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Traditionally, the relationship between engineering, social sciences, and the humanities (SSH) has often been, to varying degrees, fraught, imbalanced and/or non-existent. Engineering has oftentimes been guilty of envisaging SSH as either providing a ‘soft’ window dressing or counterbalance to ‘hard’ projects representing ‘real’ progress, or to be used to more effectively ‘communicate’, for example in overcoming public reticence around such projects. The stories, histories, (her)stories, myths, language, text, images, art, provocations and critical insights which emanate from and characterize SSH are in this (dulled and marginalized) context more likely to be conceived as mere frivolous pursuits to help fill and support leisure time or promote cultural pursuits. This, we argue, not just feeds into the disconnect between respective disciplinary approaches, but seriously and dangerously miscomprehends the value (and values) that SSH can and indeed must bring to the table, in particular when facing emerging and emergent contemporary interconnected challenges around (un)sustainability. SSH can also benefit from such authentic and pragmatic engagement with engineering and science, while highlighting the necessary and invaluable contribution it can make to society, and across our universities, in particular in facing contemporary meta-challenges. This chapter draws upon academics and practitioners from both sides of the house in an Irish university context, who have journeyed together upon such pathways. The terrain and nature of some of these journeys are described, including some of the inherent difficulties and challenges. We highlight the need for journeying together with ‘disciplinary humility’, as equal partners, if we hope to make authentic progress. Finally, some historic and contemporary examples of potential points of convergence are proposed.

We present novel co-created transdisciplinary research that uses arts and humanities methods to explore air pollution in an informal settlement (Mukuru) in Nairobi, Kenya. Air pollution is a well-documented major human health issue, but despite many air pollution reduction interventions designed to improve health, these are frequently ineffective. Often this is because they fail to account for local knowledge, cultural practices and priorities of the intended recipients. Designing solutions therefore requires in-depth exploration of relevant issues with stakeholders. Researchers worked collaboratively with local residents to develop a range of methods to explore understandings of air pollution including interviews, storytelling, participatory mapping and theatre. Together, we uncovered contrasting definitions of air pollution, differing perceptions of who was responsible for enacting solutions, and overall a view that air pollution cannot be seen in isolation from the other issues faced by settlement residents. The methods used also allowed us to communicate about the topic with a wide audience. While we acknowledge that this research approach is more time consuming than traditional approaches, we urge other researchers wishing to address multifactorial problems, such as air pollution to use a mixture of qualitative, participatory and creative methods to engage with a wide range of stakeholders to elicit new and unexpected understandings that may not otherwise emerge.

Based on the author’s experience of curating a collection of migrant community web objects within the UK Web Archive, this paper combines conceptual interrogation with empirical analysis. The central premise is that the incorporation of multilingual, diasporic micro-archives serves to queer the anglophone UK Web Archive, or “patriarchive”, by dismantling steadfast binaries and implicit postcolonial hegemonies. The article challenges Jacques Derrida’s contention that the mal d’archive is the result of the archive’s ‘troubling’ duality, and posits, on the contrary, that such boundary-crossings are the very incarnation of a positive, transgressive form of xenofeminism (XF). From the dualism at the origin of the archive itself, to that comprised in the concept of genre/gender, and from the spatiotemporal in-betweenness of the archived diasporic (web)site to the translanguaging present therein, the article demonstrates how the diasporic micro-archive is the embodiment of a non-binary, trans-inclusive XF ideology. Taking French migrant women’s blogs preserved in the London French Special Collection as a primary source and examining their transformation over time, the paper explores how blog repurposing can be apprehended as a technomaterialist XF act and how the blogs’ increasing multimodal translanguaging bears witness to a form of culturo-linguistic transitioning that transcends binary hybridity.

Based on a controversial case of assisted suicide offered to and eventually enforced on a demented woman vainly resisting the procedure, this article discusses the problems that arise when the human entity is conceptualized as an individual primarily defined by his ability for rational self-expression and autonomous self-rule. To highlight these difficulties, a liberal view on ‘autonomy’—a term which serves as an ideal but is yet subject to conditions—is scrutinized. Given that liberal political theory alone is insufficient to fully reflect the changes of personality by which an individual’s fight for autonomy bears the potential to turn into unalterable heteronomy, it is complemented by the thought of Michel Foucault. With his attention to societal mechanisms which bring individuals about—a process termed ‘individuation’ in the following—cases like the aforementioned scenario wherein individuals are forced to divide themselves from themselves can be critically analyzed. Such an approach illustrates that the established notion of the ‘individual’ can be led ad absurdum, and its validity as both an analytical idea and a normative vision should be challenged. As a result, there is a need for a more clairvoyant concept of the human person to be articulated, capable of conciliating the discontinuous nature of existence.

This descriptive research work highlights the implementation practices of Montessori education in mainland China and the concerns over Montessori education’s localization in mainland China. Localization can be understood as the adaptive process Montessori education undergoes in order to fit within Chinese culture. Two hundred and ten in-service Montessori teachers and administrators in China were surveyed to discover information concerning implementation practices in the following areas: mixed-aged classrooms, whether classrooms were co-teaching, student-to-teacher ratios, and morning and afternoon work cycles. The study found that the majority of classrooms were mixed-aged, reflecting high-fidelity Montessori practices. However, it also found that classrooms are co-teaching, have lower student–teacher ratios, and shortened work cycles, reflecting a departure from high-fidelity Montessori implementation. While localization should be considered to safeguard Montessori education’s sustainability, Chinese Montessori educators should also reflect on these findings as high implementation fidelity has been linked to better student outcomes.

In recent years, scholars studying data-intensive healthcare have argued that data-driven technologies bind together new actors and goals as part of healthcare. By combining the expectation studies with justification theory, this article adopts a novel theoretical perspective to understand how these actors and goals are enroled in healthcare. Drawing on a case study of Apotti, a Finnish social services and healthcare information system renewal project, the article shows how new emerging health data assemblages stress the aims of producing the common good in public healthcare. The project is studied by analysing interviews of the project's key actors and various documents produced in the project. The paper shows how, in the collective expectations, the new information system is justified by multiple understandings of the common good, which might be contradictory with each other. Along with the established goals of improving public healthcare operations, the new information system is expected to empower clients and patients, audit and manage personnel, promote national digital social and healthcare service markets, provide better data and tools for research, and promote Finnish research and business in international competition. These expectations are not all based on the settled understanding of the common good of public healthcare as promoting health; the common good is also defined in other terms such as improving research, promoting markets and business, and making Finland famous and a leading country in the digital social services and healthcare field. These goals and expectations are purposely ambiguous to be loose enough to gain attention and maintain it even when the promises are not met. The paper identifies the ambiguity and plurality of the common good as strategies of data-intensive healthcare and raises concerns of how this might shape public healthcare in the future. As the plural understandings of the common good might not support each other, the paper calls for further assessments of how this will affect public healthcare's core objectives and for seeking solutions that carefully balance the goals of the current and evolving multi-stakeholder environment of data-intensive healthcare.

Extreme heatwaves will occur more frequently and with higher intensity in future. Their consequences for human health can be fatal if adaptation measures will not be taken. This study analyses factors related to heat adaptation measures in private households in Germany. During the summer months of 2019, indoor temperatures were measured in over 500 private households in the City of Augsburg, Germany, accompanied by a survey to find out about heat perception and adaptation measures. Hypotheses deducted from the Protective Action Decision Model were tested using one-way ANOVAs, regression analysis and in the end a multiple hierarchical regression model. The results of the hypotheses tested imply an influence of knowledge and heat risk perception of heat adaptation behaviour and an influence of age on heat risk perception. The results of the regression model show an influence of the efficacy-related attribute, of age, indoor temperature, subjective heat stress and health implications to heat adaptation behaviour. In the end, this study proposes adjustments to the PADM according to the results of the hierarchical regression analysis., publishedVersion

In much contemporary political discourse, valued cultural characteristics are threatened by interaction with culturally distinct others, such as immigrants or a hegemonic majority. Such interaction often fosters cross-cultural competence (CCC), the ability to interact successfully across cultural boundaries. However, most theories of cultural dynamics ignore CCC, making cultural diversity incompatible with mutually beneficial inter-group interaction, and contributing to fears of cultural loss. Here, interview-based field methods at an Amazonian ethnic boundary demonstrate the prevalence of CCC. These data motivate a new theoretical mathematical model, incorporating competing developmental paths to CCC and group identity valuation, that illuminates how a common strategy of disempowered minorities can counter-intuitively sustain cultural diversity within a single generation: Given strong group identity, minorities in a structurally unequal, integrative society can maintain their distinctive cultural norms by learning those of the majority. Furthermore, rather than a rejection of, or threat to, majority culture, the valuation of a distinctive minority identity can characterize CCC individuals committed to extensive, mutually beneficial engagement with the majority as members of an integrative, multi-cultural society.

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 illness it causes have inspired unprecedented levels of multidisciplinary research in an effort to address a generational public health challenge. In this work we conduct a scientometric analysis of COVID-19 research, paying particular attention to the nature of collaboration that this pandemic has fostered among different disciplines. Increased multidisciplinary collaboration has been shown to produce greater scientific impact, albeit with higher co-ordination costs. As such, we consider a collection of over 166,000 COVID-19-related articles to assess the scale and diversity of collaboration in COVID-19 research, which we compare to non-COVID-19 controls before and during the pandemic. We show that COVID-19 research teams are not only significantly smaller than their non-COVID-19 counterparts, but they are also more diverse. Furthermore, we find that COVID-19 research has increased the multidisciplinarity of authors across most scientific fields of study, indicating that COVID-19 has helped to remove some of the barriers that usually exist between disparate disciplines. Finally, we highlight a number of interesting areas of multidisciplinary research during COVID-19, and propose methodologies for visualising the nature of multidisciplinary collaboration, which may have application beyond this pandemic., Submitted to Humanities and Social Sciences Communications: accepted pending minor revisions

Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) serves as a pillar for economic stability globally. Entrepreneurship education provides young people with essential skills that can be used in a positive manner, thus enabling them to be employers rather than employees. Marrying TVET and entrepreneurship education can help Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) in tremendous ways. These two subjects TVET and entrepreneurship can lift T&T to global prestige. Given this context, the study explored the benefits of exposing Post-Secondary TVET students to entrepreneurial training. An investigation was carried out using a mix-methods approach. The use of regression analysis and Spearman’s Correlation Analysis were used that determine the relationship between exposing Post-Secondary Technical Vocational Education and Training Students (PSTVETS) to entrepreneurship education and their interest in entrepreneurial training. Additionally, qualitative data was incorporated by utilising content analysis, focus groups and semi-structured interviews. The data revealed there was an absence of entrepreneurship education. Upon further investigation there was no real entrepreneurship culture or framework implemented within the PS schools. The results also showed the more students are exposed to entrepreneurship education more they are inclined to pursue entrepreneurship endeavours. Data also allowed the reader to grasped copious challenges experienced within TVET in T&T, that impacts on entrepreneurial training within post-secondary institutions in T&T. The researchers put forward an entrepreneurship education model that can be incorporated in the training of post-secondary schools. Additionally a strategy was articulated as to how entrepreneurship education can be adopted within the training of post-secondary institutions. Providing an adequate framework for entrepreneurial training within entrepreneurship education, and TVET provides originality and contribution to the field of TVET and entrepreneurship education.