural areas to increase student options
Mathematical meditations
No full textMathematical Meditations identifies, explores, and celebrates those aspects of mathematics that are good for you and your overall wellbeing. It is necessary for everyone to have a little time to think every so often: to contemplate, meditate, and try to understand where you are and what is going on around you. Mathematics can help you with all of that.
The Meditations in this book are the product of thousands of years of mathematical discourse. As you read through the book and work through the various exercises, you will discover new mechanisms that allow you to contemplate and understand some complex mathematical principles. However, the focus will always be wider than a mere dry comprehension of theory, as you will be encouraged to meditate upon the deeper intrinsic beauty of mathematics and what it can reveal to us about the world around us