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This article examines the ties between an internationalised science and transnational activism, in particular for causes considered universal, such as defending human rights, during the late Cold War. It focuses on a scientific network that supported mathematicians persecuted for their political views by both left- and right-wing undemocratic regimes. The Committee of Mathematicians was founded in 1974 and was active for a decade, built incrementally as a transnational advocacy network located in several Western countries. Focussing primarily on the Committee's French component, this article investigates the social and organisational underpinnings of its transnational action and defence of universal principles. It examines the modes of action and how they were shaped by scientists' professional and even disciplinary affiliations. These focal points allow an interrogation of the place the committee occupied within the space of human rights activism. The article aims to contribute to a historical sociology of the ties between science and politics and of the transnational trends that strained national frameworks, while moving away from an approach focussed solely on political macrotrends that fuelled the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Russian psychology faces an uphill battle in joining the international mainstream after decades of isolation. Among Russian psychologists today, we can see traces of the “globalist” (integrative) and “counter-globalist” (isolationist) tendencies that first manifested during the Soviet period. At that time, Russian psychology was shaped as a mono-methodological trend; it addressed fundamental theoretical problems, was based on Marxist philosophy and was oriented to reflect the standards of the natural sciences. In the post-Soviet period, fundamental social changes shifted the development of psychology as a science and different standards were adopted. Contemporary Russian psychology is substantially diversified. When searching for “the optimum level of integration” with global peers, it is necessary to take into account the theoretical and methodological orientations of the scientists, as their motives and constraints with respect to integration can be substantially different. Here we explain in detail how the different theoretical understandings and predilections of Russian psychologists determine their interests, ideals and constraints with respect to integration with the mainstream.

Within the polar science community the Polar (and Geophysical) Years represent signal events. We often read, largely within geoscience literature, that those events represented positive and dramatic steps forward in international science. From five recent books—two historical compilations and three personal narratives—augmented by interviews with a few key participants, a more cautious picture emerges, of remarkable successes but also of occasional or even persistent missteps and deficiencies. An improved understanding of the IPY concept and experience can provide useful guidance for future polar and global science.

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Within the polar science community the Polar (and Geophysical) Years represent signal events. We often read, largely within geoscience literature, that those events represented positive and dramatic steps forward in international science. From five recent books--two historical compilations and three personal narratives--augmented by interviews with a few key participants, a more cautious picture emerges, of remarkable successes but also of occasional or even persistent missteps and deficiencies. An improved understanding of the IPY concept and experience can provide useful guidance for future polar and global science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Irish folklorist Séamus Ó Duilearga (James Hamilton Delargy), his mission to safeguard Irish folklore, and the archives of the Irish Folklore Commission. Topics include the movement to preserve the Gaelic language and Irish folklore, the life and work of Ó Duilearga, and the state of the effort to renew the Irish language.

After briefly reviewing literature on safety science as a disciplinary domain, the paper analyses safety science topics from four years of the journal (2017–2020), revealing the numerous topics and domains represented. This analysis revealed a strong weighting towards transport (particularly road), with the list of other industry sectors headed by construction. Numerous risk types and intervention methods were identified in the sample of nearly 1400 papers, as well as diverse human and managerial strategies and multiple theoretical approaches to the study of safety. An authorship breakdown revealed that authors from 69 countries had contributed to Safety Science papers during this 4-year period. Many national ratings were strongly correlated with Safety Science authorship when standardized by country population size and a logarithmic transformation. A multivariate analysis found that two key authorship predictors were country mean income and degree of press freedom. Building on the journal's existing diverse topic range and international authorship distribution, particularly for collaborative ventures, possible ways forward for the journal included: increasing the number of journal offerings to represent different safety domains, fostering further international collaborations, mandating policy implications of published papers, and generating a preprint paper offering. Future directions for the journal could be explored within an iterative process involving Editorial Board members and other relevant parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]