Quarterly Review of Research - April 2023

Arts and Humanities

• Wainwright, Leon and Asquith, Wendy (2023). ‘Enfin le moment de célébrer? L’art des Caraïbes à la Biennale de Venise’ [A Moment to Celebrate? Art of the Caribbean at the Venice Biennale]. Faire Monde(s), 3 pp. 40–68.

  In recent years, the sporadic presence of various Caribbean national pavilions at the Venice Biennale – Jamaica (2001), Haiti (2011), Bahamas (2013), Grenada (2015, 2017, 2019), Antigua and Barbuda (2017, 2019), Dominican Republic (2019) – has on each occasion been almost unanimously applauded as marking some sort of moment of ‘arrival’ or ‘becoming’ for artists of the Caribbean, and for the local institutional structures and professionals that surround them. This article critically explores what the gains are of such a presence beyond the fleeting ‘Venice effect’ – mega-hyped exposure to international audiences, curators, gallerists and other market actors. The alleged benefits-for-all of contemporary cultural exchange, in an expanding globalizing field such as Venice, are by no means shared equally, and such discourses gloss over layers of uneven privilege embedded within the institution.

• Benatti, Francesca; Vignale, François; Antonini, Alessio and King, Edmund (2022). Reading in Europe—Challenges and lessons learned from the case studies of the READ-IT project. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (Early Access)./p>

  This article reflects on the challenges of combining humanistic and computational research perspectives within the framework of a multicultural and multilingual Digital Humanities project. It analyses the approach of Reading Europe Advanced Data Investigation Tool, a European project funded by JPI-CH, to the framing of its case studies within a wider perspective of interdisciplinary collaboration between humanities, digital humanities, and data science scholars. The analysis of sources ranging chronologically from the 18th century to the present and technologically from manuscript diaries to social media defines a new framework for the history of reading focused on the centrality of the human experience of the reader, and on the evolution of the medium through which reading is conducted. The interdisciplinary collaboration of the project develops a shared laboratory space where practices, languages, and research cultures converge to address both microscope and macroscope questions on the history of reading.

• Houghton, Frances (2023). ‘Alien Seamen’ or ‘Imperial Family’? Race, Belonging and British Sailors of Colour in the Royal Navy, 1939–47. The English Historical Review (Early Access).

  In October 1939, the British Government lifted a formal ‘colour bar’ to military service for the duration of hostilities. Yet despite the state’s rhetoric of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic ‘People’s War’, racial discrimination continued to pervade Britain’s wartime armed forces. In particular, the Royal Navy (RN) fiercely resisted opening up naval service to eligible British men of colour. Providing a fresh critical perspective on wartime Admiralty records, this article establishes that the Second World War catalysed a significant shift from a codified de jure structure of racial exclusion in the Navy, to a more informal system that was rooted in a complex and diffuse web of de facto racist recruiting practices. It demonstrates the ways in which, between the temporary removal of the formal ‘colour bar’ to naval service in 1939 and its permanent abolition in 1947, the RN enacted a series of complicated covert mechanisms that were designed to shut out men of colour by stealth as far as possible. The article also scrutinises a number of letters of protest that were written to the Admiralty on behalf of Black West Indian, Maltese and Anglo-Indian individuals who were denied entry to the Service. These letter-writers collectively sought to expose the Navy’s hidden racial discrimination and to challenge, with varying degrees of individual success, the naval institution’s continued practices of racial exclusion. Overall, this article ascertains how complex and contested meanings of ‘race’, national ‘belonging’ and ‘Britishness’ were invested in the Royal Navy during the Second World War.

• Younger, Neil (2022). Religion and politics in Elizabethan England: The life of Sir Christopher Hatton. Politics, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

  This book reassesses the religious politics of Elizabethan England through a study of one of its most unusual but most neglected figures, Sir Christopher Hatton. Born in relative obscurity, Hatton rose to power through the court as the consummate royal favourite. As a privy councillor and later lord chancellor, Hatton was a key member of Elizabeth’s innermost circle, serving alongside Lord Burghley, the Earl of Leicester and Sir Francis Walsingham. Yet he stands out from his contemporaries in one crucial respect: throughout his life, he was the friend and patron of numerous Catholics, among his family, his servants, and his patronage network at court and in the country. He protected many within the English Catholic community, and his network extended even to Catholics involved in plots against the queen. Many of his contemporaries believed Hatton to be a Catholic himself, or at the very least something close to a Catholic. At the same time, he was a key ally of those within the Church of England who most vehemently opposed puritanism. Hatton thus stands out as a highly unusual Elizabethan minister, and this book contends that his powerful influence over the queen was a significant factor in restraining the policy preferences of Elizabeth’s more strongly Protestant advisors. _Religion and politics in Elizabethan England_ traces Hatton’s life and career, his relationship with Elizabeth, his networks, and his part in the major policy debates of the reign. Overall, it argues that Hatton’s career casts doubt on claims that Elizabeth’s regime was exclusively Protestant in character, and suggests that Catholics and Catholic sympathisers retained a voice in Elizabethan politics.

• Robson, James (2022). Aristophanes: Lysistrata. Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

  Lysistrata is the most notorious of Aristophanes' comedies. First staged in 411 BCE, its action famously revolves around a sex strike launched by the women of Greece in an attempt to force their husbands to end the war. With its risqué humour, vibrant battle of the sexes, and themes of war and peace, Lysistrata remains as daring and thought-provoking today as it would have been for its original audience in Classical Athens. Aristophanes: Lysistrata is a lively and engaging introduction to this play aimed at students and scholars of classical drama alike. It sets Lysistrata in its social and historical context, looking at key themes such as politics, religion and its provocative portrayal of women, as well as the play's language, humour and personalities, including the formidable and trailblazing Lysistrata herself. Lysistrata has often been translated, adapted and performed in the modern era and this book also traces the ways in which it has been re-imagined and re-presented to new audiences. As this reception history reveals, Lysistrata's appeal in the modern world lies not only in its racy subject matter, but also in its potential to be recast as a feminist, pacifist or otherwise subversive play that openly challenges the political and social status quo.

• Wakefield, Donna; McEvoy, Mel; Blackburn-Daniels, Sally and Campbell, Siobhan (2023). Tackling the NHS mental health crisis of working through the COVID-19 pandemic; pilot creative writing programme has potential to support wellbeing of recovering healthcare workers. Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (Early Access).

  This article outlines a collaborative co-research project bringing together trauma medics with Arts and Humanities researchers. The aim was to devise and implement a Creative Writing workshop series with frontline health care workers and to test this using a psychosocial scale. The results established the efficacy of Creative Writing as a means of mitigating stress and anxiety symptoms. The programme, which is low cost and replicable, is now seen as a possible tool for psychosocial support for NHS populations in ongoing crisis situations.

Psychology

• Albayrak‐Aydemir, Nihan and Gleibs, Ilka Helene (2022). A social‐psychological examination of academic precarity as an organizational practice and subjective experience. British Journal of Social Psychology (Early access).

  Research and teaching conditions have, particularly for those who are junior or from disadvantaged backgrounds, deteriorated considerably over the years in the higher education sector. Unequal opportunities in access and advancement in careers have led to increasing levels of precarity in the higher education sector. Although the concept of precarity has been grasped in many other disciplines, the social-psychological understanding of this concept remains unexplored. In this paper, we aim to develop a social-psychological understanding of precarity to examine how identity dynamics and intergroup relations, as well as associated organizational controls, reinforce inequality regimes and power structures that create precarious conditions in academia. In doing so, we use social identity theory and system justification theory under an inequality regime framework. We argue that even though change towards equality and equity in academia should be possible, it is difficult to achieve this because of entrenched identity interests by power holders and the perceived legitimacy of the existing system. Therefore, academic precarity should be recognized both as a subjective experience and as an organizational practice to make inequalities more visible and decrease the perceptions of legitimacy—and to eventually achieve a fundamental positive transformation in academia.

• Amer, Amena and Obradovic, Sandra (2022). Recognising recognition: Self‐other dynamics in everyday encounters and experiences. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 52(4) pp. 550–562.

  At the core of what makes humans, and their behaviour, social, is the interplay between self and other. Our identities, for example, are essential to our functioning as social beings as they allow us to make sense of ourselves, and others, across different contexts. We care about how others see us and achieving congruence between how we see ourselves, how we think relevant others see us, and indeed how relevant others actually see us in turn, becomes integral for achieving a positive sense of self. Therefore, humans require recognition from relevant others. This recognition can take many different forms, from legal recognition of one's rights in society, to social recognition of one's belonging to different groups. Moreover, the absence of recognition can lead to serious repercussions and consequences, resulting, on an individual level, in a reduced mode of being and feelings of exclusion, and on a social and political level, in tensions and conflict. The current special issue takes a multidisciplinary approach to contribute to the growing debates and discussions around the importance of understanding recognition and its role in social behaviour. As the introduction to this special issue, this paper argues that the concept of recognition enables a better understanding of how identification and belonging become entangled with power struggles and expressions of agency. Doing so leads us to conclude that a social psychology of identity and intra/intergroup relations which does not consider power relations, as bound up in processes of recognition and its denial, fails to consider the key processes and broader impact that exclusion, subtle or explicit, has on individuals' well-being, belonging and ability to act in the world.

• Cooper, Mick; Di Malta, Gina; Knox, Sarah; Oddli, Hanne and Swift, Joshua (2023). Patient Perspectives on Working with Preferences in Psychotherapy: A Consensual Qualitative Research Study. Psychotherapy Research, 2022 (Early Access).

  Assessing and accommodating patient preferences is integral to evidence-based practice. This qualitative study sought to explore patient perspectives and experiences of working with preferences in psychotherapy. Participants were 13 UK-based patients who had 24 or fewer sessions of a collaborative–integrative psychotherapy. Ten participants identified as female and three as male. Interviews were conducted at endpoint and analyzed using a team-based, consensual qualitative research approach. Three superordinate domains were developed: Preferences Themselves, Process of Working with Preferences in Psychotherapy, and Effect of Preference Work (or its Absence). Patients typically wanted leadership, challenge, and input from their psychotherapist, and an affirming style. Patients attributed the origin of their preferences to Preferences originated from patients’ personal history, characteristics, or circumstances; the present psychotherapy; or past episodes of psychotherapy. Some preferences changed over time. Preference work had positive effects on the therapeutic relationship and patients’ intrapersonal worlds; however, not accommodating patient preferences could also be beneficial. Our findings provide in-depth answers to a range of novel questions on preference work—the mechanisms by which preference work yields positive outcomes, factors that facilitate preference work, and origins of patients’ preferences—as well as helping to nuance previously established quantitative findings. Implications of these results for clinical training and practice are discussed.

• Coultas, Clare; Reddy, Geetha and Lukate, Johanna (2023). Towards a social psychology of precarity. British Journal of Social Psychology, 62(51) pp. 1–20.

  This article introduces the special issue ‘Towards a Social Psychology of Precarity’ that develops an orienting lens for social psychologists' engagement with the concept. As guest editors of the special issue, we provide a thematic overview of how ‘precarity’ is being conceptualized throughout the social sciences, before distilling the nine contributions to the special issue. In so doing, we trace the ways in which social psychologists are (dis)engaging with the concept of precarity, yet too, explore how precarity constitutes, and is embedded within, the discipline itself. Resisting disciplinary decadence, we collectively explore what a social psychology of precarity could be, and view working with/in precarity as fundamental to addressing broader calls for the social responsiveness of the discipline. The contributing papers, which are methodologically pluralistic and provide rich conceptualisations of precarity, challenge reductionist individualist understandings of suffering and coping and extend social science theorizations on precarity. They also highlight the ways in which social psychology remains complicit in perpetuating different forms of precarity, for both communities and academics. We propose future directions for the social psychological study of precarity through four reflexive questions that we encourage scholars to engage with so that we may both work with/in, and intervene against, ‘the precarious’.

• Mahendran, Kesi; Nieland, Sue; English, Anthony and Goodman, Simon (2022). No borders on a fragile planet: Introducing four lay models of social psychological precarity to support global human identification and citizenship.British Journal of Social Psychology (Early access).

  Measures such as Identification with all humanity (IWAH) and global identification and citizenship (GHIC) are positivity correlated with measures of humanitarianism, cosmopolitanism and environmental concern. Research using these measures suggests that most citizens have low-global identification scores. This article sheds light on this finding by investigating how global identification relates to precarity and migration (neither of which are measured in the IWAH/GHIC). The study conducted in England, Scotland and Sweden introduces a qualitative dialogical approach to GHIC. This involves measuring migration-mobility in dialogical interviews and controlling and removing borders on world maps—using an interactive world mapping task (N = 23). Participants articulate four social representations relating to a fragile earth, enduring colonial settler/native conflict, ingroup/outgroup conflict or, in contrast, a cooperative plentiful planet where borders are unnecessary. Such social representations demonstrate the importance of planetary consciousness and relate to four lay models of social psychological precarity related to intergroup competition, global conflict, economic rationality and human-made borders. In conclusion, all participants employ lay models of social psychological precarity when discussing sovereignty, migration and belonging. We recommend psychologists investigating GHIC include measures of social psychological precarity and migration-mobility.

• Matthews, C. M.; Mondloch, C. J.; Lewis-Dennis, F. and Laurence, S. (2022). Children’s ability to recognize their parent’s face improves with age. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 223, article no. 105480.

  Adults are experts at recognizing familiar faces across images that incorporate natural within-person variability in appearance (i.e., ambient images). Little is known about children's ability to do so. In the current study, we investigated whether 4- to 7-year-olds (n = 56) could recognize images of their own parent-a person with whom children have had abundant exposure in a variety of different contexts. Children were asked to identify images of their parent that were intermixed with images of other people. We included images of each parent taken both before and after their child was born to manipulate how close the images were to the child's own experience. When viewing before-birth images, 4- and 5-year-olds were less sensitive to identity than were older children; sensitivity did not differ when viewing images taken after the child was born. These findings suggest that with even the most familiar face, 4- and 5-year-olds have difficulty recognizing instances that go beyond their direct experience. We discuss two factors that may contribute to the prolonged development of familiar face recognition.

Social Sciences and Global Studies

• Cross, Charlotte and Giblin, John D. eds. (2022).Critical Approaches to Heritage for Development. Rethinking Development. Abingdon: Routledge.

  This book investigates the relationship between heritage and development, from the global visions articulated by UNESCO and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to local activism, livelihood innovations and political strategies employed in diverse countries of the Global South. In doing so, the book asks us to consider whose past and whose future is ultimately at stake in efforts to use heritage for development.

• Maiden, John (2023). Age of the Spirit: Charismatic Renewal, the Anglo-world and Global Christianity, 1945-1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  This expansive study offers an interpretation of the ‘new Pentecost’: the rise of charismatic Christianity, before, during, and after the ‘long 1960s’. It offers unrivalled analysis of charismatic music, books, television, conferences, personalities, community living, and controversies in the 1960s and 1970s. It looks forward, also, to the many global legacies of charismatic renewal, for example in relation to the politics of sexuality in the Anglican Communion and support for President Donald J. Trump.

• Rutledge, Emilie and Polyzos, Efstathios (2022). The rise of GCC-East Asian trade: A cointegration approach to analysing trade relationships.The World Economy (Early Access).

  Using a new approach to analysing trade relationships, this article analyses how the continuing rise of China has allowed the Gulf Cooperation Council bloc to diversify its economic and political dependence away from North America and ‘look East’ for new strategic alliances.

• Marino, Alessandra and Cheney, Thomas (2022). Centring Environmentalism in Space Governance: Interrogating Dominance and Authority Through a Critical Legal Geography of Outer Space. Space Policy (Early Access).

  By reading the language of the Outer Space Treaty against its historical context, we note that seemingly egalitarian clauses mask the persisting hegemony of older space powers in access to and benefits from outer space. Its use of a critical legal geography of outer space allows us to consider the role of the law in relation to both geographical imaginaries and the responsibilities of humans beyond the planet we inhabit.

• Laskaridis, Christina (2022). “Writing History as a Way of Life”: The Life and Work of Margaret Marie Garritsen de Vries. History of Political Economy, 54(S1) pp. 127–157.

  This article provides a biography of Margaret Marie Garritsen de Vries, the official historian of the International Monetary Fund. Studying the life of a woman economist turned historian in an international organization brings to light her contribution as an economist working in a predominantly man's field—international monetary and financial issues. This article explores her work as a historian and draws out some of the particularities of women's work in an international organization during this period.

• Chellappoo, Azita and Baedke, Jan (2023). Where the social meets the biological: new ontologies of biosocial race. Synthese, 201, article no. 14.

  This article explores how the new conception of biosocial race has important implications for philosophical debates on the ontology of race.

• Pryke, Michael and Allen, John (2022). The everyday construction of value: A Canadian investment fund, Chilean water infrastructure, and financial subordination. Finance and Society (Early Access).

  Taking the example of Canada’s Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) and its extensive investments in Chilean water infrastructure, this article considers how a global investment fund draws on financial practices developed in the advanced economies to add value to long term infrastructure assets in the Global South.

• Mihr, Anja; Sorbello, Paolo and Weiffen, Brigitte eds. (2022). Securitization and Democracy in Eurasia. Transformation and Development in the OSCE Region. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

  This open-access edited book presents cutting-edge research on securitization and democratic development in the OSCE Region. It presents case studies and highlights recent activities of proactive engagement in democratic institution-building and responding to security threats from the Balkans to Central Asia. These contributions illustrate how the OSCE’s informal approach to peace, security, and securitization as norm entrepreneur is closely linked to the level of democracy among its member states.

School of Environment, Earth and Ecosystem Sciences

• van der Ploeg, Robin; Cramwinckel, Margot J.; Kocken, Ilja J.; Leutert, Thomas J.; Bohaty, Steven M.; Fokkema, Chris D.; Hull, Pincelli M.; Meckler, A. Nele; Middelburg, Jack J.; Müller, Inigo A.; Penman, Donald E.; Peterse, Francien; Reichart, Gert-Jan; Sexton, Philip F.; Vahlenkamp, Maximilian; De Vleeschouwer, David; Wilson, Paul A.; Ziegler, Martin and Sluijs, Appy (2023). North Atlantic surface ocean warming and salinization in response to middle Eocene greenhouse warming. Science Advances, 9(4), article no. eabq011.

  Quantitative reconstructions of hydrological change during ancient greenhouse warming events provide valuable insight into warmer-than-modern hydrological cycles. In this paper Phil Sexton and colleagues paper presents sea surface temperature (SST) records and seawater oxygen isotope estimates for the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO), using the newly developed 'clumped isotope' technique along with oxygen isotope data. The data are derived from well-preserved fossils of microscopic plankton living in the surface waters of ancient seas, recovered from deep-sea sediment cores from the North Atlantic Newfoundland Drifts. These indicate a transient ~3°C warming across the MECO, and a transient shift toward higher isotope values which implies increased salinity in the North Atlantic in response to greenhouse warming. These observations provide important evidence from the past concerning the dynamic ocean response to global warming events, which are consistent with theory and model simulations that predict an enhanced hydrological cycle under global warming. The paper represents the culmination of 10 years analysis of samples recovered by a team of sea-worthy scientists including Dr Sexton during an International Ocean Drilling Programme research cruise in 2012.

• Dannenmann, Marie; Klenner, Fabian; Bönigk, Janine; Pavlista, Miriam; Napoleoni, Maryse; Hillier, Jon; Khawaja, Nozair; Olsson-Francis, Karen; Cable, Morgan L.; Malaska, Michael J.; Abel, Bernd and Postberg, Frank (2023). Toward Detecting Biosignatures of DNA, Lipids, and Metabolic Intermediates from Bacteria in Ice Grains Emitted by Enceladus and Europa. Astrobiology, 23(1) pp. 60–75.

  The reliable identification of biosignatures is key to the search for life elsewhere. On ocean-covered worlds like Enceladus or Europa, two moons of the giant planets of our solar system attracting considerable attention as possibly harbouring life, this can be achieved instruments such as the SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA) on board NASA's upcoming Europa Clipper mission. During spacecraft flybys, these instruments can sample ice grains formed from subsurface water and emitted by these moons. Previous laboratory experiments have demonstrated that SUDA-type instruments could identify amino acids, fatty acids, and peptides in ice grains and discriminate between their abiotic and biotic origins. Karen Olsson-Francis and colleagues report experiments simulating measurements of ice grains containing DNA, lipids, and metabolic intermediates extracted from two bacterial cultures: Escherichia coli and Sphingopyxis alaskensis. Salty Enceladan or Europan ocean waters were simulated using matrices with different NaCl concentrations. Characteristic signals, such as DNA nucleobases, are clearly identifiable. Mass spectra of all substances exhibit unambiguous biogenic patterns, which in some cases show significant differences between the two bacterial species. The results provide important information for future space missions looking for evidence of life on Enceladus or Europa.

School of Computing and Communications

• Strode, Diane; Sharp, Helen; Barroca, Leonor; Gregory, Peggy and Taylor, Katie (2022). Tensions in Organisations Transforming to Agility. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 69(6) pp. 3572–3583

  Transforming into an agile organisation is challenging because it involves complex changes across the organisation, including changes to strategy, structure, culture, operations, and technology. Although much has been written about organisational agility, practitioners still call for authentic accounts and concrete experiences to help them understand how to transform. This article is based on three case studies of diverse organisations transforming to agility and provides an account of each transformation.

  Each organisation chose a different focus for their transformation: culture change, strategic change, and operational change. Each organisation faced challenges that resulted in tensions. We present 13 tensions from three cases, which illustrate the kinds of tension that organisations face in agile transformations. We consider these 13 tensions through the lens of paradox theory and thereby produce both practical guidance and theoretical contributions. We show how questions generated from this perspective may be used to guide transformation leaders and managers in addressing the tensions they will meet. Our findings provide empirical evidence for the tension categories in paradox theory and show that tensions occur during transformations to agility and not just in fully agile organisations.

• Azzam, Mazen; Pasquale, Liliana; Provan, Gregory and Nuseibeh, Bashar (2023). Forensic Readiness of Industrial Control Systems Under Stealthy Attacks. Computers & Security, 125, article no. 103010

  This article details an approach to engineer Forensic Readiness in safety-critical, geographically distributed Industrial Control Systems (ICS), by proactively collecting potential evidence of stealthy attacks. To trigger data collection, we assess whether potential stealthy attacks can cause damage to the system relying on previous work on online safety monitoring. To select the data that may be lost due to a stealthy attack, we map the safety constraints that we would predict to be violated to the specific concerned areas of an ICS using the Process Plant Layout. To reduce the real-time data collection overhead, we propose a decision-theoretic framework to decide whether the identified data is “worth” collecting based on a trade-off between collection cost and the expected damage that can be caused by the attack. We show through extensive simulations on the benchmark Tennessee–Eastman Process (TEP) that our approach does not miss any relevant data; and the collection of data enabled by our decision-theoretic framework has a limited impact on the ICS performance (execution time).

School of Life, Health and Chemical Sciences

• Zühlsdorff, Katharina; Lopez-Cruz, Laura; Dutcher, Ethan G.; Jones, Jolyon A.; Pama, Claudia; Sawiak, Stephen; Khan, Shahid; Milton, Amy L.; Robbins, Trevor W.; Bullmore, Edward T. and Dalley, Jeffrey W. (2023). Sex-dependent effects of early life stress on reinforcement learning and limbic cortico-striatal functional connectivity. Neurobiology of Stress, 22, article no. 100507.

  This study was funded by a GlaxoSmithKline Varsity Award to Profs Jeff Dalley, Amy Milton, Trevor Robbins and Edward Bullmore from University of Cambridge. The project was focused on the study of the effects of an early-life stressor, maternal separation (MS) (known by inducing a depressive-like phenotype in rodents), on inflammatory markers, behaviour and brain connectivity changes. This study in particular studied sex differences on how MS affects behavioural flexibility, and sensitivity to positive and negative feedback during adulthood in rats, using a computational approach based on reinforcement learning.

  Changes on feedback sensitivity seem to be underlying psychopathologies like depression and contribute to an increased vulnerability to develop this disorder. The findings revealed differences in how males and females exposed to MS react to feedback and how ‘sensitive’ they are to new stressors during adulthood. Functional connectivity changes (assessed by fMRI) from the basolateral amygdala to fronto-striatal brain regions may be mediating the differential reactivity to feedback observed in adult rats exposed to an early-life stressor. Studying the differences between males and females in this type of study may contribute to finding new therapeutics that take into consideration sex-dependent underlying mechanisms.

• Rodriguez-Rodriguez et al. Identification of aceNKPs, a committed common progenitor population of the ILC1 and NK cell continuum. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(49), article no. e2203454119.

  Responses to tumour growth by the immune system relies on the balance of different innate lymphoid cells (ILCs). They either promote anticancer immunity (mediated by natural killer (NK) cells or ILC1) or lead to a tumour-permissive immune microenvironment (ILC2 or ILC3-mediated), where the tumour continues to develop. Since ILCs develop from common ILC precursors it is important to understand their lineage and how we can shift the balance towards anti-tumour responses.

  This paper identifies the existence of "aceNKPs" in murine bone marrow as the earliest hematopoietic precursors uniquely committed to become ILC1/NK cells with the capacity to further mature into group-1 ILCs capable of controlling tumour growth. Identification of aceNKPs is important for our understanding of the production of ILC1/NK cells and how they may be manipulated prior to maturation.

• Payne, Daniel T.; Labuta, Jan; Futera, Zdeněk; Březina, Václav; Hanyková, Lenka; Chahal, Mandeep K. and Hill, Jonathan P. (2022). Molecular rotor based on an oxidized resorcinarene. Organic Chemistry Frontiers, 9(1) pp. 39–50.

  This paper is from work by Daniel Payne during his previous independent fellowship in Japan and forms one of the preliminary studies his future research as he starts his lectureship at Open University in the School of Life, Health and Chemical Sciences (LHCS) from January 2023.

  Supramolecular chemistry and the design and synthesis of molecular machines has become a research field with immense potential that could bridge the complexity gap between chemistry and biology. The ability to construct single molecules that have a function and can produce work from chemical inputs would allow us to mimic biological processes in discreet chemical entities. This work studies a class of macrocyclic compounds called Fuchsonarenes that have rigid and controllable 3-dimensional conformations and can undergo oxidation and protonation processes. Through chemical inputs (acid and solvent) the rotation rate of entities at the periphery of the macrocycle can be modulated and simultaneously observed with the naked eye through visible colour changes that correlate to the rotation rates in solution. This study provides a proof-in-principle for the direct observation of molecular machine process, which are typically indirectly observed through analysis of analytical data such as NMR measurements.

School of Mathematics and Statistics

• Barrow-Green, June and Royle, Tony (2022). The work of British women mathematicians during the First World War. In: Jones, Claire G.; Martin, Alison E. and Wolf, Alexis eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Science since 1660. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 549–572.

  The First World War acted as a catalyst to provide women with opportunities to infiltrate the male dominated bastion of industrial engineering. This was especially apparent at the establishments intimately involved in the advancement of the fledgling discipline of aeronautics and related fields. The Royal Aircraft Factory lay at the centre of the research and development that was driving innovation in aeronautics in Britain, and the facility took responsibility for the design and testing of new aircraft. The National Physical Laboratory focused more on the theoretical aspects of aerodynamics. Its primary weapon in this pursuit was the analysis of data obtained from the observation of the behaviour of scale models of aircraft, or aircraft components, in wind tunnels.

  In London itself, a department in the British Admiralty was formed specifically to address issues pertaining to the strength and integrity of aircraft structures. Within all three of these domains there was a great demand for individuals who had a background and expertise in mathematics and, as increasing numbers of men were conscripted to bolster the front line, this requirement was mitigated by the employment and deployment of suitably qualified women.

• Sudakow, Ivan; Vakulenko, Sergey A. and Grigoriev, Dmitry (2023). Excitable media store and transfer complicated information via topological defect motion. Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation, 116, article no. 106844.

  Excitable media are prevalent models for describing interesting effects in physical, chemical, and biological systems such as pattern formation, chaos, and wave propagation. In this paper, we found that waves of new kinds propagate in an excitable medium. We show that these waves are capable to perform cell differentiation creating complex patterns. For example, there is a cell colony that must adapt to a new environment and develops products necessary for survival. It is clear that a colony, where it is possible to transfer complex adaptive innovations from one cell to another, has a clear selective advantage. This transmission can be done by means of the waves, opened in this paper, and these waves can not only transmit simple information, but they can also transfer complex behaviour.

School of Physical Sciences

• Mark A. J. Parker, Holly Hedgeland, Nicholas Braithwaite, Sally Jordan. Establishing a physics concept inventory using computer marked free-response questions. EUR J SCI MATH ED 2022, 10(3), 310-323.

  While research in the Sciences is often associated with experiments, and reflective practice in our teaching associated with scholarship activities, the point where research of education practice and development of methods in subject-specific areas meets is a vital research activity. This paper highlights some of the world-leading Physics assessment methods being researched tested and developed at the OU. In this paper, former OU PhD student Mark Parker reports on his thesis work, looking at how reliably and accurately “free response” text questions in key Physics concepts are answered, then automatically computer marked, testing the fairness, reliability and accuracy of that marking.

  With Physics Education Research (PER) activity firmly established in the School of Physical Sciences, and also now a requirement as a research activity within Physics departments in UK Higher Education to accredit undergraduate degrees with the Institute of Physics (the Physics professional body) – thereby enabling our Physics graduates to progress to chartered scientists, physics and engineering status in their post-OU degree careers – it has been exciting to see PER activity growing in the School in the last 12 months – particularly in engaging our staff tutors, Associate Lecturers and central academic staff in PER, beyond scholarship of teaching.

• Suttle, M.D., Daly, L., Jones, R.H., Jenkins, L., Van Ginneken, M., Mitchell, J.T., Bridges, J.C., Hicks, L.J., Johnson, D., Rollinson, G., Taylor, R., Genge, M.J., Schröder, C., Trimby, P., Mansour, H., Piazolo, S., Bonsall, E., Salge, T., Heard, R., Findlay, R., King, A.J., Bates, H.C., Lee, M.R., Stephen, N.R., Willcocks, F.M., Greenwood, R.C., Franchi, I.A., Russell, S.S., Harrison, C.S., Schofield, P.F., Almeida, N.V., Floyd, C., Martin, P.-.-E., Joy, K.H., Wozniakiewicz, P.J., Hallatt, D., Burchell, M.J., Alesbrook, L.S., Spathis, V., Cornwell, L.T. and Dignam, A. (2023), The Winchcombe meteorite—A regolith breccia from a rubble pile CM chondrite asteroid. Meteorit Planet Sci.

  Led by Dr Martin Suttle, UK and international meteoritics experts discuss the analysis of the Winchcombe meteorite. This celestial body famously fell onto the driveway of Winchcombe residents during the Covid lockdown and, thanks to the fast thinking of the local residents, and OU and Natural History Museum scientists, significant samples of the meteorite were recovered and have now been analysed.

  In addition to Dr Suttle, researchers Dr Richard Greenwood and Professor Ian Franchi conducted a detailed study of the aqueous alteration of the rock and inclusion geologies in this meteoritic sample, looking particularly at the materials included in the meteorite deriving from fragments of water-rich asteroids. Their work focused on the micrometer- to millimeter-sized changes in polished sections of the meteorite material, and alongside analysis across UK institutions, included use of the SEM facilities at the OU.

  The analysis informs our geological understanding of how rocks evolve within the Solar System and therefore give clues to the origins of our own and other rocky planets (and the water on Earth). The analytical equipment utilised in this work has recently benefitted from significant investment through the Wolfson Foundation and OU funds, setting the OU in a leading position for future cosmochemical analysis of meteoritic, lunar and asteroid samples.

School of Engineering and Innovation

• Imediegwu, Chikwesiri; Grimm, Uwe; Moat, Richard and Jowers, Iestyn (2023). A computational method for determining the linear elastic properties of 2D aperiodic lattice structures. The Journal of Strain Analysis

  Cellular structures are used in a range of engineering applications, for example in the design of bespoke orthopaedic implants, resulting in components that are lightweight but strong. These structures derive their mechanical properties from the geometry of their internal shape, as well as from the properties of the base materials from which they are made, and recent developments in additive manufacturing offer the opportunity for exploring a broad range of innovative geometries. This paper is concerned with computational investigation into the behaviour of structures based on aperiodic patterns, i.e. patterns without translational symmetry. Modelling the mechanical properties of cellular structures traditionally employs shortcuts such as applying periodic boundary conditions or using single unit cells to reduce computational load and complexity. Unfortunately, these are features that do not exist in aperiodic patterns. Initial experimental findings suggested that mechanical isotropy (the measure of how similar mechanical properties are in all directions) was significantly better in aperiodic structures compared to periodic structures. To quantify this in an otherwise unstudied structure requires a very large number of physical tests or a very large number of computationally intensive models. Therefore, in order to make progress with our research goal of assessing for the first time the mechanical properties of aperiodic patterns, the technique presented in this paper was developed. This enables automatic, efficient prediction of mechanical properties in all orientations without the need for periodic boundary conditions. This technique can also be applied to structures such as foams or stochastic pattern, broadening the scope of application for the technique.

• Zhao, Rui; Shi, Kai; Neighbour, Gareth and Liu, Chunqiong (2023). “Pandora's box” regarding hydropower: Carbon‐intensive reflection. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, 19(1) pp. 284–286.

  As the world's largest source of renewable energy, hydropower offers an attractive contribution to the battle against carbon emissions but requires certain geographical constraints to be met such as the ability to capture and contain vast amounts of natural rainfall in mountainous regions. However, hydropower is vulnerable to climate change, such as wide-scale droughts which may have a profound impact on the robustness of the electricity supply. An understanding of how the meteorological drought may further propagate into a hydrological drought through complex mechanisms is important. The paper recognizes that extreme climate events aggravate electricity load as happened in Sichuan where hydropower supply decreased significantly in the face of prolonged high-temperature weather. As a consequence, the electricity gap was fulfilled by accelerating coal production, whilst the reservoir risked being a carbon source due to the continued decline in water levels resulting in carbon dioxide release from sediments through aerobic and anaerobic decomposition of their contained organic matter. The paper argues there is a Pandora's box hidden in the sustainability of hydropower, shifting it from carbon-free to carbon-intensive especially when thinking about the wider system involving electricity demands like EVs and ultimate decommissioning fostering a dilemma of sustainability.

Knowledge Media Institute

• Kwarteng, Joseph; Coppolino Perfumi, Serena; Farrell, Tracie; Third, Aisling and Fernandez, Miriam (2022). Misogynoir: Challenges in Detecting Intersectional Hate. Social Network Analysis and Mining (SNAM), 12(1), article no. 166.

  "Misogynoir" is a term coined by Moya Bailey to describe the unique form of oppression experienced by Black women due to the intersection of racism and sexism. It refers to the specific ways in which Black women are marginalized and discriminated against. In this paper, the authors show that detecting and addressing misogynoir online is very challenging, and that exisiting tools and methods for detecting hate speech and online harassment are not equipped to handle the complexities of hate at the intersection of two or more social identities. The study also suggests that further effort is required to enhance all-purpose hate speech detection algorithms in order to address more nuanced and subtle kinds of hatred, such as intersectional hate.

• Asprino, Luigi, Enrico Daga, Aldo Gangemi, and Paul Mulholland. Knowledge Graph Construction with a façade: a unified method to access heterogeneous data sources on the Web. ACM Transactions on Internet Technology 23, no. 1 (2023): 1-31.

  Data integration is the dominant use case for Knowledge Graphs (KG). A knowledge graph represents concepts, objects, people, or situations, and their relationships. However, data comes in many different shapes and legacy systems cannot easily be changed to produce KGs. Research in knowledge graph construction (KGC) studies methods and designs tools to support users in transforming data into KGs. Dr Daga and Dr Mulholland proposed a novel, original stance to the problem: Façade-X. In this article, they proved that Façade-X can support any format expressible in a BNF grammar – while no other approach can claim this. This theoretical result paves the way to design systems that can support seamless data integration from an open-ended set of resources with the same intuitive, façade-based data model. The Façade-X approach and the related SPARQL Anything open-source software are receiving increasing attention from the community of KG practitioners.

• Beck, Vanessa; Brewis, Jo; Davies, Andrea and Matheson, Jesse (2022). Cis women's bodies at work: co‐modification and (in)visibility in organization and management studies and menopause at work scholarship. International Journal of Management Reviews (Early access).

  This paper reviews research on cis women's bodily self‐discipline in the workplace. We compare literature exemplifying the ‘bodily turn’ in organization and management studies to scholarship on menopause at work, to identify key themes across these oeuvres and the significance of the blind spots in each. There is little overlap between them: only eleven organization and management studies publications dealt with menopause. In classifying these literatures using Forbes’ (2009) concept of co‐modification, we distil four themes: bodily moulding; non‐disclosure; failing; and resistance, redefinition and reclamation. Based on this, we argue for more substantive considerations of menopause in organization and management studies, and suggest what the organization and management literature has to offer its sister scholarship. For example, we foreground how menopause exacerbates the visibility paradox facing female workers which organization and management studies identifies; and argue that menopause at work scholarship should pay more attention to specific bodily accommodations, refusals and the ‘unscripted’ aspects of menopause in organizations.

• Barthold, Charles; Bevan, David and Corvellec, Hervé (2022). An ecofeminist position in critical practice: Challenging corporate truth in the Anthropocene. Gender, Work & Organization, 29(6) pp. 1796–1814.

  Drawing on selected discourses of non-essentialist ecofeminism this article proposes and substantiates an ecofeminist position. This distinct position is shown to bring with it a capacity to challenge widely-uncontested, corporate-produced truths regarding the benefits and the legitimacy of certain commercial activities. Three historical cases inform the discussion: the fights led by Rachel Carson against dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), by Erin Brockovich against hexavalent chromium, and by Vandana Shiva against genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Distinguishing characteristics of this emblematically individual and critical activist practice include that: it is aimed at fighting environmental degradations; it originates from outrage; it is sustained by dedication and courage; and it combines pedagogy, politics, and ethics. We show how this practice may be understood by reference to acknowledged ecofeminist tenets and in particular with the advocating of a holistic, respectful association with all forms of life on Earth. This in stark contradistinction to dualist, corporate positions of self-interested detachment from the environment, and a corresponding denial of the entanglement of the social and physical worlds. We show how such an ecofeminist position has been capable of disrupting both established corporate truths, as well as the discursive power relationships attached to them; and how it engenders an imperative that corporations must confront and engage with the deliberate, anthropogenic consequences of their activities.

• Siraz, Sonia; Claes, Björn; De Castro, Julio and Vaara, Eero (2022). Theorizing the Grey Area between Legitimacy and Illegitimacy. Journal of Management Studies (Early access).

  Despite a proliferation of research on legitimacy, the ‘grey area’ that lies between legitimacy and illegitimacy remains undertheorized. Responding to calls for further research, we clarify the construct of legitimacy and extend legitimacy theory by providing a conceptual framework for analyzing the legitimacy-illegitimacy continuum. First, we propose three novel legitimacy states between legitimacy and illegitimacy: conditional legitimacy, unknown legitimacy, and conditional illegitimacy, and elaborate on the distinct qualitative characteristics of the five legitimacy states. Second, we offer a model of the dynamics of legitimacy state change and the (in)stability of the issue-specific reference framework that is used to judge them. Third, our legitimacy states bridge the research streams on legitimacy judgment formation and legitimation strategies thereby advancing the integration of these relatively separate research streams more broadly. Our paper contributes to a more robust understanding both of how legitimacy states can be conceptualized and analyzed in future research, and of how they can be dealt with in managerial practice.

• Derry, Caroline (2022). The ‘legal’ in socio-legal history: Woods and Pirie v Cumming Gordon. Journal of Law and Society, 49(4) pp. 778–799.

  This article explores the Scottish defamation case Woods and Pirie v Cumming Gordon (1811-1812) in order to demonstrate the value of legal readings across the broadest spectrum of socio-legal history. While the case has attracted attention from social historians, particularly historians of sexuality, it was shrouded in secrecy and thus did not contribute to the development of legal doctrine. Nonetheless, careful attention to the specifically legal nature of the archive and proceedings deepens our understanding of them and their social implications. Woods and Pirie concerned an allegation of lesbianism made by a half-Indian, half-Scottish schoolgirl against her teachers. Its extensive records offer particularly rich material relating to gender, sexuality, race, nationality, and empire whose significance and limitations are only fully grasped if it is analysed with an understanding of its legal context. Ultimately, such engagements deepen our understanding of the law’s operation as well.

• Crotty, James and Daniel, Elizabeth (2023). Cyber threat: its origins and consequence and the use of qualitative and quantitative methods in cyber risk assessment. Applied Computing and Informatics (Early Access).

  Purpose - Consumers increasingly rely on organisations for online services and data storage while these same institutions seek to digitise the information assets they hold to create economic value. Cybersecurity failures arising from malicious or accidental actions can lead to significant reputational and financial loss which organisations must guard against. Despite having some critical weaknesses, qualitative cybersecurity risk analysis is widely used in developing cybersecurity plans. This research explores these weaknesses, considers how quantitative methods might address the constraints, and seeks the insights and recommendations of leading cybersecurity practitioners on the use of qualitative and quantitative cyber risk assessment methods.

  Design/methodology/approach - The study is based upon a literature review and thematic analysis of in-depth qualitative interviews with 16 senior cybersecurity practitioners representing financial services and advisory companies from across the world.

  Findings - While most organisations continue to rely on qualitative methods for cybersecurity risk assessment, some are also actively using quantitative approaches to enhance their cybersecurity planning efforts. The recommendation of this paper is that organisations should adopt both a qualitative and quantitative cyber risk assessment approach.

  Originality/value - This work provides the first insight into how senior practitioners are using and combining qualitative and quantitative cybersecurity risk assessment, and highlights the need for in-depth comparisons of these two different approaches.

• Liu, Gordon; Aroean, Lukman and Ko, Wai Wai (2022). Service innovation in business ecosystem: The roles of shared goals, coopetition, and interfirm power. International Journal of Production Economics (Early Access)

  A business ecosystem consists of a hub-firm (ecosystem leader) and a community of actor-firms. Building on the extended resource-based view and business ecosystem literature, this article explains the factors that contribute to an actor-firm’s service innovation. To test our framework, we obtained 100 dyadic, time-lag responses from a tourism resort ecosystem in Indonesia. We found that coopetition is more valuable than shared goals in improving an actor-firm’s service innovation. Coopetition is inefficient when the reward-mediated power is high, while shared goals are more beneficial when the non-mediated power is high. These findings indicate that hub-firms should exercise caution regarding their efforts to nurture shared goals, coopetition and interfirm power to promote service innovation. Overall, this study advances the extended resource-based view by highlighting that shared goals and coopetition allow an actor-firm to acquire important resources from its ecosystem relationships with other actor-firms to facilitate service innovation. More importantly, effective access to these relationship-based resources depends on interfirm power.

• Baxter, Jacqueline; Floyd, Alan and Jewitt, Katharine (2022). Pandemic, a catalyst for change: Strategic planning for digital education in English secondary schools, before during and post Covid. British Educational Research Journal (Early access).

  Following lockdowns in 2020 owing to Covid‐19, schools needed to find a way to ensure the education of their pupils. In order to do this, they engaged in digital learning, to varying extents. Innovations emanated from all school staff including, for example, teachers, leaders and teaching assistants. Some were already innovating in this area and brought forward and implemented digital strategies, while others engaged with digital learning for the first time. While research is emerging about the effects of the pandemic restrictions on pupils and staff in relation to key issues such as mental health and educational attainment, very little is known about the impact on school leaders' strategic planning processes. To address this gap, this paper draws on a UK Research and Innovation funded study adopting a strategy as learning approach to report on 50 qualitative interviews with school leaders to examine digital strategy in English secondary schools, before, during and after July 2021, when restrictions were lifted in England. It draws on strategy as learning literature to evaluate if schools have changed their strategic planning for digital learning, as a direct response to having learned and innovated during the pandemic. The paper concludes that there is evidence that digital innovations during the pandemic have changed the ways in which leaders think about their digital strategy, thus supporting a strategy as learning approach. However it also concludes that although there is ample evidence that the pandemic has changed the way many schools view digital learning, for some schools, there remain persistent barriers to digital integration and planning. These emanate both from material and cultural considerations, as well as leader vision and belief in digital learning.

• Tasselli, Stefano and Sancino, Alessandro (2022). Leaders' Networking Behaviours in a Time of Crisis: A Qualitative Study on the Frontline against COVID‐19. Journal of Management Studies, 60(1) pp. 120–173.

  What do leaders do when they interact with followers and stakeholders in a time of crisis? What networking behaviours do leaders manifest in such a context of emergency? We answer these questions through qualitative research and cluster analysis conducted on a sample of leaders involved in community management in the most affected region in northern Italy during the three key phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings span a period of 18-months and show that leaders display a behavioural repertoire that includes six networking actions. Grouped together, these actions identify three clusters of leaders: Churners, who engage mainly in network generation and network termination; Divergent leaders, who manifest high levels of network conflict and re-construal; and Sense-makers, who are high in network deepening and teleology. Our research contributes to unveil the idiographic micro-foundations of networking behaviour during organizational jolts.

• Ataullah, Ali; Coleman, Simeon; Le, Hang and Wang, Zilong (2023). Social capital, environmental justice and carcinogenic waste releases: US county-level evidence, 1998–2019. Regional Studies (Early access).

  We examine the role of social capital in explaining the highly unequal regional distribution of firms’ carcinogenic releases. Our model predicts that social capital, by enabling information-sharing and coordination among community members, decreases carcinogenic releases. Our analysis, based on the US county-level releases derived from around 2 million chemical-facility-level reports during the period 1998–2019 and the instrumental variables approach, confirms our prediction. However, the impact is reduced when counties rely on waste-releasing firms for economic opportunities. An important policy implication of our study is that the efficacy of initiatives to alleviate environmental injustice is likely to depend on communities’ social capital.

• Sotiropoulos, Dimitris; Rutterford, Janette and Tori, Daniele (2022). U.K. investment trust valuation and investor behavior, 1880-1929. The Journal of Economic History, 82(4) pp. 1031–1069.

  This study looks at the valuation of UK investment trusts for the fifty years following their appearance as companies in the 1880s. Based on a large and unique dataset compiled from primary sources, our calculations reveal huge variation between the ordinary share prices of investment trusts and their underlying net asset ‘fundamental’ values. This mismatch is a well-known puzzle in modern financial markets and has attracted a large volume of research because it casts doubt on the concept of market efficiency. We investigate possible explanations for this pricing puzzle and shed light on UK investor behavior before the 1930s.

Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport

• Bhandari, Renu and Rainford, Jon (2023). Exploring the Transitions of Neurodivergent Access Students to Level One Study: Narratives of Study Skills and Support. International Journal of Educational and Life Transitions, 2(1), article no. 5.

  The higher education journey of any student in a distance learning university is a challenging one but this is more so for neurodivergent students. Neurodivergent students have been found to require both academic (Jackson et al. 2018; Ness 2013) and non-academic support (Gelbar et al. 2015) around them to enable to achieve and reach their academic goals. Access programs in The Open University have a widening participation agenda and enrol many Neurodivergent students with diagnoses of autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, Asperger’s syndrome, and Dyspraxia. The study focused on the following three research questions: 1. What forms of support do neurodivergent students transitioning from Access to Level 1 study value? 2. What barriers to success may the current access curriculum create for neurodivergent students? 3. How can neurodivergent students transitioning from Access to level 1 be better supported? Students from the three access modules moving to any level 1 module were included in the sample. This paper focuses on the findings from the five remotely conducted in-depth interviews and an associated photo-elicitation task. Through a thematic analysis, a number of key themes were developed: Finding their own way, Support, quality of tutor support, wider systems of support, understanding assessment, facing new systems, the jump, language of learning and referencing issues. The paper explores these with examples and highlights how these might inform future practice to improve transitions for neurodivergent students. The paper also highlights the limitations institutional focused research with these groups places upon the scope of this kind of research.

  For the impact and triangulation of the study, four key teams within the University were engaged - The module teams, Associate lecturers, Disability Support Teams, and the Students Support Teams. Besides disseminating the findings of the study to various groups, the researchers were involved in exploring some of the recommendations proposed and developing practices. Firstly, the results and the transition experience of Neurodivergent students were considered for designing and shaping the content of the new modules-Y034 and Y035. The Associate lecturers were engaged in briefings of the findings and reflections upon how this might impact upon their teaching practices. The Student Support Teams, and the Disability Support Teams were fed forward the results and insights from the study to revisit the guidance and the touch points of ways of communicating with the neurodivergent students.

• Doehler, Steph (2022). Role Model or Quitter? Social Media’s Response to Simone Biles at Tokyo 2020. International Journal of Sport Communication (Early access)

  Simone Biles, poster athlete for Team USA, cited mental health issues for the reason she withdrew from several gymnastics events at the Tokyo Olympic Games, prompting immediate scrutiny from the world's media and the general public. This article, authored by early-career researcher Steph Doehler, analyses the Facebook narrative surrounding Biles’s withdrawal within the theoretical context of framing, as crafted through user comments on various public high-profile Facebook pages. The research was presented prior to publication at the Center for Sociocultural Sport and Olympic Research annual conference at Cal State University in Fullerton, California. A total of 87,714 user comments were collected and analysed with many people supporting Biles and engaging in a broader discussion about athlete mental health, while others denounced her move, implying she quit on the biggest sporting stage. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature on the framing of athlete mental health, specifically through a bottom-up framing perspective, and is the first to use a female athlete as the focal point. The narrative surrounding Biles calls into question how progressive the public is when it comes to issues of mental health, highlighting that this remains a contentious subject.

• Kucirkova, Natalia and Hiniker, Alexis (2023). Parents’ ontological beliefs regarding the use of conversational agents at home: resisting the neoliberal discourse. Learning, Media and Technology (Early access).

  The article advances critical research studies in AI and family use of technology. Drawing on a theoretical analysis and empirical data from interviews with Norwegian families, we develop a new framework for conceptualising and studying Bourdieu's "acts of resistance". We argue that parents' ontological beliefs about AI tools such as conversational agents need to be examined in relation to their antecedents and within the broader arenas of human and social ontologies. The article is the first step to document the lived experiences of modern families in relation to AI and theorise parents' acceptance and rejection intentions and behaviours. A key finding relates to families' perceived risk of a loss of agency. This finding corresponds to my previous work on agency and children's digital media use and OU colleagues' work in this area. The practical implication of the study is the need to support developments in technology design that allow for greater cultural responsiveness and possibility to self-design AI tools. A related paper, based on a cross-disciplinary project, synthesises literature on agency from three learning sciences perspectives and provides a framework for integrating agency into the design of children's educational technologies.

• Ibbotson, Paul (2023). The Development of Executive Function: Mechanisms of Change and Functional Pressures. Journal of Cognition and Development (Early access).

  Executive functions are a set of cognitive skills that help us plan, think flexibility, manipulate information, and regulate our thoughts and behaviour. Successfully acquiring these skills in childhood is important for a wide range out outcomes in later life, including reading comprehension, reasoning, arithmetic calculations, mathematical problem solving, fluid intelligence, physical and mental health, levels of law abiding, and career satisfaction. In this paper I explore how children construct these skills in development; how they gradually develop into different components (inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility) and how these skills are sensitive to the wider beliefs, values, norms, and preferences of children’s lives (Ibbotson, 2023). There is discussion of how this approach is similar to and different from existing accounts, and how it relates to broader issues of training and transfer, group and individual differences, overlapping executive functions and domain-general learning. For example, using this approach, we recently trained 104 children in Havana, Cuba, on a working memory task which transferred to their untrained syntactic ability (Roque-Gutierrez & Ibbotson, 2023). For applied practice, the impact of this work holds the promise that interventions targeting one domain will spill over into the untrained domain and ultimately improve developmental outcomes for children.

• Okada, Alexandra and Gray, Peter Barry (2023). A Climate Change and Sustainability Education Movement: Networks, Open Schooling, and the ‘CARE-KNOW-DO’ Framework. Sustainability, 15(2356)

  This study is part of the Green Forum project. It explores the interplay and close cooperation gap between universities, schools, enterprises, policymakers, and wider society for the joint development of actions for CCSE ‘Climate Change and Sustainability Education’. We argue that CCSE, as the integration of sustainability and eco-consciousness at all educational levels, should empower learners by providing competences to identify issues and responsible actions to shape a liveable planet for all. Underpinned by the CARE-KNOW-DO theoretical principles developed by Okada in various EU-funded projects, we explore CCSE issues and provide a novel foundation for a new education movement to combine strategies, initiatives, and interventions towards learning ecologies. Findings of our Delphi Study with 27 expert academics, practitioners, entrepreneurs, and policymakers of the UK Green-Forum presents seven recommendations to tackle the CCSE’s challenges: 1. Promote flexible real-context curriculum; 2. Foster cross-curricular practices with teachers’ training; 3. Establish CCSE definition with benchmarks including skills and qualifications; 4. Enhance learners’ agency through the cooperation of stakeholders and organisations; 5. Raise students’ passion for nature with a hopeful curriculum; 6. Increase green careers awareness through education, and 7. Implement tangible curriculum through policy-change with equity, diversity and inclusion. We present 60 green-initiatives and 33 green-skills to foster CCSE and empower students to CARE-KNOW-DO actions towards a sustainable world with green-careers, green-lives, and green-societies. This study underpins the CCSE movement which was launched at the Open University on the 27th of March of 2023; with the contributions of 45 organizations and the UK Department for Education.

• Oates, John (2022). Formulating National Standards for Research Ethics Support and Review: The UKRIO/ARMA Case. Ethics, Integrity and Policymaking, 9 pp. 49–58

  This book chapter reports the research and development of a national framework for research ethics review. While for research in health and social care there is a coordinated system of ethics review overseen by the Health Research Authority, there has not been a similar coordination of review by higher education institutions (HEIs) and larger research organisations. I have been involved for many years in promoting common practices and standards in research ethics review, through my roles as trustee in the Association for Research Ethics, lead for the British Psychological Society Code of Human Research Ethics, member of the Ethics Group of the Academy of Social Sciences, advisor to the United Kingdom Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) and ethics reviewer for the European Commission. In discussion with UKRIO and the Association for Research Managers and Administrators, I agreed to establish a team to research and propose a national framework for ethics review of research outside of the health and social care fields. To maximise the buy-in to such a framework, we consulted widely across stakeholders, particularly with HEIs, research organisations, Universities UK, the Economic and Social Research Council and the European Research Council. Our proposals went through three major drafting and consultation cycles. As the work progressed it became clear that two documents were needed; one a short, concise guide to the framework and a much more extensive document that gave a full rationale for the principles, processes and standards. Launched in 2020, the framework has been widely accepted and used extensively by HEIs and research organisations when revising or establishing research ethics structures and processes.

Health, Wellbeing and Social Care

• Blanchard, Howard T; Carroll, Diane L and Astin, Felicity (2022). Patient experience of informed consent for diagnostic coronary angiogram and follow-on treatments. British Journal of Healthcare Management, 28(11) pp. 305–311.

  All medical procedures carry some risk, so it is important to ensure that people agreeing to treatment voluntarily make an informed decision that is right for them. Planned coronary angiography is a common diagnostic procedure that provides an image of the inside of arteries in the heart. If narrowing’s are present treatment to widen them (coronary angioplasty) can be provided as a follow-on treatment during the same procedure. However, agreeing to a diagnostic procedure, followed by a treatment, that may, or may not occur, can be confusing for patients.

  In this US survey study, we wanted to replicate a larger UK based study, to understand patients’ experiences of giving their consent for planned coronary angiogram plus/minus follow-on treatment. Finding showed that a significant proportion of participants did not remember, or understand, the health information given to them, and misunderstood the treatment outcomes.

  Professor Felicity Astin and Dr Emma Harris are leading a National Institute for Health and Social Care funded research study to explore the feasibility of using a digital patient decision aid in cardiology practice to improve shared decision making and consent for planned coronary angioplasty.

• Boyle, G and Mozdiak, L (2022). Young adult carers – transitioning to adulthood or to adult caring? Children & Society.

  Our paper reports findings from a qualitative study that explored whether young adult carers services in England are delivering assessment and support which facilitates young people’s positive transitions to adulthood. We found that the limited development of transitional assessments in England and their substitution with adult carers assessments has resulted in these young people being designated as adult carers instead. We have recommended that a more committed approach to transitional support is needed across England to ensure the requirements of the Care Act 2014 are met. Our paper discusses the potential for the strategic development of young adult carers services to improve the opportunities available to these disadvantaged young people.

• Carlin, Paul and Wallace, Jonathan and Moore, Adrian & Hughes, Catherine & Black, Michaela & Rankin, Debbie & Hoey, Leane & Mcnulty, Helene. (2022). Dementia Analytics Research User Group (DARUG) ‐ A Model for meaningful stakeholder engagement in dementia research. Alzheimer's & Dementia. 18.

  The Data Analytics Research User Group was a collaborative project with Ulster University, funded through the R&D Division in Northern Ireland. Using the TUDA dataset (Trinity, Ulster, Department of Agriculture Study), of approximately 5000 persons across the Island of Ireland, the team looked at the data to examine its potential to identify indicators in the data that could potentially predict cognitive decline. Wedded to this with the development of a model of user engagement using ENGAGE, a platform that captures user interaction and feedback in real time and delivers a report at the end of the session. Whilst the data modelling and potential for use in a variety of exploratory projects was evident in the results, direct signalling to outcomes was more debateable. The use of the ENGAGE platform was very successful but an adjunct looking at novel project management and governance fell away as COVID hit. Be that as it may, this model is now being used within the funded AIM4Health project, with the OU acting as a consultant to evaluate this system of governance, one that not only utilises research participants as sources of information but as integral contributors within the ethical and management structures of the project.

• Jones, Rebecca L.; Changfoot, Nadine and King, Andrew (2022). Revisioning ageing futures: Feminist, queer, crip and decolonial visions of a good old age. Journal of Aging Studies, 63.

  This paper is an Editors’ Introduction summarising a Special Issue of the Journal of Ageing Studies, which aimed to create more inclusive visions of a good old age. Popular images of a successful later life tend to be based on the experiences of relatively privileged people e.g. wealthy, healthy, White and heterosexual people. The papers in this special issue use critical theories (feminism, Queer Theory, crip theory and decolonial theory) to think about ways of ageing well that are more inclusive of diverse experiences. This is important because how you imagine your future ageing affects your wellbeing when you are younger and can affect how you experience your own old age. I’ve been writing about this topic for about 10 years now but I’m still fascinated – next I’m hoping to do some work with colleagues to generate some positive visions of a good old age with people with learning disabilities.

• Kremers S, Wild SH, Elders P, Beulens JW, Campbell D, Pouwer F, Lindekilde N, de Wit M, Lloyd CE, Rutters F. The role of mental disorders in precision medicine for diabetes. Diabetologia (2022) 65:1895–1906

  Cathy Lloyd has joined forces with academics and researchers from five different countries (The Netherlands, Canada, Denmark, Australia and the UK) to publish a narrative review on the identification and treatment of mental disorders in people with diabetes. Previous studies have shown that there is a greater risk of poor mental health in people with diabetes, which can contribute to negative outcomes including diabetes complications and poorer quality of life. This article, led by PhD candidate Sanne Kremers from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands, considered the latest research on the measurement and individualised treatment of mental disorders which have used novel methods either in-person or using mobile health technologies. The review concluded that, although significant gaps in knowledge remain, there is potential for technologically enabled solutions to help identify individuals with mental disorders and subsequently to recommend particular (more precise) treatments. This could have considerable value for diabetes care and has implications for future research as well as practice.

Languages and Applied Linguistics

• Kaya, Sibel; Yuksel, Dogan and Curle, Samantha (2023). The effects of language learning and math mindsets on academic success in an engineering program. Journal of Engineering Education, 112(1) pp. 90–107.

  The way people think about their abilities can affect how well they do in school. Some people believe that they can do better with hard work and practice (i.e., growth mindset), while others think that their abilities are set and cannot be changed (i.e., fixed mindset). Previous studies have looked at how these mindsets affect success in subjects like biology and math, but this study is the among the first to look at how language learning mindsets and math mindsets affect success among English-medium engineering students in Turkey. The results showed that students with a growth mindset in both language and math tended to do better in both English and Turkish-medium courses compared to those with a fixed mindset. The study suggests that a student's mindset can play a big role in their academic success in engineering courses, and that understanding their mindset can help them improve their performance.

• Henning, Lucy (2023). Remixing literacy: Young children producing literacy practices for research participation. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 38, article no. 100682.

  This paper proposes that an adapted version of Dyson’s 2010 concept of ‘remixing’ offers an accessible metaphor for understanding the complexity of young children’s literacy practices when mediating meaning in texts. It considers the kinds of things a group of four-year-old children ‘re-mixed’ into practices of taking photographs to show a researcher, who couldn’t visit their classroom during COVID-19, reading writing and learning in their classroom It argues that the capacity to adapt literacy practices to changing technologies and circumstances is essential for 21^st century citizens and that ‘remixing is a concept that can capture these processes for reflective classroom practitioners.

• Bárkányi, Zsuzsanna and G. Kiss, Zoltán (2022). A homofóniakerülés hatása a zöngeprodukcióban [Homophony avoidance in the production of voicing]. Általános Nyelvészeti Tanulmányok(34) pp. 143–168.

  Hungarian is a voicing language with a symmetrical set of voiced-voiceless obstruent consonant pairs. Thus, while a number of words only contrast in the voice feature (minimal pairs) word-initially (e.g., szár /saːr/ ‘stem’ –zár /zaː r/ ‘lock’), in intervocalic position and word-finally, according to the Hungarian descriptive tradition, the contrast is completely lost before another obstruent. This applies within the word, across morpheme as well as word boundaries, unless a pause intervenes. The present study investigates voicing in /s/–/z/ and /t/–/d/ in minimal and non-minimal pairs in Hungarian in voicing neutralising environments. We show that homophony avoidance, i.e., whether the obstruent is in a minimal or non-minimal pair, significantly influences the amount of voicing in these consonants. A subsequent paper discusses whether the observed differences are salient enough to be perceived.

• Singh, Jaspal Naveel (2022). [Book Review] Graphic politics in eastern India: Script and the quest for autonomy Nishaant Choksi. London: Bloomsbury. 2021. Journal of Sociolinguistics (Early Access).

  In this book review, I critically evaluate Nishaant Choksi's (2021) ethnographic monograph Graphic politics in eastern India for researchers in the field of sociolinguistics. I highlight that ethnographic studies of script and multiscriptality can inform the sociolinguistic study of indigenous peoples’ (and more broadly marginalised populations’) writing practices and their assertion of political autonomy and agency beyond the liberal orders of the nation-state. Choksi’s insights are important stimuli for my own work on graffiti writing and illegalised literacies in the Indian hip hop scenes.

• Tudela-Isanta, Anna and Arias-Badia, Blanca (2022). El tratamiento del multilingüismo en la traducción audiovisual catalán-español: estudio de caso de Las del hockey [The Treatment of Multilingualism in Catalan-Spanish Audiovisual Translation: A Case Study of The Hockey Girls]. CLINA Revista Interdisciplinaria de Traducción Interpretación y Comunicación Intercultural, 8(1) pp. 31–55.

  In the last years, the number of audiovisual contents that do not have English as the main production language have experienced a boom on video-on-demand platforms. At the same time, audiovisual creators have been challenged to create content that reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity of current societies (Santamaria, 2019). In this paper, we analyse a series that follows this trend: The hockey girls, originally recorded in Catalan and also available in peninsular Spanish on Netflix. We propose a case study of the series from an interdisciplinary approach between Sociolinguistics and Audiovisual Translation Studies. On the one hand, the selected product represents the natural attitudes towards social multilingualism or linguistic cosmopolitanism of young people in Catalonia (Newman et al., 2008; Trenchs-Parera et al., 2014) and reflects typical phenomena of multilingual societies, which make the dialogues in more believable. On the other hand, the analysis of different audiovisual translation modalities — subtitling for the d/Deaf in Catalan, conventional subtitling and subtitling for the d/Deaf in Spanish, dubbing in Spanish, and audio subtitling in Catalan and Spanish — shows that there is not a consistent treatment of the different language varieties of the series and that the different modalities do not always capture the richness of multilingualism.