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Closing the gender pay gap “once and for all”: Labour’s proposed reforms to GPG reporting in the UK
No full textThe UK’s gender pay gap (GPG) has been declining over time, falling from 27.5% in 1997 to 14.3% in 2023. Nevertheless, at the current rate of decline, it will take at least another 20 years to close the GPG. In the lead-up to the recent election, then Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves promised that a Labour government would close the GPG “once and for all.” This ambitious pledge was backed by a series of policy changes outlined in Labour’s election manifesto, including amendments to the current GPG reporting scheme. While these reforms have the potential to address some of the key shortcomings in the current system, their success will depend on effective oversight and enforcement—neither of which are clearly addressed in Labour’s plan
Analyzing air-traffic security using GIS-``blur'' with information flow control in the IIIf
Get PDFIn this paper, we address security and privacy of air-traffic control systems. Classically these systems are closed proprietary systems. However, air-traffic monitoring systems like flight-radars are decentralized public applications risking loss of confidential information thereby creating security and privacy risks.
We propose the use of the Isabelle Insider and Infrastructure framework (IIIf) to alleviate the security specification and verification of air traffic control systems.
This paper summarizes the IIIf and then illustrates the use of the framework on the application of a flight path monitoring system. It presents the extension of the IIIf by a formal notion of indistinguishability and proves the central noninterference property for the flight path monitoring application
Developing an evaluation strategy in Kashmir: assessing the impact of an arts intervention with school children in an area of conflict
Get PDFAbout 1 in 6 children live in areas of conflict globally (Save the children, 2022), with significant impact on mental health, behaviour, and life outcomes (Buser et al., 2023). Research on ways to help prevent and reduce suffering is paramount, yet assessing the impact of interventions on children in the context of conflict is challenging, beset with ethical, cultural and psychometric difficulties (Newman et al., 2006). This practice report shares and reflects on the research strategy developed to evaluate the impact of an arts intervention in the Kashmir Valley, funded by an AHRC Urgency bid to help children in crisis. The study took part in a highly militarised area, where children were regularly exposed to violence, protests and resistance, and education and family life were heavily impacted by military lockdowns. When the study began (June 2020) conditions were further intensified by rising cases of coronavirus. The arts-based intervention occurred at one school and ran throughout their academic year (from August 2020). Thirty children (aged 12-15) were referred by the school to participate in a programme that was integrated into the curriculum and included a range of art activities: painting, writing, puppetry, music and performance, designed to enable expression and improve wellbeing, led by an artist and art therapist (Buser et al., 2023)
Oracy for global learning
No full textLiteracy and numeracy have for long been regarded as fundamental skills across all education levels. Oracy, however, has only recently emerged as the third pillar of the essential skills triangle (Oracy Skills Framework, 2020). But, research into oracy (conventionally defined as ‘speaking and listening skills’) has been mainly confined within compulsory educational contexts, despite efforts to ‘opening up the discussion on oracy skills in HE’. (Heron, 2019) This seems like a paradox, because by comparison to other levels of education, Higher Education has been shaped by expansive physical and virtual mobilities on national, international and transnational scales both for students and staff, who enrich university life with diverse accents, oracy cultures and multilingual competencies. Moreover, the advent of generative AI has elevated oracy skills to a marker of authenticity, as can be inferred by the recent increase of oral presentations (vivas) in assessment design. But how are students supported with developing and mastering oracy skills beyond deficit models and national contexts? (Cushing, 2024). My presentation aims to share research-informed insights into the role of oracy for global learning as a mode of ‘interthinking’ that ‘puts talk to work’ (Littleton and Mercer, 2013) on a transnational level. I will present on the design of a new project that draws on my previous research on ‘accentism’ (Loukopoulou, 2017) and on the ‘Inclusive Multilingualism’ toolkit developed in the context of Middlesex University (Lazar and Ryder, 2023). My project’s intended outputs will further support the implementation of the 2031 Learning Framework with new resources for embedding internationalisation, interactive and dialogic learning across all Middlesex campuses and transnational collaborations, which rely on spoken language and debate.
References:
• Cushing, I. (2024). ‘Social in/justice and the deficit foundations of oracy’. Oxford Review of Education, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2024.2311134
• Heron, M. (2019). ‘Making the case for oracy skills in higher education: practices and opportunities’. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 16(2). https://doi.org/10.53761/1.16.2.2
• Lazar, G. and Ryder A. (2023) Inclusive Multilingualism: A Toolkit for Educators,
https://www.intra.mdx.ac.uk/about-us/services/centre-for-academic-practice-enhancement/enhancing-education-awards-eeas-202122-academic-year/enhancing-education-awards-winners/Multilingual-Toolkit-June2023-FINAL.pdf
• Littleton, K. & Mercer, N. (2013) Interthinking: Putting Talk to Work. Routledge
• Loukopoulou, K. (2017) ‘It’s not what you say, but how you say it’, Times Higher Education (28 September), online version:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/snobbery-against-regional-accents-hurting-university-teaching
• Oracy Skills Framework (2020) https://oracycambridge.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/The-Oracy-Skills-Framework-and-Glossary.pd
AI, automation and abstraction
No full textIn November 2022, the installation Unsupervised by the artist Refik Anadol was exhibited in the lobby of MoMA, New York. Aesthetically, it conveyed a dynamic display of abstract forms interpreting, via machine learning, MoMA’s archive of modern art. Conceptually, however, it sits at the nexus of a number of theoretical questions regarding the increasing use of artificial intelligence in art. Whereas the historical automatism of surrealism through abstract expressionism often purported to evoke the unconscious of the individual artist, the automatism of artworks such as Unsupervised claims to manifest the somehow non-human unconscious of modernity. Whereas the conceptual work of artists such as Sol LeWitt was algorithmic in an attempt to divest the art of the heroic creator figure, artworks such as Unsupervised seem to replace the latter with the heroic machine. Moreover, this romantic rhetoric and visual language obfuscates the immense amount of often emphatically exploitative labour required for such systems (Hito Steyerl) and also the fact that the ‘visual knowledge’ of computer software tends to serve existing power interests (Wendy Hui Kyong Chun). This panel seeks to accordingly historicise the emerging aesthetics of AI art making, and engage with questions such as how art historical methods might be employed to gain critical purchase on technological advances that threaten to only serve the status quo, and whether there is hope in current practice for the kind of subversive engagement with cutting-edge technological development that was often attributed to early new media artists such as Nam-June Paik and Gretchen Bender
Investigating formations of gender and sexuality in the avant-gardes: interventionist art history and scholarly curation
No full textThe works presented as part of this PhD have taken place in my activities working with artists estates, preserving their studios, working on scholarly inventories of archives, curating and publishing, with a focus on women artists who started their practice in the 1960s and 1970s. I subsequently expanded my interest in the pioneering practices of women artists and the complex configurations of gender and sexuality in the inter- and postwar (neo)avant-gardes such as Surrealism and the constructive-concrete art movements.
My practice developed reciprocally across these various activities, with a longstanding commitment to the artists and estates I represented. I subsequently had the opportunity to dedicate exhibitions to these artists in my roles as museums (Curator at Kunsthalle Basel and Curator at Large at Muzeum Susch, Switzerland) and independent curator, as well as numerous institutional catalogue texts and magazine articles.
I focused my investigations on the recontextualisation of women avant-gardists whose work had been under-recognised in the narratives of hegemonic art history. My curatorial strategies, as well as my writing, were informed by intense phases of dedicated research facilitated through my primary access to the artists’ studios and archives for extended periods. My access to several artists’ estates gave me new and privileged insights into the work and social conditions of these artists.
This expert research provided the base for my curation informed by newly formed scholarship providing original and ground-breaking exhibition concepts. My authorial interventions complicated and altered the perception and evaluation of these artists pioneering achievements, as well as the face of genre and style definitions and further impacted critical revisions in art institutions worldwide. Through these contributions, I critically intervened into the hegemonic art historical and museal discourse of the art movements
Role of intraorganizational social capital and perceived organizational support on expatriate job performance: empirical evidence
Get PDFPurpose
An expatriate is a person living outside their native country and is physically mobile across international borders for professional or personal reasons, whether for a short or long time, whether organizationally sponsored or not. In the competitive and globalized world, expatriation helps organizations to sustain international competition. Based on the social capital theory, performance theory and organizational support theory, this study aims to explore the impact of intraorganizational social capital (IOSC) and perceived organizational support (POS) on expatriate job performance (EJP) along with the intervening role of Islamic work ethics (IWE).
Design/methodology/approach
Data are collected from Expatriate employees working in UAE for at least three years among various knowledge-based industries. A total of 268 filled responses were received using the convenience sampling technique. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed hypotheses.
Findings
The results indicate that POS and IOSC positively influence most EJP dimensions except demonstrating effect dimension and IWE acts as a partial mediator. The study adopted a cross-sectional research design, and the respondents are white color expatriates working in the knowledge-based industries across the United Arab Emirates. Various other business sectors, such as tourism, hospitality, manufacturing, oil and energy can be considered in the study context and longitudinal research designs can be adapted to generalize the findings.
Research limitations/implications
The study adopted a cross-sectional research design, and the respondents are white color expatriates working in the knowledge-based industries across the United Arab Emirates. Various other business sectors, such as tourism, hospitality, manufacturing, oil and energy, can be considered the study context and longitudinal research designs can be adopted to generalize the findings.
Practical implications
Human resource managers need to formulate their company policies so that a recruit is given orientation and training the existing workforce on the benefits of IWE, as it can be seen as developing employee morale and ethical behavior. Onboarding an expat from different regions is an expensive initiative for the organization. The organization should consider both tangible and intangible costs that go into the recruitment, selection and onboarding of an expat.
Originality/value
Very few studies have explored the role of IWE with a second-order EJP construct with the respondents from the knowledge-based industries of the UAE
High-performance work system and learning orientation in offline, online, and hybrid workplaces: the mediating role of affective commitment
Get PDFPurpose – The present study primarily aims to investigate the role of the high-performance work system (HPWS) in shaping learning orientation (LO). Moreover, the study delves into the examination of affective commitment’s (AC) role as a mediator. Additionally, the research extends to exploring the potential moderating impact of workplace settings, specifically offline, online and hybrid workplaces, on the mediated relationship.
Design/methodology/approach – The model has been tested on 360 respondents from the IT sector in India. The data have been validated using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.
Findings – The results indicate that AC mediates the relationship between HPWS and LO. Furthermore, this mediation was found to be positive and significant in hybrid and offline workplace settings, whereas it was found to be insignificant in the online workplace setting.
Research limitations/implications – The self-report responses from the respondents could potentially introduce a limitation, as respondents might lead to inflated outcomes in the research findings. While Harmans’ single-factor test did not indicate any common method bias, it is important to acknowledge that this bias might not have been completely eliminated.
Originality/value – The present study has expanded upon the existing research on HPWS by
examining its influence on LO, while also considering AC as a mediator. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that no prior studies have undertaken a comparative analysis of this relationship across various workplace settings
First-generation Pakistani-Canadian men and their experiences with mental health therapy
Get PDFBackground: First-generation Pakistani-Canadian men face unique mental health challenges as they navigate dual cultural identities and societal expectations. However, their experiences with seeking and engaging in mental health therapy remain understudied.
Aim: This study aimed to investigate the experiences of first-generation Pakistani-Canadian men who have sought mental health therapy in Canada, exploring their perceptions about becoming a consumer of therapeutic services, and the issues they faced as they engaged in these services.
Method: A qualitative study using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was conducted. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 10 first-generation Pakistani-Canadian men aged 30-45 who had immigrated to Canada between 1975 and 1990 and who had sought mental health support. Interviews were conducted via video conferencing, and were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using IPA principles.
Findings: The analysis revealed several key themes: (1) Challenges faced by first-generation Pakistani-Canadian men, including struggles with dual identity and cultural expectations; (2) Barriers to seeking mental health support, such as stigma, cultural beliefs, and lack of culturally sensitive services; (3) Experiences of therapy, including both positive and negative encounters; (4) Navigating the challenges and complexities of the mental health care system; and (5) Navigating through trauma in individual journeys.
Discussion: The findings highlight the complex interplay between cultural identity, acculturation stress, and mental health for first-generation Pakistani-Canadian men. Participants faced significant challenges in reconciling their cultural heritage with Canadian societal norms, which often contributed to their mental health concerns. While some participants found therapy helpful, others encountered barriers related to cultural misunderstandings and lack of culturally appropriate care.
Conclusion: This study provides valuable insights into the mental health experiences of first-generation Pakistani-Canadian men and emphasizes the need for culturally sensitive mental health services. Recommendations include increased cultural competence training for mental health professionals, community outreach programs, and the development of culturally tailored interventions to better serve this population.
Future research may investigate the long-term mental health trajectories of first-generation Pakistani-Canadian men. Specifically, it should examine how factors such as employment status, family dynamics, and community integration influence mental well-being over time. Additionally, further studies could explore the effectiveness of tailored mental health interventions and online therapy platforms in overcoming the accessibility barriers identified in this research. By addressing these critical gaps, mental health professionals, policymakers, and researchers can work towards developing more inclusive and effective mental health care solutions for immigrant populations