Arts & Humanities
When Narratives Collide: The Fundamentals of Islamic Fundamentalism
Heritage is a group’s claim to a legacy. There are, however, different ways of reading history in the process. The Western notion of World Heritage finds value in a culturally diverse past, which is already fulfilled by the present. Conversely, Islamic fundamentalism seeks to bring about conformity to its founding age, condemning any deviance from this particular foundation. Baudouin Dupret, […]
Optimising well-being and development through music
Professor Graham Welch and the music education research team at University College London have conducted extensive work to evaluate and document the benefits of music for children. Their research has included large-scale studies of music programmes sponsored by governments and charities. The outcomes of these studies have shown clear benefits of music in supporting optimal health, well-being and development in […]
Beyond Alchemy: Robert Boyle’s Mechanical Philosophy
Dr Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino is a researcher at Florida Atlantic University. In her book, The Chemical Philosophy of Robert Boyle: Mechanism, Chymical Atoms, and Emergence, she offers a detailed account of the mechanistic theory of matter advanced by Robert Boyle. She explains the ways in which Boyle departed from his predecessors to create a more complex and complete chemical philosophy […]
Real-time societies: Maintaining control in the digital world
The rapid growth of digitisation is disrupting society profoundly. To secure a worthwhile future, we need to explore new approaches to govern complex socio-technical systems. Professor Johannes Weyer and his research team at Technische Universität Dortmund in Germany have developed SimCo, a simulation framework to investigate the dynamics of socio-technical systems like transportation or energy supply. This research examines how […]
Accents of the Caribbean: How vowel pronunciations pivot, shift and merge
Prof James Walker of the Department of Languages and Linguistics at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, is a sociolinguistic expert who has conducted extensive research on the English language in various parts of the world, including North America and the Caribbean. Together with Prof Miriam Meyerhoff at the University of Oxford, UK, their research focuses on different vowel pronunciations […]
Gender, performance, and self-efficacy in STEM-related careers
The expansion in STEM-related industries has exposed a shortage of qualified labour, particularly females. Dr Matthew J. Liberatore, the John F. Connelly Endowed Chair in Management, and Dr William P. Wagner, Professor of Information Systems, both at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, USA, are investigating whether the gender gap observed in IT careers and STEM subjects extends to the gender and […]
Consciously calculating unconscious bias: The role of dichotomous valuation
Like with any choice, when faced with data selection, people are influenced by their own biases. A new research paper by econometric expert Dr Xingwei Hu of the International Monetary Fund evaluates how people subconsciously view different variables and the way this influences their decision-making. By assessing decisions through dichotomous valuation, Dr Hu is able to show the extent to […]
Energy futures: A new equilibrium model for resource extraction and investment decisions
Increasingly sophisticated technologies developed in the current century to extract natural resources from costlier fields have changed the current and expected futures prices of resources, with important consequences for energy self-sufficiency and economic growth stability. In a recent paper, Alexander David, Professor of Finance at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary in Canada, develops a new model that […]
The critical gap between management theory and technological reality:
Why many businesses are still failing to innovate effectively
Prof Hugo Tschirky is an academic at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and specialises in how companies innovate and embrace technology. In 2004, he initiated and co-authored a book called “Bringing technology and innovation into the boardroom” but many of the findings in this book have still yet to be fully embraced by executive boards. Worryingly, a critical gap […]
Listening to the city: Architecture as soundscape
Sound is an integral part of many people’s daily life, and the architectural spaces that surround us shape and impact the quality of urban sound. Street performers, such as buskers, contribute to the city soundscape, and while in the past they may have been treated as a nuisance, now they are more readily accepted as contributing to the vitality of […]