Discourses and Strategic Visions: The U.S. Research University as an Institutional Manifestation of Neoliberalism in a Global Era

It is argued widely that the academy today is in the process of significant change—in the institutional assumptions of what constitutes the university and the construction of knowledge and in its relations with the city and the world. This article addresses the evolution of the modern university in the context of the discourses of contemporary globalizing institutions. Further, it empirically assesses the organizational priorities of U.S. research universities in light of the application of these discourses to their objectives and practices, finding that they are playing a key role in the formal representation of the institutional direction, goals, and values of American higher education.

'Ulster's policing goes global': The police reform process in Northern Ireland and the creation of a global brand

This paper engages with contemporary discussions in relation to the commodification of policing and security. It suggests that the existing literature regarding these trends has been geared primarily towards commercial security providers and has failed to address the processes by which public policing models are commodified and marketed both within, and through, the transnational policing community. Drawing upon evidence from the police change process in Northern Ireland, we argue that a Northern Irish Policing Model (NIPM) has emerged in the aftermath of the Independent Commission on Policing (ICP) reforms. This is increasingly branded and promoted on the global stage. Furthermore, we suggest that the NIPM is not monolithic, but segmented, and targeted towards a number of different 'consumers' both domestically and transnationally. Reflecting these diverse markets, the NIPM draws upon two seemingly incongruous constituent elements: the 'best practice' lessons of policing transition, as embodied in the ICP reforms; and, the legacy of counter-terrorism expertise drawn from the preceding decades of conflict. The discussion concludes by querying as to which of these components of the NIPM is in the ascendancy.

Sequential extracellular matrix-focused and baited-global cluster analysis of serial transcriptomic profiles identifies candidate modulators of renal tubulointerstitial fibrosis in murine adriamycin-induced nephropathy

Transcriptome analysis using microarray technology represents a powerful unbiased approach for delineating pathogenic mechanisms in disease. Here molecular mechanisms of renal tubulointerstitial fibrosis (TIF) were probed by monitoring changes in the renal transcriptome in a glomerular disease-dependent model of TIF ( adriamycin nephropathy) using Affymetrix (mu74av2) microarray coupled with sequential primary biological function-focused and secondary

Carrying religion into a secularising Europe: Montserratian migrants' experiences of global processes in British methodism

Migrants to Europe often perceive themselves as entering a secular society that threatens their religious identities and practices. Whilst some sociological models present their responses in terms of cultural defence, ethnographic analysis reveals a more complex picture of interaction with local contexts. This essay draws upon ethnographic research to explore a relatively neglected situation in migration studies, namely the interactions between distinct migration cohorts - in this case, from the Caribbean island of Montserrat, as examined through their experiences in London Methodist churches. It employs the ideas of Weber and Bourdieu to view these migrants as 'religious carriers', as collective and individual embodiments of religious dispositions and of those socio-cultural processes through which their religion is reproduced. Whilst the strategies of the cohort migrating after the Second World War were restricted through their marginalised social status and experience of racism, the recent cohort of evacuees fleeing volcanic eruptions has had greater scope for strategies which combat secularisation and fading Methodist identity.