Playlab: Telling Stories with Technology (workshop summary)

This one-day workshop explores how playful interaction can be used to develop technologies for public spaces and create temporal experiences

The Ancient Origins of Medieval Fields: A Reassessment

This article questions the suggestions that have been made by a number of archaeologists and landscape historians concerning the Roman and prehistoric origins of large tracts of the medieval rural landscape in lowland England. It suggests that arguments for large-scale continuity of field systems, mainly based on the evidence of excavations and topographic analysis, are flawed because they fail to take fully into account the topographic contexts, and the practical functions, of field boundaries. When these matters are given due weight, much of the evidence cited in support of ‘continuity’ instead appears to suggest a significant degree of discontinuity, at least in terms of systems of land division, between Roman Britain and medieval England

HOW NATURAL IS NATURAL? HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON WILDLIFE AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN BRITAIN:Colin Matthew Memorial Lecture

This article explores some of the ways in which historians can, and should, engage with current debates about the environment. What we often think of as ‘natural’ habitats in Britain – heaths, ancient woodland, meadows and the like – are largely anthropogenic in character, and much of our most familiar wildlife, from rabbits to poppies, are alien introductions. The environments we cherish are neither natural nor timeless, but are enmeshed in human histories: even the kinds of tree most commonly found in the countryside are the consequence of human choice. The ways in which the environment was shaped by past management systems – to produce fuel, as much as food – are briefly explored; and the rise of ‘re-wilding’ as a fashionable approach to nature conservation is examined, including its practical and philosophical limitations and its potential impacts on the conservation of cultural landscapes

Health, Healthcare Access, and Use of Traditional Versus Modern Medicine in Remote Peruvian Amazon Communities: A Descriptive Study of Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices

There is an urgent need for healthcare research, funding, and infrastructure in the Peruvian Amazon. We performed a descriptive study of health, health knowledge and practice, and healthcare access of 13 remote communities of the Manatí and Amazon Rivers in northeastern Peru. Eighty-five adults attending a medical boat service were interviewed to collect data on socioeconomic position, health, diagnosed illnesses, pain, healthcare access, and traditional versus modern medicine use. In this setting, poverty and gender inequality were prevalent, and healthcare access was limited by long distances to the health post and long waiting times. There was a high burden of reported pain (mainly head and musculoskeletal) and chronic non-communicable diseases, such as hypertension (19%). Nearly all participants felt that they did not completely understand their diagnosed illnesses and wanted to know more. Participants preferred modern over traditional medicine, predominantly because of mistrust or lack of belief in traditional medicine. Our findings provide novel evidence concerning transitional health beliefs, hidden pain, and chronic non-communicable disease prevalence in marginalized communities of the Peruvian Amazon. Healthcare provision was limited by a breach between health education, knowledge, and access. Additional participatory research with similar rural populations is required to inform regional healthcare policy and decision-making

Designing Healthier Communities

Research conducted by Pham, Cowman, and Williamson, and advised by Kendall House and Amy Spurlock indicates that generational distribution differences and the variation between pre-licensure Bachelor of Science in Nursing versus online RN-BSN in the Boise State University College of Nursing provided different descriptive outlook statistics in regards to motivation to remain in healthcare and perception of risk for mask wearing in a clinical setting with patients. Results from a survey of 50 individuals (pre-licensure BSN & online RN-BSN) indicated a negative desire to remain in healthcare proceeding the COVID-19 pandemic, with the largest proportion stemming from the millennial generation or online RN-BSN. A larger neutral viewpoint on a healthcare career proceeding COVID-19 was found for the pre-licensure BSN and Gen Z/Gen X generations. Significant positive correlation among patient interaction and mask wearing were also found in all the respondents, with all generations reporting a higher perception of risk when not wearing masks in a clinical setting. Results have suggested that varying demographic categorization for the nursing field will result in differing perspectives for their career outlooks and perception of risk

Banishing barberry:The history of Berberis vulgaris prevalence and wheat stem rust incidence across Britain

Wheat stem rust, caused by the fungus Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici (Pgt), is a notoriously damaging disease of wheat and barley. Pgt requires two hosts to complete its lifecycle; undergoing asexual reproduction on cereal crops and completing sexual reproduction on Berberis spp. The latter stage of its lifecycle is of particular importance in temperate regions such as western Europe, where asexual urediniospores are unable to survive cold winter weather. In the past, the crucial role of Berberis in the lifecycle of stem rust led to intensive eradication campaigns, initially carried out by farmers in the face of hostile scientific opinion. In the United Kingdom, common barberry (Berberis vulgaris) is today a relatively rare plant. Stem rust is, however, currently experiencing a resurgence; at the same time, there has been a general increase in the prevalence of barberry and an upsurge in its planting which, in the United Kingdom, is associated with attempts to encourage the endangered barberry carpet moth (Pareulype berberata). This article situates current developments within a broader chronological framework, examining changing attitudes towards barberry and rust in England in the past and the history of the plant's use and cultivation. It assesses how widespread B. vulgaris really was in the environment historically, and thus the scale of its eradication. We suggest that Berberis was never widely established as an archaeophyte in the United Kingdom. Current attempts to re-establish it are based on a misunderstanding of the plant's historical status and could potentially pose a serious threat to food security

Production, Power, and the "Natural": Differences between English and American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century

Garden historians have often emphasized the divergent development of designed landscapes in America and England in the course of the eighteenth century. This essay argues that the extent of that divergence in the period before about 1760 has been exaggerated, largely as a consequence of misconceptions about the real nature of English gardens. Only after 1760 did landscape design on both sides of the Atlantic really follow different trajectories, for reasons that were essentially social and ideological in character