Public engagement with eugenics in the academy exhibitions and events across HE institutions

This collective report details the authors’ engagement with the legacies of eugenics through curating exhibitions and events at higher education institutions and museums in the UK and abroad. It details the practical experiences of uncovering and exploring historical eugenic affiliations among influential figures such as Francis Galton and William Beveridge and the challenges faced in addressing these legacies within institutional contexts, specifically University College London (UCL), the London School of Economics (LSE), the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the British Psychological Society. The authors, who are also the curators of exhibitions on the history of eugenics, highlight collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches drawing on archival collections, public programming, and responses from epistemic communities engaged with the topic. Rather than being an academic text, this piece reflects on the complex, evolving dialogue around reckoning with eugenics in public history and its relevance today through curatorial practice and collective personal reflection

NEW ABC. Networking the educational world : across boundaries for community-building

This collection provides data from an EU-funded Horizon2020 project “NEW ABC: Networking the Educational World: Across Boundaries for Community-building”, under the call H2020-SC5-MIGRATION-2018-2020. The project is led by Prof. Rachele Antonini at the University of Bologna. The research actions in the UK Team. This collection details the data collected from the team in the United Kingdom, which was co-led by Prof. Sarah Crafter at The Open University and Prof. Guida de Abreu at Oxford Brookes University. The project was supported by Postdoctoral Researchers, Dr. Nelli Stavropoulou, Dr. Eleni Stamou and researcher Ms Kelly Lambert. The UK team undertook two ‘pilot actions’, similar to an intervention, which used participatory action research and co-creation as a key approach. The two interventions were: 1) Empowering young translators (Work Package 4). The aim of this pilot action was to produce participatory co-creative activities to emotionally and socially support young people who translate and interpret for peers, family, and their local communities. We collaborated with a highly culturally and linguistically diverse secondary school in England. With their support, we set up an after-school club known as the ‘Young Translators Club’ for young people who speak multiple languages and who regularly translate for others which took place across the academic year of 2021 – 2022. We also undertook interviews with young translators in two secondary schools. 2) The adventures of the Little Prince in the World (Work Package 5). The ‘Adventures of the Little Prince in the World’ pilot was first developed in Cyprus and then re-piloted and adapted in UK schools. Using the literary work by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, “The Adventures of the Little Prince”, the aim of this pilot action was to build the resilience of migrant children by reshaping the narratives of their experience to enable them to feel included in the school environment. In the UK the Team focused on collaborating with teachers in primary and secondary schools in 2022 – 2023 to co-create participatory activities aimed at fostering a sense of belonging, respect, friendship and community for children and young people from a migrant background and improve their smooth inclusion into school life. Overview of the wider project. The purpose of the NEW ABC project is: 1. To develop real-life co-participated actions by stakeholders in education that tap into their real needs and can be used to inform policy makers on effective solutions to overcoming challenges to integration; 2. To empower and develop the capacity for agency, inclusivity and to have voice of all the stakeholders involved heard, particularly children in diverse communities; and 3. To ensure the development of integrated approaches at the local and (inter)national level during and after the end of the project. To achieve these aims, the NEW ABC implemented nine activity-based pilot actions for the inclusion of migrant and refugee children and young people in education. The implementation of the nine activity-based pilot actions sought to engage stakeholders, especially those groups such as children and young people who migrate or are refugees, whose voice might go unheard or heeded, in the collaborative design of formal informal and non-formal educational activities that facilitate their inclusion. The pilot actions were co-created and implemented in two consecutive stages, in order to ensure applicability, scalability and sustainability. Work Package 4 was the first stage of the pilot actions and involved the first implementation of the co-creation of activities with key stakeholders. Work Package 5 involved the partner countries exchanging the pilot actions and re-piloting in a different country context. The NEW ABC methodological and conceptual framework. All of the pilot actions across the partner countries shared the same methodological and conceptual framework which combined the following: • Participatory Action Research (PAR). In the NEW ABC project, PAR binds together the project’s conceptual and methodological framework. PAR approaches involve researchers and other stakeholders (community members, researchers, interested/affected groups, non-academic, policy-makers, etc.) working together to examine a problematic situation and/or create actions to change it. Participatory approaches often draw on narrative, storytelling and arts-based research. • The Co-Creation Approach. The core of NEW ABC methodology lies in participatory action research and co-creation, which conceptually share the same tenets: the development of democratic partnerships between researchers and local/community stakeholders; their involvement with the PAR approach in the design of the research, evaluation and dissemination of the findings; and the empowerment of interested/affected/groups/stakeholders by actively involving them through co-creation methods in the design of practices that have contextual fit and are responsive to the expressed needs of the community and the participants they serve. • Care and Compassion approach to migration. The NEW ABC uses care and compassion as theoretical concepts that underpin their pilot actions. ‘Care’ and ‘compassion’ are treated as foundational theoretical and moral principles running through our pilot actions. • The Whole Child Approach. The whole child approach puts children and young people at the center and focuses on what works best for them and on what the other stakeholders in education e.g. educators, families, policymakers, community members, and associations – must do to ensure their integration and success. • The Bottom-Up Approach. The bottom-up approach facilitates the engagement of stakeholders, the voices of children, vulnerable groups, the community, educators, and families to find expression in the co-creation of innovation pilot actions that address a variety of challenges to integration in education

Gait dynamics classification with criticality analysis and support vector machines

Classifying demographic groups of humans from gait patterns is desirable from several long-standing diagnostic and monitoring perspectives. IMU recorded gait patterns are mapped into a nonlinear dynamic representation space using criticality analysis and subsequently classified using standard Support Vector Machines. Inertial-only gait recordings were found to readily classify in the CA representations. Accuracies across age categories for female versus male were 72.77%, 78.95%, and 80.11% for =0.1, 1, and 10, respectively; within the female group, accuracies were 73.36%, 76.70%, and 78.90%; and within the male group, 77.65%, 81.48%, and 81.05%. These results show that dynamic biological data are easily classifiable when projected into the nonlinear space, while classifying the data without this is not nearly as effective

Hackney Public Health Principles of Commissioning

Module 1 and Module 2 material

Music consumption : a systematic review across the lifespan

The present study aimed to systematically review research concerning changes in music consumption across the lifespan to better understand how adults of all ages consume music. Keyword searches of four academic databases identified 2,002 peer-reviewed articles, and of these, fifteen articles were selected for review using the PRISMA protocol. The findings indicated that very few studies have investigated how people of all ages consume music, and the limited research on this topic has been methodologically inconsistent, leading to contradictory and inconclusive findings. This review also identified a shortlist of possible factors (e.g., life goals, personality, conformity) that might account for any age-related changes in musical consumption. As life expectancy and the proportion of elderly people continue to increase in many countries, the review recommends that future research should seek to reflect how people of all ages consume music and identify factors responsible for any changes as people grow older

Pharmacists on the frontline : medication misuse and abuse during violent conflict in four MENA countries

Purpose: An important, yet under-researched, impact of violent conflict on public health is the susceptibility of populations in conflicts to drug abuse and misuse as increased stress, the easy availability of drugs, and the relaxation of taboos against drug use exacerbate the problem. This study explores the experiences of pharmacists regarding drug misuse and abuse in four conflict- affected MENA countries. Methods: The study is part of a larger two-year (2021-2023) project investigating the impact of violent conflict in the MENA region on medicine abuse and misuse and the experiences of pharmacists in managing this challenge. This part used a quantitative approach using survey methodology with a sample of pharmacists in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq. Results: A total of 181 questionnaires were filled (65.7% male, mean age=29.9 years old. the majority of the pharmacists (n=170, 93.9%) reported that on average, 27.88% of the pharmacy customers were suspected of misusing/abusing medications in the past 3 months. The most misused medicines were pregabalin and sedatives/hypnotics followed by opioids like tramadol, in addition to cough and cold and anti-allergy preparations. Almost one- third of respondents (31.49%) refused to dispense drugs which they thought were intended to be used inappropriately. Sixty-five (35.9%) said that they had been subjected to violence for the sake of obtaining medications, and 17 (9.8%) reported being threatened five times or more in the past year. Conclusion: Based on the results above, future interventions in conflict settings must address both supply-side governance and the broader psychosocial drivers of medication misuse/abuse to ensure that pharmacists are supported rather than exposed in their essential work

The racialization of Roma as “Black” in interwar Romania and beyond

This article addresses the underrepresentation of “blackness” within Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS), which has historically concentrated on the United States, western Europe, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Despite calls for global expansion, CWS has so far inadequately engaged with the ways in which individuals perceived as “Black” were excluded from the idealized national community in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The marginalization of blackness profoundly influenced discussions around national belonging throughout the twentieth century and continues to shape debates on race in the region today. We re-examine the significance of blackness, particularly through the racialization of Roma communities in interwar Romania and the implications of blackness elsewhere in CEE, while challenging the portrayal of this region as homogeneous and exclusively white

'Nothing but trouble', or reasoned inconsistency? The development of religion and belief protection since 2000

The article considers the development of the law on religion and belief discrimination in the EU since the introduction of the Employment Equality Directive 2000/78 (the Equality Directive) in 2000. At the time of its introduction, it was anticipated that a number of problems would face the courts given that the new equality ground would cover similar interests to those protected by existing human rights protection for freedom of religion and belief. The article explores the extent to which those fears were realised in subsequent legal developments. It explores the development of the CJEU case law on religion and belief law and shows that in large part the predictions of inconsistent treatment of religion and belief have been borne out. It concludes with an assessment of the extent to which the inconsistencies that are identified are a serious problem for the future development of the law on religion and belief within Europe

Empowering nursing students : a cross-sectional study

In nursing, empowerment can enable nurses to raise concerns about patient safety and to do so within a safe and supportive environment. Furthermore, empowering patients to gain more ownership of their health can positively influence both nurses and patients. This narrative review focused on the importance of empowering nursing students. The literature determined that nursing students must feel valued and be treated equally, and to work in an environment that is open and transparent, in order to feel empowered. Fear of retaliation may prevent nursing students from speaking out about poor care and poor practice. Moreover, co-developing care and support regimens with service users benefited both nursing students and patients, as well as local communities, reduced stress and burnout, and allowed the patient to self-care, and act in their own best interests