From Homophony to Polyphony: Law and Music a Consonant Duet for Future Legal Thinking and Practice?

This paper examines the extent to which the law should mirror music as a discipline that embraces the value of community in the diverse sense in order to accommodate difference. The paper advocates that the law should shift from privileging community in the unified, singular sense in order to champion community in the collective sense, so that the law may genuinely support the inclusion of a diverse range of identities.To this end, the paper emphasises the importance for the law to embed the value of ‘community’ in the Derridean sense into its approach to embrace the innate differences between identities. The paper argues that at present the operation of ‘community’ in the Derridean sense is prevented by its discordant relationship with the formalist legal approach. This approach privileges the closure of the law above accommodating the values of diversity and possibility, which are central to the Derridean conception of ‘community’. Subsequently, the paper supports Ramshaw’s thesis that a reciprocal relationship between the law and music should be established in order to facilitate a shift from dominant legal thinking and praxis in order to promote ‘community’ in the Derridean sense. This paper concludes by supporting music as a powerful instrument to emancipate the law from its formalist tendencies, and ultimately to enable the value of ‘community’ in the Derridean sense to be harmoniously embedded into future legal thinking

Feminist Judicial Decision-Making as Judicial Decision-Making: A Legitimate and Valuable Approach?

Feminist legal scholars argue that the rigid, formalist approach towards judicial decision-making is potentially harmful to the lives, experiences, and interests of women.  In critically analysing a feminist re-judgement within Feminist Judgments From Theory to Practice, this dissertation argues that the Feminist Judgments Project represents a legitimate and valuable approach, which effectively re-imagines judicial decision-making in line with women’s interests. This dissertation reinforces feminist judicial decision-making as a more responsive form of judgment making particularly for vulnerable and marginalised women whom regularly experience and are subjected to traditional judicial approaches. Further, the dissertation argues that feminist judicial decision-making constitutes a legitimate and valuable approach despite considerable criticism levelled at this methodology and judges who openly hold feminist beliefs. The dissertation positions the Feminist Judgments Project within the context of the legal realist approach to judicial decision-making, which serves as a critique of the formalist approach to judicial decision-making. The dissertation's analysis of the feminist re-judgment of R v Dhaliwal (R v D)[1] aims to promote the Feminist Judgments Project’s methodological approach as a mode of judicial best practice. This dissertation concludes that feminist judicial decision-making is a legitimate and valuable approach which recognises social inequalities and amplifies marginalised communities, whilst also remaining faithful to legal conventions

Informed consent and placebo effects: a content analysis of information leaflets to identify what clinical trial participants are told about placebos

BackgroundPlacebo groups are used in randomised clinical trials (RCTs) to control for placebo effects, which can be large. Participants in trials can misunderstand written information particularly regarding technical aspects of trial design such as randomisation; the adequacy of written information about placebos has not been explored. We aimed to identify what participants in major RCTs in the UK are told about placebos and their effects.Methods and FindingsWe conducted a content analysis of 45 Participant Information Leaflets (PILs) using quantitative and qualitative methodologies. PILs were obtained from trials on a major registry of current UK clinical trials (the UKCRN database). Eligible leaflets were received from 44 non-commercial trials but only 1 commercial trial. The main limitation is the low response rate (13.5%), but characteristics of included trials were broadly representative of all non-commercial trials on the database. 84% of PILs were for trials with 50:50 randomisation ratios yet in almost every comparison the target treatments were prioritized over the placebos. Placebos were referred to significantly less frequently than target treatments (7 vs. 27 mentions, p<001) and were significantly less likely than target treatments to be described as triggering either beneficial effects (1 vs. 45, p<001) or adverse effects (4 vs. 39, p<001). 8 PILs (18%) explicitly stated that the placebo treatment was either undesirable or ineffective.ConclusionsPILs from recent high quality clinical trials emphasise the benefits and adverse effects of the target treatment, while largely ignoring the possible effects of the placebo. Thus they provide incomplete and at times inaccurate information about placebos. Trial participants should be more fully informed about the health changes that they might experience from a placebo. To do otherwise jeopardises informed consent and is inconsistent with not only the science of placebos but also the fundamental rationale underpinning placebo controlled trials

Book review: The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm, Ending State Violence

The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm, Ending State Violence (Levine and Meiners, 2020) is a powerful, reflexive and much needed abolition feminist critique of carceral responses to sexual and gender violence and how feminism should support us in transcending ineffective, racialized criminal legal responses and institutions. The authors, Judith Levine and Erica Meiners, provide a deep analysis of the frequently peripheralized relationship between feminism, sexual and gender violence, and the intersectional harms perpetuated by the carceral state. Their timely account is formed in view of the #MeToo movement and the retributive and narrow legal terrain within the context of the sexual offences regime in the United States

A phenotypically plastic magic trait promoting reproductive isolation in sticklebacks?

This study identifies one possible mechanism whereby gene flow is interrupted in populations undergoing evolutionary divergence in sympatry; this is an important issue in evolutionary biology that remains poorly understood. Variation in trophic morphology was induced in three-spined stickleback by exposing them from an early age either to large benthic or to small pelagic prey. At sexual maturity, females given a choice between two breeding males, showed positive assortative mate choice for males raised on the same diet as themselves. The data indicate that this was mediated through a preference for males with trophic morphology similar to that of fish with which the females were familiar (from their pre-testing holding tanks). In trials where the female did not choose the most familiar male, the evidence suggests that either she had difficulty discriminating between two similar males or was positively choosing males with more extreme morphologies (more benthic-like or pelagic-like). This study has shown for the first time that expression of a plastic trait induced at an early age, not only results in specialisation for local foraging regimes but can also play a significant role in mate choice. This is equivalent to an environmentally induced, plastic version of the “magic traits” that promote ecologically-driven divergence in sympatry, hence the proposed descriptor “plastic magic trait”

Better decision making practices and processes.

Objectives Existing decision-making practices and processes for sharing linked data for research are not keeping pace with the data tsunami and technological advances. The objectives of this project were to review existing approaches to decision making and to make recommendations for better decision-making practices and processes. Approach We used a hypothetical research application to compare decision-making practices and processes for sharing linked health data for research in three jurisdictions, Western Australia, Manitoba and Scotland. to We considered the decision makers; the relevant law, policy, and guidelines; and the ethical review process to assess practice and process against metrics of good decision making - efficiency, transparency, accountability and community participation. An analysis of the similarities and differences identified common problems and challenges with existing decision-making processes. Recommendations on how to address these common problems were proposed. Results There were significant similarities in the decision-making processes in the three jurisdictions. These included: • formal application processes; • a statutory basis for decision making; • criteria for waiving consent including low risk, impracticality, necessity, and • protection of privacy and confidentiality; and • at least some community participation in decision making and research. The main areas where decision making could be improved were: • Efficiency — the number of decision makers and duplication of the issues considered by different decision makers. • Separation of decision making on governance criteria and ethics criteria • Transparency and accountability • Community involvement Conclusion This project has identified several areas where decision-making about sharing linked data for research could be improved. Six internationally relevant recommendations for better decision-making were developed covering a range of issues from identifiability to community involvement

Phenomenology of Practice Workshop

Delegates interested in exploring phenomenology and applying it to networked learning. Hanfod.NL organised a phenomenology of practice 'node' event in 2021, sponsored by the Networked Learning Conference Consortium. This event, due to be held in Cardiff, UK, had to pivot online due to the pandemic and attracted pleasing levels of interest. We would like to take the opportunity to run the workshop in-person at the conference while people are together, building on the momentum from 2021 and projecting it into the future with hopes of enlisting more collaborators, possibly for a Networked Learning and Phenomenology edited book in the Springer NL series, but certainly for opening up avenues of related work being presented at future Networked Learning conference

Contemporary Music and its Audiences

This dissertation enquires into the discourses surrounding contemporary music and contemporary music audiences. It is concerned with the language used to describe, and inscribe value upon, music, and with the categories and genres used to organise its texts and audiences. It is concerned with the “between-spaces” of music and culture, and how certain interpretive positions tend to fall into the cracks between the ascendant dialogues and canonical monuments. Chapter 1 begins with an overview of various strains of recent music research, with a particular focus upon popular musicology and popular music studies. Subsequently, the dissertation moves on to explore a number of areas of contestation, including the persistence of the opposition between high and popular culture, postmodernism and music, canon formation and critical praxis, and interpretive practices and studies of music audiences. The discussion is underwritten by the themes of isolation (suggested in the kind of nomadic and multifaceted critical position endorsed by Edward Said) and doubt (suggested in the concept of the ironist as developed by Richard Rorty). The overriding goal of the dissertation is one of addressing the relative lack of attention given to individual audience members and to both the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of their everyday engagements with music. The discussion concludes – via a critique of the dialectic between Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin – by proposing an alternative way of thinking about music audiences in the 21st century

What is it like for a learner to participate in a Zoom Breakout Room session?

Though virtual classrooms are not new, the COVID-19 pandemic sent many teachers and students online for the first time. This paper examines the use of a web-based video conferencing tool, Zoom, and in particular, the use of breakout rooms as part of a student’s learning experience. We ask: what is it like for a learner to participate in a Zoom Breakout Room session? Using Max van Manen’s (2016) phenomenology of practice, we collected learners’ lived experience descriptions of participating in a Zoom breakout room, then reflected on them phenomenologically as a way to generate new insights into this recently common online learning experience. Four moments are portrayed: a learner’s arrest at the announcement of breakout rooms; a learner’s transition into a breakout room as existential suspension; surveilling self and others in a breakout room; and exiting the breakout room as a moment of foreclosure and re-disorientation. The paper compares Zoom breakout rooms with aspects of video-gaming and notices a detriment to Freirean problem-posing education if students can avoid standing, unmediated, behind just their words, even in the relative safety of a small group of peers