The Canadian Security Certificate Regime. CEPS Special Report, 30 March 2009

This work was prepared as part of the EU–Canada project - The Changing Landscape of Justice and Home Affairs Cooperation in the European Union and EU-Canada Relations – funded by the European Commission, Directorate-General for External Relations, Relations with the US and Canada. This project assesses the relations between the European Union (EU) and Canada in the area of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA). It aims at facilitating a better understanding of the concepts, nature, implications and future prospects related to the Europeanisation of JHA in the EU, as well as its role and dilemmas in the context of EU-Canada relations. The current Canadian system for naming and deporting non-citizens on grounds of national security reflects the influence of several salient trends in post- 9/11 policy making in Canada: judicial minimalism, the adoption of the most restrictive (as opposed to least restrictive) alternative that does not tip over into unconstitutionality, and the avoidance of political risk by following precedents already set by other jurisdictions. In this respect, the UK has been a clear source of inspiration for Canadian courts and parliamentarians regarding Special Advocates and control orders

Approaches to the use of iconography in historical reconstruction, and the curious case of Renaissance Welsh harp technique

It is an oft-repeated cliché that ‘smart is sexy,’ and while cynics may find plenty of reason to scoff at the thought, some solace can be taken in the economic success and increase in the social cachet of the ‘historically informed performance’ (or HIP) movement. Countless millions of people over the last thirty years have been drawn to the world of medieval and renaissance music, many as a result of the exciting new sounds created through the thoughtful synthesis of artistic and intellectual sensibility demonstrated in historical reconstructions of early instruments and their playing techniques. In light of this economic and cultural success, it therefore seems fitting to take a step back and think about how individuals today arrive at a view of historical reality in the world of instrumental performance, especially when faced with images and artifacts which may be interpreted in many different ways. This research, as ‘an authentic expression of our contemporary cultural condition bringing new experiences and insights into our world,’ 1 is immensely valuable. However, are we justified in going further and asserting that our modern reconstructive work sheds light on ‘the way things actually were,’ or in other words, that it reveals objective historical truth? In the following pages I will take a closer look at the research methodology of historically informed performance and propose a refinement based on a probabilistic analysis of the data produced. While the areas of research which might benefit from such an inquiry are virtually unlimited, my specific focus for the purposes of this exercise is the harp technique in late medieval and early renaissance Wales. This is one branch of the musicological tree which remains relatively infrequently visited in early music circles, yet one which, as we will see, is richly rewarding when explored through the multifaceted methodology and interdisciplinary orientation of modern HIP research

Religion and modernity in Spain: religious experience in the novels of Ramón Pérez de Ayala

While Ramón Pérez de Ayala is widely regarded as a leading liberal with strong anti-Catholic and indeed anti-religious views, a close examination of his novels reveals a more ambivalent attitude to religious experience. Indeed, his liberalism could be said to embrace religion in its spiritual, as distinct from its temporal, dimensions. This article examines a number of Pérez de Ayala's major novels and discusses his views on, among other things, his knowledge of biblical criticism, his views on transcendence, pantheism, education, Church and State, scholasticism, neo-Thomist aesthetics, sexuality, women and marriage. Perez de Ayala makes extensive use of the Bible and religious texts in his works and, in his advocacy of a return to the values of early Christianity, could be said to show affinities with religious or theological modernism, which is conventionally held not to have any impact within Spain

Major Hugh Pollard, MI6 and the Spanish Civil War

The recently released Special Operations Executive (SOE) personal file of Major Hugh Bertie Campbell Pollard (HS 9/1200/5) sheds new light on the man who helped fly General Franco from the Canary Islands to Morocco, leading ultimately to the overthrow of the democratically elected republican government and thirty-six years of brutal dictatorship. Contrary to the previous portrayal of Pollard, a genial, rough-and-ready gung-ho ‘adventurer’ who flew the future Caudillo to Morocco on a whim, the files reveal Pollard to have been an experienced British intelligence officer, talented linguist, and firearms expert with considerable firsthand experience of wars and revolutions in Mexico, Morocco, and Ireland, where he had served as a police adviser in Dublin Castle during the ‘stormy days’ of the Black and Tans in the early 1920s. Pollard, who listed his hobbies in Who's Who as ‘hunting and shooting’, was the sporting editor of Country Life and a member of Lord Leconfield's hunt. He was also a renowned and passionate firearms expert having written numerous books on the subject including the section on ‘small arms’ for the official war office textbook. His friend Douglas Jerrold, who himself later served in British intelligence, recalled that Pollard ‘looked and behaved, like a German Crown Prince and had a habit of letting off revolvers in any office he happened to visit’. Once Jerrold plucked up the courage to ask Pollard if he had ever killed anybody

Turbulence, Dilemmas and Leadership: A Case Study of an English School after Academisation

This thesis uses critical incident technique (CIT) (Chell, 2004) in a qualitative case study to show the responses of leaders in an English secondary school when faced with dilemmas arising from a transition into a multi-academy trust (MAT). The use of CIT interviews allowed for school leaders self-identification of dilemmas they had encountered. The case study school was transferred from local authority control to a local MAT because of a falling student roll and not because of a failed OfSTED inspection. The study addresses how leaders in a mainstream school adapt to UK Government policy (The Academies Act, 2010) on academisation and the subsequent dilemmas this process creates. The aim is to identify the impact on school leaders of change into a school within a MAT. The study includes an analysis of school leaders as street-level bureaucrats and their use of discretion (Lipsky, 2010) to navigate leadership dilemmas. The study addresses three research questions: 1. How do school leaders respond to turbulence and any subsequent dilemmas in the context of academisation? 2. To what extent are school leaders able to use discretion when dealing with dilemmas? 3. What patterns of school leadership are associated with school leaders’ responses to dilemmas? This thesis reveals how an apparent consensus of organisational priorities (improving results through emphasis on teaching and learning) can mask an underlying ‘blindness’ to the perceived realities of groups and of the individuals within them who function as street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 2010). Thus, the normal and expected turbulence of a major transition may be exacerbated, rather than mitigated, by decisions taken by leaders, unaware of the at times restrictive impact on the discretional freedom of their subordinates. This has the inadvertent outcome of cascading turbulence and undermining the ethos of distributed leadership (DL). The result is that often leaders are functioning as managers operationalising the head teachers’ diktats rather than leaders demonstrating leadership

Art-geoscience encounters and entanglements in the watery realm

This paper critically explores a 40-year collaboration between a geomorphologist and a relief printmaker from the perspective of the emerging art-science paradigm in the geosciences. Drawing on the authors’ work and practice worldwide, ‘standard art-science’ (the artist as communicator and observer) and emerging ‘transdisciplinary/paradisciplinary’ practices are explored in the watery realm. While standard art-science ‘encounters’ were viewed favourably from the viewpoint of community engagement, especially by commissioning bodies, they did not measurably improve the explanation of science to the public nor offer new avenues for creative investigation. In light of this, the authors undertook a series of explicitly interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary ‘entanglements’ by co-conceiving projects, carrying out joint fieldwork and ‘data’ collection and, most importantly, working together in the studio and laboratory. These projects suggest that multi-scalar approaches are required when using art-geoscience to explore environmental issues which impact significantly on individuals and communities