Covert research and adult protection and safeguarding: An ethical dilemma?

Purpose: This paper aims to consider the contentious issue of covert research in studying the social contexts of vulnerable groups. It explores its potential utility in areas where overt strategies may be problematic or denied; and examines and problematises the issue of participant consent. Design/methodology/approach: Using a literature-based review and selected previous studies, the paper explores the uses and abuses of covert research in relation to ethics review proceedings governing social research, with an especial focus on vulnerability. Findings: Findings indicate that although the use of covert research is subject to substantial critique by apparently transgressing the often unquestioned moral legitimacy of informed consent, this carries ethical and practical utility for research related to safeguarding concerns. Arguably covert research enables research access to data likely to reveal abusive and oppressive practices. Research limitations/implications: Covert research assists in illuminating the hidden voices and lives of vulnerable people that may otherwise remain inaccessible. Such research needs to be subject to rigorous ethical standards to ensure that it is both justified and robust. Practical implications: Emphasising the need to consider all angles, questions and positions when addressing the social problem of adult protection and safeguarding. Originality/value: Increasingly social research is treated as being as potentially harmful as medical research. Ethics review tends towards conservative conformity, legitimising methodologies that may serve less social utility than other forms of investigation that privilege the safeguarding of vulnerable people. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: The Promise and Reality of Reconciliation in Croatia

The international community is increasingly interested in promoting post-conflict reconciliation in a variety of forms, with trials and truth commissions featured most prominently. The contemporary academic discussion over transitional justice (and the practice of transitional justice itself) is largely focused on whether and how these types of large-scale national transitional justice mechanisms contribute to reconciliation. This article examines the promise and reality of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to contribute to national reconciliation. Ultimately, the ability of state-wide policies to contribute to reconciliation rests on the active participation of local level actors. This requires political backing at the state and local level beyond that of just the international community. More attention needs to be paid to domestic cultural factors in the initial decision to implement state-wide transitional justice procedures, and bottom-up mechanisms must be built into any large scale approach to reconciliation

Master of Fine Arts

thesisThe practice of yoga has had a profound impact on me as a dancer and artist, serving as a new lens and conceptual framework I have applied to my creative work. Both dance and yoga allow me the unique opportunity to experience who I am by emphasis on self-investigation through expansion of consciousness with the use of the body. Dance enables me to outwardly manifest my inner reality through the form of choreography and performance, while yoga encourages deep emotional reflection. I am interested in the relationship between my yoga practice and philosophical beliefs, and how each influence my creative process, choreographic works, and performance. In this thesis, I am exploring the tantra yogic model of embodiment: the body is the key to transcendence; and the yogic perspective of tapas: the heat or resistance required for physical, mental, and spiritual transformation. Using discomfort as a catalyst for artistic growth, I analyze and reflect upon my thesis work: ""Better an ignis fattus/than no illume at all"" (Better to be a foolish fire than to have no flame at all). I draw connections between the philosophical perspective of tapas, the tantra model of embodiment, and their relationship to themes in my creative work. Ultimately, this study reveals how the practice of yoga, and the concept of tapas has been a useful tool for my creative work, providing me artistic freedom and fortitude to embrace uncertainty with steadiness and ease

Ayn Rand, Female Misogynist: A Study of Androgyny in Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand, renowned author of such titles as Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, based many of her heroines on her androgynist views derived from her upbringing and lifestyle. Parker balances her research mostly between Rand’s life and her female protagonist in Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart. Taggart possesses some disdain for a few female characters in the novel, which reflects some of Rand’s lack of female friends due to anti-feministic opinions, the most notable identifying her own sex as weak and submissive. Ayn herself said that she based all of her characters off of a male hero in a children’s comic books series. Her negative experiences with trying to form these female friendships lead her to create these masculine heroines to escape from the overwhelming feminism she was experiencing. According to Parker, this explains why Ayn in fact did favor male dominance over females, which explains why many of her characters possess masculine character traits

Invasion of Ukraine Discourse on TikTok Dataset

We present a dataset of videos and comments from the social media platform TikTok, centred around the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, an event that launched TikTok into the geopolitical arena. The discourse around the invasion exposed myriad political behaviours and dynamics that are unexplored on this platform. To this end we provide a mass scale language and interaction dataset for further research into these processes. An initial investigation of language and social interaction dynamics are explored in this paper. The dataset and the library used to collect it are open sourced to the public