The accommodation of sustainability in the EU Internal Market public procurement system

The main aim of this paper is to analyse the accommodation of sustainability considerations within the European Union’s (EU) Internal Market public procurement (PP) system. The paper investigates whether EU PP law can be used as a tool to further sustainability while advancing its main objective of removing barriers to trade and opening PP markets

BEAR PGR Conference 2024 - Conference proceedings

BEAR Conference proceedings are the collection of papers and posters that were presented at the BEAR PGR conference. Conferences provide opportunities for people to present their research, and get input from other researchers and colleagues in their field

First steps in Urban Tree Canopy Cover

Trees provide a range of benefits for urban society including biodiversity enhancement, promoting better health and wellbeing, and increasing urban resilience to extreme weather such as heavy rainfall and hot summer temperatures. Quantifying how much of a given area is covered by trees, when viewed from above, i.e. the tree canopy cover, provides a proxy for these current benefits and projections can be made for future benefits. Generally, the larger a tree canopy, the greater the ecosystem services provided by the tree. Urban Tree Canopy Cover (UTCC) is expressed as a percentage of the total area or in m2, ha2 or km2

Transcriptions and Synopsis of Selected Witnesses for the Pseudo-Oecumenian Catena on Ephesians

Transcriptions of seventeen Greek manuscripts of the Pseudo-Oecumenian Catena on Ephesians (CPG C165), consisting of the following New Testament witnesses: GA 075, 91, 627, 1905, 1907, 1916, 1919, 1923, 1932, 1971, 1980, 1982, 1997, 1998, 2011, 2183, 2962. Synopses of the three types of catena scholia: normal, extravagantes, Photiana. Created in conjunction with a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham in 2024

Understanding the impact of Open Research at University of Birmingham and advocating for greater engagement

In June 2023, the library kicked-off a project, supported by internal Quality-Related funding. A Project Officer with coding expertise analysed data about publications, datasets and other outputs produced by Birmingham academics. Conversations with researchers from many career stages and disciplines were also conducted, exposing exemplars of good practice and open research culture

‘Medieval Islamic objects and the architecture of the mind’. Review of: Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam by Margaret S. Graves, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, 339 pp., over 100 col. plates and b. & w. illus., £68 hdbk, Print ISBN 9780190695910, Online ISBN 9780190695941.

This review examines the monograph of Margaret Graves, Arts of Allusion, which offers a nuanced argument about visual representation in a disparate group of portable objects dating to between the ninth and thirteenth centuries and created in the heartland of the medieval Islamic world. The study focuses on what Graves calls ‘archimorphic objects’: portable objects that reference architecture in some way, either through their form or ornament. While many studies have pointed to intriguing formal similarities between small objects and monumental buildings in the medieval Islamic tradition, Graves breaks new ground in her exploration of what the allusion to monumental architecture in portable art reveals about the viewers and makers of these objects. Her detailed analyses of numerous objects that were both quotidian and fabulously crafted demonstrates the importance of allusion, metaphor, and other indirect forms of expression to the mechanics of representation in both visual and literary arts in medieval Islamic civilization

Palladio drawings in Britain: half a century of research

The Royal Institute of British Architects possesses one of the finest collections of architectural drawings and one of the jewels in its crown are over three hundred drawings by the celebrated Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. Although cataloguing these drawings began in the 1960s as of late 2023 no printed catalogue has been published. This article examines the historiography of Palladio drawings in Britain: half a century of research, in order to set out what many of the issues regarding the project have been in the last fifty years

Beyond Dvořákʼs ‘The Last Renaissance’: on the beginnings of Slovenian scientific art history inspired by modern art

One of the characteristics of the Vienna School of Art History, as Hans Tietze writes in The Method of Art History, is the conviction that ‘living art is the key to dead art’. The article draws connections between the lively art debates in Vienna in the first decade of the twentieth century, the breakthrough of Plečnik’s and Meštrović’s art, and the art historians who, at the beginning of their careers, were just beginning to explore the relationship between the formulation of method and the object of research, and places them in the broader historical context of the situation of small nations just before the dissolution of the monarchy. After the 1914–1918 war, central questions in art and science were reopened at the fringes of the former monarchy. Collaboration between scholars and artists was crucial not only for the development of the professions, but also for the formation of a modern cultural identity and sovereignty in the new multi-ethnic state