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Tracking museums' online responses to the Covid-19 pandemic: a study in museum analytics
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic led to the temporary closure of all museums in the UK, closing buildings and suspending all
on-site activities. Museum agencies aim at mitigating and managing these impacts on the sector, in a context of chronic data
scarcity. “Museums in the Pandemic” is an interdisciplinary project that utilises content scraped from museums’ websites
and social media posts in order to understand how the UK museum sector, currently comprising over 3,300 museums, has
responded and is currently responding to the pandemic. A major part of the project has been the design of computational
techniques to provide the project’s museum studies experts with appropriate data and tools for undertaking this research,
leveraging web analytics, natural language processing, and machine learning. In this methodological contribution, firstly, we
developed techniques to retrieve and identify museum official websites and social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter).
This supported the automated capture of large-scale online data about the entire UK museum sector. Secondly, we harnessed
convolutional neural networks to extract activity indicators from unstructured text in order to detect museum behaviours,
including openings, closures, fundraising, and staffing. This dynamic dataset is enabling the museum studies experts in the
team to study patterns in the online presence of museums before, during, and after the pandemic, according to museum size,
governance, accreditation, and location
Does venture capital improve corporate social responsibility performance?
Get PDFIn recent years, market agents have paid more attention to firm-level sustainable developments, but the economic effects of venture capital on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance are not clear. We empirically investigated this issue using data from Chinese non-financial A-share listed firms between 2010 and 2019. We found that venture capital participation may reduce the CSR performance of portfolio companies (e.g., SMEs), and high-quality internal control would moderate the relationship between venture capital and CSR performance. We suggest that the Chinese regulatory agencies should further direct institutional investors to establish socially responsible investments (SRI), optimise the information disclosure of CSR and enhance the listed companies’ internal control system
Reexamining race and Capitalism in the Marxist tradition – editorial introduction
Get PDFThe question of capitalism’s relationship to issues of race, racism and processes of racialisation has become increasingly prominent in contemporary debates. This special issue of Historical Materialism on ‘Race and Capital’ seeks to intervene in these debates. In this Introduction, we situate the special issue within this wider political, historical and theoretical context. We begin by reconstructing some of the key tensions and fault lines within contemporary discussions of race and racism, particularly in relation to the Marxist tradition. Against those who claim a primarily oppositional relationship between the Marxist tradition and anti-racist thinking, we chart a historical account of key moments in which Marxist movements and thinkers have attempted to articulate distinctively historical-materialist accounts of race and racism. We then situate the key themes of the special issue – and the various articles that compose the issue – against this background
Unpacking the effect of institutional support on international corporate entrepreneurship in entrepreneurial support systems
Get PDFExtent research is unclear about the relationship between entrepreneurship support systems and international corporate entrepreneurship (ICE) in emerging economies. This research considered entrepreneurial support systems essentially act as institutional intermediaries and consider resource slack as a mediating variable and dual network embeddedness as a moderating variable to explore the effects of formal institutional support and informal institutional support on ICE. Based on an empirical analysis of data from 480 valid questionnaires from small multinational corporations (MNCs) in Asia-Pacific region, this research found that (1) institutional support has a positive effect on ICE; (2) resource slack mediates institutional support and ICE; and (3) local network embeddedness has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between institutional support and resource slack, and ultra-local network embeddedness has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between institutional support and resource slack. The findings of the study echo the call of scholars to pay attention to the influence of institutional factors on ICE, and clarify the process of institutional support in the entrepreneurial support system on ICE
“Under house arrest”: mental health and minority stress experiences of LGBTQ+ young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe
Get PDFIntroduction: Increased rates of mental health issues among LGBTQ+ people have been reported during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among young people.
Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted 2021 with 61 young adult LGBTQ+ people residing in France, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, and the UK. Each interview was summarized on a template covering the participants’ experiences of pandemic restrictions, mental health, and minority stress during this period. A thematic analysis was conducted on the templates.
Results: The pandemic restrictions had a large impact on the participants’ lives, leaving them stuck at home. Not having access to the LGBTQ+ community was an additional stress, as this is a venue for support. Half of the participants had suffered from mental health issues during the pandemic. Those who were living in non-affirmative households had a particularly difficult time and experienced overwhelming stress. Increased feelings of gender dysphoria were seen among trans participants due to lack of access to gender affirming healthcare. Most participants experienced less distal minority stress than usual due to social isolation restrictions.
Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated social restrictions had a large impact on the lives of LGBTQ+ young adults. Many experience worse mental health, although a relief from distal minority stress was common.
Policy implications: Policy makers must consider the needs of LGBTQ+ young adults as they seek to explore and establish their gender and/or sexual identity. During a pandemic, it is particularly important to help young LGBTQ+ people to engage with the LGBTQ+ community
The geography of academic entrepreneurship: spin-offs, firm growth and regional impact
No full textThe book records how academic entrepreneurship reflects how the changing roles of universities feeds into and is a response to specificities of regional development.
The contribution of the book is to provide a critique of what is understood about the university spin-offs process and its link with regional development. The reason for the focus on the region lies in an attempt to explain geographical differences in technology-led economic development. How and why do universities through the spin-off processes contribute to imbalances in outcomes and opportunities
Systematic Underestimation of Human Hand Weight
Get PDFAccording to Newton’s laws, the weight of a body part is equal to its mass times gravitational acceleration. Our experience of body part weight, however, is constructed by the central nervous system. No sensory receptors directly specify the weight of body parts, and the factors influencing perceived weight remain unknown. The perceived weight of held objects has been linked to sensations of the magnitude of central motor commands sent to the muscles, what Helmholtz called the effort of will and has subsequently been called the sense of effort1. This is shown by manipulations of fatigue1, anaesthesia2, and following brain damage3. Similar drive to muscles is required to counteract the force of gravity on the limbs themselves, though few studies have investigated the perceived weight of body parts4. Stroke patients with hemiplegia frequently comment that their limbs feel heavy5, an effect linked to fatigue in the affected limb6. Similarly, amputees commonly complain of the weight of prosthetic limbs7, despite these typically weighing less than actual limbs. Here we show that healthy adult humans systematically underestimate hand weight. We used a psychophysical matching task to measure experience of hand weight, which was underestimated on average by 49.4%. We further show that experimental induction of hand fatigue causes a systematic increase in perceived hand weight. Our results demonstrate that humans fail to experience the full weight of their body
“The Reformation of the 21st Century?” Church of England clergy experiences of ministry during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Get PDFThe research reported here was conducted independently within the Diocese of Oxford by: Prof Gillian Symon, School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway University of London; Dr Rebecca Whiting, Department of Organizational Psychology, Birkbeck University of London; and Dr Rebecca Taylor, Department of Sociology, University of Southampton.
The report is based on 40 open-ended interviews with clergy in the diocese which took place between June 2020 and October 2021. These interviews explored the experience of clergy as they delivered spiritual, psychological, and social care during the various stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on the effects of the digitalisation of practice. The report summarises the perceptions and views of these participants
Rape revisited: Joanna Bourke reflects on historicising sexual violence, in conversation with Ruth Beecher
Get PDFJoanna Bourke’s career as a social and cultural historian span more than three decades. She is a Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, a Fellow of the British Academy and the current Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College. She is the prizewinning author of sixteen books, including histories of violence, modern warfare, medicine and science, psychology and psychiatry, the emotions, pain and what it means to be human. Her ground-breaking 2007 book Rape debunked ‘theories’ espoused by academics, doctors, lawyers and scientists that it was women who were responsible for rape; she insisted that we place the responsibility for sexual violence firmly with the rapist. It catalysed a new and vibrant scholarship. In 2018, Bourke established the Wellcome Trust-funded Sexual Harms and Medical Encounters (SHaME) Research Hub at Birkbeck to explore the role of medicine and psychiatry in sexual violence. The reflections below are based on a conversation between Bourke and Ruth Beecher, a post-doctoral historian and applied researcher in the SHaME team. It took place on the publication of Bourke’s new book, Disgrace: Global Reflections on Sexual Violence, published by Reaktion Books in July 2022. Disgrace explores how sexual violence varies widely across time and place, delving into the factors that facilitate violence and giving voice to survivors and activists. Ultimately, Bourke argues for a transnational feminism that will promote a rape- and violence-free world
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