Nikosthenes: innovation and identity in late archaic vase-painting

In this dissertation, I focus on the creative and commercial activities of the Nikosthenes workshop, a Greek vase-painting enterprise that operated in Athens between 545 and 510 BCE. My research examines the objects produced by the workshop, the artists who produced them, and the different contexts in which these objects were made and found. By using a fixed set of data, the painted vases signed and/or attributed to the Nikosthenes workshop, I argue that this particular enterprise was central to a number of important developments in the art of vase-painting during the Archaic period and that non-Athenian artists were a significant part of its workforce. Moreover, I argue that the shared painted signature that appears on 149 vases from this workshop represents a savvy business that catered to customer demands and nimbly shifted its aesthetic according to varying tastes. My dissertation is the first comprehensive study devoted to the Nikosthenes workshop in over twenty years, and my research represents a major shift in method and approach to the topic. In the first chapter, I explore the artistic identity of the Nikosthenes workshop by examining what is known about artists in antiquity more generally and what has been written about Nikosthenes as an individual artist. Signatures are an important part of this discussion, in that their survival on painted vases continues to play a significant role in how scholars interpret vase-painting artists and their artistic personalities. I propose that a diverse group of artists contributed to the workshop’s identity, and I discuss their contributions in chapter two. I place these artists in their busy workshop setting by examining the evidence for their physical spaces, and I profile some of the most important Athenian and non-Athenian artists who worked therein. In chapter three, I focus on the creative developments pioneered by the Nikosthenes enterprise, and I highlight the many ways these innovations were the result of complex reinterpretation of foreign aesthetic and likely carried out by non-Athenian artists in the shop. I end the project with the fourth chapter which presents the distribution of the Nikosthenes vases, and I show how the geographical patterns indicate that there were different types of vessels going to different customers. I argue that Nikosthenes, while both an individual artist and a workshop, is best thought of as a brand that catered to the demands of a growing overseas market

Developing a local framework for quality in an online learning environment: a case study

This paper describes a quality framework for the development of a set of online learning resources, namely worked examples with audio enhancement and simulations, used to improve the offering of a level one business mathematics course at Central Queensland University. The framework centres around five criteria that emerged as the resources were developed. They were a primary reference determining the quality of the learning environment created

A comparative thematic review of vocational leadership literature from the USA, Great Britain and Australia

Vocational education and its leadership is an important sphere of economic activity worldwide and is being impacted by several trends including: the increasing significance and centrality of skills development in today’s economies; economic trends associated with globalisation (internationalisation of education and emergence of global labour markets); and demographic trends resulting in ageing populations and workforces. Leadership in vocational education contexts is crucial to the economic success of this sector. The aim of this paper is to provide a comparative thematic review of the research and literature on leadership in vocational education between the USA, Great Britain and Australia posed by the research question, ‘What are the key leadership issues facing vocational education and training sectors in the USA, Great Britain and Australia?’ This study contributes to the research and literature by identifying key impact factors for vocational education leadership in these nations over the last 13 years. Results from the comparative review established the following three key issues: a concern over equity and diversity; the importance of change management; and leadership skills and their development. Although leadership competencies are the subject of some debate there appears to be a broad consensus that leaders are developed not only by formal courses, but more importantly by on-the-job experiential learning. The future development of leaders within vocational education is discussed in relation to the implications for policy and practice, and suggestions for future research are provided