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Troubling environmental governance: citizen legal experiments with transboundary commons
Full text linkEnvironmental phenomena shed light on the fiction that inter-state borders constitute on some level, and the limitations of state-based environmental governance. Transboundary watersheds, in particular, flow across borders of different kinds, evincing the interdependence of water bodies, both human and nonhuman. The lack of cross-border comprehensive environmental governance imposes regional forms of inequity and inefficient forms of water protection. In Central America, to address such problems, citizens have created a legal prototype for how transboundary watersheds could be governed as a commons going forward. This endeavour has been led by Salvadorans, concerned as they are by their country’s position as a lower co-riparian and their significant interdependence with transboundary water bodies. I argue that, in addition to destabilizing established approaches to environmental governance, the legal prototype opens avenues for forms of earthly politics and multispecies justice by placing the reproduction of life, human and nonhuman, side by side
Unaccompanied Refugee Minors’ Journey to Greece: Displacement, Protection, and the Impact on Mental Health
Full text linkThis research analyses how varying protection gaps along an unaccompanied refugee minors’ (URMs) journey to Europe can impact their mental health, starting with fleeing their country of origin, through to the transit phase, and concluding with their arrival in Europe. The secondary analysis of existing literature highlights the importance of acknowledging factors at each stage that have the potential to negatively impact the mental health of URMs. My analysis examines one possible route to Europe that a URM may take in seeking asylum: starting with leaving Syria as country of origin, passing through Türkiye as a host state, before continuing onward movement to arrival in Greece. The analysis centres on the key themes of loss, inaccessibility, and restriction present within different stages that impact the mental well-being of URMs throughout their journey. The assessment of how the loss of support systems, accessibility barriers to needs and services, freedom, and autonomy during their journey create vulnerabilities for URMs that current protection frameworks are struggling to address. The analysis of existing protection frameworks, research, and case studies surrounding the topic of mental health of URMs at each stage will be tied together to give a comprehensive assessment of the mental health burdens of URMs as they make their journeys to Europe. The goal is to develop a better understanding of impacts on mental health within each stage of the journey, protection gaps along the way, and to identify ways in which these protection frameworks can be improved to be able to provide more proactive interventions to help mitigate the compounding mental health burden on URMs seeking safety in Europe
The Role of ‘Unity’ in Refugee Communities: A Case Study of Integration Mechanisms in Leeds (UK)
Full text linkFrom anecdotal discussions with members of refugee communities in Leeds, this research has developed the hypothesis of a refugee-made integration mechanism called ‘unity’ helping to support and further integrate these communities through the facilitation of social networks and accumulation of social capital. As such, this paper is an experiment assessing the positive impact on integration that ‘unity’ has for the communities who practice it. Thus, this study examines the role of ‘unity’ as a mechanism facilitating the creation and maintenance of social networks in refugee community organisations (RCOs) in Leeds.
In order to test the hypothesis, this research evidence-checks the role of ‘unity’ comparing it to established literature on integration mechanisms and social capital theories, additionally bringing case studies and evidence from interviews conducted with eight refugee leaders of the communities.
The key findings of this study confirmed that ‘unity’ plays two roles simultaneously as a mechanism for integration by acting as an ignition for new organisations and networks, but also by being the glue maintaining the community together and continuously offering support towards integration. ‘Unity’ operates within the ‘shared values’ of the communities and turns these values into sustained and valuable networks. The networks then become eased pathways to achieving ‘marks and means’, which is the last stage of a successful integration within frameworks used by research and policies in the global north
Historical Responsibility and the Mediation of Difficult Pasts
Full text linkMediating Memories and Responsibility brings together leading scholars and new voices in the interdisciplinary fields of memory studies, history, and cultural studies to explore the ways culture, and cultural representations, have been at the forefront of bringing the memory of past injustices to the attention of audiences for many years. Engaging with the darkest pages of twentieth-century European history, dealing with the legacy of colonialism, war crimes, genocides, dictatorships, and racism, the authors of this collection of critical essays address Europe’s ‘difficult pasts’ through the study of cultural products, examining historical narratives, literary texts, films, documentaries, theatre, poetry, graphic novels, visual artworks, material heritage, and the cultural and political reception of official government reports. Adopting an intermedial approach to the study of European history, the book probes the relationship between memory and responsibility, investigating what it means to take responsibility for the past and showing how cultural products are fundamentally entangled in this process
Review of Alexander Samuel Wilkinson, ed., Illustration and Ornamentation in the Iberian Book World, 1450–1800
Full text linkElizabeth Savage, review of Alexander Samuel Wilkinson, ed., Illustration and Ornamentation in the Iberian Book World, 1450–1800, in Jahrbuch für Kommunikationsgeschichte 25 (2024): 186–
‘Meeting the Gutenberg Bible in a Virtual Reading Room’, SHARP In the Classroom
No full textVirtual reading rooms (VRRs) started to become more common during closures due to Covid-19, as institutions increasingly created set-ups to allow for interactions with librarians who can facilitate live, responsive research, in real time, with physical objects. But they have not become embedded in research, teaching, research-led teaching, and public engagement. Much of the discussion about VRRs for research and teaching has focused on more common material, not least because research and teaching with highly valuable, rare, and restricted artefacts has by default been in person. This is especially the case for specialist research and teaching related to their materiality. But this model is exclusionary. It demands the health, personal and professional circumstances, and wealth for travel as well as connections to be granted access, while causing an ecological impact. This call for action explores how VRRs can be used to facilitate participant-directed interactions for advanced teaching and research into materiality of rare artefacts of print heritage, based on virtual object-based teaching with perhaps the most special of all special collections: the Gutenberg Bible
The Politics of Process Mezzotint: Jacob Christoff Le Blon’s Reputation, 1700–89
No full textJacob Christoff Le Blon invented translucent printing inks, which allowed for optical mixing, and a way to use them with three or more mezzotint plates to reproduce all ‘natural colours’. His revolutionary approach to colour printing in the 1700s is widely celebrated and considered a precursor to today’s CMYK colour system. But his career was a series of high-risk ventures, with each success followed by devastating failure and a fresh start, often abroad. His workshop’s direct legacy ended just 40 years after his death, after his student Jacques-Fabien Gautier-Dagoty tried to destroy his reputation and his last student’s students stopped producing trichomatic mezzotints. This essay assesses the reception of Le Blon’s printing techniques from his research and experimentation until he invented his method of optically mixing colour separations in 1710 in Amsterdam, through his careers in London and Paris until his death in 1741. It ends with the production of the final material in the direct legacy of his workshops around 1790. It draws on Le Blon’s writings, advertisements, and Gautier-Dagoty’s public correspondence
Metacognition of Inferential Transitions
Full text linkA reasoning process is more than an unfolding causal chain. Although some thoughts cause others in virtue of their contents, paradigmatic cases of personal level inference involve something more, some appreciation that the conclusion follows from the premises. Both first-order processes and second-order beliefs have proven problematic or inadequate to account for the phenomenon. Thus, here I argue for an intermediate position, according to which an epistemic feeling, a form of procedural metacognition, plays this role. Extensive psychological research has shown that epistemic feelings are involved in monitoring many kinds of cognitive process, affecting how the processes unfold. Inferences may be no different. Inferences are also plausibly accompanied by an epistemic feeling, in particular a feeling of reliability or unreliability. Such a feeling accounts for the phenomenological datum. It can also play a significant epistemic role for the thinker
The Pre-Modern Manuscript Trade and its Consequences, ca. 1890-1945
Full text linkThis collection brings together current research into the development of the market for pre-modern manuscripts. Between 1890 and 1945 thousands of manuscripts made in Europe before 1600 appeared on the market. Many entered the collections in which they have remained, shaping where and how we encounter the books today. These collections included libraries that bear their founders’ names, as well as national and regional public libraries. The choices of the super-rich shaped their collections and determined what was available to those with fewer resources. In addition, wealthy collectors sponsored scholarship on their manuscripts and participated in exhibitions, raising the profile of some books. The volume examines the collectors, dealers, and scholars who engaged with pre-modern books, and the cultural context of the manuscript trade in this era
The spectacle of production: a Roman imperial winery at the Villa of the Quintilii, Rome
Full text linkThe elites of many past cultures have sought to romanticise agricultural labour—often the source of their wealth and hence their status. A recently discovered winery at the Villa of the Quintilii on the Via Appia Antica, near Rome, provides only the second known example from the Graeco-Roman world of an opulent wine production complex built to facilitate vinicultural ‘spectacle’. The authors present the architectural and decorative form of the winery and illustrate how the annual vintage was reimagined as ‘theatrical’ performance. Dating to the mid third century AD, the complex illuminates how ancient elites could fuse utilitarian function with ostentatious luxury to fashion their social and political status