Acknowledged Goods: Cultural Studies and the Politics of Academic Journal Publishing

This essay explores the changing context of academic journal publishing and cultural studies' envelopment within it. It does so by exploring five major trends affecting scholarly communication today: alienation, proliferation, consolidation, pricing, and digitization. More specifically, it investigates how recent changes in the political economy of academic journal publishing have impinged on cultural studies' capacity to transmit the knowledge it produces, thereby dampening the field's political potential. It also reflects on how cultural studies' alienation from the conditions of its production has resulted in the field's growing involvement with interests that are at odds with its political proclivities

DRAMATIC ARCHITECTURES. THEATRE AND PERFORMING ARTS IN MOTION

This work was funded by national funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., within the project UIDB/04041/2020 (Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Ancient versus modern health patterns: biological and socioeconomic status differences and similarities between a Hellenistic and a 20th century human burial population from Greece

The present research offers the rare opportunity to compare the human remains of an ancient (3rd-1st century BC) population from the North Cemetery of Demetrias, Thessaly, and a modern (late 19th-late 20th century AD) one, the Athens Collection, from various cemeteries in Athens, Greece. Its main purpose is to explore the biological similarities and differences between the two populations and among the subsets within each one of them, as these are defined by biosocial parameters, namely sex/gender, and purely social, that is socioeconomic status. An attempt is made to associate biological with social variation through oral pathology and wear and address questions as to whether the health status of burial populations can indeed reflect socioeconomic conditions and status in life. Data analysis produced very conclusive differences between the two populations, and among sex/gender and socioeconomic status groups and suggests that dental caries, antemortem tooth loss, occlusal wear and dental enamel defects are very sensitive indicators of social position and conditions in general. Comparisons between the ancient and the contemporary population reveal that environmental, cultural and socioeconomic circumstances did not have the same effect on all oral conditions. Moreover, variations between the sexes are quite evident in Demetrias and they appear to reflect the inferior social position of both women and female infants/children. In contrast, in Athens, there is no evidence to indicate gender discrimination or favourable treatment of male infants. Social class differentiation manifests itself in the distribution of oral pathology and wear between status groups in both assemblages, but it is clearly more pronounced in Demetrias. Finally, this thesis contributes towards a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between biological and socioeconomic status and of the Hellenistic biocultural history. It also emphasises that analysis of human remains should be carefully contextualised culturally, archaeologically and historically

Conversational ecologies

This project takes a transdisciplinary approach to spatial interactivity, incorporating elements of theoretical discourse, speculative design, narrative worldbuilding, making, scientific experimentation and video. To me it is destructive to segregate bodies of knowledge, or any bodies for that matter, and it denies the synergism that is possible with transdisciplinary work. I combine scientific materiality with imagined alechemies and interweave these throughout the text with borrowed and original philosophical contemplations to more fully grapple with the shifting complexities of Conversational Ecologies. I firmly believe that due to the complex, multisensorial nature of interactivity, the discourse must exist outside of just the written. This discourse can exist simultaneously as fantasy and reality–as long as it engages the senses and encourages people to reconsider their ecological positionalities. This theoretical, textual body acts as both a beginning for these experiments, and as a site to re-incorporate what I learn ‘in the field.