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Book review: The Making of a Left-Behind Class Educational Stratification, Meritocracy and Widening Participation by Fred Powell, Margaret Scanlon, Patrick Leahy, Hilary Jenkinson and Olive Byrne
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Digital twins and their potential use in democratising urban futures.
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Measuring Collective Action Intention Toward Gender Equality Across Cultures
Get PDFCollective action is a powerful tool for social change and is fundamental to women and girls’ empowerment on a societal level. Collective action towards gender equality could be understood as intentional and conscious civic behaviors focused on social transformation, questioning power relations, and promoting gender equality through collective efforts. Various instruments to measure collective action intentions have been developed, but to our knowledge none of the published measures were subject to invariance testing. We introduce the gender equality collective action intention (GECAI) scale and examine its psychometric isomorphism and measurement invariance, using data from 60 countries ( N = 31,686). Our findings indicate that partial scalar measurement invariance of the GECAI scale permits conditional comparisons of latent mean GECAI scores across countries. Moreover, this metric psychometric isomorphism of the GECAI means we can interpret scores at the country-level (i.e., as a group attribute) conceptually similar to individual attributes. Therefore, our findings add to the growing body of literature on gender based collective action by introducing a methodologically sound tool to measure collective action intentions towards gender equality across cultures
Model-Free Linear Noncausal Optimal Control of Wave Energy Converters via Reinforcement Learning
Get PDFThis article introduces a novel reinforcement learning (RL) method for wave energy converters (WECs), which
directly generates linear noncausal optimal control (LNOC)
policies on continuous action space. Unlike other existing WEC
RL algorithms looking at the problem mainly from a learning
perspective, the proposed RL approach adopts a control-theoretic
approach by delving into the underlying WEC energy maximization (EM) optimal control problem (OCP). This leads to
control-informed decisions on choosing the RL state, as well as
developing the RL structure. The proposed model-free LNOC
(MF-LNOC) offers substantial advantages, including significantly
improved performance due to the use of noncausal information,
a simplified RL with linear actor and quadratic critic structures,
and remarkable fast convergence speeds, achieved using less than
150 s of data points, for a benchmarked point absorber, which can
be further shortened using the replay technique. This reduction
in training time allows for controller reconfiguration in pace with
sea changes. Demonstrative numerical simulations are presented
to verify the efficacy of the proposed methods. The proposed
MF-LNOC also shows robustness against wave prediction inaccuracies and changing sea conditions. The MF-LNOC methodology
can be highly attractive for WEC developers who want to design
an efficient and reliable controller for WECs but also hope to
avoid the challenge of establishing a control-oriented model that
can preserve high fidelity over a wide range of sea condition
Hybrid Optimal Control for an Active Mechanical Motion Rectifier for Wave Energy Converters via Separation Principle
Get PDFThe wave energy field is characterised by its continuous growth and development in research and technology. Over recent decades, different application issues have hindered the worldwide implementation of wave energy devices, and only a few have reached the commercialisation stage. Some of these inherent challenges have driven the creation of innovative wave energy system designs. In particular, active mechanical motion rectification (AMMR) is a novel proposal to rectify the energy flux in wave energy devices. The objective of active rectification is twofold. On the one hand, it increases the overall system efficiency by achieving a higher average output velocity in the generator. On the other hand, the AMMR introduces a new variable in the control design: A switching law to connect and disconnect the generator from the wave capture structure. Thus, the control design possesses two degrees of freedom, significantly increasing the complexity of the energy-maximising power take-off control problem. In this paper, the problem of designing an optimal control philosophy for an AMMR-based wave capture system is addressed. The problem is solved by proving that, a separation principle applies, and that the optimal control solution over a fixed interval, is independent of the optimal switching sequence selection. To illustrate the utility of the analytical results, a numerical example for a flap-type wave energy converter, utilising an AMMR-based power take-off, is presented
Role and Findings of Arts-based Research in the DANCING Project. ‘…Usually in the world it is the other way around…’
Get PDFThis report outlines and discusses the arts-based research undertaken within the larger multi-method project ‘Protecting the Right to Culture of Persons with Disabilities and Enhancing Cultural Diversity through European Union Law: Exploring New Paths (DANCING)’, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and based at Maynooth University (MU), Ireland.[1] DANCING has been running from 1 September 2020 and will be completed by 31 August 2025.
Notably, DANCING deploys arts-based research alongside socio-legal and doctrinal research to explore the right of persons with disabilities to take part in cultural life as an essential aspect of enhancing cultural diversity in the European Union (EU). Arts-based research (i.e. qualitative research that employs the premises, procedures, and principles of the arts) has been used in the DANCING project as a data collection method to understand barriers and facilitators to cultural participation. In particular, arts-based research has helped identify what features are experienced as exclusionary by people experiencing different types of disability, both as audience and as artists, and to advance the understanding of what facilitates cultural participation. Arts-based research has also been vital to gauge a deeper understanding of key concepts of disability law, such as accessibility. Further, it has provided an actual demonstration of the cultural diversity brought by and inherent to disability
Achieving Regional Equality
Get PDFGoverning from the metropolitan scale is not a
concept that is widely comprehended in Ireland.
And yet, the 2018 National Planning Framework
(NPF) statutorily mandates Ireland’s three regional
assemblies to develop what they term Metropolitan
Area Strategic Plans (MASP) for each of their
respective regional cities. This is a challenge for the
three regional assemblies because the purpose and
power of the metropolitan scale and its designation
is little understood amongst planners, policymakers
and the general public. Additionally in a staunchly
centralised Ireland, the regional assemblies as
governance bodies are under-recognised and underappreciated.
When done correctly, various opportunities can
stem from city-regional governance. Amongst
development scholars, strengthening lower tiers
of governance is beneficial particularly to identify
places in need of policy attention. However, in order
to effectively legitimise meso-level governance and
to successfully implement the Regional Spatial and
Economic Strategies (RSES) and MASPs, people’s
awareness of how the city-regional scale can benefit
them and their locality must first be addressed.
This policy report is based on research that took
place between September 2021 – December 2022.
Funded jointly by the Irish Research Council (IRC)
and the Southern Regional Assembly (SRA), the
research focuses on Ireland’s Southern Region, its
Assembly (SRA) and its executive (SRA Executive)
as a case study to observe and document the
relatively new process of ‘metropolitanisation’ in
Ireland in order to offer insight into implementatio
Hidden in Plain Sight: Attending to Women’s Amateur Filmmaking Histories at the Irish Film Archive
Get PDFThis article aims to identify various ways in which women’s amateur filmmaking becomes obscured in both film archives and in the academic scholarship on film and filmmaking. Recognising that amateur film is marginalised and undervalued in relation to commercial and professional filmmaking, the article uses the case study of one Irish amateur filmmaker to identify the processes and practices that have resulted in her work being obscured and overlooked. The filmmaker, Sr Maureen MacMahon, was practicing amateur filmmaking from the 1960s to the 1970s and her work is held at the Irish Film Archive. Investigation of Sr Maureen’s filmmaking drew from a variety of sources including the films and film materials, film metadata recorded at the archive, newspaper archives, an archive held at Sr Maureen’s religious order and an interview with Sr Maureen. Analyses of these materials has resulted in three findings: firstly, the dispersal of materials and information pertaining to Sr Maureen across multiple sites posed challenges for our construction of a coherent narrative about her; secondly, Sr Maureen turned her hand to many creative and pedagogic activities beyond filmmaking, and, in her own estimation, she was an arts educator more than a filmmaker; and, finally, the films are not easily categorised as they are generically and stylistically diverse, making auteurist approaches difficult. Drawing from these findings we discuss the challenges that this creates for foregrounding women’s contributions to film
Women's television histories: Locating women's role in emerging and developing international television.
Get PDFThis special issue aims to take steps towards the internationalisation of scholarship on women’s television by drawing together articles on different national contexts of television and detailing the experiences of women in various national and historical television ecologies and economies. This is, of course, merely a step, since no one issue can attend to the breadth of women’s experiences in the many national television organisations and roles. Scholarship in anglophone, Global North and Western countries has been enabled because of the confluence of various factors including: fairly stable employment prospects for academics comparable, for example, to Global South scholars; the availability of funding for such scholars to undertake travel to conferences and network with scholars; the availability of research on the topic of women’s media histories because it is in English language and universities have the library resources. Therefore, the history of women’s work in these national contexts has begun to be told but there is a pressing need for attention to, and recognition of, scholarship beyond the limited context of anglophone territories
The Erotic Webcam Industry in Brazil: Moral Disputes and Controversies A Iindústria Erótica de Webcam no Brasil: Disputas E Contenciosos Morais
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Este artigo discute os contenciosos morais presentes na indústria erótica de webcam brasileira, que visam distinguir a prática de camming da prostituição e da venda de sexo. Tais disputas buscam movimentar o camming dentro da divisão hierárquica do trabalho sexual, posicionando-o como um exemplo positivo de serviço erótico. O argumento se embasa nos estudos em dirty works , que diagnosticam táticas de trabalhadores para normalizarem e administrarem as máculas morais de ocupações estigmatizadas. Os resultados veem de etnografia digital (2016-2020) nas duas plataformas de camming nacionais (Câmera Hot e Câmera Privê) e de 15 entrevistas em profundidade com trabalhadoras mulheres cisgênero. Conclui-se que as performers desenvolvem três estratégias para tentar normalizar o camming: criar um léxico para a atividade, distinguir sexo de erotismo virtual e sinalizar as singularidades do camming . Tais estratégias estão fundamentadas em convenções de gênero e sexualidade, que são acionadas como balizas para refletir sobre o valor do camming .
Abstract
This paper addresses the moral controversies of the Brazilian erotic webcam industry, which aim to distinguish the camming practice from prostitution and sex sale. Such disputes seek to move camming within the hierarchical division of sex labour, positioning it as a positive example of erotic service. The argument is based on dirty works scholarship, which diagnoses workers’ tactics to normalise and manage the moral taints of stigmatised occupations. The results come from digital ethnography (2016-2020) developed on the two national camming platforms (Camera Hot and Camera Prive) and 15 in-depth interviews with cisgender women workers. The study concludes that performers develop three strategies in order to normalise camming: they create a lexicon for the activity, they distinguish sex from virtual eroticism, and they substantiate camming particularities. Such strategies rely on gender and sexuality conventions, which are summoned as guideposts to reflect on camming value