TRANSITION OF CHILDREN TO THE FIRST DAY CARE – HOW DOES MIGRATION BACKGROUND INFLUENCE CHILDREN’S SETTLING PROCESS?

This study investigates how children with and without migration background are settled in day care centers. The design of a gentle transition period from the family to the day care center together with parents and children is one of the indispensable quality criteria of early childhood education. The steadily increasing migration to Germany and thus also the number of families with migration background lead to the fact that more and more migrant children are settled in German day care centers. To examine how the migration background influences children’s settling process, I conduct interviews with head teachers of German day care centers. The results show that the head teachers are confronted with a variety of challenges by children with a migration background, which no longer represent an exception, but rather characterize everyday life. Successful settling requires good teamwork: internally with colleagues and externally with parents. In addition, there should always be a friendly and constructive level of communication that allows feedback, criticism and feelings. Decisive criteria for how a settling will go are the character of the child and the willingness of the parents to let go and cooperate. This applies regardless of whether it is a family with or without a migration background. The article provides several practical recommendations for successfully managing the transition process. Article visualizations

A Room, A Chair, and A Desk: Founding Voices of Women’s and Gender Studies in Uganda

This paper studies the birth and development of women’s and gender studies in Uganda. I conducted this research as part of a doctoral thesis on the history of women’s and gender studies in the Global South. Using feminist and standpoint theories, much of the research includes oral histories gathered over the course of three years of field work in Uganda. From the moment I heard my professor say, “I learned to be a feminist from Ugandan women,” I knew that I wanted to understand the history of women’s and gender studies in the country. In sub-Saharan Africa, the discipline of women’s and gender studies has made dramatic inroads into the academy through the development of degree-granting undergraduate and graduate programs, the creation of research centers and institutes, and the growth of African feminist theory. Using Uganda as a case study, we can look to the oldest program of its kind in Africa to trace the birth of the discipline on the continent. The history of women’s and gender studies in Uganda speaks to ways in which the discipline in the Global South has, since its inception, been entrenched in transnational feminism and an intersectional curriculum rooted in indigenous feminisms

A transnational family story:A narrative inquiry on the emotional and intergenerational notions of ‘home’

At the core of migratory experiences lie key questions pertaining to one’s emotional changing Self: the complexity of conflicting identities, feelings of (un)belonging, varying degrees of emotional place (un)attachment, and the fundamental (re)conceptualizations of ‘home. Though well-studied from various angles, ‘home’ asan emotional concept in the context of generational family migration research has many gains yet to be made. Through an in-depth study on three generations of one author’s own family, this paper provides personal insight into the intergenerational and emotional dimensions of this topic. Unanimously, the findings demonstrate that notions of ‘home’ as where family is remain predominant, with ties to transnationally dispersed family members rendering ‘home’ as multiple. Places of familial heritage further remain central in conceptualizations of ‘home’ through a retainment of cultural practices and values derived from familial homelands. Despite these cross-generational similarities, challenges and emotional uncertainties on the topic are seen to be increasingly prevalent in the youngest generation. Above all, interviewees’ post-migration reflections demonstrate that such conceptualizations are intricate, relational and do not exist in an emotional vacuum

Building STEM Equity and Identity in the Community

Numerous obstacles contribute to the underrepresentation of racial, ethnic, and gender groups in science and technology fields. However, addressing these barriers is complex and multifactorial. As part of their exploration of intersectionality and leadership, seniors in biology investigated different factors that initiate and sustain interest and engagement in STEM fields. They applied this knowledge by re-envisioning classroom activities and resources to align with best practices that encourage the development of STEM identity in underrepresented groups. These activities are being compiled into a resource handbook for Indianapolis-area teachers and will be part of an ongoing service outreach project for biology undergraduates

Perceived multifunctionality of agroforestry trees in Northern Ethiopia

This case study explored perceptions on the beneficial and detrimental functions obtained from agroforestry trees in two sites in Northern Ethiopia. These perceived functions were contextualized and their contribution to a multifunctionality in agriculture discussed. 55 farming household heads and five informants in two study sites, Abreha we Atsbah and Mayberazio, participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants in March 2016. Using a Means-End Chain framework, cognitive structures around the perceived functions were revealed. It was investigated which attributes are seen as provoking certain functions and how the functions contribute towards the achievement of personal values. The most mentioned beneficial functions of agroforestry trees were wood for construction (98% of households), fuel (95%), sale (84%), fodder (82%), land improvement (69%), and fencing material (47%). The most mentioned drawbacks of agroforestry trees were detrimental shade (78% of households), resource depletion (16%), and barrier for cultivation (13%). Farming households were found to carefully design their agroforestry system in order to obtain the requested functions. The results of the study show that functions can contribute to three spheres: (i) to support the household’s livelihood, (ii) to serve as business incentive, or (iii) to the personal satisfaction of the household members. A comparison of the personal values related to function indicate that agroforestry trees are perceived as particularly beneficial if they contribute to more than one of these spheres. Thus, participants of this study were found to be interested in a multifunctional portfolio of agroforestry tree functions which is aligned with their household farming goals

The impact of carbon disclosure mandates on emissions and financial operating performance

We examine whether a disclosure mandate for greenhouse gas emissions creates stakeholder pressure for firms to subsequently reduce their emissions. For UKincorporated listed firms such a mandate was adopted in 2013. Using a difference- indifferences design, we find that firms affected by the mandate reduced their emissions – depending on the specification – by an incremental 14-18% relative to a control group. This reduction was accompanied by an average 9% increase in production costs. At the same time, the treated firms were able to increase their sales by an almost compensating amount. Taken together, our findings provide no indication that the disclosure requirement led to a significant deterioration in the financial operating performance of the treated firms, despite the significant carbon footprint reduction following the disclosure mandate

Mitigating Decentralized Finance Liquidations with Reversible Call Options

Liquidations in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) are both a blessing and a curse -- whereas liquidations prevent lenders from capital loss, they simultaneously lead to liquidation spirals and system-wide failures. Since most lending and borrowing protocols assume liquidations are indispensable, there is an increased interest in alternative constructions that prevent immediate systemic-failure under uncertain circumstances. In this work, we introduce reversible call options, a novel financial primitive that enables the seller of a call option to terminate it before maturity. We apply reversible call options to lending in DeFi and devise Miqado, a protocol for lending platforms to replace the liquidation mechanisms. To the best of our knowledge, Miqado is the first protocol that actively mitigates liquidations to reduce the risk of liquidation spirals. Instead of selling collateral, Miqado incentivizes external entities, so-called supporters, to top-up a borrowing position and grant the borrower additional time to rescue the debt. Our simulation shows that Miqado reduces the amount of liquidated collateral by 89.82% in a worst-case scenario