Meaning in the margins: postcolonial feminist methodologies in practical theology

This paper troubles research approaches in practical theology by exploring how attention to lived experiences of marginalization in postcolonial feminist theologies shapes theological methodologies. Drawing on the work of Walter Mignolo and Marcella Althaus-Reid, the margins are explored as epistemological and material sites that shape theological knowledge production. The complex intersections of experiences and identities of lives on the margins require a resistance to taxonomic or technical theological methodologies. As discussed by Mayra Rivera and Ada María Isasi-Díaz, the margins are not sites of deprivation, but of critical praxis, so theological methodology must be attentive to everyday experiences of the margins. The paper highlights where postcolonial feminist theologies add to practical theology about poetics by attending to making meaning. The paper concludes by reflecting on academic engagement with postcolonial feminist theology and the lived experiences of the margins

What Can Artificial Intelligence Do for Scientific Realism?

The paper proposes a synthesis between human scientists and artificial representation learning models as a way of augmenting epistemic warrants of realist theories against various anti-realist attempts. Towards this end, the paper fleshes out unconceived alternatives not as a critique of scientific realism but rather a reinforcement, as it rejects the retrospective interpretations of scientific progress, which brought about the problem of alternatives in the first place. By utilising adversarial machine learning, the synthesis explores possibility spaces of available evidence for unconceived alternatives providing modal knowledge of what is possible therein. As a result, the epistemic warrant of synthesised realist theories should emerge bolstered as the underdetermination by available evidence gets reduced. While shifting the realist commitment away from theoretical artefacts towards modalities of the possibility spaces, the synthesis comes out as a kind of perspectival modelling

The Knowledge Level in Cognitive Architectures: Current Limitations and Possible Developments

In this paper we identify and characterize an analysis of two problematic aspects affecting the representational level of cognitive architectures (CAs), namely: the limited size and the homogeneous typology of the encoded and processed knowledge. We argue that such aspects may constitute not only a technological problem that, in our opinion, should be addressed in order to build articial agents able to exhibit intelligent behaviours in general scenarios, but also an epistemological one, since they limit the plausibility of the comparison of the CAs' knowledge representation and processing mechanisms with those executed by humans in their everyday activities. In the final part of the paper further directions of research will be explored, trying to address current limitations and future challenges

Experience in Social Affective Applications: Methodologies and Case Study

New forms of social affective applications are emerging, bringing with them challenges in design and evaluation. We report on one such application, conveying well-being for both personal and group benefit, and consider why existing methodologies may not be suitable, before explaining and analyzing our proposed approach. We discuss our experience of using and writing about the methodology, in order to invite discussion about its suitability in particular, as well as the more general need for methodologies to examine experience and affect in social, connected situations. As these fields continue to interact, we hope that these discussions serve to aid in studying and learning from these types of application

Academic literacies twenty years on: a community-sourced literature review

In 1998, the paper ‘Student writing in higher education: an academic literacies approach’ by Mary Lea and Brian Street reinvigorated debate concerning ‘what it means to be academically literate’ (1998, p.158). It proposed a new way of examining how students learn at university and introduced the term ‘academic literacies’. Subsequently, a body of literature has emerged reflecting the significant theoretical and practical impact Lea and Street’s paper has had on a range of academic and professional fields. This literature review covers articles selected by colleagues in our professional communities of the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE), BALEAP the global forum for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) professionals, and the European Association of Teachers of Academic Writing (EATAW). As a community-sourced literature review, this text brings together reviews of wide range of texts and a diverse range of voices reflecting a multiplicity of perspectives and understandings of academic literacies. We have organised the material according to the themes: Modality, Identity, Focus on text, Implications for research, and Implications for practice. We conclude with observations relevant to these themes, which we hope will stimulate further debate, research and professional collaborations between our members and subscribers

Scientific Research about Climate Change Mitigation in Transport : A critical review

Peer reviewedPostprin

The emergent structure of feeling : what does it mean for critical educational studies and research?

Critical research in education is not what it used to be. It must now engage with a differently structured and globalized world with different social and material conditions for its peoples. This paper sets out to name the contemporary structure of feeling in which education researchers now work, particularly in terms of what now is to be the object of their educational theorizing and research and what are to be the intellectual resources brought to bear on such activity. The intention is to open up debate, recognizing that there are no easy answers and yet acknowledging the need for answers to be attempted. It is, therefore, an invitation premised on an optimism of the will to complement legitimate pessimism of the intellect. It concludes that a critical engagement with these matters demands a modernist/postmodernist, reconstructive/deconstructive reflexivity in the mobilizing of a new sociological imagination applied across the broad spectrum which is educational research.<br /