Book review of Gender Pay Gap: Vom Wert und Unwert von Arbeit in Geschichte und Gegenwert

The gender pay gap is a persistent global labour issue, one that still has not been solved. In Gender Pay Gap: Vom Wert und Unwert von Arbeit in Geschichte und Gegenwart, the editors and contributors tackle historical and contemporary gender pay gaps (and the relationship between them) by addressing issues that leave the reader exclaiming: “Wow, I never thought about [issue]!” The issues the book examines range from the more-than-full-time work of “pastor wives” to the “digitisation” of work

Guest Editorial: The Gig Economy and Women Workers in the Middle East

What is the impact of the so-called gig economy on women workers in the Middle East? Does digitalisation represent a catalyst for female labour participation in the region or a burden leading to further financial insecurity and invisibility? How are ordinary women gig workers re-imagining their tech lives and challenging unwritten rules, patriarchy and lack of access to the labour market? Featuring articles analysing case studies in Egypt, Iraq, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, this special issue addresses the abovementioned questions, directly speaking to the academic debate on the global gig economies. Proving a regional and local perspective, it contributes to a more plural understanding of gig work in a multiplicity of contexts, practices and experiences. It investigates the relationship between the daily and the digital to explore the role of platforms in shaping female labour participation and women’s empowerment, as well as issues of precarisation and marginalisation. By proposing a collection of original and pioneering research on an understudied topic as applied to specific contexts in the Middle East, the special issue broadens the analysis of the so-called gig economy beyond a mere economic lens, bringing together multi-disciplinary insights and approaches from sociology, political economy and digital anthropology. It shows that online gig work is neither a crystallised nor monolithic dimension. Instead, platforms - in some instances - have become vectors of formalisation instead of leading only to informality, such as in the case of taxi driving app and home cooking/food delivery, where apps have enhanced more regulation as formality was not the norm before. Women gig workers are re-imagining their roles in their everyday practices of working from home, blurring the lines between the public and the private spheres. They adapt to neoliberal conditions of flexibilisation to sustain their needs in contexts where processes of labour informalisation have long permeated the development of labour relations

Exploring possibilities for student-staff partnerships and beyond in discipline-based education research

Discipline-based education research (DBER) uses researchers’ disciplinary background to inform investigations into university teaching and learning. The terms of student involvement in DBER are often dictated by the researchers, with student choice limited to whether or not they will contribute data. This is counter to the ethos of active student participation in which students can directly influence their university studies. While examples of DBER projects with students as collaborators rather than as informants or subjects exist, such opportunities are usually available to a few students. This paper explores where, why, and how students could contribute to DBER projects by exploring different roles students can take and examining the possibilities for student input to the process of educational research when viewed as an investigative cycle. This identifies places where students can influence research work while being able to disengage as necessary. Going beyond individual students, whole-class contributions also appear practical, opening up the possibility to “co-create DBER.

Designing an AI policy: An experiment in co-creation

We present a case study of co-creating a policy for the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in a writing course at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Students and faculty in two sections of a required 1st-year writing course worked to draft and respond to a policy about AI and then reflected on the experience. Student reflections suggested that the experience not only engaged students in a meaningful inquiry into AI, but also introduced them to key threshold concepts in both student partnership work and writing studies

The Gig Economy and Its Impact on Women in Iraq

The gig economy has significantly transformed Iraq’s labour market, creating new opportunities for women while also exposing persistent inequalities. This paper traces the experiences of Iraqi women in the gig economy, drawing on both individual and collective insights grounded in the authors’ work in this context. These experiences reveal the dual nature of the gig economy: providing flexible work options while perpetuating vulnerabilities such as discrimination and economic insecurity. By situating our analysis within Iraq’s unique socio-economic conditions, including women’s low workforce engagement and infrastructural challenges, we contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamics shaping women’s participation in this emerging labour market. The paper explores the types of gig work available to Iraqi women, alongside the structural barriers they face, such as limited digital infrastructure and inadequate legal protections. We conclude by highlighting actionable pathways for improving economic outcomes for women and fostering inclusive growth in the gig economy

The nexus between the length of colonization and access to electricity in 126 countries around the world

The percentage of the population with access to electricity varies considerably from one country to another. This study examines the extent to which the percentage of a country’s population with access to electricity is affected by the length of time it has been under colonial rule. To do this, the study employs Ordinary and Two-Stage Least Squares estimation techniques with data from 126 countries around the world. The results show that people living in countries that have been under colonial rule for a long time are more likely to have better  access to electricity. This is partly explained by high levels of political stability and education, but also by low population growth in these countries. Therefore, to guarantee access to electricity for a larger proportion of the population, countries that have experienced a short period of colonization, need to implement policies that not only promote political stability and education but also slow down population growth

“Adequate Ideas” and Proper Names: Gareth Evans on Thought and Language

In The Varieties of Reference, Evans claims that thinking about an individual object requires satisfying what he calls “Russell’s Principle” by having an “adequate Idea” of the object. Acquiring an adequate Idea is intellectually demanding. By contrast, Evans agrees that acquiring a proper name, in the sense of coming to be able to use it to refer to its bearer, is easy. There is an apparent tension in these views that is made explicit if coming to use a proper name to refer would enable one to think about its bearer. The present paper argues that this tension is real, so that consistency requires major modification of Evans’s views. Particular attention is paid to his accounts of proper names, and his criticisms of Kripke’s views on that topic.

Davidson on First-Person Authority and the Essential Sociality of Meaning

As some authors have recently pointed out, the notion of first-person authority has an importantly social dimension: it concerns not only how one’s mental self-ascriptions can be usually (or always) true, but also how one’s interlocutor can presume such mental self-ascriptions to be true (Borgoni 2019, Winokur 2023). An adequate theory of first-person authority should account for both aspects of the phenomenon, but the traditional discussion has focused mainly on the former. In this paper, I will reexamine Davidson’s account of first-person authority in this light and argue that it has interesting theoretical resources to address both aspects of first-person authority within a unified framework. In the literature, there is a consensus that (1) the key idea in Davidson’s account is to explain first-person authority in terms of a speaker’s authoritative knowledge of the meanings of her own words, and (2) Davidson explains the special status of a speaker’s semantic knowledge by invoking his non-communitarian view of meaning-determination. I will argue that, to see a fuller picture of Davidson’s view on first-person authority, these ideas need to be integrated with his discussion on triangulation, where he purports to show that meaning should be essentially social and interpretable. This will allow us to recognize how Davidson\u27s theoretical system, as a whole, is indeed tailored to capturing the social dimension of first-person authority highlighted in the recent discussion

Redefining team assignments through a whole-class students-as-partners approach

Throughout my undergraduate degree, education has evolved dramatically, moving towards more student-centred and experiential learning approaches. This reflective essay delves into my journey through an undergraduate organisational communication course, using an example of a team assignment to highlight the transformative impact of the whole-of-class Students as Partners approach. This innovative model integrates theoretical knowledge with practical application through the creation of digital professional resources and the facilitation of student-led, creative projects. By positioning students as active co-creators, this approach fosters collaboration, critical thinking, and personal growth, creating a dynamic and engaging learning environment that equips students with transferable skills for the modern workforce. To strengthen my arguments, I also bring together reflections from my co-authors, who represent a variety of perspectives and experiences with how the Students as Partners approach transformed a typical team presentation format

Embracing the “third space” in higher education: A case for embedded students-as-partners teaching and learning

This paper presents a case for integrating students as partners (SaP) within the curriculum of higher education (HE), particularly through the lens of “third space” learning. Drawing on our experiences as a collaborative of educators in Canada and the United Kingdom, we explore the liberatory potential of play, partnership, and co-creation in HE. Through the Becoming an Educationist (Becoming) module, we demonstrate how SaP can empower students—especially non-traditional students in UK post-1992 universities, that is, UK institutions with a strong focus on widening participation, applied learning, and “social mobility” or transformative learning—to find their voice in academia. We argue for embedding SaP within the curriculum to foster a sustainable ecology of collaborative practice for social justice, challenging traditional divisive structures in education