The Neverending Shift: A feminist reflection on living and organising academic lives during the Coronavirus pandemic

This article offers a feminist reflection written as a nocturnal stream of consciousness exposing the embodied, emotional and professional experience of living and working during a pandemic outbreak. Framed within a feminist approach, this personal narrative provides an example of the effects of such unexpected and unprecedented circumstances on personal and professional academic lives. Developed during the first stage of the (inter)national coronavirus pandemic, my reflections address issues of privilege; emotional labour; the virtual invasion of the home space within the current increasingly ambiguous space of ‘the workplace'; workload; and wellbeing. Further, I consider how the newly enforced flexible work measures based on online tools have turned current work–life dynamics into a ‘Never‐ending Shift'

I lost my baby today: Embodied writing and learning in organizations

This article focuses on miscarriage and the sharing of intimate experiences as an example of alternative writing that can be used to challenge and resist dominant masculine discourse in academia. It steps back from patriarchal forms of writing organizations and contributes in three ways: in terms of methodology through the use of multi-voice autoethnography that embraces evocative language; with regard to the subject matter, by sharing a narrative that focuses on the bodily and dirty in day-to-day organizing; and in style, by going beyond traditional structures to foster personal, fragile and reflexive narratives that can enhance the understanding of lived experiences in organizations. More specifically, the first author’s autoethnographic account of perinatal loss in the context of contemporary academia is used as an example of resistance to patriarchal norms of organizing

Health and Wellbeing - The University of Essex Reader

This book brings together chapters written by staff and students at the University of Essex on topics related to Health and Wellbeing. We offer personal and academic perspectives on a number of issues: disability wage gap, mental health, the relationship between physical and mental wellbeing, wellbeing through learning, utopia and human florishing, writing autoethnographically about miscarriage and anorexia, inter-professional working relationships, decision making in mental capacity law, and patient participation

Identità organizzativa, identità individuale e transformazione

This book chapter (in Italian ) contributes to the study of people identifying as gender non-conforming in the workplace from an organizational and psychological. In particular, we focus on the interplay between gender identity, organizational identity and individual identity

Workload allocation models in academia: Panopticon of neoliberal control or tools for resistance?

Academic ‘labour’ within the Higher Education landscape is changing as universities are increasingly managed as business organisations. In the contemporary neoliberal academic context, departments and individuals are required to develop forms of accountability based on quantitative metrics regarding performance, budgets, human resource management and income generation. Drawing from Foucauldian theories of power, this paper explores the contentious implementation of workload allocation models in the UK Higher Education sector not only as an illustration of a superimposed managerial tool of control, but also as an instrument of resistance. This article suggests that in order to counteract the systematic failure of neoliberal academia at the individual and collective level, these performance management tools can be used as forms of empowerment and resistance. Further, it is recommended that these instruments are designed in a collaborative way to ensure fair and transparent allocations of tasks and responsibilities, and to avoid unmanageable workloads

An error prediction framework for interferometric SAR data

Three of the major error sources in interferometric synthetic aperture radar measurements of terrain elevation and displacement are baseline errors, atmospheric path length errors, and phase unwrapping errors. In many processing schemes, these errors are calibrated out by using ground control points (GCPs) (or an external digital elevation model). In this paper, a simple framework for the prediction of error standard deviation is outlined and investigated. Inputs are GCP position, a priori GCP accuracy, baseline calibration method along with a closed-form model for the covariance of atmospheric path length disturbances, and a model for phase unwrapping errors. The procedure can be implemented as a stand-alone add-on to standard interferometric processors. It is validated by using a set of single-frame interferograms acquired over Rome, Italy, and a double difference data set over Flevoland, The Netherlands

Fever with spontaneous gingival bleeding: A diagnostic challenge

A previously healthy 4-year-old girl was admitted to our institution with fever and painless spontaneous gingival bleeding, persisting over a week, without evident lesions or trauma. She was born in Italy and had always lived in Palermo. She had never travelled internationally. Lab oratory testing showed a negative swab test for Sars-CoV2 and a tri linear pancytopenia with neutropenia (0.6 × 103/mm3), lymphopenia (1.17 × 103/mm3), thrombocytopenia (115 × 103/mm3) and anemia (Hb 7.1 g/dL, RBC 3.48 × 103/mm3, Hct 21.2%, RDW-CV 23.4%, RDW SD 51,6 fL). Other laboratory findings showed hyponatremia (130 mmol/dL), hypocalcemia (8.7 mmol/dL), hypoalbuminemia (3.5 g/dL), increase of LDH (267 IU/L), C-reactive protein (1.64 mg/dL) and alka line phosphatase levels (190 IU/L). On physical examination she appeared in pain, pale, with hyperemic pharynx without plaque or pu rulent secretion and hypertrophic bleeding gingiva (see Fig. 1). There was notable cervical lymphadenopathy, hepatomegaly (1 cm below the costal margin), and splenomegaly (3 cm below the costal margin). An abdominal ultrasound showed an enlarged spleen (15.6 × 6.6 cm) and ascites. Additional history revealed the diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis, treated with six doses of Amphotericin B liposomal (administered for first 5 days plus one dose on the 10th day) seven months earlier. A subsequent leishmania polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay on blood and gingival brush confirmed the diagnosis of a leishmaniasis relapse. A comprehensive immunological evaluation including an HIV test excluded any primary or acquired immunodeficiency disease. Treatment with amphotericin B was administered over 10 days, leading to a full recovery. Visceral leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania infantum is endemic in the Mediterranean region. Mucocutaneus lesions are extremely rare with this species and usually affect immunosuppressed patients. In children leishmaniasis relapse with atypical mucosal involvement represent a rarity. Clinical follow up and periodic PCR tests (performed at 3-6-9-12 months after treatment) should be considered for early recognition of a relapse