What do we mean when we talk about information policies

An information policy is a concerted action of various agents with information as the object, having as a purpose certain goals. The crisis we face is not only economic but also technological and due to changes in the organizational model, and we are already seeing some effects of deregulation and no planning. We can only establish solid information policies if we find a set of actions around which a wide spectrum of agents can be aligned without friction. 1. In the print world, policies should allow us to determine what exists and make that easily accessible, and know what is little used and will tend to be used less and ensure that it is preserved. 2. Research funding institutions can and must agree to facilitate open access to information and data. 3. Finally, the library-organization must be able to provide digital books, offer digital information that anybody can use, and ensure that born-digital materials are passed on to future generations. To this we must add the need to plan for information literacy training in schools. In these times of change, surrounded by uncertainty and some notable weaknesses, part of our professional duties should be devoted to elaborate agreements enabling us to take coordinated action in certain directions

What do we mean when we talk about language? An introduction

This session will introduce some of the topics related to language across the university. We will look briefly at some of the theories, concepts, ideas and discussions about what is meant when we talk about language. The first half of the session will be in the form of a talk, then followed by open discussion. Topics to be discussed include: What does language do? What are the differences between spoken and written language? What do we mean by academic language? How can understanding more about language help inform our own disciplines and teaching practices

What Do We Mean When We Talk About Performance?: A Metacritical Overview of an Evolving Concept

It is fair to state that performance is one of the most contested terms in our field, clearly evolving and emerging in the last few decades as one of the most significant terms in a wide range of academic disciplines and in society in general. This essay lays out many of the principal critical and theoretical concepts and debates related to performance—performativity, performance studies, performance art, etc.—to illustrate how the field and the lens through which we view it have changed and are continuing to change, as well as how those of us who study Latin American theater fit into the larger picture of examining the embodiment of meaning. This study of some of the main contributions to the discipline and to the creation of the field of performance studies offers an overview of the concepts, scholarship, and bibliography that have helped shape the ways in which we talk about performance. (CL

What do we mean when we talk about trust in social media? A systematic review

Do people trust social media? If so, why, in what contexts, and how does that trust impact their lives? Researchers, companies, and journalists alike have increasingly investigated these questions, which are fundamental to understanding social media interactions and their implications for society. However, trust in social media is a complex concept, and there is conflicting evidence about the antecedents and implications of trusting social media content, users, and platforms. More problematic is that we lack basic agreement as to what trust means in the context of social media. Addressing these challenges, we conducted a systematic review to identify themes and challenges in this field. Through our analysis of 70 papers, we contribute a synthesis of how trust in social media is defined, conceptualized, and measured, a summary of trust antecedents in social media, an understanding of how trust in social media impacts behaviors and attitudes, and directions for future work

‘What do we mean when we talk about language?’ Opening up Language Across the University

This paper describes a recent project set up by the language centre at a UK-based art and design institution around the topic of language at the university. In this context language is often seen as being ‘separate’ from course content but in reality, and drawing from both academic literacies and systemic functional linguistics, it can be viewed as ‘the essential condition of knowing, the process by which experience becomes knowledge’ (Halliday & Martin, 1993, p. 94). In other words, understanding more about language and how it works across the university and within different disciplines can help inform teaching and learning practices. Drawing on ideas about language teacher expertise (Fitzpatrick, Costley & Tavakoli, 2022), the project revolves around a series of talks on different aspects of language with the aim of providing colleagues across the university with an understanding of what language is and does. These colleagues may not always have an applied linguistics background and so may not always be aware of the concepts, ideas and methodologies that our field has to offer

What do we mean when we talk about “safe space”?: a philosophical exploration of a contentious metaphor in education

Educators have described their classes and institutions as “safe spaces” with increasing frequency and certainty since the 1990s. However, philosophers of education such as Eamon Callan, Cris Mayo, and Sigal Ben-Porath have found “safe space” to be conceptually and pedagogically lacking when interpreted from intersectional positionalities operating within the hegemonic white, masculine, and consumerist discourses permeating a modern educational system that strives for greater equity, diversity, and inclusion. This work operationalizes “safe space” by recognizing it as what linguists Max Black, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, and philosopher Paul Ricoeur would term a conceptual metaphor, which structures thinking about education. Critical pedagogues such as Michael Apple, Raymond Callahan, Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, Herbert Kliebard, and Peter McLaren have argued how this type of structured thinking can influence pedagogical practices; but to date, no in-depth philosophical analysis of “safe space” exists in the literature. Interrogating modern debates about the nature of “space” inherited from Isaac Newton (who viewed it as an absolute container filled with independent subjects/objects), and Gottfried Leibniz (who viewed space as an infinite set of relations between subjects/objects), the implications for any educationally worthwhile understanding and practice of “safety” or “safe space” are shown to be suspect due to the Newtonian inheritances. Ultimately, I posit that “safe space” is unavoidably Newtonian – assumed to be capable of formulation a priori such that students are entitled to a guarantee that a class space will be safe in some sense that can be unambiguously stated, irrespective of who is taking the class, what the class is about, and what is going on in the world. This a priori safe space is then one that institutions feel responsible for guaranteeing, teachers feel responsible for creating and maintaining, with students feeling no responsibility other than reaping its benefits. Linking this work’s conceptual analysis of the Leibnizian inheritances to “space” and “safety” (understood as infinitely relational) to that of critical pedagogues such as bell hooks, I argue for a more philosophically grounded and educationally worthwhile understanding of “safe space”.Safe Space; Philosophy of Education; Paul Ricoeur; Isaac Newton; Gottfried Leibniz, bell hooks; Conceptual Metaphor; Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI

What do we mean when we talk about “safe space”? A philosophical exploration of a contentious metaphor in education

Educators have described their classes and institutions as “safe spaces” with increasing frequency and certainty since the 1990s. However, philosophers of education such as Eamon Callan, Cris Mayo, and Sigal Ben-Porath have found “safe space” to be conceptually and pedagogically lacking when interpreted from intersectional positionalities operating within the hegemonic white, masculine, and consumerist discourses permeating a modern educational system that strives for greater equity, diversity, and inclusion. This work operationalizes “safe space” by recognizing it as what linguists Max Black, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, and philosopher Paul Ricoeur would term a conceptual metaphor, which structures thinking about education. Critical pedagogues such as Michael Apple, Raymond Callahan, Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, Herbert Kliebard, and Peter McLaren have argued how this type of structured thinking can influence pedagogical practices; but to date, no in-depth philosophical analysis of “safe space” exists in the literature. Interrogating modern debates about the nature of “space” inherited from Isaac Newton (who viewed it as an absolute container filled with independent subjects/objects), and Gottfried Leibniz (who viewed space as an infinite set of relations between subjects/objects), the implications for any educationally worthwhile understanding and practice of “safety” or “safe space” are shown to be suspect due to the Newtonian inheritances. Ultimately, I posit that “safe space” is unavoidably Newtonian – assumed to be capable of formulation a priori such that students are entitled to a guarantee that a class space will be safe in some sense that can be unambiguously stated, irrespective of who is taking the class, what the class is about, and what is going on in the world. This a priori safe space is then one that institutions feel responsible for guaranteeing, teachers feel responsible for creating and maintaining, with students feeling no responsibility other than reaping its benefits. Linking this work’s conceptual analysis of the Leibnizian inheritances to “space” and “safety” (understood as infinitely relational) to that of critical pedagogues such as bell hooks, I argue for a more philosophically grounded and educationally worthwhile understanding of “safe space”

What do we mean when we talk about Roman healing spas? The Roman architecture in bathing buildings using mineralmedicinal water in Hispania

La presencia de edificios vinculados al aprovechamiento y al uso de aguas mineromedicinales es un hecho constatado y bien conocido en todo el Imperio Romano. Sin embargo, con frecuencia estos edificios antiguos aparecen en la bibliografía descritos junto a los establecimientos termales de agua común sin que se planteen, en la mayoría de los casos, elementos de diferenciación como los que creemos existen en estos edificios, dada su principal funcionalidad (salutífera) y su significado último (religioso). Bajo esa premisa, consideramos necesario hacer una revisión arquitectónica y organizativa de estos complejos termales, partiendo de un ámbito concreto y delimitado: la Península Ibérica, como ejemplo extrapolable y comparable con otros ámbitos del Occidente del Imperio Romano.The existence of Roman baths in which mineral-medicinal waters were used is a well-known reality around the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, these establishments are usually described in bibliography in the same way as Roman spas using common water in spite of their substantial differences related to their health and religious meanings. In order to improve our knowledge on this subject, it is necessary to review the architecture and organization of these healing spas. As a first step, this research undertakes the study of the best known Roman buildings of Hispania allowing us to compare them with other areas of the Western Roman Empire

Potterliteracy: Cross-Media Narratives, Cultures and Grammars

This is an opportunity to think hard about the rhetorics of multiliteracy and media literacy. What exactly do these mean when we look at the detail, at the 'micro-level' of literacy (Buckingham 2003)? How does a particular image or narrative moment 'translate' across different media? If we expect children to learn about the notion of 'character' in literature or film, what does this mean in the context of a game? If they learn the category of 'verb' in language, how do we talk about this category in film? How is the 'verb' different in the interactive media of computer games? And how do these processes relate to macro-literacy, to the broader cultural experience of books, films and games within which such meanings are situated? And what are these different formal structures representing? At the heart of this question, I want to place the question about the social purpose of Harry Potter for children, and the forms of agency the character represents