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'Mediterranean Archaeologies of Insularity in an Age of Globalization', A. Kouremenos and J.M. Gordon eds. (Oxford 2020)
No full text'Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity' edited by Hertzmann, Leezah and Newbigin, Juliet. Published by Routledge, Abingdon, 2020; 358 pp, £32.99 paperback
Get PDFWhat is exhaustion? On justice and contingency
Get PDFThis paper uses the the Deleuzian notion of exhaustion to question the meaning of justice. It does this with reference to a number of literary authors, primarily Samuel Beckett. The paper argues for a non-anthropomorphic evaluation of human potential, and maintains that this is the condition for any viable understanding of justice. Within this, it argues for the significance of contestation and democratic institutions against neo-liberal competition
Regional development, innovation systems and service companies’ performance
Get PDFThis paper examines the impact of firm-level research and development (R&D) and country-level innovation on the relationship between geographic scope and financial performance. Using econometric estimation to analyze data from a sample of 339 United Kingdom (UK) service companies over the period from 2011 to 2017, we found a concave relationship between geographic scope and financial performance. Moreover, the results indicated that UK service companies that increase their R&D expenditure accrue a higher performance from higher geographic scope. This is because the relationship becomes convex but the foreign country’s innovation has no direct effect on UK service companies’ performance. Additional results showed that performance differences from geographic scope and the influence of firm-level R&D and country-level innovation exist between SMEs and large firms, and between private and public firms
Association of aetiological factors for hypomanic symptoms, bipolar disorder and other severe mental illnesses: twin and polygenic risk score analysis
Get PDFImportance: Subsyndromal hypomanic symptoms are relatively common in the general population and are linked to the onset of bipolar disorder. Little is known about their aetiology and whether this is shared with the aetiology of bipolar disorder or other mental illnesses.
Objective: This is the first twin study to examine the genetic and environmental architecture of hypomanic symptoms in a non-clinical youth sample, and compare estimates at varying severity levels and their relationship with diagnosed bipolar disorder. Associations between hypomania and polygenic risk scores [PRS] for bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia were also investigated.
Design, Setting and Participants: This study used phenotypic and genetic data from the Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden.
Main Outcomes and Measures: Hypomanic symptoms were assessed using the parent-rated Mood Disorders Questionnaire when the twins were 18. Bipolar disorder diagnosis and/or lithium prescription were ascertained from national registries for residents of Sweden. PRS for psychiatric disorders were calculated using independent discovery genetic data.
Results: 8,568 twin pairs aged 18 (54.7% females) were included in the study. The hypomania heritability estimate was 59% (95% Confidence Intervals [CI] 52%-64%) for males and 29% (95% CI 16%-44%) for females. Unique environmental factors accounted for 41% (95% CI 36%-47%) of the hypomania variance in males and 45% (95% CI 40%-50%) in females. Shared environmental factors were only detected for females and explained 26% (95% CI 13%-38%) of the variance. The heritability estimates were fairly consistent across different hypomania severity groups. Moderate genetic (.40, 95% CI .21-.58) and shared environmental (.41, 95% CI .03-.75) correlations between hypomania and diagnosed bipolar disorder were found. Hypomania was significantly associated with the PRS for schizophrenia and major depressive disorder but not bipolar disorder (bipolar I or II).
Conclusions and Relevance: Higher heritability for hypomania was found for males compared to females. The results highlight the shared aetiologies between hypomanic symptoms, bipolar disorder, major depression and schizophrenia in youths. Future research should focus on identifying specific shared genetic and environmental factors. These findings support a possible dimensional model of bipolar disorder, with hypomania representing a continuous trait underlying the disorder
Representations of Bangladeshis and internal ‘Others’ in the Indian press: the cases of Felani Khatun, Zohra Bibi and the ‘woman in red sari’
Get PDFThe India-Bangladesh border is the fifth longest border in the world. It is 4,096.7 km long and runs through five densely populated states in India. It is also the longest border India has with any of its neighbours. The nature of the border has created its own specific issues for bordering practices, as people cross borders informally and for variety of reasons (such as trade, farming, kinship, tourism to list a few). The response to unauthorised mobilities is always in terms of the need for more guards and physical presence, along with inhumane border control tactics and the use of force. Importantly, India’s borders and approach to the idea of security is mired in the colonial past, but also the communal and gendered ways in which the boundaries of the nation-state are represented in postcolonial India. These intersections of communal and gendered patterns are also evident in the media reporting of Muslim people and Bangladeshi migrants in India; nevertheless, it has not received sufficient academic attention. There is a dearth of literature which focuses on the representations of Bangladeshi migrants and Muslims in Indian media. This article explores how the media brings the Bangladeshi woman and the Muslim Indian woman together in a discourse which represents them as ‘other’, along the lines of gender, religion, nationality and migration status. The article utilises the existing body of work around borders, migration, media, and gender, which is developed further through the analysis of three well-publicised cases of the ‘woman in red sari’, Zohra Bibi and Felani Khatun. Their media representations bring to the fore three important themes for consideration: ‘madness’, criminality and cruelty
Curating the past: blood and money in London
Get PDFThis essay explores two exhibitions with which the authors were involved, in order to think through issues around curating and displaying medieval Anglo-Jewry history. The exhibitions were Blood: Uniting & Dividing (5 November 2015-28 February 2016) and Jews, Money, Myth (19 March-17 October 2019) both of which were developed at the Jewish Museum London in collaboration with the Pears Institute for the study of Anti-semitism at Birkbeck, University of London
Uncertainty of outcome, team quality or star players? What drives TV audience demand for UEFA Champions League football?
Get PDFResearch Question: This is the first article to empirically examine what drives TV audience demand for the UEFA Champions League (UCL) in major European markets. It then asks: How well does the tournament structure meet the preferences of TV viewers?
Research Methods: The article analyses the UCL from 2013/14 to 2018/19, considering TV viewing figures for all televised games from the group stages through to the finals in six nations – France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. It then analyses match data in the UCL since its most recent tournament restructure in 2003/04, along with Ballon d’Or results and UEFA Club Coefficient rankings, to assess the efficiency of the current tournament structure.
Results and findings: Uncertainty of outcome is not significantly associated with the size of TV audiences for the UCL, but both the presence of star players and team quality are. However, analysis of match data reveals that the current structure of the UCL does not maximise the number of star players or top clubs that progress to the latter stages of the tournament.
Implications: These findings enable UEFA and other sport competition organisers to make evidence-informed decisions about how to structure competitions, while balancing the needs of multiple stakeholders. They also contribute to the small but growing body of empirical work that seeks to identify the key drivers of TV demand for sport – increasingly the dominant form of revenue for many sport organisations
Exploring primary breast cancer survivors' self-management of sustained cancer-related cognitive impairment in the workplace
No full textObjective: Work plays a central role in return to a more 'normal' life among women diagnosed with primary breast cancer. However, ongoing cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI) and cancer-related sequelae continue to detrimentally impact workability. Only a few studies have explored the long-term consequences of CRCI and self-management coping strategies applied in the workplace. This study explored women's experiences of sustained post-treatment CRCI and its impact on workability beyond the initial return-to-work (RTW), as well as experiences of self-management coping strategies.
Method: Forty employed women with a diagnosis of primary breast cancer who were between 6 and 60 months post-active treatment completed a semi-structured telephone interview. A 'framework' analysis approach was used.
Results: Two superordinate themes were identified: 'Sustained consequences of CRCI' and 'Self-management coping strategies to support work-related performance'. We found that the impact of CRCI extends beyond the initial RTW. The adopted self-management coping strategies could provoke mixed emotions, including emotional distress. Reduced workability was experienced up to 5-years post-active-treatment.
Conclusion: Sustained CRCI induces negative emotions, fatigue and diminishes confidence reducing workability long into survivorship beyond RTW. The self-management coping strategies implemented to manage these sequelae generate mixed feelings, with some describing the strategies as problematic and of little benefit
Set-shifting-related basal ganglia deformation as a novel familial marker of obsessive-compulsive disorder
Get PDFThe symptoms of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) are suggestive of cognitive rigidity, and previous work identified impaired flexible responding on set-shifting tasks in such patients. The basal ganglia are central to habit learning and are thought to be abnormal in OCD, contributing to inflexible, rigid habitual patterns of behaviour. Here, we demonstrate that increased cognitive inflexibility, indexed by poor performance on the set-shifting task, correlated with putamen morphology, and that patients and their asymptomatic relatives had common curvature abnormalities within this same structure. The association between the structure of the putamen and the extradimensional errors was found to be significantly familial in OCD proband–relative pairs. The data implicate changes in basal ganglia structure linked to cognitive inflexibility as a familial marker of OCD. This may reflect a predisposing heightened propensity toward habitual response patterns and deficits in goal-directed planning
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