The Death of Isabella Della Volpe: Four Eyewitness Accounts of a Postmortem Caesarean Section in 1545

This article provides a transcription and translation of four notarized declarations describing the events surrounding a postmortem caesarean section performed in 1545 in Vercelli, a small city in the Duchy of Savoy. After her death in the late stages of pregnancy, Isabella della Volpe’s body was opened and her fetus excised by a local barber, aided by a surgeon and a midwife. The article argues that the postmortem caesarean section was a well-known and widely accepted procedure and that it might be motivated by financial and legal as well as religious concerns; not only was it important to baptize the child for its salvation, but the fate of the mother’s dowry, as in this case, might depend on whether she died with or without living issue.History of Scienc

Women, Gender, and Utopia: The Death of Nature and the Historiography of Early Modern Science

This essay reflects on the ambivalent reception of The Death of Nature among English-speaking historians of early modern science. It argues that, despite its importance, the book was mostly ignored or marginalized by these historians (as opposed to historians interested in feminist or environmental studies) for a variety of reasons. These included the special role played by the "Scientific Revolution" in the grand narrative that increasingly shaped the historiography of science beginning in the 1940s and the subsequent "hyperprofessionalism" of the discipline as a whole. The essay concludes by placing Carolyn Merchant's work in the context of feminist utopian writing of the late 1970s and calls for renewed attention to the history of the utopian genre as a resource for teachers and feminist scholars of the history of science.History of Scienc

Towards flexible personalized learning and the future educational system in the fourth industrial revolution in the wake of Covid-19

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Higher Education Pedagogies on 25/02/2021, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/23752696.2021.1883458The concept of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is examined and related to a ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate (UCaPP) world, Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity (VUCA) as well as Barnett's concept of 'supercomplexity' in Higher Education and its response to Covid-19. Pedagogies need to be aligned with institutional and views about 'quality education' but with respect to the likely changes in the nature of undergraduate student intake in the formulation of a Future Educational System. Considerations include students from 'nontraditional' sources adapting to existing university structures and how adaptive structures might accommodate these students on top of changes and disruptions resulting from Covid-19. We consider that mobile devices (phones and tablets) allow Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) to be developed in accordance with individual students' needs. PLEs allow ubiquitous, flexible educational structures to be developed to improve personalised and quality education. Educational policies should be associated with connectivist approaches involving active learning via broad curriculum development and the core values of 'hybrid-flexible' learning and appreciate the importance of individual student needs and capabilities, socio-economic as well as academic. We stress the importance of broadening access to higher education, in particular, those who have been 'neglected' by current procedures

Exploring Empathic Space: Correlates of Perspective Transformation Ability and Biases in Spatial Attention

Separate lines of research have noted recruitment of parietal cortex during tasks involving visuo-spatial processes and empathy. To explore the relationship between these two functions, a self-other perspective transformation task and a task of spatial attention (line bisection) were administered to 40 healthy participants (19 women). Performance on these tasks was examined in relation to self-reported empathy. Rightward biases in line bisection correlated positively with trait-level self-reported empathic concern, suggesting a left hemisphere mediation of this prosocial personality trait. Unexpectedly, speed of perspective taking in the self-other transformation task correlated negatively with empathic concern, but only in women, which we interpret in light of gender differences in empathy and strategies for egocentric mental transformations. Together, the findings partially support the commonalities in visuo-spatial attention, perspective-taking and empathy. More broadly, they shed additional light on the relationship between basic cognitive functions and complex social constructs

The iPad six years on: progress and problems for enhancing mobile learning with special reference to fieldwork education

This paper summarises findings from 2010 involving mobile technologies in the Enhancing Fieldwork Learning project. We show, through practical involvement with students and higher education teaching practitioners, that iPads can be used to facilitate innovative pedagogies and promote active learning in various field and outofclass situations. We also note that iPads and similar smart devices can be useful in Higher Education in general. The acceptance of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is far less common in the HE system in the UK than at secondary level despite the range of apps and development of students’ individual Personal Learning Environments