Humanities & Social Sciences

Launched in 2023, this conference is part of an initiative to foster a vibrant research culture and promote dissemination activities at the School of Engineering, Cardiff University, United Kingdom. The conference provides a platform to celebrate achievements in various engineering disciplines, and to explore and discuss further advancements in the diverse fields that shape contemporary engineering. In 2024, the structure of the conference programme reflected the crosscutting themes and collaborative nature of the research, and was built around current and emerging research areas in the School: 1. Bio-based engineering brings together all of the engineering topics that interface with medicine or biology. This theme recognises both the pivotal role technology plays in revolutionizing healthcare, and the implementation of biological processes in providing novel solutions to engineering problems. 2. Computational modelling and digital twins represents cutting-edge research into virtual representations of objects or systems that are updated with real-time information and used to guide decision-making. The School’s research in this area focuses on developing smart materials and structures, and sustainable processes that help create a sustainable and greener economy. 3. AI and deep learning focuses on the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques in engineering. The School’s research in this field harnesses the power of AI in medical applications and in agriculture, improving the health and wellbeing of society. 4. Net zero is a testament to the School’s commitment to a greener, more efficient future. The aim is to advance energy technology and play a key role in addressing the increasing demand for sustainable and low carbon technologies while reducing environmental impact and ensuring a sustainable environment. The School’s work helps to drive forward net-zero solutions for achieving the government carbon targets. 5. Future engineering represents state of the art technologies for the next generation such as wireless communication systems and future power systems engineering. This theme showcases the exciting and emerging interdisciplinary work being done in the School of Engineering.

Modern medical technologies, especially the pre-implantation and prenatal diagnosis, have given the possibility of preventive dealing with the risks of physical or mental disabilities. On the other side there is the call for support and “inclusion” of people with disabilities. These opposing trends are critically analyzed and discussed in depth from a legally, genetic, as well as from a medical, social and ethical point of view.

Die Metapher vom Eisernen Vorhang überwinden: Zur Geschichte der europäischen Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften im Systemkonflikt. Die Metapher vom Eisernen Vorhang beherrscht unsere Wahrnehmung des Kalten Kriegs bis heute. Doch welchen Einfluss hatte die Trennung zwischen Ost und West auf die sozial- und kulturhistorische Selbsterforschung Europas in der zeitgenössischen Geschichts- und Literaturwissenschaft? Barbara Picht macht das Ost-West-Paradigma selbst zum Untersuchungsgegenstand der Wissenschaftsgeschichte, anstatt es zu übernehmen. Sie analysiert signifikante kulturelle Selbstentwürfe im Europa des Kalten Krieges mit einem Schwerpunkt auf Geschichte und Literatur. Am Beispiel des Werkes von Fernand Braudel und Robert Minder (Frankreich), Werner Conze und Ernst Robert Curtius (BRD), Walter Markov und Werner Krauss (DDR) und Oskar Halecki und Czesław Miłosz (Polen bzw. US-amerikanisches Exil) zeigt sie, dass die »Interpreten Europas« der bipolaren Logik der Systemkonfrontation nicht gehorchten. Die »institutionelle Macht« des Kalten Krieges war sehr wohl zu spüren, doch vom beherrschenden Bild des iron curtain muss man sich lösen, geht es um die Geschichte der europäischen Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften im Systemkonflikt.

Enabling Learning: Language Teaching for Australian Universities illuminates efforts by tertiary language educators to facilitate the learning of languages at the university level. The educators' endeavours recounted in this volume address a range of specific aspects of the language learning experience or language teaching within tertiary education institutions. The chapters offer an overview of learning approaches and experiences, from the beginner to the advanced level, of different learning environments, from the traditional to online and hybrid, and of different languages, from Indigenous to European to East Asian. This work foregrounds the relevance of improved accessibility to language learning in the university context, presents innovative educational solutions informed by the examination of specific contexts, and asserts the importance of developing intercultural competence.

The Historical Archive of the Banco di Napoli, the largest banking archive in the world, preserves documents whose unique characteristics give the institution significant importance not only from the perspective of economic history but also as a source for artistic and social history. I have attempted to illustrate the various methods of archival research that can be used to consult the Archive’s documents, offering an itinerary through time and space in which the scholar interacts according to their own inclinations and interests. The examples illustrated include the payments for work carried out in the 18th century at the Villa of Resina, the 20th-century discoveries of artifacts in the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, and the history of the Villa Augustea in Somma Vesuviana.

Adolescents are at a critical life stage where they will soon be able to contribute to the wellbeing of humankind, or do it great harm. Consequently, it is vital that the challenges and possibilities of adolescence be well understood and addressed. In Australia, such understanding is urgently needed with respect to Aboriginal adolescents. Not only must they adjust to their changing bodies and minds, but they must negotiate these changes within a context usually characterised by racism and poverty. They must also do this within intercultural environments that include the disparate and sometimes incompatible beliefs and practices of their multicultural populations. The chapters in this collection address these challenges to Aboriginal adolescents in the Northern Territory and the intercultural contexts in which they take place. Their discussions include the adolescents' experiences with health and health care, education, and the criminal justice system. They also address their hopes, dreams, plans and politics, engagement with social media, food preferences and nutrition, engagement with language, family, and changing mores affecting sexual behaviour and marriage. The book aims to provide readers with a greater understanding of the day-to-day lives of Aboriginal adolescents, and some of the adults who care for or neglect them. It seeks to provide readers with a better understanding of the circumstances, processes and factors that affect adolescent health, wellbeing and future prospects in their intercultural environments, and glimpse the multiplicity of these circumstances, processes and factors and the complexity of their interaction.

Wer prägt DIE LINKE jenseits von Öffentlichkeit, Wahlergebnissen und bekannten Namen? Kevin Scheibel eröffnet einen fundierten Blick auf die Parteibasis in den Jahren vor den inneren und äußeren Umbrüchen der 2020er. Dazu wirft er einen empirisch gestützten Blick auf die soziale Zusammensetzung, die Beitrittsmotive und die politischen Einstellungen der Mitglieder zwischen 2014 und 2019. Auf Grundlage einer umfangreichen Befragung zeigt die Analyse zentrale Entwicklungslinien und Spannungsfelder einer Partei im Wandel und liefert einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Parteienforschung, der dabei hilft, auch gegenwärtige Entwicklungen der LINKEN einzuordnen.

A groundbreaking perspective on energy history that reveals the early modern home, and not industry, as the first major driver of fossil-fuel adoption. This book explores how the homes of ordinary city dwellers sparked our modern dependence on fossil fuels. Drawing on a rich variety of sources, including probate inventories, household manuals, personal journals, medical treatises and contemporary artwork, it reveals how households in the early modern Low Countries embraced peat and coal to fuel new standards of warmth, light and domesticity. Yet, with these new home comforts came rising indoor pollution, intensified and gendered housework and, ultimately, a quiet shift in humanity’s relationship with nature. Bridging the histories of environments, material culture and consumption, Fossil Consumerism offers a reinterpretation of the historical roots of global warming, finding these not in the industrial mill, but in the intimate, overlooked spaces of the home. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the everyday origins of the Anthropocene.

Westminster model; UK politics; Brexit

Using her experience of living under apartheid and witnessing its downfall and the subsequent creation of new governments in South Africa, the author examines and compares gender inequality in societies undergoing political and economic transformation. By applying this process of legal transformation as a paradigm, the author applies this model to Afghanistan. These two societies serve as counterpoints through which the book engages, in a nuanced and novel way, with the many broader issues that flow from the attempts in newly democratic societies to give effect to the promise of gender equality. Developing the idea of ’conditional interdependence’, the book suggests a new approach based on the communitarian values which underpin newly democratic societies and would allow women’s rights to gain momentum and reap greater benefits. Broad in its thematic approach, the book generates challenging and complex questions about the achievement of gender equality. It will be of interest to academics interested in gender and human rights, international and comparative law.

Nonbelievers, Apostates, and Atheists in the Muslim World offers a contemporary, cross-cultural look at nonbelief and nonreligion in Islam. Providing historical, conceptual, statistical, and ethnographic data on nonbelievers from Morocco to Egypt, Turkey, and Bangladesh, it explores the unique nature and challenges of nonreligion for Muslims. It includes 11 chapters by experts on nonbelief, nonreligion, and atheism in an array of Muslim-majority countries. The book features multiple disciplines and offers both ethnographic and statistical information on this important, growing, but neglected population. It explores the unique nature of nonreligion in Islam, illustrating that nonbelief is specific to a particular religious tradition. It also examines how ex-Muslims navigate complexities and dangers of their societies—especially for women—and how nonbelief and nonreligion do not equate to atheism or the total repudiation of religion or of Muslim identity. This book is an outstanding resource for scholars and students of nonbelief, atheism, secularism, religion, and contemporary Islam.

Von den Seelenlehren der Schüler des Aristoteles und späterer Peripatetiker sind nur vereinzelte Fragmente überliefert, die entweder in der Forschung wenig Beachtung fanden oder wegen ihrer Knappheit kontrovers diskutiert wurden. Häufig wurden dabei die Fragmente jedoch nicht in die, meist doxographische, Überlieferungsgeschichte eingebettet. Ausserdem war bei den vorhandenen Besprechungen ein Bezug zu Aristoteles oft eine Interpretationsvoraussetzung. DIe vorliegende Arbeit untersucht deshalb die Fragmente der hellenistischen Peripatetiker Theophrast, Dikaiarch, Aristoxenos, Klearch, Straton und Kritolaos, soweit möglich, innerhalb ihrer Überlieferungstradition und als Zeugnisse eigenständiger Philosophen, deren Bezug zu und Abhängigkeit von Aristoteles erst über die Fragmentanalyse zu klären ist. Es zeigt sich, dass eine Weiterentwicklung von aristotelischen Positionen nur bei Theophrast sicher und bei Straton sehr wahrscheinlich behauptet werden kann. Mit Ausnahme Klearchs scheinen die Fragmente der übrigen Peripatetiker der aristotelischen Lehre zumindest nicht zu widersprechen, doch bleiben die Gemeinsamkeiten zu oberflächlich, um einen Aristotelismus etablieren zu können.

Bei dem vorliegenden Text handelt es sich um eine Übersetzung von Władysław Kuraszkiewicz, Gramatyka historyczna języka polskiego, Warszawa: PZWS 1972(2. Aufl.). Die Übersetzung wendet sich an den Studenten der Slawischen Philologie, vor allem der frühen Semester, in denen es nicht die Regel ist, daß polnische Literatur schon frei gelesen und verstanden werden kann.

Indonesia is the world’s second-largest cigarette market: two out of three men smoke, and clove-laced tobacco cigarettes called kretek make up 95 percent of the market. Each year, more than 250,000 Indonesians die of tobacco-related diseases. To account for the staggering success of this lethal industry, Kretek Capitalism examines how kretek manufacturers have adopted global tobacco technologies and enlisted Indonesians to labor on their behalf in fields and factories, at retail outlets and social gatherings, and online. The book charts how Sampoerna, a Philip Morris subsidiary, uses contracts, competitions, and gender, age, and class hierarchies to extract labor from workers, influencers, artists, students, retailers, and consumers. Critically engaging nationalist claims about the commodity’s cultural heritage and the jobs it supports, Marina Welker shows how global capitalism has transformed both kretek and the labor required to make and promote it. “Thoughtful and provocative, this is a superb book that will be widely read, especially by those who are looking for an antidote to current popular support of kretek.”—Abidin Kusno, author of Jakarta: The City of a Thousand Dimensions “A magnificent book! Kretek Capitalism is destined to become a classic of both medical anthropology and public health scholarship.”—Robert Proctor, author of Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition

Communications engineering / telecommunications