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Guest post: full carbon pricing, average carbon intensity and the Global Steel and Aluminium Arrangement: in conversation with Bixuan Xu and Aaron Cosbey
Get PDFSynthesise this: integrating innovation governance and EU regulation of synthetic biology
Get PDFResponsible innovation (RI) is an innovation governance framework, developed by Science and Technology Studies (STS), which seeks to transform innovation processes. While legal academia has derived valuable insights from STS for regulating technology, it has largely not considered the implications of developments on RI for the law. This article aims to address this using EU governance of synthetic biology (synbio) as a case study. It highlights how the existing regulatory framework struggles to accommodate the diverse issues synbio raises and explores hybrid approaches using soft mechanisms to enhance the effectiveness of hard law in governing technology. Considering the entire ‘governance continuum’ as a whole, the article argues firstly that while such hybrid approaches offer potential for implementing RI, they are currently limited, and secondly that for RI to transform innovation processes, hard law must also adapt. The article suggests finally that RI itself offers guidance for addressing those two needs
In the canine archives of sex: Radclyffe Hall, Una Troubridge and their dogs
Get PDFHow does attention to dogs open up understanding of the queer, and more specifically, the Sapphic past? And what can modern Sapphic dog culture in turn tell us about the racialized formation of the ‘special bond’ between humans and their dogs? This article examines the forgotten enmeshments of Sapphic and pedigree dog cultures in early twentieth-century England. It takes as its case study one of the best-known couples of Sapphic modernity, Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge, and their dachshunds, Wotan and Thorgils. Bringing into dialogue scholarship on the history of sexuality and animal history it traces the historical footprint of these dogs and the people around them. I argue that what I call the ‘canine archive of sex’ – a broad range of documents including show catalogues, newspaper reports, fiction and scientific writings – offers new insights into Hall’s and Troubridge’s own lives and the wider circle of unmarried women involved in dog shows, alone and as couples. If centring historical dogs thus aids the recovery of historically marginalized lives, it furthermore reveals that modern pedigree culture, and the related championing of canine breeds, were circumscribed by class and racial thinking in a way that shaped understanding of the human-canine relationship
The TRansforming Institutions by Gendering contents and Gaining Equality in Research (TRIGGER): project report
Get PDFThe TRansforming Institutions by Gendering contents and Gaining Equality in Research (TRIGGER) was a project designed to understand the underrepresentation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths and Medicine (STEMM) subjects in academia, and the institutional changes needed. TRIGGER was an applied five-country research project funded by the European Union which ran from 2014 to 2017, and Birkbeck College (University of London) was allocated €400,000 to research and address the nature and causes of underlying gender inequality in STEMM fields.
In 2014 nine actions were drawn up to drive the project, designed to reinforce Birkbeck College’s 2012 Bronze Award from Athena Swan (a scheme that recognises UK universities committed to gender equality in STEMM), and the Aurora programme (a leadership scheme devoted to women in UK higher education)
Engaged scholarship: addressing regional inequalities in innovation opportunities for BAME and disabled entrepreneurs
Get PDFTwo studies conducted by CIMR researchers on regional inequalities in support for entrepreneurs with disabilities and from ethnically diverse backgrounds have helped to aid understanding of the importance of context for entrepreneurial support for both groups. The first study was funded by the Regional Studies Association (2020-2021). The second was supported by an Impact Grant from Birkbeck’s School of Business, Economics and Informatics (BEI) (2021).
We found wonderful examples of best practice in the formal support networks which provide a wide range of services supporting their beneficiaries’ personal and professional development, including their entrepreneurial skills. Some distinctive features of the networks included mentorship schemes, integration services and mental health support tailored to the needs of the target group. The main challenges for the networks identified were access to finance and disabled participants’ access to support services
Exploring the impact of COVID-19 on employees’ boundary management and work-life balance
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic altered the ways academics work and live by creating a context during the spring of 2020 when working from home was largely mandatory and where, for cohabiting workers, the home as workplace was simultaneously occupied by all household members during working hours (and beyond). Using a multi-method qualitative approach, we examine how academics experienced working from home during the unprecedented circumstances imposed by the first UK lockdown and social distancing measures. Our findings show that a working arrangement commonly termed ‘flexible’ – working from home – can actually reduce flexibility in a context of mandatory implementation, accompanied by the removal of instrumental and emotional support structures such as childcare and face-to-face (physical) social gatherings. Intensified workloads, increased employer monitoring, social disconnection and blurred boundaries between work and personal life collectively generate the reduction of employees’ perceived flexibility-ability. Experiences may be particularly negative for those with low flexibility-willingness, whose pre-pandemic preference was to separate work and home as much as possible. Employee efforts to assert agency in this context include establishing ‘micro-borders’ and using time-based strategies to create ‘controlled integration’. We discuss implications for border theory and outline directions for future research
Children’s effortful control skills, but not their prosocial skills, relate to their reactions to classroom noise
Get PDFEnvironmental noise is one of the main sources of pollution in today’s modern world. Health effects associated with noise depend on both environmental exposure and individuals’ noise sensitivity. However, still little is known as to why some children are more noise sensitive than others. Studies to date have focused on adult populations and have not considered both cognitive and personality factors when explaining noise sensitivity. The current research investigates individual differences in noise sensitivity among elementary school children, with the aim of shedding light on its underlying mechanisms. Study 1 (n = 112) validated a novel questionnaire assessing children’s reactions to classroom noise against two measures of noise sensitivity that are commonly used in adult populations. Study 2 (n = 237) investigated how children’s reactions to classroom noise covaried with their effortful control and prosocial skills, both measured through a teacher report. Prosocial skills were not related to children’s reactions to noise. However, children with lower effortful control skills reported more negative reactions to classroom noise. Given the importance of effortful control skills to succeed at school, children at risk of school difficulty might also be the ones who are particularly vulnerable to noise
The invention of the social? Debating the scope of politics in the Greek polis from the later Classical to the early Roman period
Get PDFThis paper applies to ancient Greece an approach to modern political thinking developed by P. Rosanvallon: the integration of philosophical texts with the most everyday documents to better grasp a society’s understanding of its political life. For ancient Greece the more everyday evidence of cities’ inscriptions, especially their collective decisions published on stone, can help to modify our understanding of Greek political thinking. The paper focusses on the example of changing ideas about the nature of political and private life – and especially the space between them – in the Greek cities of the Roman period. In an approach very influential on modern political theory and interpretations of ancient Greek society, Classical Athenian democrats and philosophers had tended to insist on a sharp binary distinction between public or political life, on the one hand, and private life, on the other. This left little space for a notion of an intermediate third space of polis life, similar to a ‘social sphere’ or ‘civil society’, in which public and private interactions and motivations were thoroughly intermingled. This pattern remained dominant in the Hellenistic and Roman period, but, after the Roman conquest, certain Greek citizens and intellectuals developed, above all in inscriptions, a much more explicit, complex and subtle notion of ‘social life’ between politics and private life, sometimes describing it with new words such as synanastrophe and symbiosis. The paper concludes by asking what the different ancient concepts and interpretations discussed here can contribute to current historiographical debates about the nature of the Greek city after c. 146 BC, especially about how to move beyond the traditional picture of ‘depoliticisation’ now that recent studies have shown the continued vibrancy of civic political institutions and debates. The conclusion also calls into question the orthodox narrative of the development of ideas of ‘the social’ or ‘civil society’ over many centuries up to the modern age
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