Uncoupling binaries,unsettling narratives and enriching pedagogical practice: lessons from a trial to Indigenize geography curricula at the University of Adelaide,Australia

The development of culturally and social inclusive curricula is an important aspect of teaching geography. In countries such as Australia with a history of colonial oppression and dispossession the need to acknowledge Indigenous history and peoples in teaching is vital. This paper reports on the lessons learned from being part of the Indigenous Enrichment of Curricula Project (IECP) for geography curricula at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Drawing on advice from an Indigenous Reference Group, this project trialled the use of visual and aural delivery mechanisms, the development of country-based assessments, the use of “co-run conversations in safe spaces” and embedding of key narratives and storylines to provoke student learning and cultural reflexivity. Challenges are reported on, including working out how to decolonize curricula without adopting binary and essentialist constructions of Indigeneity, how to involve Indigenous colleagues without overburdening them, and how to represent Indigenous knowledge. The paper concludes that Indigenizing or enriching curricula must go beyond a content focus and avoid superficially gilding the lily (by the addition of culturally palatable and romanticized “nuggets” of Indigenous knowledge) but build towards a drastic re-structuring in practice of entire course frameworks consistent with Indigenous ways of doing and seeing.     

Academic motherhood in the United Arab Emirates

Balancing the dual roles of mother and academic can be an intensive juggling act. Often, it is mothers who undertake the majority of domestic work in the household, and who tend to experience greatest consequences of this in the workplace; including stress, pressure and less likelihood of promotion. Research indicates that networks of support provided by families and friends can help alleviate these pressures. Academic parents who work outside of their home countries may not have access to these networks to share the work of raising children, but academics who work in the Arabian Gulf have inexpensive domestic help at their dispensation. The ways in which life as an expatriate affects academic mothers both professionally and personally is explored in this study set in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Interview data was gathered from ten expatriate academic mothers. It was found that, similarly to other studies in this field, mothers undertake the vast majority of coordination of domestic work and childcare in their homes, but that having domestic help enables them to enjoy more time with their families. However, there was no clear indication that having extra help at home enabled the women to partake more readily in their academic work. The majority of the women in this study considered that their lives as academic mothers are made easier by residing in the UAE, despite being far from family. This was in part due to ubiquitous domestic help, but also due to perceptions of the UAE providing a culturally family friendly working environment.     

Competition for talent: retaining graduates in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine

Graduates are considered a convenient source of human capital in today’s knowledge-based economy. It is therefore crucial to understand what drives their mobility intentions to retain larger numbers of graduates. This is particularly true for peripheral regions, which need to compete with economic centres that are assumed to be more attractive. This paper adds a euregional perspective to the existing literature on graduate migration by investigating whether or not students intend to stay in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine (EMR) after graduation. It takes into account the role of hard and soft locational factors, social factors as well as individual characteristics in shaping future graduates’ mobility preferences. Using survey data from 2015 from five higher education institutions in the EMR, this paper finds that mobility intentions are determined by students’ perceptions of the quality of life, openness and career opportunities in the euroregion. In addition, distance to the partner and other social ties such as family and friends influence migration intentions.     

Fashioned Forest Pasts,Occluded Histories? International Environmental Analysis in West African Locales

This article considers how environmental problematics are produced and interpreted, using case material from West Africa’s humid forest zone. Examing the experiences of several countries over the long term, it is possible to identify a deforestation discourse produced through national and international institutions. This represents forest and social history in particular ways that structure forest conservation but which obscure the experience and knowledge of resource users. Using fine‐grained ethnography to explore how such discourse is experienced and interpreted in a particular locale, the article uncovers problems with ‘discourse’ perspectives which produce analytical dichotomies which confront state and villager, and scientific and ‘local’ knowledges. The authors explore the day‐to‐day encounters between villagers and administrators, and the social and historical experiences which condition these. Instances where the deforestation discourse becomes juxtaposed with villagers’ alternative ideas about landscape history prove relatively few and insignificant, while the powerful material effects of the discourse tend to be interpreted locally within other frames. These findings present departures from the ways relations between citizen sciences and expert institutions have been conceived in recent work on the sociology of science and public policy.     

Evidence concerning the roman military diet at Bearsden,Scotland, in the 2nd Century AD

Analyses of sterols and biological studies have shown that a Roman defensive ditch was also a cesspit. The plant debris includes wheat fragments dispersed from defecated bread or other farinaceous food. These techniques may reveal ancient diets in a detail previously impossible to achieve.     

Tracing firing technology through clay properties in Cuzco,Peru

The purpose of this study was to identify changes in firing practices that occurred during a timeframe that saw the introduction of European kiln technology to the Andes (AD 900–1800). Pottery from an excavated context at the archaeological site of Aqnapampa in the southern highlands of Peru was examined for changes in paste recipes that adapted local materials to increased firing temperatures indicative of evolving firing technologies. Sherds (60) and fragments refired to 890 °C from 12 stratigraphic levels were compared by style, surface treatment, paste color, and vitrification structures (ESEM). Four technological phases of the Cuzco pottery sequence emerged and were used to evaluate the trajectory of a single decorative style (Killke). Previously thought to have been produced in pre-Inca times and curated into later periods, the Killke sherds presented evidence that the style was produced using technologies introduced in the Inca and Spanish Colonial Period.