Asymmetric projection of introspection reveals a behavioural and neural mechanism for interindividual social coordination

When we collaborate with others to tackle novel problems, we anticipate how they will perform their part of the task to coordinate behavior effectively. We might estimate how well someone else will perform by extrapolating from estimates of how well we ourselves would perform. This account predicts that our metacognitive model should make accurate predictions when projected onto people as good as, or worse than, us but not on those whose abilities exceed our own.We demonstrate just such a pattern and that it leads to worse coordination when working with people more skilled than ourselves.Metacognitive projection is associated with a specific activity pattern in anterior lateral prefrontal cortex (alPFC47). Manipulation of alPFC47 activity altered metacognitive projection and impaired interpersonal social coordination. By contrast, monitoring of other individuals’ observable performance and outcomes is associated with a distinct pattern of activity in the posterior temporal parietal junction (TPJp)

THE ECONOMICS OF THE MANUSCRIPT AND RARE BOOK TRADE, ca. 1890–1939

The market for rare books has been characterized as unpredictable, and driven by the whims of a small number of rich individuals. Yet behind the headlines announcing new auction records, a range of sources make it possible to analyze the market as a whole. This book introduces the economics of the trade in manuscripts and rare books during the turbulent period ca. 1890–1939. It demonstrates how surviving sources, even when incomplete and inconsistent, can be used to tackle questions about the operation of the rare book trade, including how books were priced, profit margins, accounting practices, and books as investments, from the perspectives of both dealers and collectors

‘Meeting the Gutenberg Bible in a Virtual Reading Room’, SHARP In the Classroom

Virtual reading rooms (VRRs) started to become more common during closures due to Covid-19, as institutions increasingly created set-ups to allow for interactions with librarians who can facilitate live, responsive research, in real time, with physical objects. But they have not become embedded in research, teaching, research-led teaching, and public engagement. Much of the discussion about VRRs for research and teaching has focused on more common material, not least because research and teaching with highly valuable, rare, and restricted artefacts has by default been in person. This is especially the case for specialist research and teaching related to their materiality. But this model is exclusionary. It demands the health, personal and professional circumstances, and wealth for travel as well as connections to be granted access, while causing an ecological impact. This call for action explores how VRRs can be used to facilitate participant-directed interactions for advanced teaching and research into materiality of rare artefacts of print heritage, based on virtual object-based teaching with perhaps the most special of all special collections: the Gutenberg Bible

The Falerii Novi Project: the 2023 season

A four-week campaign from 29 May–23 June 2023 marked the third season of the Falerii Novi Project, and the second season of stratigraphic excavation on site as part of an international collaboration between the British School at Rome, Harvard University, the Institute of Classical Studies (University of London) and the University of Toronto, along with researchers from Ghent University and the University of Florence, under the authorization of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Provincia di Viterbo e per l’Etruria Meridionale. The project, described in two previous reports (Bernard et al., 2022; Andrews et al., 2023b), sets out to explore the urban history of the site of Falerii Novi in the Middle Tiber Valley (Andrews et al., 2023a). Excavation concentrated on three areas of the city: work continued in Areas I (macellum) and II (domus), while Area III in the southern sector of the town was closed and a new Area V opened above a series of tabernae along the northwestern side of the forum piazza (Fig. 1). Reported elsewhere in this volume are other activities also undertaken under the broad umbrella of the Falerii Novi Project over the past year. These include a large geophysical survey of the suburban area begun with the aim of exploring the immediate hinterland of the city (Pomar, 2024) and a topographical reassessment of the open excavations conducted by the Soprintendenza between 1969 and 1974 (Fochetti, 2024)

The Pre-Modern Manuscript Trade and its Consequences, ca. 1890-1945

This collection brings together current research into the development of the market for pre-modern manuscripts. Between 1890 and 1945 thousands of manuscripts made in Europe before 1600 appeared on the market. Many entered the collections in which they have remained, shaping where and how we encounter the books today. These collections included libraries that bear their founders’ names, as well as national and regional public libraries. The choices of the super-rich shaped their collections and determined what was available to those with fewer resources. In addition, wealthy collectors sponsored scholarship on their manuscripts and participated in exhibitions, raising the profile of some books. The volume examines the collectors, dealers, and scholars who engaged with pre-modern books, and the cultural context of the manuscript trade in this era

Access to mental health services in Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and the Greater Horn of Africa region

Over the past ten years, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia have consistently featured among the top twenty nationalities applying for asylum in the United Kingdom. People across the Greater Horn of Africa region face significant challenges in accessing mental health services, compounded by widespread stigma and cultural barriers that deter individuals from seeking help. Mental health services in the region suffer from limited resources and lack of funding, a shortage of trained professionals, and a lack of supportive national policies and legislation. There is a pressing need for basic psychosocial support, counselling, substance abuse services, and greater integration and prioritisation of mental health within broader health and social care systems. Recognising mental health as an essential part of the right to health for both citizens and refugees is crucial. Governments and international actors must invest in developing healthcare systems that can meet these needs, mobilising political will and funding to alleviate the substantial yet often invisible burden of psychological suffering among displaced populations. Achieving the goal of “no health without mental health” remains a distant but necessary aspiration

Troubling environmental governance: citizen legal experiments with transboundary commons

Environmental phenomena shed light on the fiction that inter-state borders constitute on some level, and the limitations of state-based environmental governance. Transboundary watersheds, in particular, flow across borders of different kinds, evincing the interdependence of water bodies, both human and nonhuman. The lack of cross-border comprehensive environmental governance imposes regional forms of inequity and inefficient forms of water protection. In Central America, to address such problems, citizens have created a legal prototype for how transboundary watersheds could be governed as a commons going forward. This endeavour has been led by Salvadorans, concerned as they are by their country’s position as a lower co-riparian and their significant interdependence with transboundary water bodies. I argue that, in addition to destabilizing established approaches to environmental governance, the legal prototype opens avenues for forms of earthly politics and multispecies justice by placing the reproduction of life, human and nonhuman, side by side

Historical Responsibility and the Mediation of Difficult Pasts

Mediating Memories and Responsibility brings together leading scholars and new voices in the interdisciplinary fields of memory studies, history, and cultural studies to explore the ways culture, and cultural representations, have been at the forefront of bringing the memory of past injustices to the attention of audiences for many years. Engaging with the darkest pages of twentieth-century European history, dealing with the legacy of colonialism, war crimes, genocides, dictatorships, and racism, the authors of this collection of critical essays address Europe’s ‘difficult pasts’ through the study of cultural products, examining historical narratives, literary texts, films, documentaries, theatre, poetry, graphic novels, visual artworks, material heritage, and the cultural and political reception of official government reports. Adopting an intermedial approach to the study of European history, the book probes the relationship between memory and responsibility, investigating what it means to take responsibility for the past and showing how cultural products are fundamentally entangled in this process

Protection for Venezuelans in the spirit of Cartagena? An analysis of the spirit of Cartagena and how the protection policies for displaced Venezuelans in Brazil, Colombia and Peru held up to the standard of the spirit of Cartagena

In the midst of the largest exodus in Latin America and months before the fortieth anniversary of the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees, a discussion of the Latin American regional refugee regime is timely. This study reviews the protection policies of three receiving countries in Latin America during the Venezuelan displacement crisis for the period of 2015-2021. It begins with an over-arching discussion of the role and importance of regional refugee regimes. It continues with a narrowed focus on the Latin American regional refugee regime, centred around the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees. Then, it seeks to close a knowledge gap by defining and attributing elements to the ‘spirit of Cartagena’, an emerging concept stemming from the Cartagena regime. This broader discussion is put into perspective with a case study on the Latin American response to the Venezuelan displacement. The case study focuses on the forms of protection offered to displaced Venezuelans in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. Then, an analysis is conducted on whether, and in what ways, the varying policies acted in the ‘spirit of Cartagena’. The analysis uses the defining elements of the ‘spirit of Cartagena’ as a measuring stick against themes of the discussed protection policies. The aim is to evaluate some of the region’s responses to the Venezuelan displacement crisis in the context of the notion of the ‘spirit of Cartagena.’ The conclusion is that a harmonised response within the regional refugee regime was ideal, however the policies were generally ad hoc, complementary, and temporary. Despite this, the pragmatism of the protection measures still reflected some aspects of the ‘spirit of Cartagena’

Concepts

Concepts are recombinable elements of deliberate conscious thoughts. When I think birds fly, I use my concept of birds and my concept of flying. We think about the world by categorizing things under concepts. This allows us to use existing knowledge (the bird may well fly off). And when we learn something new (birds have feathers), concepts store that information systematically. As studied in cognitive science, concepts are mental representations: physical particulars (in the brain, and perhaps body, of the thinker) that refer to things in the world. A prominent version of the representational approach argues that concepts combine and behave like words of natural language—that we think in a language of thought. As information floods in from the world, concepts are a key way we make sense of what we perceive. They play a central role in thought, language, communication, and learning. They are powerful tools for organizing information, making inferences, and planning for the future