The horror of orthodoxy: Christina Mirabilis, thirteenth-century ‘zombie’ saint

In 1232, Thomas of Cantimpré wrote his Life of Christina Mirabilis (c. 1150–1224), an account of the miraculous life and three deaths of an unenclosed holy woman from the Low Countries. The text opens with an explicit vindication of Christina’s return(s) as divinely mandated. Yet, the narrative shows that her community struggles to deal with the revenant in their midst. Through her example, they must confront the terrifying mechanics of purgatory, resurrection, and the co-incidence of body and soul. A similar unease is found in modern scholarship, in which Christina is typically referred to dismissively in terms more commonly applied to cinematic monsters. I work with such dismissive language – specifically the term ‘zombie’ – to move beyond this heuristic roadblock. The terms of filmic zombie-ism provide new insight into the merging of orthodoxy and terror in Christina’s vita

Het effect van Eindhoven.

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Cognitive and functional (COLFUN) framework forenvisioning and assessing high-demand situations

The human role in complex task environments will more and more focus on handling non-routine situations with increasing information velocity and ubiquity. This paper presents a generic Cognitive and Functional (COLFUN) framework for envisioning and assessing such high-demand situations in order to realize an adequate human resource deployment. The framework consists of two models, a cognitive load model and a functional model, that support a coherent scenario analysis of the task demands and information flows. We briefly discuss two example assessments in early development processes: a traffic-control-center analysis and a task analysis for a naval ships bridge. Both analyses supported the development and refinement of operating procedures, support systems, manning schemes, work organization and training requirements. In general, COLFUN supports the integration of human factors in the iterative development process of complex human-machine systems

Modeling safety culture as a socially emergent complex systems phenomenon: a case study in aircraft maintenance

Aerospace Transport & Operation

Modeling safety culture as a socially emergent phenomenon: A case study in aircraft maintenance

Safety culture is often understood as encompassing organizational members’ shared attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and values associated with safety. Safety culture theory development is fraught with inconsistencies and superficiality of measurement methods, because the dynamic and political nature of culture is often ignored. Traditionally, safety culture is analyzed by survey-based approaches. In this paper we propose a novel, systemic, interdisciplinary approach for investigating safety culture that combines multi-agent system modeling with organizational ethnography. By using this approach, mechanisms of emergence of safety culture from daily practices, operations and interactions of organizational actors can be modeled and analyzed. The approach is illustrated by a case study from the aircraft maintenance domain, based on existing ethnographic data. Using the proposed approach we were able to reproduce and explain emergent characteristic patterns of commitment to safety in the maintenance organization from this study. The model can be used for theory development and as a management tool to evaluate non-linear impacts of organizational arrangements on workers’ commitment to safety.Aerospace Transport & Operation