French Nineteenth-Century Art Writing as Audio Description: the case of Edouard Manet

This chapter compares the ‘traditional’ audio description of Edouard Manet’s 1863 masterpiece Olympia with descriptions of the painting by 19th-century French critics made when it was first put on public display in Paris in 1865. This comparison suggests that descriptions that include references to artistic techniques, personal opinion, and the various ways a beholder looks at and responds to a work of art produce a more engaging and evocative audio description than the supposedly objective and neutral texts that are recommended by best practice guides. By embracing the plurality of responses to a painting, and acknowledging that different people view paintings in different ways, this chapter advocates for a more creative approach to audio description that might better capture the experience of being moved by a work of art

Rethinking the Inherent Jurisdiction of the High Court in Safeguarding Adult Reviews:Beyond Legal Literacy

Purpose: The Inherent Jurisdiction of the High Court (the IJ) is used in safeguarding adults' work to protect ‘vulnerable’ adults whose autonomy is compromised but who have mental capacity as defined by the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Safeguarding Adult Reviews (SARs) frequently call on practitioners to develop legal literacy, including regarding the IJ. This article explores and discusses how the IJ is presented in SARs and argues that there are systemic problems beyond legal literacy to consider in this area.Design/methodology/approach: Relevant SARs (n=29) were located through theNational Network of Safeguarding Adult Board Chair’s library. These were thematically analysed to identify patterns regarding how the IJ is covered in these documents.Findings: The reviews converged around specific experiential clusters (familial and domestic abuse, community-based exploitation, self-neglect). They entailed accounts of complex mental capacity issues and raised concerns about legal literacy. It was common to find situations where many other avenues for intervention had been exhausted and the IJ was proposed as a measure of last resort. The discussion of the IJ in SARs occasionally differs from prevailing legal accounts of its application, particularly regarding self-neglect and situations where a third party is not exerting coercion or control. We close the article with a discussion about legal literacy.Originality/value: The IJ is an evolving area of law and practitioners may therefore struggle to grasp its applicability. SARs are important resources for practitioners to learn lessons concerning this less commonly used legal mechanism. As a result, independent reviewers should be cautious about how they frame this legal remedy and consider if this really is a case of ‘legal literacy’

Plant Species Classification Using Evolving Ensemble and Siamese Networks

Image-based dried plant specimen identification poses a significant challenge due to the large number of possible classes and the extreme scarcity of labelled training samples. To tackle these limitations and mitigate classification biases, this research proposes a Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO)-based weighted evolving ensemble model as well as a Siamese network for plant species classification. Specifically, we first diversify the base classifier pool by employing three networks, i.e. ResNet50, Xception, and VGG19, fine-tuned using the specimen samples. Besides the adoption of a mean average ensemble model, a weighted ensemble scheme with PSO-based optimal weighting factor generation is also utilised to integrate the outputs of the three base networks for tackling classification variances. In addition, to further tackle species classification with extremely imbalanced data, a Siamese network with ResNet50 as the backbone is utilised. Evaluated using a challenging FGVC6 data set with Melastomataceae images, the PSO-based weighted ensemble model is able to assign more influence to the best performing base networks for ensemble prediction and outperforms the traditional mean average ensemble method. Moreover, the Siamese network also obtains competitive performance for solving imbalanced specimen classification by performing comparing similarity scores between image embeddings

Shadows of Silence: Narratives of Indian Migrant Women Facing Domestic Violence in the UK

Migration and domestic abuse are deeply interwoven phenomena, with migration often exacerbating vulnerability to abuse through intersecting structural, systemic, and cultural factors (Anitha, S, 2011; Raj &amp; Silverman, 2002). This conceptual review critically examines existing literature on the experiences of migrant survivors of domestic abuse, integrating Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory and Meaning-Making Theory, with intersectionality woven throughout. While prior research has established the prevalence of domestic abuse among migrant populations, much of it has overlooked the complex interplay between cultural norms, immigration status, and socio-economic dependencies that shape survivors’ experiences and hinder their access to support.The review highlights key themes such as the role of migration in creating both protective and risk factors, the impact of systemic barriers like immigration laws, and the influence of family and community dynamics on survivors’ help-seeking behaviours. It also identifies significant gaps in current literature, particularly the lack of intersectional and culturally sensitive approaches to interventions. In response, the review proposes the Integrated Ecological, Intersectional, and Trauma-Informed (IET) Framework, which integrates existing theories to offer a conceptual model for multi-level, survivor-centered interventions.Clinical implications of the review include recommendations for early intervention strategies, the integration of trauma-informed and culturally sensitive care, joint interventions, and community-based supports. Addressing systemic barriers and promoting resilience through empowerment are also crucial for supporting migrant survivors. This review contributes to the development of more effective, inclusive, and culturally attuned approaches to domestic abuse prevention and intervention, ensuring that the unique needs of migrant women are met within a broader socio-political context.<br/

Firm–education–industry association linkages:Driving the territorial embeddedness of business services multinational corporations in Romania?

This study examines the nature and implications of linkages between multinational corporations and local institutions across peripheral regions. Analysing the development of outsourced and offshored business services in Romania, the study highlights the role of firm–education–industry association linkages in driving the territorial embeddedness of multinational corporations into host country regions. Firm–education–industry association linkages facilitated changes in higher education curricula to supply firm-specific skills, the development of advanced technical and management skills, and a programme of state policies privileging foreign capital. While this industrial and institutional transformation facilitated Romania’s move up the value chain into more advanced business services, it simultaneously drove forms of corporate capture and dependency, reproducing a flexible, co-opted workplace labour regime

Trapped in Time and Place:Cognitive Immobility Among Diaspora Communities

This article adopts the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach to explore the phenomenon of cognitive immobility, where individuals remain cognitively trapped in experiences or locations despite elapsed time and physical distance from those events and places. It explores how (im)mobility and life transitions hold people in the past. The study focuses on the cognitive experiences of Mrs Eve, an African-American woman who on her first visit to Dakar, Senegal, felt a deep, unexplained connection to the place. The article triangulates Mrs Eve’s experiences against those shared by other individuals in previously published peer-reviewed narratives to reveal how (im)mobility and life transitions can lead to cognitive immobility. It underscores that traumatic or memorable life experiences can result in cognitive immobility under certain circumstances and thus enriches the discourse on people who are cognitively trapped in their past

Facilitating generative AI literacy in the face of evolving technology:Interventions in marketing classrooms

The emergence of generative AI (GenAI) has illustrated that higher education needs to adapt to the technology. Its speed of evolution requires that we adequately prepare students for an ever-changing landscape. Toward achieving that aim, we draw on the concept of interpretive flexibility, where the interpretations, uses, and outcomes of a new technology can differ and evolve over time, often with dominant stakeholders controlling the process. To engage marketing students in this process, we propose that they be presented with these diverse interpretations now as part of GenAI literacy. Specifically, we offer three small-scale pedagogical interventions designed to address this urgent need. Given the newness of GenAI, our interventions are designed to be infused into existing marketing instruction, instead of requiring a redesign of a curriculum. With each intervention, students not only significantly decrease their confidence in the accuracy of what GenAI produces but also see reasons to examine the implications of it. Both these outcomes, we suggest, could help to maintain interpretive flexibility required to properly respond to and guide the technology as its uses, impacts, and evolution become evident. We encourage educators to prioritize a comprehensive notion of GenAI literacy in their pedagogy to maintain interpretive flexibility

The Everyday Security of Living With Conflict

When ‘cyber’ is used as a prefix, attention is typically drawn to the technological and spectacular aspects of war and conflict – and, by extension, security. We offer a different approach to engaging with and understanding security in such contexts, by foregrounding the everyday – mundane – experiences of security within communities living with and fleeing from war. We do so through three vignettes from our field research in Colombia, Lebanon and Sweden, respectively, and by highlighting the significance of ethnography for security research with communities living in regions afflicted by war. We conclude by setting out a call to action for security researchers and practitioners to consider such lived experiences in the design of security technology that aims to cater to the needs of communities in ‘global conflict and disaster regions’.---Cuando se usa el prefijo ‘ciber-’, suele centrarse la atención en los aspectos tecnológicos y espectaculares de la guerra y el conflicto - y, por extensión, en la seguridad. Sin embargo, en este artículo ofrecemos un enfoque diferente para abordar y comprender la seguridad en estos contextos, al tomar en cuenta y resaltar las experiencias cotidianas – mundanas – de seguridad dentro de las comunidades que viven en guerra o huyen de ella. Lo hacemos a través de tres casos de nuestras investigaciones de campo en Colombia, Líbano y Suecia, respectivamente, resaltando la importancia de la etnografía para la investigación sobre seguridad en comunidades que viven en regiones afligidas por la guerra. Concluimos con un llamado a la acción para que los investigadores y profesionales en el área de la seguridad consideren estas experiencias vividas en el diseño de tecnologías de seguridad que buscan atender las necesidades de las comunidades en 'regiones afectadas por conflictos y desastres a nivel mundial