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Access, restrictions and readership in early modern parish libraries
Get PDFThis article explores the collections and accessibility of parish libraries in early modern England and the subjects in which their readers were most interested. The period covered begins with the 1558 accession of Elizabeth I, which preceded by only a few years the establishment of the first post-Reformation parish library, and ends with the Parochial Libraries Act of 1709, which ensured that libraries could not be dismantled and dispersed without permission from the appropriate authorities. This article argues that parish libraries were established in this period to provide people of gentry rank and below with a religious education and that, despite previous historians’ arguments to the contrary, the works in these collections were appropriate to the intended audience. It further contends that despite physical access restrictions imposed on these libraries by their founders, their books were read, and that readers’ interests focused on four themes that were central to early modern Protestantism.Peer reviewe
Youth and internationalism in the twentieth century : an introduction
Get PDFThis essay introduces a special issue on the complex and contradictory ways in which young activists and youth organisations encountered and experienced internationalism. It argues for the need to pay greater attention to the ambiguous encounters – involving seemingly benevolent aims but also blind-spots and prejudices – that were created by transnational youth mobilities and by young people’s participation in international ventures. We first consider meanings of ‘youth’ within different twentieth-century contexts and comment on the transnational mobilities in which young people participated. We then outline how youth-based internationalism took different shapes, discussing its left-wing and Christian manifestations in particular, and noting how internationalism was articulated through different forms of collective action. The essay makes a case for combining perspectives from social and transnational history to demonstrate the complex character of internationalism, which different groups of young people experienced as both empowering and exclusionary.Peer reviewe
Among‐species variation in six decades of changing migration timings explained through ecology, life‐history and local migratory abundance
Get PDFWe thank all Fair Isle residents for their long-term support, and W.T.S. Miles and I.J. Andrews for database construction and management. V.R.D was funded by a UK NERC SUPER DTP PhD studentship supported by University of Aberdeen and Fair Isle Bird Observatory Trust.Species exploiting seasonal environments must alter timings of key life‐history events in response to large‐scale climatic changes in order to maintain trophic synchrony with required resources. Yet, substantial among‐species variation in long‐term phenological changes has been observed. Advancing from simply describing such variation towards predicting future phenological responses requires studies that rigorously quantify and explain variation in the direction and magnitude of changing timings across diverse species in relation to key ecological and life‐history variables. Accordingly, we fitted multi‐quantile regressions to 59 years of multi‐species data on spring and autumn bird migration timings through northern Scotland. We demonstrate substantial variation in changes in timings among 72 species, and tested whether such variation can be explained by species ecology, life‐history and changes in local abundance. Consistent with predictions, species that advanced their migration timing in one or both seasons had more seasonally restricted diet types, fewer suitable breeding habitat types, shorter generation lengths and capability to produce multiple offspring broods per year. In contrast, species with less seasonally restricted diet types and that produce single annual offspring broods, showed no change. Meanwhile, contrary to prediction, long‐distance and short‐distance migrants advanced migration timings similarly. Changes in migration timing also varied with changes in local migratory abundance, such that species with increasing seasonal abundance apparently altered their migration timing, whilst species with decreasing abundance did not. Such patterns broadly concur with expectation given adaptive changes in migration timing. However, we demonstrate that similar patterns can be generated by numerical sampling given changing local abundances. Any apparent phenology‐abundance relationships should, therefore, be carefully validated and interpreted. Overall, our results show that migrant bird species with differing ecologies and life‐histories showed systematically differing phenological changes over six decades contextualised by large‐scale environmental changes, potentially facilitating future predictions and altering temporal dynamics of seasonal species co‐occurrences.Peer reviewe
Giovanni Gentile : the heir of the Risorgimento
No full textThis thesis offers a novel interpretation of Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944) as the ‘Heir of the Risorgimento’. While Gentile is mostly neglected in the Anglophone scholarship, existing literature tends to focus exclusively on readings of Gentile qua philosopher or ‘Philosopher of Fascism’. In doing so, scholars have, for the most part, overlooked Gentile’s writings on the history of Italian thought, as well as his journalistic activity during the First World War.
In my reading, Gentile subscribes to the prototype of Risorgimento intellectual, from whom he inherits a number of convictions: the immanence of philosophy in life, the practice of reconstructing the history of Italian thought, and the centrality of culture to political life. The unitary reading of Gentile I propose in this thesis, shows that Gentile, much like the Risorgimento thinkers he admired and studied at length, was concerned with establishing unity amongst Italians.
I do not interpret Gentile’s political character as a feature that appears with his adhesion to the Fascist Regime, but as a profound trait of his intellectual personality, pervading his philosophy and historical analysis. Therefore, rather than studying segments of Gentile’s oeuvre in isolation, I seek to connect the different areas of his corpus, as well as explaining his political allegiance to the Fascism
Prominence, promotion and positioning of the ‘Thesis by publication’ in six countries
Get PDFThe international nature of doctoral education creates interesting tensions where national systems, institutional policies, disciplinary customs, individual supervisor preferences, and doctoral researcher needs meet. The Thesis by Publication (TBP), a model where published works are included within the thesis, is available to doctoral researchers in many disciplines and institutions, but it is not a universally accepted format or approached in a homogeneous way. Policy has been known to shape practice, yet we know little about how institutional policies shape TBP practices across different national contexts. This study presents a content analysis of policy documents related to the TBP in public universities across six countries: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Our goal is to understand the prevalence of the TBP and related policy documentation in different contexts, and how the model is promoted and positioned within the doctoral landscape. Findings from our study challenge the often-stated notion that the TBP is a universally understood format. Our findings also show the risks in the absence of explicit policies, as well as the possible inequalities that may arise as a result of a lack of policy transparency and synergy within and across contexts.Peer reviewe
Rome/rea : three-year, tri-color timeseries photometry of the Galactic Bulge
Get PDFFunding: YT acknowledges the support of DFG priority program SPP 1992 “Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets” (TS 356/3-1). JW acknowledges the support of DFG priority program SPP 1992 "Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets" (WA 1047/11-1). SM and WZ were partly supported by the National Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 12133005). RFJ acknowledges support for this project provided by ANID’s Millennium Science Initiative through grant ICN12_009, awarded to the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS), and by ANID’s Basal project FB210003.The ROME/REA (Robotic Observations of Microlensing Events/Reactive Event Assessment) Survey was a Key Project at Las Cumbres Observatory (hereafter LCO) which continuously monitored 20 selected fields (3.76 sq.deg.) in the Galactic Bulge throughout their seasonal visibility window over a three-year period, between March 2017 and March 2020. Observations were made in three optical passbands(SDSS−g′, −r′, −i′), and LCO’s multi-site telescope network enabled the survey to achieve a typical cadence of ∼10 hrs in i′ and ∼15 hrs in g′ and r′. In addition, intervals of higher cadence (<1 hr) data were obtained during monitoring of key microlensing events within the fields. This paper describes the Difference Image Analysis data reduction pipeline developed to process these data, and the process for combining the photometry from LCO’s three observing sites in the Southern Hemisphere. The full timeseries photometry for all ∼8 million stars, down to a limiting magnitude of i ∼ 18 mag is provided in the data release accompanying this paper, and samples of the data are presented for exemplar microlensing events, illustrating how the tri-band data are used to derive constraints on the microlensing source star parameters, a necessary step in determining the physical properties of the lensing object. The timeseries data also enables a wealth of additional science, for example in characterizing long-time scale stellar variability, and a few examples of the data for known variables are presented.Peer reviewe
Piezoelectric charge coefficient of halide perovskites
Get PDFFunding: LKJ acknowledges funding from UKRI-FLF through MR/T022094/1.Halide perovskites are an emerging family of piezoelectric and ferroelectric materials. These materials can exist in bulk, single-crystal, and thin-film forms. In this article, we review the piezoelectric charge coefficient (dij) of single crystals, thin films, and dimension-tuned halide perovskites based on different measurement methods. Our study finds that the (dij) coefficient of the bulk and single-crystal samples is mainly measured using the quasi-static (Berlincourt) method, though the piezoforce microscopy (PFM) method is also heavily used. In the case of thin-film samples, the (dij) coefficient is dominantly measured by the PFM technique. The reported values of dij coefficients of halide perovskites are comparable and even better in some cases compared to existing materials such as PZT and PVDF. Finally, we discuss the promising emergence of quasi-static methods for thin-film samples as well.Peer reviewe
Post-Soviet dependence with benefits? Critical geopolitics of Belarus’s and Tajikistan’s strategic alignment with Russia
Get PDFFunding: This work was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) fellowship funding [grant number 12B9422N] and FWO funding for research stays abroad [grant number V463023N].The 2022 invasion of Ukraine has stimulated a debate on Russia’s relations with states which were part of the Soviet Union. Our article contributes to this discussion by focusing on Russia’s two ‘strategic partners’, Belarus and Tajikistan, and exploring these countries’ perspectives. We develop a critical geopolitics framework which accounts for time, multi-level power dynamics and culture. The article provides a new understanding of the dynamics of geopolitical knowledge beyond the West, analysing how Belarusian and Tajik political elites’ decision-making towards Russia has evolved from the late Soviet period until now. While both governments appear to be dependent on Russia and, consequently, generally supportive of its politics in the global arena, the article argues that this alignment has been highly strategic. Throughout the years, Belarusian and Tajik decision makers have skilfully navigated power and economic asymmetries with Russia by using their geographical location and Russia’s neo-imperial mindset to their benefit.Peer reviewe
Moments of willing : on the existential power to will a change to self and world
Get PDF‘Will’ might be a term for the energy that moves individual lives forward. ‘Wilfulness’ references character: how exercises of will characterise an individual’s life. ‘Intention’ focuses on the aim of an act of willing – while not everything one wills is what one intends – and ‘desire’ refers to the wish for something – but not necessarily something one either wills or intends to happen. ‘Motivation’ describes the reason behind a particular act of willing. All these terms might be distinguished from ‘agency’, a more general capacity to have an effect on the world and also to react to the world. A conceptual complex such as the above, under the rubric of an individual’s ‘existential power’, introduces the possibility of better doing justice to the phenomenological complexity of the conscious lives of research subjects, and also the dignity of that living. The life-history of one Rickey Hirsch is briefly adduced as case-study.Peer reviewe
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