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humanities and social sciences communications
We are currently inviting papers for the following themed article collections:
Continuity and change in Russian politics
The future of research assessment
Scientific advice to governments
Perspectives on soft power
Studies in horror and the Gothic
Discourse studies: theories and methodologies at the crossroads of language and society
Green criminology and environmental harm
China in the Global South
Digital society and capitalism
Religion and poverty
Mediated populism
What future for the philosophy of religion?
Social and spatial inequalities: processes, impacts and policies
Challenging medical translation
Making and using evidence
Quantitative methodologies: novel applications in the humanities and social sciences
The past, present and future of European science diplomacy
Conceptualising health research participation in the era of big data
Migration, poverty and inequality
Critical and cultural perspectives on dementia
Interrogating interdisciplinarity
Expertise in integration and implementation for transformative research
Digital hate and (anti-)social media
Mixed research methods in the training of social sciences teachers
Critical modernity studies: interdisciplinary approaches to social pathologies
The politics of 'autonomous vehicles'
Humanising epidemiology: non-medical investigations into epi/pandemic phenomena
Digital diasporas: cross-language and cross-cultural perspectives
Generative approaches to noise: towards a new paradigm in the humanities and social sciences
Corona discourse(s) remaking the world: experts, politics, media and everyday life
Social studies of academia: power and knowledge in higher education
Scientific advice through Covid-19
European perspectives on migration: media narratives and societal discourses after 2015
Humanisation of the AI economy
Making an Article Submission
Authors who intend to submit a paper for one of our collections should use the online portal.
Editor: Professor Neil Robinson (Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Limerick)
The centenary of the Russian Revolution of 1917 has been a cause for reflection. Political, social and economic change in Russia have reshaped Russia over the last century, but at the same time, as the return to autocratic rule under Vladimir Putin shows, there are powerful continuities in Russia that need to be accounted for.
This article collection will explore how continuity and change have shaped Russian politics over the last century and their legacies today, and how different social science disciplines, and interdisciplinary work have taken account of continuities and change to explain the role of different forces and institutions in the development of Russia.
Contributions are invited from a range of disciplines and perspectives, including, but not restricted to: political studies, international relations, history and sociology.
Articles exploring the following key themes and others of relevance will be considered:
Policy continuity and change in Russia
Perspectives on change in Russian politics and society
Conceptualising change in Russia
Sources of change in Russian politics
Continuity and change in Russian foreign relations
Legacies of the past in Russian politics
Social and economic adaptation to change in Russia
This is an open collection - as such there is no closing date for submissions.
Read papers published to date in this collection.
Editor: Professor James Wilsdon (Professor of Research Policy, Department of Politics & Director of Impact and Engagement, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Sheffield, UK)
It is now thirty years since the UK's first research assessment exercise took place in 1986. To mark this anniversary, Humanities & Social Sciences Communications will publish a thematic collection on the future of research assessment. A strong cast of contributors, drawn from academia, management, policy and practice, will explore recent developments and debates in the UK and internationally.
Across research systems worldwide, policymakers, universities, funders and publishers are grappling with how to measure and assess the qualities and impacts of research. Since the mid-1980s, there has been a steady escalation in the quantity, reach and sophistication of research assessment.
Several triggers lie behind this: pressure from governments for tighter audit and evaluation of public investment in research; demand by policymakers for more strategic intelligence on impacts and future priorities; the need for universities and other institutions to mange and develop their research portfolios; competition within and between institutions for prestige, students, staff and resources; increases in the availability of real-time 'big data' on research uptake; and the capacity of indicators, metrics and other tools for data analysis.
Architects and advocates of assessment point to accompanying increases in research productivity and quality. But the relationship to outcomes is intensely debated, and critics argue that the burdens of audit and assessment systems, and the pressures and incentives they create, are having corrosive effects on research cultures, qualities and values.
We invite contributions from academics, policymakers and practitioners on the following themes:
The development, use and effectiveness of different policies, frameworks and tools for research assessment;
The relationship between research assessment and outcomes, qualities and impacts;
Uses, merits and limitations of quantitative indicators and peer review in research assessment;
The politics and ethics of research assessment;
The effects of assessment on research cultures, careers, equality and diversity;
Responses to the growing influence of university rankings and league tables;
Altmetrics and indicators for assessing research qualities and/or wider impacts;
Gaming, unintended consequences and strategic responses to assessment;
The history, development and comparative analysis of national assessment systems;
Strategies for evaluating inter, multi and transdisciplinary research.
This is a rolling collection and as such submissions/proposals will be welcomed at any point up until December 2021.
We invite submissions and article proposals for this rolling article collection dedicated to Global Governance. This collection provides a multi- and inter-disciplinary forum for current thinking in this fast evolving field of scholarship.
Insights from a broad spectrum of areas are welcomed, including, but not restricted to: international relations, political science, law, economics, sociology, history, sustainability, development, security, sports, public health, demography and cultural studies.
Editors: Sir Peter Gluckman (Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand & Chair, International Network for Government Science Advice) and Prof James Wilsdon (Professor of Research Policy, Department of Politics & Director of Impact and Engagement, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Sheffield, UK)
Scientific advice to governments has never been in greater demand; nor has it been more contested. From climate change to cyber-security, poverty to pandemics, food technologies to fracking, the questions being asked of scientists, engineers and other experts by policymakers, the media and the wider public continue to multiply and increase in complexity. At the same time, the authority and legitimacy of experts are under increasing scrutiny, particularly on controversial topics, such as climate change and genetically modified crops.
This thematic collection brings together leading contributors – from across Europe and internationally – to the theory, practice and politics of scientific advice. It will build on the conclusions of a landmark conference in Auckland in August 2014, which led to the creation of the International Network for Government Science Advice (INGSA).
Articles are invited that explore scientific advice from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including science and technology studies, science policy studies, political science, sociology and philosophy. Case studies and practitioner perspectives are also welcome.
Topics that the collection hopes to cover include:
Institutional arrangements for scientific advice in national governments, European and international institutions;
Different modes of scientific advice: including deliberative and informal advice; advice in crises and emergencies; foresight and horizon scanning;
The relationship between scientific advice and wider approaches to evidence-informed policymaking;
The qualities, skills and capabilities of scientific advisors and policy commissioners and 'customers' of advice;
The role of different types of evidence and expertise in advisory processes (including from the natural sciences, engineering, social and behavioural sciences, arts and humanities), and the prospects for inter- or trans-disciplinary approaches;
The role of public values, engagement and dialogue in science advisory processes;
The contribution of boundary organisations to scientific advisory systems and processes, including national academies, learned societies, think tanks, business lobby groups, NGOs, foundations and civil society organisations;
Scientific advice in situations of uncertainty, complexity and 'post-normal' science;
Science advice in diplomacy and international relations.
Editor: Professor Nick Anguelov (Department of Public Policy, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, USA)
Since its conceptualisation in the 1980s by Joseph Nye, the term 'soft power'–the ability of states to persuade others to do what they want without force or coercion–has been widely invoked in foreign policy discussions. While proponents highlight the successful applications of soft power in confronting critical regional or global issues, others point to its limitations in contrast to those of 'hard power' approaches, such as military intervention, coercive diplomacy and economic sanctions.
This thematic collection explores all aspects of soft power, from approaches to framing foreign-policy agendas, to the strategies that countries use to persuade and elicit positive attraction in order to obtain preferred outcomes.
Contributions are invited from a range of disciplines and perspectives, including, but not restricted to: diplomacy, international relations, security studies, international economics and law, sociology and anthropology.
Given the new and emerging incarnations of soft power in the era of 'new media', submissions from the following fields are also welcomed: communications studies, cross-cultural sociology, global business and marketing studies, and information technology management.
Evolving definitions of soft power
Instruments of soft power and their use (e.g., public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy and financial aid)
Country- and region-specific case studies
Interplay between soft and hard power
Infrastructure dynamics to support soft power (e.g., informational technology, social media)
Implications and outcomes of soft power
Future of soft power and 'smart power'
Editor: Dr John Edgar Browning (Savannah College of Art and Design, USA).
'Studies in Horror and the Gothic' is by necessity of its pervasive, aesthetic nature a broad and all-encapsulating thematic collection, one that will engage the study of horror and the Gothic through literature, film, television, new media, and electronic gaming. We are here interested in the dark, the forbidden, the secret. But fundamentally all our submissions should ask, and strive to address (or redress) on their own terms, what is "horror" and what is the "Gothic," employing in the process individual or multiple methods of theoretical inquiry and myriad disciplinary or interdisciplinary approaches from across the humanities, social sciences, and beyond. This thematic collection concerns itself with the business of exhuming, from the dark recesses of human experience, any number of cultural products from any historical moment or geography that might prove useful in uncovering some of horror's and the Gothic's more fascinating junctures and deeper meanings. Submissions should be scholarly but remain accessible to the advanced student or knowledgeable general reader interested in the subject.
Contributions on the following themes are especially encouraged:
Theories of horror and monstrosity;
Horror, the Gothic, and pedagogy;
National Gothic(s) and horrors;
Female Gothic/horror histories;
Specialised themes in horror and the Gothic (law, sexuality, disability, etc);
Ethnographic approaches to horror and the Gothic;
Horror by the decade;
Lost Gothics;
Post-millennial horrors and Gothic(s).
Collection Advisory Board: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Central Michigan University, USA), Carol Margaret Davison (University of Windsor, Canada), Harry M. Benshoff (University of North Texas, USA), Dylan Trigg (University of Memphis, USA and University College Dublin, Ireland), Maisha L Wester (Indiana University, USA), and Jesse Stommel (University of Mary Washington, USA).
Read Dr John Edgar Browning's paper 'The real vampires of New Orleans and Buffalo: a research note towards comparative ethnography'.
Editor: Professor Johannes Angermuller (The Open University, UK)
Advisory Panel: Dr Cristina Arancibia (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Chile), Dr Aurora Fragonara (Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Italy), Dr Péter Furkó (Károli Gáspár University, Hungary), Dr Jens Maesse (Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Germany), Dr Eduardo Chávez Herrera (University of Warwick, UK), Dr Michael Kranert (University of Southampton, UK), Dr Jan Krasni (University of Belgrade, Serbia), Dr María Laura Pardo (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina), Dr Yannik Porsché (Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany), Dr Kaushalya Perera (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka), Dr Luciana Radut-Gaghi (Université de Cergy-Pontoise, France), Dr Marco Antonio Ruiz (Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Brazil), Professor Hailong Tian (Tianjin Foreign Studies University, China), Dr Jan Zienkowski (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
Discourse Studies is a field that has been developing dynamically at the intersection of language and society. While discourse analysis is an established subfield within linguistics, discourse designates an object of investigation and topic of controversial debate in many other fields of the social sciences and humanities: sociology, political science, education, history, anthropology, literary criticism, cultural studies, philosophy and beyond. This collection reflects the growing awareness of the many strands and traditions that have been developing in different disciplines and aims to take stock of Discourse Studies as an interdisciplinary field. Its objective is to step outside the niche of established schools and to make recent discourse-related developments in specialised disciplinary fields available to a broader interdisciplinary audience.
Contributing authors are invited to approach the topic from either a theoretical or methodological vantage point. From a theoretical angle, articles can focus on critical conceptual and epistemological debates that have characterised a field, approach or school in Discourse Studies. These contributions should focus on contemporary challenges in the broader context of Discourse Studies. They should avoid theoretical exegesis, focus on problems and questions relevant to discourse researchers and explicitly aim to establish a dialogue across the disciplinary spectrum. From a methodological angle, contributions can present analytical tools and research methods that are applied to an empirical object. Against a background of past achievements, contributions should reflect on the articulation of theories and methods in discourse research.
Additional information on this collection can be found at DiscourseNet.
Editor: Dr Angus Nurse (Middlesex University School of Law, UK)
We are inviting submissions and article proposals for a thematic article collection dedicated to Green Criminology and Environmental Harm. The collection invites original research and reviews of policy and practice aimed at addressing contemporary environmental harm problems. This includes work aimed at addressing the manner in which environmental harm is framed within criminal justice systems as well as how failures in enforcement practice or issues within policy and legislation impact on environmental harm. Insights from a broad spectrum of areas are welcomed, including, but not restricted to: environmental harm as crime, environmental victimology, environmental policing, environmental law and the prosecution of environmental offences, environmental criminality, wildlife crime as environmental harm.
Editor: Professor Ho-fung Hung (Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, USA)
Over the last decade, China has become ever more active in exporting capital to other developing countries. Sectors that Chinese companies invest in range from mining and infrastructure to manufacturing. These investments cover all continents. China's initiation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and its participation in the BRICS bank will give extra financial boost to outward investment of Chinese companies. Journalistic and policy discussion about the impact of China's outward investment on the prospect of development in the global South abounds. While some hail China's capital export as creator of a new context of development, others see it as not much different from old colonial exploitation of less developed countries. Academic research on this topic is still lacking and uneven. This thematic collection aims to bring together pioneering research on the local impacts of Chinese investment in different parts of the developing world. It will foster comprehensive and comparative perspectives on whether Chinese outward investment is creating a new context of development in the developing world or not.
Editors: Dr Gottfried Schweiger and Dr Helmut P Gaisbauer (Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research, University of Salzburg, Austria); Prof Clemens Sedmak (Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King's College London, UK/Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research, University of Salzburg, Austria).
Poverty and religion are interrelated in different ways. On the one hand, for various religious traditions poverty is both an aspect of a particular faithful life (e.g. monastic communities) and giving to the poor is seen as a religious duty. Such traditions have evolved over time and expanded the role of faith-based organisations nowadays play in welfare provision and international development. Faith-based organizations play an important role in poverty alleviation both in rich and poor countries. These actions and practices, as well as their religious and theological underpinnings, deserve scrutiny. On the other hand, religion plays an important role in the life of people living in poverty: how they experience and shape their living, and how they find their place in society and the communities in which they. The role of religion in justifying certain inequalities and processes of exclusion (e.g. in India) and thus contributing to the sustainability of poverty is another important theme worth reflection.
We invite papers, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, that consider the following overarching question: how can religion be used as a vehicle to overcome structures of poverty, and how does it sometimes hinder such processes?
Contributions from sociology, development studies, religious studies, economics, theology, and other social sciences and humanities are welcomed; as are insights from different geographical settings, forms of poverty, and religious traditions.
This special issue is run in collaboration with the 2017 Salzburg Conference on Interdisciplinary Poverty Research, organised by the Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research of the University of Salzburg.
Editor: Dr Michael Higgins (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK)
This article collection examines the relationship between populism and media culture and practice. In its original conception, populism describes a political alignment with the ordinary people against the interests of the governing, cultural and corporate classes. It assumes that formal elites are dedicated to self-enrichment and the retention of power, and only the aggressive animation of popular interests can counter their protective norms and tactics. This political stance has occasioned forms of rhetoric and practice claiming association with popular sentiment, often based on constructions of anti-politics and authenticity.
Populist discourses have become essential in understanding the relationship between media and contemporary politics. This article collection promises to examine mediated populism as it continues to innovate in a multi-modal media setting and amid shifting political circumstances.
Articles should make a contribution to the understanding of mediated populism and its histories. Contributions that expand the study of populism across new contexts and political movements, and encourage an emphasis on emergent media platforms, are encouraged.
Topics welcomed include, but are not restricted to:
Populist politics and social media
Mediated populism across the political spectrum
Mediating authoritarian populism
Mediated populism and emotionality
Populism and mediatization
Populism in a cross-national and international setting
Editor: Dr Russell Re Manning (Bath Spa University, UK)
We are living through an exciting time for the philosophy of religion: a time of crisis. There is, it seems, widespread discontent within the discipline about its current state and future directions – indeed about whether it even has a future whatsoever.
For many, the discipline has rightly recognised that it has become philosophically and religiously provincial - with a disproportionate emphasis on analysis of arguments for and against the existence of God. In a context of increasing philosophical and religious diversity, along with a welcome tendency towards inter/trans-disciplinarity, philosophers of religion seem aware that something has to change to secure the discipline's future. Here, however, consensus evaporates and a range of proposals has been put forward. A rough typology of (non-exclusive) alternatives suggests a variety of directions for philosophy of religion: 1) a turn towards the continental style of philosophy; 2) a turn towards non-Western philosophies; 3) a turn towards religious practices (beyond the current focus on religious beliefs); 4) a turn towards non-Western religious traditions; 5) a turn towards the methodologies of the study of religions; 6) a turn towards ethico-political engagements; 7) a turn towards those historically marginalised in the discipline; 8) a turn towards confessional apologetics and 9) a turn towards the methodologies of the natural sciences.
This article collection will seek interdisciplinary perspectives on the analysis of the current situation of the crisis of the philosophy of religion and solicit evaluations of proposals for its future. It aims to provide a forum for those engaging the state of the discipline and of its future - whether with regret, frustration, and/or hope.
Editor: Dr Jamshid Tehrani (Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Durham University, UK) [2018—2020]; Dr Joseph Stubbersfield (Psychology Department, Heriot-Watt University) [from 2020—]
Cultural evolution describes how socially learned ideas, rules, and skills are transmitted and change over time, giving rise to diverse forms of social organization, belief systems, languages, technologies and artistic traditions. This research article collection will showcase cutting-edge research into cultural evolution, bringing together contributions that reflect the interdisciplinary scope of this rapidly growing field, as well as the diversity of topics and approaches within it.
Quantitative and qualitative research from a range of perspectives and disciplines is welcomed, including: sociology, archaeology, anthropology, complex network analysis, economics, history, linguistics, medical humanities, politics, psychology, philosophy, and religious studies.
Contributions are invited on, but not restricted to, the following themes:
Comparative studies of social learning and/or cultural transmission;
Evolution in human behaviour;
Cognitive anthropology;
Cultural attraction theory;
Experimental studies of cultural evolution;
Novel methodologies to study sociocultural evolution;
Quantitative/complex network analysis;
Modelling studies of cultural evolutionary dynamics;
Phylogenetic analysis of culture and language;
Gene-culture co-evolution and human niche construction;
Evolution of religious practices and beliefs;
Real-world applications of cultural evolutionary knowledge — e.g. to grand societal challenges;
Evolution of language and communication;
Philosophical perspectives on cultural evolution.
Read papers already published in this collection.
Challenging Medical Knowledge Translation – Convergence and Divergence of Translation across Epistemic and Cultural Boundaries
Editors: Professor John Ødemark (Associate Professor of Cultural History and Cultural Encounters, University of Oslo, Norway), Professor Eivind Engebretsen (Professor of Medical Epistemology, University of Oslo, Norway)
The aim of this collection is to develop contemporary knowledge translation (KT) in medicine by challenging it with current cultural and humanistic theories of translation. In the process of doing this, however, we will also challenge theories of translation within the humanities by juxtaposing them with the scientific practice of KT. Different notions of "translation" have become increasingly important in the contemporary natural and human sciences. The turn to translation can be traced across a number of human sciences, such as cultural studies, anthropology and science and technology studies (STS). Translation has lately also become institutionalized in the field of medicine, leading to the development of so-called knowledge translation and 'translational research'. These concepts refer to a set of research activities bound together by the common goal of "bridging the gap" between science in laboratories and clinical application – and more generally, putting research-based knowledge into practice. While translation in the human sciences has emerged as a key theoretical concept, and could be seen as an index of current epistemological predicaments and the almost obligatory requirement to cross-disciplinary and cultural boundaries in a "global age", its materialization in medical discourse is of an entirely different nature. KT denotes a scientific and purportedly non-cultural practice that defines social and cultural difference as a "barrier" to the transmission of the logos of medical science. The aim of KT is to bring "pure" scientific knowledge from "bench to bedside" by testing its validity in clinical practice – while at the same time keeping the scientific knowledge intact throughout the process of translation across various social fields and sectors of the healthcare system across the globe. However, KT implies little theoretical reflection over translation as a process of meaning production.
The point of departure for the contributors to this collection is the observation that KT is based upon a reductive understanding of translation and knowledge transmission. Standard models of KT take translation and knowledge transmission as a phenomenon for granted, and accordingly downplays the complexity of translation as an entangled material, a textual and cultural process, which inevitably affects the "original scientific message". Moreover, we maintain that the roots of this reduction of translation should be sought in historical "deep time"; in the period where distinctions between "hard" and "soft" sciences, natural and humanistic inquiry, begin to emerge in theory (but not necessarily in practice). By contrasting KT with historical, cultural and epistemic differences from its scientific "prehistory", and by analyzing it with reference to broader humanistic and material notions of translation, we aim to develop concepts of medical translation able to cope with contemporary epistemic and cultural differences – as well as the inevitable entanglement of the socio-cultural and biomedical aspects.
Quantitative and qualitative contributions from a range of disciplinary perspectives are welcomed, including, but not restricted to, anthropology, cultural studies and cultural history, medicine, medical humanities, sociology, science and technology studies, philosophy, comparative literature, and translation studies.
Research papers that consider the following questions and themes are welcomed:
The history and epistemology of knowledge translation;
Knowledge translation and translation across the divide between humanities and natural sciences;
Knowledge translation and the translation of medical knowledge and notions of the body across cultures and periods;
Theories and methods of translation in relation to medicine and the human body;
Knowledge translation and guideline development;
Knowledge translation, health literacy and the medical humanities;
Knowledge translation as a discursive process.
Editors: Dr Kathryn Oliver (Associate Professor in Sociology and Public Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK) and Professor Annette Boaz (Professor of Health Care Research, Kingston University, London)
There is a diverse community of policymakers, funders, scholars, and practitioners of different types all working in the field of evidence use. This diversity is a strength for the academic field of 'evidence, policy and practice studies', in that multiple theories, approaches, interventions and initiatives have been tried and developed. Yet, it has also led to extremely valuable work being contained within silos, or research/practice developments being duplicated in different disciplinary areas – for example, public policy, health sciences, public health, and environmental/conservation sciences all have their own theoretical stances on evidence use, and their own empirical traditions. This is both wasteful of scarce resources, and risks leading to a stagnation of the field.
We therefore propose a multi-disciplinary collection of papers, to push forward the field and showcase this journal as a unique outlet for novel scholarship in this area, including empirical, methodological and theoretical work. We welcome insights from all geographic perspectives, to ensure that the global community working in this area is reflected. In particular, we seek studies that provide truly novel insights into how evidence for policy and practice is made, negotiated, translated and used, from theoretical, methodological or practical perspectives.
Papers may interrogate the following themes, among others:
How evidence is created or generated for and by different audiences;
How individuals and systems help the knowledge production system to provide research useful for society, and what that may mean;
What we mean by 'use', and how we can or should measure it;
Strategies and interventions to help audiences 'use' evidence, and what this implies about decision-making and research practices;
The roles and responsibilities of different actors in creating and using evidence;
The politics of evidence use;
Which forms of collaboration are best suited to creating different kinds of impact, and how;
The attributes of researchers, policymakers, practitioners and other actors who are successful at influencing policy;
How researchers and research respond to calls to increase research impact, and engage in coproduction;
The risks and costs of co-productive research, as well as the benefits;
The appropriateness of different methods to interrogate evidence use in different contexts;
How different disciplines conceptualise research use;
Which disciplines or practitioner fields have a strong tradition of evidence use, and why.
We are not seeking papers that describe the value of different research methods for decision-making (particularly those arguing for greater use of qualitative methods or randomised controlled trials), or those that describe initiatives to increase use or uptake in policy (for contributions in this area, please consider our related call for papers on 'Politics of Evidence-based Policymaking'), unless there is a clear novel contribution concerning evidence creation or use. Instead, we are looking specifically for papers that make novel methodological or theoretical contributions, building on the existing field of literature about evidence use.
Read the Collection Editors' Comment article 'Transforming evidence for policy and practice: creating space for new conversations'.
Editors: Dr Juyong Park (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Culture Technology, Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology, Korea); Dr Maximilian Schich (Associate Professor in Arts & Technology, University of Texas at Dallas, School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication, USA); Dr Sebastian Ahnert (Fellow and Director of Studies - King's College, Cavendish and Sainsbury Laboratories, University of Cambridge, UK)
Advisory Panel: Dr Lei Wang (Hallsworth Research Fellow, Manchester Urban Institute, University of Manchester, UK); Dr Michael Ochsner (Senior Researcher, FORS, University of Lausanne, and Social Psychology and Research on Higher Education, ETH Zurich, Switzerland); Professor Matjaž Perc (Director of the Complex Systems Center, and Professor of Physics, University of Maribor, Slovenia); Professor Klaus G Troitzsch (Professor Emeritus of Computer Applications in the Social Sciences, formerly affiliated with Universität Koblenz-Landau, Germany)
At a time when data analysis is increasingly driving research and decision-making, computational analysis, statistical models, computer-based programmes, and other quantitative methods have never been more important. From the interrogation of empirical questions about cultural, social, and behavioural phenomena, to the formation of evidence-based policy, the application of quantitative methods in making sense of real-world data is of paramount importance across all fields of academic enquiry.
Whilst the use of quantitative methodologies is more established in the social sciences, we recognise their growing application in many areas of the humanities. As such, we encourage the submission of novel research arising in such areas where the usefulness of such quantitative approaches is gaining increased recognition.
Original research is invited that:
Presents the application of either established or new statistical, computational, and other quantitative methodologies/methods;
Discusses real systems represented by appropriate datasets;
Includes a detailed explanation of the application of method in the relevant area of study;
Discusses and interprets findings in context of appropriate wider literature;
Demonstrates a clear significance and contribution to advancing knowledge in the area of application.
Review articles are also welcomed that synthesise recent and emerging developments pertaining to the application of methodological approaches in the humanities or social sciences.
Research reporting the application of methods in all areas of the humanities and social sciences is welcomed including, but not restricted to, the following fields:
Cultural Analytics
Culture and Cultural Production
Artistic and Textual Analysis
Design Research and Trend Analysis Literature
Musicology and Ethnomusicology
Game Studies
Science of Science Sociology
Policy analysis and evidence-based policymaking
Environmental sociology and climate politics
Read papers published in this collection.
Note: If you are conducting research applied to the social sciences and humanities, but with physics at the helm, you may be interested in 'Social physics', a related research Collection at Scientific Reports, an open-access, multidisciplinary journal from Nature Research. Find out how to submit your paper to that Collection on this page.
Editors: Dr Alexander Degelsegger-Márquez (Centre for Social Innovation, Austria); Professor Pascal Griset (Sorbonne University, France); Professor James Wilsdon (University of Sheffield, UK); Dr Mitchell Young (Charles University Prague, Czech Republic)
Advisory Panel: Elke Dall (Zentrum für Soziale Innovation, Austria); Dr Tim Flink (DZHW and Humboldt University, Germany); Dr Stefan Kuhlmann (University of Twente, Netherlands); Dr Gonzalo Ordoñez-Matamoros (Universidad Externado de Colombia, Colombia); (University of Twente, Netherlands); Dr Pauline Ravinet (University of Lille, France); Dr Luk van Langenhove (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium).
Over the past decade, there has been a marked increase in levels of research and policy interest in the concept of 'science diplomacy' — the many ways in which science, technology and innovation interrelate with foreign policy and international relations. Fuelling this interest are societal challenges of increasing complexity and urgency that put pressure on both scientific research and foreign policy, as well as on the traditional intersections of these realms. At the same time, changes in the research landscape and in diplomatic agency in Europe and elsewhere offer opportunities to effectively use science diplomacy as a foreign policy tool. In this research article collection, we want to explore how current practices of European science diplomacy came about, historically, how they are changing and what forms they might take in the future.
The collection builds on recent efforts of conceptualising and framing science diplomacy in a variety of interdisciplinary research projects as well as in policy discourse. Discussions can focus on actor constellations, science-policy interfaces, governance arrangements, historical analyses, national and supranational approaches to science diplomacy, and so on. We particularly welcome contributions from political science (including policy studies and international relations), area studies, as well as the sociology and history of science.
Articles on the following themes are especially encouraged:
• Case studies of past, current and future European science diplomacy;
• The governance of the interface between science and foreign policy;
• Interrelations between EU and EU Member State science diplomacy;
• Relation of EU and non-EU science diplomacy;
• Perception of EU science diplomacy outside the EU.
Papers focusing exclusively on the issue of science advice will be considered for the journal's related thematic collection on 'Scientific advice to governments'.
Editors: Dr David Wyatt (King's College London, UK), Dr Matthias Wienroth (Northmbria University, UK), Professor Christopher McKevitt (King's College London, UK)
The rise of big data in health care research, particularly when incorporated into health care delivery, presents a complex landscape where the role, status and value of the patient or citizen as a research subject is configured in numerous ways. Social science scholars have drawn attention to the potential for health research participation to constitute exploitation, empowerment or even a form of contemporary citizenship. Others have considered the results of participation in terms of the (bio)value attached to bodily samples through, for example, commodity exchange or the assetisation of patients, samples and/or data. Emerging big data research practices add another dimension to these issues. They raise questions about how we make sense of health research participation in the change towards datafication of human health, and the automation of data agglomeration and analysis. Such practices also raise questions about their governance by prompting us to ask whether existing local and centralised ethical regimes are fit for purpose.
Considerations of related discourses, practices and oversight are vital as 'participation' in health research has multiple forms, takes place in diverse settings, and is sponsored by different kinds of entities. From trial subject to patient advisory group member, from biobank donor to the infinitely searchable database entry, each of these forms are affected in some way by emerging big data practices. Participation is complicated further by research itself becoming more globally collaborative and thus dealing with multiple local contexts.
This collection seeks to examine the diverse ways big data and health research participation converge and are co-produced with local and centralised approaches to governance. Drawing from the fields of sociology, anthropology, science and technology studies, health research, empirical ethics, bioethics, and critical data studies, we ask authors to engage with these two overarching questions: How is the health research participant constituted, valued and assetised in the era of big data? What are the implications of this for health research practices and/or policy making?
Theoretical and empirical accounts from individual or multiple healthcare settings are welcome. We envisage that this collection will facilitate a global dialogue on these issues.
Papers could consider, but are not limited to:
The (changing) nature of health research and its relationship to health provision (for example, learning health systems).
The valuation of research participants and their data as asset or commodity.
The different kinds of labour involved in conducting and participating in research as introduced by or linked to the datafication of health.
The globalisation of health data as research data and its implications for individuals and groups.
The ethical regimes that can provide a socially just and safe environment for research participation in the context of datafication and data automation.
Citizenship and (new forms of) research participation enabled, disabled, or locked in by emergent data practices.
The place of big data analytics in research using different forms of patient derived data, for example, a patient's electronic health records, and how validity, reliability and or compatibility are negotiated.
Submissions will be welcomed until the end of May 2022.
Editor: Dr Gottfried Schweiger (Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research, University of Salzburg, Austria)
Throughout history, peoples have migrated from one place to another, prompted by different factors and using different means to reach their destinations. Migration has therefore long been a topic of academic and social enquiry, not to mention the focus of polarising political debate.
In Europe the issue of migration was brought to significant prominence during 2015-2016, when an unprecedented influx of more than one million refugees and migrants arrived into the EU, most of them fleeing war in Syria and other countries. More broadly, it is estimated that globally more than 65 million people are now officially displaced from their homes – the highest figure recorded by the United Nations since the Second World War.
People re-locate for various reasons, both legal and illegal, often risking their lives to escape from political oppression, persecution, war and poverty, as well as to be reunited with family and to benefit from entrepreneurship and education. Other factors, such as climate change, are increasingly becoming drivers too.
This research collection aims to look specifically at the relationship between poverty and migration.
Much migration, within and across borders, is driven by poverty and the hope for better well-being and a better quality of life. Yet migration itself is risky and can open up new social, economic, political and cultural vulnerabilities in the lives of migrants. The periods spent living in migrant camps, for example, are frequently marked by multiple deprivation. As soon as migrants have reached their destination — if they reach it at all and are not detained elsewhere — they are confronted with new difficulties and often end up belonging to the poorest and most disadvantaged groups within their new society. Migration can therefore be both an instrument for overcoming poverty — but it can also lead to poverty and social exclusion. These two very general trends are differentiated according to social and geographical space, as well as the backgrounds, socio-economic position, gender, race and age of migrants. After all, the wealthy scientist who moves with his family from Europe to the USA is just as much a migrant as the underage refugee from southern Africa who is stuck in a camp in Libya for several months or years and has almost no economic prospects of improving his situation.
This research collection seeks to bring together research arising from different fields, within and outside of migration studies and allied areas of enquiry, which speak to the issue of migration and poverty.
Papers are invited that consider, but are not limited to, the following themes:
Poverty and the hope for a better life as factors in the motivation for migration;
The plight of migrants in states of limbo (e.g. in migrant camps, or detention and asylum centres);
Migrants' experiences and circumstances in their new countries of residence;
The (local and global) political and legal regulations, frameworks and conditions that have a poverty-enhancing or poverty-reducing effect on migrants;
The different social and geographical spaces in which migration takes place;
The intersectionality of gender, age, race, health, disability, sexual orientation of migrants;
Interdisciplinary perspectives on the relationship between migration and poverty;
Critical appraisals of 'migration research', its theories and methods and how it approaches inequalities, vulnerability and marginalisation.
The collection is open to essays examining intra- and transnational migration (in all its forms, e.g., voluntary, forced, crowded, seasonal, etc) in relation to (relative, absolute, monetary, multidimensional, etc.) poverty, inequality and social exclusion. Papers examining normative issues of (social and global) justice, human rights or ethics in relation to migration and poverty are encouraged. In addition to case studies and empirical social research, theoretical papers and those with a policy focus can are welcomed.
This collection has no disciplinary focus and is open to contributions from a wide of discipline in the social sciences and humanities, including, among others, sociology, anthropology, geography, political science, development studies, migration studies, economics, literary studies, history, philosophy, theology and law and legal studies, cultural studies.
This collection is run in collaboration with the 2019 Salzburg Conference on Migration and Poverty, organised by the Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research of the University of Salzburg.
Editor: Dr Lucy Burke (Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
Research indicates that dementia has overtaken cancer as the condition that people most fear. The notion of dementia as both a terrifying illness and a significant societal threat is the result of a complex conjunction of events and forces—from demographic shifts to the impotency of global Pharma in the development of medical interventions.
This research collection aims to bring together scholarship that thinks critically about dementia from new arts and humanities-based perspectives rather than more traditional quantitative, medical and scientific approaches.
• the place of dementia within debates around the sustainability of health and social care in aging populations;
• the role and relationship of dementia to ideologies of "successful" or "active" aging;
• philosophical and ethical considerations of the concept of personhood and human value;
• new technologies and regimes of care;
• social justice and rights-based approaches;
• the significance and value of creative interventions and methodologies in dementia research;
• representations of dementia as a lived experience in literature, life-writing, film and television
• global south perspectives on dementia;
• reflections on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to dementia.
This collection aims to create a space for research from a range of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives, including: literary, film and cultural studies, history, politics, language and linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, sociology and fields such as dementia studies, cultural gerontology, aging studies, memory studies, the medical humanities, disability studies and arts for health.
The emphasis is on scholarship that engages critically and provocatively with dominant paradigms in dementia studies and popular perceptions of dementia in contemporary political and cultural discourse.
Related publication: Imagining a future without dementia: fictions of regeneration and the crises of work and sustainability
The traditional disciplinary boundaries that are cemented in the academic world are regularly questioned by the "real world". The social, environmental and economic challenges confronting academics, policymakers and other stakeholders do not come in neat packages. For example, the stresses of transnational migration present questions for international lawyers, transport experts and conflict analysts alike, and the impacts of water scarcity equally call on civil engineers, anthropologists, natural hazard specialists and policy makers.
Integrating the specialisations of different academic disciplines brings many challenges—not least organisational, bureaucratic, methodological, and cultural. For instance, traditional academic research assessment practices can incentivise approaches to research that lack the interdisciplinary flexibility to engage with pressing societal challenges. Nevertheless there are today many emerging examples of innovative and impactful interdisciplinary collaborations, with interdisciplinary practices becoming a given in many areas of enquiry.
This article collection is dedicated to exploring these challenges and realities, focusing on the concept, mechanics, and processes of 'interdisciplinarity'.
Papers are invited that consider, but are not limited to, the following ideas:
Evolving definitions of interdisciplinarity, and related concepts like 'transdisciplinarity'
Different perspectives on the need to drive for interdisciplinary collaborations
The place of interdisciplinarity in shaping policy, such as in relation to the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals
The mechanics and processes that take place in order for interdisciplinary research to happen in practise
The place of interdisciplinarity in educational institutions and assessment exercises (e.g. REF in the UK)
The challenges, pitfalls and hurdles that face those seeking to bring disparate disciplinary practices and communities together
Lessons learnt from interdisciplinary projects and collaborations and how these can be applied in other contexts
Editors: Professor Gabriele Bammer (The Australian National University), Dr BinBin Pearce (ETH-Zürich, Switzerland), Professor Marianne Penker (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), Austria), Professor Michael O'Rourke (Michigan State University, USA)
Advisory Panel: Dr Rebecca Freeth (IASS Potsdam, Germany), Dr Jeff Foote (University of Otago, New Zealand), Dr Lorrae van Kerkhoff (Australian National University, Australia), Dr Dena Fam (University of Technology Sydney, Australia), Dr Melissa Robson-Williams (Landcare Research, New Zealand), Dr Bianca Vienni Baptista (ETH-Zurich, Switzerland)
Expertise in the various dimensions of integration and implementation is an essential but often overlooked component of transformative research on complex societal and environmental problems, such as global climate change, illicit drug use, refugees and economic migration, spiralling health care costs, poverty and other social inequalities. This research article collection addresses the specialised knowledge, skills, competencies and dispositional attributes required to, for example, identify which disciplinary and stakeholder knowledges are relevant, synthesise different perspectives, manage power imbalances and legacies of colonisation in researching problems, and accommodate conflicting values and world views, including across different cultures.
Expertise has multiple elements that are often difficult to codify and there are few publication outlets where the 'nitty-gritty' of expertise and its challenges can be discussed and progressed. This collection provides a platform where research expertise in integration and implementation for transformation can be recognised, described, synthesised, evaluated and improved.
Detailed descriptions of elements of expertise (for example, competence in a particular method). Descriptions should be coupled with evaluations of one or more of: strengths and weaknesses, effectiveness, and how well the elements of expertise can be adapted to differing circumstances;
Case studies highlighting the application of expertise, including lessons learnt from 'failures' for improving expertise;
Initiatives overcoming fragmentation of expertise, including theoretical frameworks and ontologies providing a structure for accessing and synthesising expertise;
Educational programs for cultivating expertise;
Institutional recognition of expertise (for example, establishment of academic programs that specifically include research expertise in integration and implementation).
Contributions may be literature reviews, theory-based, or practice-based and should move beyond straight description to also incorporate critical reflection, synthesis and/or analysis.
Contributions may be based on a) established and developing approaches, such as inter- and trans-disciplinarity, systems thinking, action research, implementation science, knowledge brokering, and team science, b) case-based experience, including single or multiple, small or large-scale examples or c) cross-cutting research covering areas such as innovation and unknowns. Experience in integration and implementation in transformative research on any complex societal and environmental problem is relevant.
Read the paper by Bammer and colleagues "Expertise in research integration and implementation for tackling complex problems: when is it needed, where can it be found and how can it be strengthened?".
Editors: Dr Cosme J. Gómez Carrasco (University of Murcia, Spain), Dr Álex Ibáñez Etxeberría (University of Basque Country, Spain), Prof Jairo Rodríguez Medina (University of Valladolid, Spain), and Dr Carla Van Boxtel (University of Amsterdam, Holland)
Teacher training is an issue of current interest at an international level. Analysis of trainee teachers' knowledge is considered crucial in being able to direct their initial training programmes. Empirical findings reported in recent years have provided detailed information on how the learning opportunities presented in training programmes have a notable correlation with the knowledge and skills of teachers at the end of their training.
The objective of this article collection is to bring together new research exploring the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) of teachers in training through mixed research methods. Due to the complex nature of PCK it is necessary to use research methods that combine different techniques and procedures.
Faced with an extensive literature of concrete case studies and large-scale research, the aim of this research article collection is to show the potential of combining both approaches.
Research papers are welcomed that employ questionnaires, systematic observation scales and other instruments for collecting quantitative information, with interviews, narratives, focus groups or discussion groups. The objective of this combination of research methods should be to understand the PCK of teachers in training for the teaching of Geography, History and other social sciences. This includes knowledge for teaching, social representations of knowledge, and the most appropriate methods, techniques and resources to teach these subjects in the classroom setting.
We also welcome papers using combined approaches arising from teams of two or more theoreticians and practitioners belonging to different disciplines. Sociologists, anthropologists, education specialists, literary scholars, psychologists, political scientists, as well as scholars from other disciplines interested are invited to contribute.
Specifically, we welcome research papers that explore the following themes, among others:
The use of mixed research methods in teacher training;
Didactic transposition and knowledge for teaching in Geography, History and other social sciences;
Teachers' perceptions and opinions on the most appropriate methods, strategies and techniques for teaching Geography, History and other social sciences;
National narratives and school knowledge of teachers in social science training;
The role of emerging technologies (e.g., apps, augmented reality, etc) in teacher training;
Research on the effectiveness of training programs to improve the PCK of teachers undergoing training;
Relationships between training programs and teaching practices in the classrooms of social science teachers.
Editor: Dr Benno Herzog (Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Valencia, Spain)
Advisory Panel: Dr Edna Brennand (Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brazil), Dr Gianfranco Casuso (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Peru), Dr Craig Browne (University of Sydney, Australia), Dr Eva Klinkisch (Catholic University of Freiburg, Germany), Dr Silvina Gesser (Bar-Ilan University, Israel), Dr Titus Stahl (University of Groningen, The Netherlands), Dr Marcel Stoetzler (Bangor University, UK)
Modernity seems to produce its own specific pathologies. These pathologies are present as global catastrophes, such as global wars, climate crises, and genocides, or as more "common" and almost accepted pathologies, such as social exclusion, alienation, social suffering, exploitation, racism, sexism, antisemitism and so on. Critical approaches understand these pathologies as deeply interwoven with modernity, with a specific mode of social reproduction and even — as pathologies of reason — with Enlightenment itself.
Critical theories point towards the unstable and precarious character of contemporary societies. Modern societies, as well as biographical experiences within them, are described in terms of, for instance, uncertainty, insecurity, crisis, and ruptures. Almost no sphere of the social can escape the fluidification of certainties and boundaries as well as the disquieting acceleration of the rhythms of life. The experience of fundamental crisis shapes the perception of the world of modern individuals.
Furthermore, the catastrophes of the twentieth century, as well as the capacity of the destruction of mankind, require a critical analysis of our current models of reason. Serious reflection about modernity entails the analysis of the production of self-knowledge of modern societies. This production of social knowledge does not only take place in the academic field, but also in aesthetic production and in a huge variety of everyday discourses and practices.
The aim of this collection is to understand macro processes of production of social pathologies and pathologies of reason as well as to understand the effects of these pathologies on individuals, societies and cultures. It sets out to analyse the social ontogenesis of knowledge and the social, material and intellectual conditions of this knowledge production. The collection aims at a broad, interdisciplinary understanding from all fields of social sciences and humanities of these pathologies from all fields of social sciences and humanities. It welcomes empirical studies on diverse social pathologies as well as theoretical works on modernity.
- The influence of the different varieties of capitalism on the diverse spheres of social life, such as labour, private sphere, culture;
- Research on social suffering as well as on processes of invisibilization and marginalization of suffering;
- Critical studies on the interrelation of subjectivation, power and knowledge;
- Diverse forms of discrimination (racism, sexism, antisemitism, classism, etc) and their intersection;
- Cultural, social and political research on mass violence, genocide and other global catastrophes;
- Analyses of discourses, populism and particular knowledge as well as research on alternative or marginalized knowledge.
Editors: Dr Jack Stilgoe (Science and Technology Studies, University College London) and Dr Milos Mladenovic (Department of Built Environment, Aalto University)
'Self-driving', 'driverless' or 'autonomous' vehicles promise to change the world in profound ways. The suggested benefits include safety, efficiency, accessibility and improved urban environments. However, researchers and others have been quick to raise questions about responsibility for crashes, safe testing and possible wider ramifications for transport systems. In a discussion that has been dominated by science, engineering and narrow questions of ethics, there is a need to draw attention to the old questions of politics: Who wins? Who loses? Who decides? Who pays?
This collection (special issue) will publish original research that helps anticipate the politics of autonomous vehicles. The focus could be on the road, where vehicles are being tested and interactions with other road users are being worked out, on the lab, where rapid developments in machine learning and simulation are generating new possibilities, on discourses about possible and desirable futures, or somewhere else.
Despite the 'autonomous vehicle' terminology, these technologies, when considered through social science lenses, look far from autonomous. They will be shaped by human interests and expectations, and future sociotechnical systems will be entangled in social worlds (infrastructures, rules, norms, behaviours, institutions and more) in complex and possibly unpredictable ways.
We invite contributions from researchers on the following themes as they relate to self-driving vehicles:
Infrastructures of 'autonomy'
Connectivity and sociotechnical systems
Algorithms and AI
Data ownership, control and privacy
The rules of the road
Public vs private control
Patterns of transport use, e.g. shared, active etc.
Competing for road space
Urban design, including 'shared space'
Lessons from other mobility technologies
Histories of self-driving futures
Testing AV technologies
Sustainable technological transitions
Participation and democratic governance
This article collection is an initiative of the UKRI Driverless Futures? project.
Guest Editor: Diaa Ahmed Mohamed Ahmedien (Faculty of Art Education, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt)
Co-Guest Editor: Michael Ochsner (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland)
Advisory board: Jon Hovi (University of Oslo, Norway), Adele Langlois (University of Lincoln, UK), Tony Waters (California State University, Chicago, USA), Merryn McKinnon (Australian National University, Australia), Chisomo Kalinga (University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK), Ann H Kelly (King's College London, UK), Jochen Buechel (Charite Berlin, Germany), Lin Wang (University of Cambridge, UK), Shinichi Egawa (Tohoku University, Japan).
Pandemic outbreaks as public health crises have the potential to reshape human life, from herpes, and Legionnaires' disease to HIV and Ebola. Each virus or bacteria has its unique biological properties by which it interacts with and affects populations. Human coronaviruses, for instance, have been known since the 1960s. In the past two decades, however, several new dangerous human coronaviruses have emerged, namely, SARS-CoV in 2002, MERS-CoV in 2012, and currently, SARS-CoV-2 is the cause of the disease known as COVID-19, which has put global public health institutions on high alert. Each pandemic brings its own political, economic, cultural, social and ethical challenges. Although efforts to combat such outbreaks are primarily driven by clinical and medical professionals, the contributions of academics, policymakers and other stakeholders from other arenas, including the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS), should not be overlooked.
Against this backdrop, this research collection aims to examine the role and contributions of the HASS disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary efforts, in shaping the global response to public health crises. To this end, this collection intends to bring together a range of perspectives, empirical and theoretical, qualitative and quantitative, which draw on methods and approaches from, among other areas: cultural studies, new-media arts, history, digital humanities, law, media and communication studies, political sciences, psychology, sociology, social policy, science and technology studies.
We welcome articles exploring topics including, but not limited to, the following key themes:
The role of virtual societies/environments in reinforcing the conceptual principles of digital citizenship and other related social alternatives, by which the effects of quarantining and its social and mental consequences can be mitigated;
The cultural, political, and ethical dimensions of telemedicine and the role of sociology of artificial intelligence and social robotics to develop their potential applications to secure efficient healthcare systems within the context of today's digital revolution;
Social, cultural, and ethical trends in biopolitics and their effects on epi/pandemic responses;
Cultural, ethical, and aesthetic potential of enhanced technologies to be presented to laypeople via bio or digital media;
Human, viral, and artificial intelligence; theoretical and empirical approaches towards convergent interpretations of virality within the context of contemporary cyberculture;
Historical, philosophical or social inquiries into how pandemics emerge and transform societies and their influence on innovation and technology;
Unfolding pandemic phenomena as social drama: the ways societies respond to a contagious disease at different times, the various challenges they face, how they deal with them, and how economic and cultural dimensions may have a lasting effect;
Social, psychological and economic consequences of the complete or near-complete institutional and societal lockdown; policies to address such consequences and strategies for non-pharmaceutical public health interventions;
Diverse human responses to pandemics, relating to religion, race, ethnicity, class, or gender identity;
Approaches to highlight the dynamic role of medical humanities to improve integrative medical understanding and fuel social cohesion and psychological stability when direct/pure medical interventions are not enough to support the public;
The influence of individuals' specific choices and organisational routines on the relationship between transmissibility and pathogenicity of viruses as well as the regional and historical variability of such influences due to social, cultural and ethical values.
Scholarly contributions that address the above areas but with a focus on COVID-19, directly or indirectly, are particularly welcomed.
Interdisciplinary perspectives are welcomed, whether between HASS disciplines, or at the interface between HASS scholarship and the physical and clinical sciences, or engineering, mathematics, computer science.
While purely clinical and medical studies are not in scope, contributions that draw on contributions from areas like medical anthropology, telemedicine, bio philosophy, integrative medicine, global public health, social medicine, and digital medicine, will be considered.
Editors: Dr Naomi Wells (School of Advanced Study, University of London), Francielle Carpenedo (School of Advanced Study, University of London), Dr Saskia Huc-Hepher (University of Westminster), Professor Jane Winters (School of Advanced Study, University of London)
Since Appadurai wrote on the intertwined phenomena of electronic media and migration as disruptive and defining features of modern subjectivity (1996), the relationship between digital technologies and diasporic communities has emerged as a critical area of study across a number of disciplines. However, rarely foregrounded in cross-disciplinary discussions are the linguistic and cultural dimensions that are central to the human concerns and practices which lie behind these crucial issues of our age.
This Special Collection invites contributions from across disciplinary and geographical boundaries that confront the complexity of the contemporary context of intensified cultural and linguistic flows and new patterns of human mobility. While we seek proposals from any area of study of relevance to these themes, we are particularly keen to bridge perspectives between those working within and ideally across: migration and diaspora studies, (new) media studies, linguistics, Modern Languages, cultural studies, Digital Humanities, and computer and data science.
More specifically, we particularly encourage contributions in the following areas:
qualitative and ethnographic approaches that explore how diasporic groups and individuals engage across languages, media and digital platforms
historical perspectives that address the ways new media and technologies provide opportunities for the remediation of earlier forms of diasporic cultural knowledge and memory
approaches that address more everyday digital and cultural practices and/or more formal examples of digital cultural production in contexts of migration
quantitative and computational approaches to migration and digital research that foreground multilingual and cross-cultural concerns
policy-focused approaches that address the cultural and linguistic biases and omissions in top-down technological developments and associated data used in migration and humanitarian contexts.
This is a rolling article collection and as such submissions will be welcomed at any point up until 30 September 2021. To register interest prospective authors should submit a short article proposal (maximum 300 words) to the Guest Editor in the first instance.
Guest Editor: Luca Possati (University of Porto, Portugal)
Co-Guest Editor: Cecile Malaspina (King's College London, UK; Collège International de Philosophie, France)
Few notions are more central than noise to the transformation of modern life. Noise has become synonymous with the complexity and uncertainty of our world and its global digitized information networks. The notion of noise has provided a pithy concept for information theory and computational logic, hailing from the history of statistical analysis (error of measurement) and probability theory (stochasticity), from the understanding of thermodynamic turbulence (entropy) and molecular disorder (Brownian motion). However, the negative connotation of noise as signal interference is increasingly giving way to a generative and functional understanding of randomness and stochastic variables. Noise is no longer treated only as detrimental, but as central to our understanding of emergent patterns and to the development of fault-tolerant, actionable data in the context of partial or noisy information. Stripping away assumptions and working through noise is becoming key to Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Physicists, neuroscientists and computer scientists no longer work only against, but also with noise to refine our knowledge of complex dynamical systems and to improve data processing.
From variations in population genetics to financial forecasting, from urban planning to climate change, every aspect of contemporary life is affected by this profound shift in the conceptualisation of noise. Wherever the human sciences rely on empirical data, we witness the rising prominence of noise. But the human sciences have an otherwise critical role to play in encompassing our understanding of noise. 'What can be dismissed as noise?' is a question the Humanities must subject to a critique that exceeds scientific concerns with data efficiency and accuracy. Data bias and algorithmic governmentality highlight how crucial it is to subject our changing understanding of noise to ethical and political critique. The filtering of our preconceptions into predictive processes, in the context of ubiquitous digitization, raises the challenge of artificial intelligence's very own algorithmic unconscious.
The technical term noise has facilitated the communication of emerging scientific theories and technological innovations. It resonates because it is highly intuitive. Yet far from being self-evident, the pithiness of the term noise in fact reflects culturally dominant notions of order, organization, self-regulation and progress. The difficulty in accounting for the recent change in noise's conceptualisation thus points to values and beliefs that remain tied to industrial and post-industrial capitalist worldviews. They testify, more fundamentally, to the lasting impact of the Cartesian paradigm. Even as logic and mechanics have become non-classical, Descartes' analogy between classical logic and classical mechanics, aligning the suppression of error and that of unproductive energy, still informs the modern definition of information as negation of noise and entropy (negentropy).
By turning the attention increasingly toward the generative capacity of noise, modern science and technology are thus completing a shift away from the Cartesian paradigm. Also artists and designers have long explored the functional and generative qualities of acoustic noise, of randomness and ambiguity, thereby testing the parameters of social resilience and robustness.
What is lacking is a transversal approach to noise, a critique that assesses the conditions of possibility of thought and experience in contemporary society, in light of this paradigmatic shift towards the generative aspects of noise. The aim of this collection is to synergise contributions toward such a critique coming from recent developments in both the human and natural sciences, in technology and the arts.
This collection provides a multi- and inter-disciplinary forum for current thinking in this fast-evolving field of research. We invite submissions and article proposals for this rolling article collection dedicated to the concept of noise. Insights from a broad spectrum of areas are welcomed: information theory and computer science, philosophy (epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics), digital humanities & media studies, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, musicology, literature, experimental artistic practices etc.
Contributions are invited that provide perspectives on hot topics within this theme, including, but not restricted to, questions such as:
The generative use of noise in automated decision-making processes, from finely-granulated noisy life-world data to actionable data
Surveillance capitalism and algorithmic governmentality: the noise-free society
Noise, Data Bias and the algorithmic unconscious
Epistemological noise: transferring concepts between areas of knowledge
Aesthetic and ethical implications of the technical concept of noise
Noise: teleology, teleonomy and the ad hoc discovery of purpose
Generative approaches to noise in design, architecture, synthetic biology etc.
Enablement: noise and the co-constitution of environment and morphogenetic trajectories
Noise and requisite variety: complexity on the basis of noise vs order from noise
Reductionism: noise and the bridging problem
Noise: fake news and the communication strategy of smoke and mirrors
Noise: uncertainty, populism, conspiracy theories and the flight into meaning
Noise and Ancient Greek notions of clinamen, apeiron, chaos and cosmos
Noise & krach: tuché, fortuna, chance, speculation
The historical event as noise & krach
Chaos and cosmos: noise and the fetishization of order and disorder
Noise: historical invariance & unpredictability in novelty formation
Noise, information entropy and negentropy
Deterministic laws & empirical stochasticity
Noise, indiscernibility, indeterminacy
Recursivity and non-linearity
Computational dynamics based on the elimination of noise vs resilience, robustness of evolutionary and developmental paths with stochasticity & variability
Noise & game theory: topology, network complexity and indeterminacy
Functional noise in molecular biology and synthetic bio-technology
Conventional computable dynamics: resisting or embracing the role of noise?
Noise and the specificity of laws to phase spaces in living processes
Noise and the analogy of logic and mechanics in the history of philosophy
Diversifying the concept of noise: from white Gaussian noise to fluctuations, resonance and non-linear amplification.
This is a rolling article collection and as such submissions will be welcomed at any point up until June 30th 2022. To register interest prospective authors should submit a short article proposal (maximum 300 words) to the Guest Editors in the first instance.
Guest Editors: Jan Krasni (University of Tyumen, Russia), Michael Kranert (University of Southampton, UK), Elena Psyllakou (National Center for Social Research - EKKE, Greece), Jens Maesse (University of Gießen, Germany)
This collection deals with the constructions and apparatuses of the Covid 19 pandemic in various discursive (and epistemological) fields that directly influence and reconfigure societies around the world. We are interested in approaches to Covid-19 discourses, working across disciplinary boundaries and invite papers that reflect on discursive resources, practices and strategies that become constitutive of personal, public and/or institutional knowledge about Covid-19 pandemic and the very apparatuses of its political and social reconfiguration.
We envisage papers based on, but by no means restricted to the following questions:
Media: How do different discourses in the media (from traditional to new and social media) construct meaning on and around Covid19?
Expertise: How is Covid19 "diagnosed", "advised" and "problematised" by experts, specialists and scientists from different disciplines?
Politics: How political parties, leaders and other representatives use the Covid19 situation for positioning games?
Everyday life: How does Covid19 change everyday life in health care, academia, education, the family, the business world and other social worlds?
This is a sister collection to that on 'Discourse studies: theories and methodologies at the crossroads of language and society'.
This is a rolling article collection and as such submissions will be welcomed at any point up until March 2022. To register interest prospective authors should submit a short article proposal (maximum 300 words) to the Guest Editors (using this email) in the first instance.
Guest Editors: Johannes Angermuller (The Open University, UK), Eduardo Chávez Herrera (San Sebastián, Spain), Sixian Hah (National University of Singapore), Julian Hamann (Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany)
Scope: Academic research and teaching face new challenges. While specialized knowledge plays an important role in, and for, society, there is a growing demand for systematic, critical and reflexive research on social practices of academic knowledge production and dissemination. Vibrant research in social studies of science has made academic knowledge production an object of empirical analysis. And higher education research has traced the systemic, institutional and organizational underpinnings of academic knowledge production. The nexus of power and knowledge is both a core issue of the social sciences and a highly promising topic at the intersection of Social Studies of Science and Higher Education Studies.
Against this backdrop, the objectives of this research collection are twofold: first, to respond to a need for a new niche of integrative research at the intersection of Social Studies of Science and Higher Education Studies. Overcoming the divide between the two fields, research can make a difference in the broader debate about academia by responding to the challenges that research and higher education are facing today. Understanding the nexus of power and knowledge is key to understanding these new challenges.
The research collection on Social Studies of Academia welcomes empirical and theoretical contributions. Possible topics for articles to focus on are changing conditions of knowledge production, the shaping of academic practices by fields of power or the impact of academic knowledge on society. We are interested in both the look from above on societal structures and from below on situated practices. A particular area of interest is academic identities and subjectivities of early career academics and the way they are negotiated in various arenas of the academic world.
Research on other issues pertaining to the thematic scope of the collection is most welcome.
Editors: Roger Pielke Jr. (University of Colorado Boulder, UK), Sujatha Raman (Australian National University, Australia), James Wilsdon (University of Sheffield, UK), So Young Kim (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, USA)
Scope: Across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted unprecedented levels of interest, engagement and scrutiny of models and mechanisms for scientific advice, and highlighted their essential—if contested—role in policy and decision making. Differing regional, national and international responses to the pandemic provide an opportunity and imperative to explore and compare scientific advice in a range of political and institutional contexts.
Building on this journal's existing collection 'Scientific Advice to Governments', this new collection invites contributions on these and related questions:
How have different regional, national and international governments organised and managed scientific advice over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic?
Has the operation of scientific advisory bodies followed or deviated from existing government guidelines for feeding expertise into policy judgements?
Which disciplinary sources of knowledge and expertise have been privileged or disadvantaged in specific advisory mechanisms?
How have governments navigated and responded to advisory and evidentiary contributions from formal bodies, informal or unofficial sources and individual experts?
How have 'the public' been depicted and imagined within the presentation of scientific advice?
How has scientific advice been mediated and reported in print, broadcast and social media?
During COVID-19, how have expert and public debates, divergent views and—at times—misinformation affected the presentation and reception of scientific advice?
Is scientific advice being communicated in new ways with implications for the presentation and reception of uncertainty and expert judgment?
Research on these topics has the potential to generate impact in at least two ways. First, as the pandemic enters a new phase of uncertainty over issues such as the impact of new COVID-19 variants, and the availability of effective vaccines, a deep understanding of local, regional and global dynamics of science advice are an essential ingredient in ensuring that relevant expert knowledge is being used effectively by decision makers. Second, this research will support processes of reflection on the pandemic, by critically evaluating good and sub-optimal practice in the interaction of experts, politics and publics, and informing future developments in science advisory mechanisms around the world.
This collection will bring together contributions from around the world, and aims to provide a core resource for high-quality, comparative and interdisciplinary work on diverse aspects of science advice in the pandemic.
The collection will be highly interdisciplinary and will seek contributions from disciplines including, but not limited to:
Policy studies and evaluation
Science and technology studies
Media and communication studies
This is a rolling article collection and as such submissions will be welcomed at any point up until the end of December 2022.
Editors: Dr Monika Gabriela Bartoszewicz (Masaryk University, Czech Republic), Dr Marek Troszyński (Collegium Civitas University, Poland).
Scope: This special collection covers and analyses the varieties of media narratives and their societal reception in post-2015 Europe. It aims to bring together papers from different countries and different scientific fields (e.g. political sciences, sociology, anthropology, media studies) focusing critically on the following issues:
Media narratives and frames;
Media stereotypes;
Including and othering;
The discursive construction of a "migrant";
Migration perception and rhetoric;
Societal responses to migration and migrants.
We look at the post-2015 landscape because migration is still crucial in many—and not only—European countries. While the scholarship concerning the so-called "European Refugee Crisis" is quite robust, most of the works focus on the "Kodak moment" or are very issue-specific and lack the longitudinal advantage. Moreover, the problem of migration and migration discourses present in the media is still one of the critical factors shaping the political and societal landscape in Europe. Pro- and anti-migration frames, narratives, and images are still present in the media and employed by various political forces, subsequently reverberating in public opinion.
Our call is based on one cardinal premise that media representations of migrants are critical for the healthy coexistence of migrants with the host society. Moreover, if we look at the media, it is appropriate to consider how the media present not so much the conventionally known but not yet sufficiently processed knowledge of "what everyone needs to know about migrants." Finally, it is vital to bear in mind that we live in a post-factual age where the media works to entertain, give an impression of objectivity and simultaneously strive to shape the opinion.
We welcome papers that aim to answer topical research questions:
How do media portrait migrants in different countries post-2015 momentum?
How are the media framing, priming, and narrating migration and migrants in post-2015 Europe?
What patterns, discourses, and issues are connected to migration and migrants across post-2015 Europe?
Does the media representation change in time? How does the situation differ in different countries?
What are the societal responses to media migration-related narratives?
What is the dynamic between patterning, cognitive processing and social behaviour towards migrants?
Is there a media-reality gap or a gap between migration media frames (what is produced and delivered) and migration audience frames (what is in people's head)?
We are looking for either conceptual and theoretical papers or case studies based on sound fieldwork. We welcome both qualitative and quantitative studies, including traditional approaches (surveys, experiments, focus groups, content analysis) and more innovative methodologies (social media networks analysis, social scientific computational methods).
This is a rolling article collection and as such submissions will be welcomed at any point up until the end of June 2022.
Editor: Elena G. Popkova (Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University), Russia)
Scope: In recent years there has been a global tendency towards the humanization of economic growth. This has often been connected to efforts to implement the Sustainable Development Goals. The AI economy is a new type of socio-economic relationship that has been implemented in Industry 4.0. It envisages an active and diverse use of smart technologies, which apart from AI, also include the Internet of Things (IoT), robots, ubiquitous computing (UC), cloud technologies, technologies of cybersecurity provision (in particular, blockchain), and so on. The problem is that the AI economy functions and has developed contrary to the achievements in terms of the economy's humanization.
This collection aims to provide scientific and methodological support for the humanization of the AI economy.
Contributions are welcomed on a range of themes, including, but not limited to, the following:
Humanistic scientific concepts of the AI economy;
Corporate social responsibility of hi-tech (automatized) entrepreneurship (including responsible investments) in the AI economy;
Digital personnel, including the specifics of training, employment, and realization of human potential in the AI economy;
Smart cities/regions/communities in the AI economy, including the specifics and perspectives of the humanization of their growth and development;
Sustainable development of the AI economy (in particular, in view of the SDGs);
Models of the AI economy that reflect its humanization in different countries/groups of countries;
Scenarios, perspectives, and scientific & methodological and applied recommendations for the AI economy humanization;
State management of the AI economy according to the priority of economic growth humanization (with support for the SDGs);
Socialization of AI as a technology of man-machine interaction: challenges for society, labor market, and educational market.
Multidisciplinary studies that consider the AI economy at the intersection of economic, social, legal, ICT, and environmental disciplines are also welcome.
This is a rolling collection and as such submissions/proposals will be welcomed up until August 2022. To register interest prospective authors should submit a short article proposal (abstract summary) to the Editor in the first instance.
Referee instructions
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (Humanit Soc Sci Commun) ISSN 2662-9992 (online)


text:
PRODUCT LINE FOR CUSTOMERS
AgriPower, Inc. manufactures a broad line of "Heat Only" and "Combined Heat and Power" Waste to Energy Systems
Each System can use between 1 and 60 tons of suitable waste materials as fuel in 1 ton increments. Multiple Systems can be operated together. The maximum electric output from operating multiple Systems together is 7.5 MW (gross) and 6 MW (net).
Heat Only Systems.
The Systems' heat energy output ranges between 500,000 and 30,000,000 BTU/hour (gross) and 400,000 to 25,000,000 (net) in 1,000,000 BTU/hour increments. Their heat energy can be produced in the form of hot water, steam or heated air.
Combined Heat & Power Only Systems.
The heat energy can be directed to heating and power applications in the ratio selected by the customer. This ratio can be changed at any time. Their electrical output ranges between 200 kW to 1.2 MW (gross) and from 150 kW to 1.0 MW (net) in 100 kW increments. Depending on their application, the electric power is generated using a screw expander generator or an Organic Rankine Cycle unit.
Some sample configurations are shown below. (1)
A SYSTEM NAME AG-200 AG-300 AG-500 AG-750 AG-1.2
B TONS OF FUEL REQUIRED FOR 24 HOURS OF CONTINUOUS OPERATION. ASSUMES 5,500 BTUs/lb. PER TON OF FUEL. 13 16 35 40 60
C ELECTRIC POWER
D GROSS / NET POWER OUTPUT (2) 200 kW / 150 kW 300 kW / 225 kW 500 kW / 400 kW 750 kW / 625 kW 1.2 MW / 1.0 kW
D HEAT ENERGY
F TOTAL AMOUNT OF GROSS (NET) HEAT ENERGY AVAILABLE FOR HOT WATER, STEAM, HEATED AIR AND ELECTRIC POWER
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT: AGRIPOWER, INC.™ BARRY J. BERMAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER 46 DEEPDALE DRIVE, GREAT NECK, NEW YORK 11021 USA OFFICE: (516) 829-2000 • MOBILE: (516) 384-2100 E-MAIL: BBERMAN@AGRIPOWER.COM OR VISIT OUR WEBSITE: WWW.AGRIPOWER.COM
(1) SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS, CONFIGURATIONS, REQUIREMENTS, PRICING AND AVAILABILITY ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE AT ANY TIME WITHOUT NOTICE. (2) ALL AMOUNTS SHOWN ABOVE ARE ESTIMATED. NET ELECTRICAL OUTPUT OF THE COMBINED HEAT AND POWER SYSTEMS REFLECTS A REDUCTION OF APPROXIMATELY 5% TO 10% PER SYSTEM FOR THE PARASITIC LOAD NECESSARY TO OPERATE ITS COMBUSTION MODULE INCLUDING ITS COMPUTER, MOTORS, FANS, BLOWERS, PUMPS, SCREW AUGERS, ETC. AND AN ADDITIONAL 5% OF THEIR ELECTRIC GENERATORS' GROSS ELECTRICAL OUTPUT FOR THEIR PARASITIC LOAD (AS REFLECTED IN THE TABLE).
© 2018. AGRIPOWER, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRESENTATION MATERIALS- 2018 FOLDER- PRODUCT LINE FOR CUSTOMERS- AUGUST 3, 2018. DISCARD ALL PRIOR VERSIONS.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


This is a feature-rich, dual band heart rate monitor. It has a nice iOS/Android app as well as another Wahoo app – the 7 minute workout for strength and conditioning. It's waterproof for swimming, can cache data and it can provide lots of clever metrics saying how much your bounce or sway as well as giving you your cycling- or running-cadence (app-only)!
Positives: You can use it with just about any modern app or watch. I use it as my Garmin-HRM, my early morning iOS HRV HRM and my swimming caching HRM. It has a 'status light' on it as well as the ability to configure what it does when you tap it. It's great that it caches the data and great too that the strength and conditioning app fulfils a part of your training regime that many of the watchmakers neglect.
Negatives: It feels a little less substantial than the Garmin, Suunto and 4iiii alternatives. Being diplomatic, it comes from a certain 'aesthetic angle'. All the 'special' data metrics are tied into to the Wahoo app; only HR can be exported from the WAHOO data ecosystem. It can't send VO + GTC + Cadence to the Garmin watches. It seems to use batteries fairly quickly for a HRM.
Comments: I was blown away with this product when it was released and yet still new functionality trickles out from the developers. Impressive. The ANT+ HRV data is suspect. If only the Wahoo Fitness app would allow the export of swim-cached HRV data then I would be data-fulfilled. Wahoo tend to lend more of an ear to the cycling world. However I fully expect the TICKR-X to evolve over time – hopefully through firmware released rather than yet another new strap that you need to buy. If they configured it so that it could compete with the Garmin HRM-RUN on a feature-for-feature basis it would sell even more. The TICKR-X may have it's work cut out for it as Suunto introduce app-based caching and Garmin introduce swimming HRMs.
Alternatives: This link covers some alternatives.
Detailed Review: This link covers my detailed review of the WAHOO TICKR-X.