Cosmo girls: configurations of class and femininity in elite educational settings

In this paper we offer a unique contribution to understandings of schooling as a site for the production of social class difference. We bring together the rich body of work that has been conducted on middle-class educational identities, with explorations of the centrality of the feminine in representations of class difference from the field of critical girlhood studies. This is done in order to explore how young femininities mediate the representation of class difference in the environment of the private girls’ school. Drawing from our two research studies, located in private girls’ schools in Australia and the United Kingdom, we argue that the notion of ‘disgust’, commonly used in recent engagements around class, has only limited purchase in understanding the representation of class difference in these schools. It is the inconsistencies and complexities in how class and class relations are produced that we wish to illuminate.

Inter-organisational knowledge sharing in regional sustainable development communities

There has been an increasing interest in the use of inter-organisational groups to address regional implications in sustainable development. These groups bring together local knowledge and expertise and span boundaries between government and industry organisations. Our focus is in understanding how knowledge is shared in such inter-organisational groups. Utilising interviews, observations and social network analysis, we examine the knowledge sharing implications derived from the mixed membership, multilevel interaction, and the need to span boundaries with external organisations in these collaborations.

Spirituality, music, and wellbeing : sharing insights from an Australian setting

The relationship between spirituality, music, health, and wellbeing is gaining much theoretical and research attention globally. These related concepts are complex and involve many facets and challenges. This paper explores the relationship between music and spirituality as a way to communicate actively with God, which interconnects with wellbeing and quality of life. The focus of this paper discusses one case study from my wider research project “Spirituality and Wellbeing: Music in the Community” that started in 2013, in Melbourne (Australia). Having gained ethical clearance, case study methodology (interviews, documents, and observation) was employed. For this paper, I only offer a discussion of semi-structured interviews with volunteer participants from an Anglican Church in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne (Australia). Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), I analyzed and codified the interview data to explore the lived experience of the participant’s perception and how they make sense of it. As IPA is phenomenological, it takes into the account my own ideas through a process of interpretation when analyzing the phenomena under study. The interview data are reported under two overarching themes: music and spirituality and music and wellbeing. The data provides insights into the various ways music contributes to participants’ spiritual journey and growth. I argue that music is a powerful vehicle that connects people with God and others as it fosters an enhanced sense of spiritual growth and self-wellbeing.

Sharing questions and initiatives, the professional organizations' point of view

The Book Designer: Careers and Professionalisation features contrubutions from 62 International design educators and professionals.  These leaders in their field provide analysis and expert commontary on the skill and epertise now required for sucessful career in design.

Stylised configurations of trauma: faking identity in Holocaust memoirs

Exploring a series of fraudulent Holocaust memoirs-Herman Rosenblat's Angel at the Fence, Misha Defonseca's Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust, Binjamin Wilkomirski's Fragments and Helen Demidenko's The Hand That Signed the Paper-, this paper argues that fakes are not some 'bogus Other' (Ruthven 3) of 'genuine' literature but in fact parodic works that reflect on the tenuous nature of both the past and the notion of self. Indeed, the revelation of a fraudulent memoir exposes the investments of a public culture in notions of the real-firstly, in terms of an authentic identity and secondly, in relation to a genuine literary experience. The Holocaust frauds perpetuated by Rosenblat, Defonseca, Demidenko and Wilkomirski, in exploiting an historical phenomena regarded as sacrosanct, highlight and utilise the commodification of trauma in both public and literary arenas, manipulating discourses of victimhood and authenticity in order to interrogate the boundaries of the real and the unreal and, indeed, to reveal the faultlines in literary culture per se. Less interested in literary classifications, however, than in notions of history and identity, this paper contends that the scandals surrounding fakes are fundamental to understanding anxieties about the connection between word and world, and the strange expectation that literature is able to provide access to something 'true'.

Robust nonlinear distributed controller design for active and reactive power sharing in islanded microgrids

This paper presents a robust nonlinear distributed controller design for islanded operation of microgrids in order to maintain active and reactive power balance. In this paper, microgrids are considered as inverter-dominated networks integrated with renewable energy sources (RESs) and battery energy storage systems (BESSs), where solar photovoltaic generators act as RESs and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles as BESSs to supply power into the grid. The proposed controller is designed by using partial feedback linearization and the robustness of this control scheme is ensured by considering structured uncertainties within the RESs and BESSs. An approach for modeling the uncertainties through the satisfaction of matching conditions is also provided in this paper. The proposed distributed control scheme requires information from local and neighboring generators to communicate with each other and the communication among RESs, BESSs, and control centers is developed by using the concept of the graph theory. Finally, the performance of the proposed robust controller is demonstrated on a test microgrid and simulation results indicate the superiority of the proposed scheme under different operating conditions as compared to a linear-quadratic-regulator-based controller.

Review article: Emergency department data sharing to reduce alcohol-related violence: a systematic review of the feasibility and effectiveness of community-level interventions.

The present paper aims to review current evidence for the effectiveness and/or feasibility of using inter-agency data sharing of ED recorded assault information to direct interventions reducing alcohol-related or nightlife assaults, injury or violence. Potential data-sharing partners involve police, local council, liquor licensing regulators and venue management. A systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature was conducted. The initial search discovered 19,506 articles. After removal of duplicates and articles not meeting review criteria, n = 8 articles were included in quantitative and narrative synthesis. Seven of eight studies were conducted in UK EDs, with the remaining study presenting Australian data. All studies included in the review deemed data sharing a worthwhile pursuit. All studies attempting to measure intervention effectiveness reported substantial reductions of assaults and ED attendances post-intervention, with one reporting no change. Negative logistic feasibility concerns were minimal, with general consensus among authors being that data-sharing protocols and partnerships could be easily implemented into modern ED triage systems, with minimal cost, staff workload burden, impact to patient safety, service and anonymity, or risk of harm displacement to other licensed venues, or increase to length of patient stay. However, one study reported a potential harm displacement effect to streets surrounding intervention venues. In future, data-sharing systems should triangulate ED, police and ambulance data sources, and assess intervention effectiveness using randomised controlled trials that account for variations in venue capacity, fluctuations in ED attendance and population levels, seasonal variations in assault and injury, and control for concurrent interventions.