Prison staff face regular exposure to potentially traumatic events, yet research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among UK prison officers has remained limited. A mixed-methods design comprising an online survey (study one) and semi-structured interviews (study two) explored traumatic stress within this population. The survey measured PTSD symptomology among 447 participants, and associations with demographic factors, critical incident exposure, and individual and work environment factors. Semi-structured interviews with 19 participants supplemented survey data and provided in-depth perspectives of critical incident exposure and workplace culture. Results indicated that 51.7% of participants reported clinically significant PTSD symptoms. Increased critical incident exposure and greater workplace frustration contributed to higher symptomology. Interviews highlighted a culture of emotional suppression and a need for more accessible support. Findings highlight the need for interventions addressing individual and workplace factors to support prison officer wellbeing, and for further research into reducing the risk of PTSD in this population.

Alina Bako presents Marius Turda's 2024 book, “În căutarea românului perfect: Specific național, degenerare rasială și selecție socială în România modernă” [In search of the perfect Romanian: National specificity, racial degeneration, and social selection in modern Romania] (published by Polirom), as a landmark and indispensable synthesis in the field of Romanian cultural and intellectual history studies. Marius Turda, a professor at Oxford Brookes University (UK) and a leading international expert on eugenics, racism, and biopolitics in Central and Eastern Europe, delivers a rigorous, evidence-based demythologization of modern Romanian history. At the core of his argument lies a stark conclusion: the notion of a “perfect Romanian” - an idealized, biologically and culturally pure national archetype - has never truly existed and was always a constructed fantasy rooted in anxiety, exclusion, and pseudoscientific ambition. Instead, Turda advocates for a healthier alternative: a tolerant, civic-oriented form of patriotism grounded in inclusion, democratic values, and critical self-reflection rather than ethnic or racial essentialism. The book meticulously brings together two dominant yet conflicting visions of Romanian identity that emerged in the 19th and especially the 20th centuries. On one side, romantic and literary discourses - prominent in the works of writers, poets, and cultural critics - celebrated the Romanian peasant as the embodiment of authentic national virtues: simplicity, moral purity, and deep connection to the land and traditions. On the other side, emerging medical, anthropological, and eugenic discourses expressed profound alarm over perceived "racial degeneration," demographic decline, and biological “weakness” among the population. Medicine was increasingly reframed not merely as a healing profession but as a “national science” tasked with engineering biological improvement through selective reproduction, social hygiene policies, and interventions aimed at strengthening the Romanian “race”. Turda examines these ideas with scholarly impartiality and nuance, situating Romania firmly within broader European trends. He shows how interwar eugenics, scientific racism, and antisemitism were not marginal or uniquely Romanian phenomena but part of a continent-wide intellectual current embraced by scientists, politicians, and cultural figures. In Romania, this manifested in exclusionary policies and rhetoric targeting Jews, Roma communities, people with disabilities, and other groups deemed “undesirable" or “degenerative”. Eugenic nationalism gained particular momentum after the creation of Greater Romania in 1918, finding enthusiastic support among prominent intellectuals such as Mihai Eminescu (in his proto-nationalist writings), Octavian Goga, Emil Cioran (in his early, controversial phase), and numerous physicians, biologists, and anthropologists who promoted ideas of racial purification and social selection. The analysis does not stop at the interwar period. Turda traces the persistence and adaptation of these discriminatory logics into the post-World War II era, including under communist rule, where certain biopolitical concerns were reframed in ideological terms while discriminatory practices against minorities and “socially unfit” individuals continued in different forms. By placing Romanian debates in transnational context, the book demonstrates how local ideas about national specificity and racial improvement circulated within - and were influenced by European networks of eugenic thought, from German Rassenhygiene to Anglo-American sterilization movements and French degeneration theories. Ultimately, În căutarea românului perfect functions as both a scholarly contribution and a vital educational and civic tool. It urges Romanian society to confront uncomfortable aspects of its past, dismantle lingering national obsessions with ethnic purity and biological exceptionalism, and prevent the repetition of historical abuses rooted in exclusion and pseudoscience. The book's significance has been widely recognized: in 2025, it was awarded the prestigious Observator Cultural Prize in the Essay/Publicistics category, affirming its impact on contemporary Romanian intellectual discourse. Through this meticulously researched and courageously honest volume, Marius Turda invites readers into an open, unflinching dialogue about the making (and unmaking) of modern Romania.

ABSTRACT Chester Cobb was an Australian modernist writer who published two novels as an expatriate in England, Mr. Moffatt (1925) and Days of Disillusion (1926). Cobb’s experimental narrative style was praised by his contemporaries, but his name is now virtually absent from critical work on Australian literary modernism. This article reassesses Cobb’s contribution to the modernist novel of the 1920s by examining the narrative style of Mr. Moffatt. The unique contribution of Mr. Moffatt lay in its use of variations in the forms of (free) direct thought to stage the conflict between involuntary and voluntary processes in the flow of everyday consciousness. In this way, Cobb uses stream of consciousness style to advance a plot focused on the spiritual growth of the novel’s protagonist as he navigates the complexities of capitalist modernity. In this respect, Cobb deserves attention not simply as a follower of James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and other early 20th-century modernists but also as an Australian innovator who made a distinctive contribution to modernist literary styles.

The article examines the possibilities of integrating visualization and media analysis into the IT training of future bachelor’s students in secondary education. The relevance of the topic is determined by the changing nature of the digital educational environment, in which a future computer science teacher must not only be proficient in software tools but also be able to work with visual forms of knowledge representation, critically analyze media messages, identify manipulative and AI-generated content, and design their own digital products for educational purposes. The aim of the article is to provide a theoretical generalization of practices for integrating visualization and media analysis into the IT training of future bachelor’s students in secondary education and to outline recommendations for their systematic implementation in the educational process of higher education institutions. The methodological basis of the study includes the analysis of scholarly sources, comparison, generalization, systematization, and interpretation of the findings of contemporary research on the digital, informational, and media-related preparation of future teachers. It has been established that the most productive practices are those that combine visual modeling, work with digital media, analytical tools, project-based tasks, artificial intelligence tools, and reflective assessment of learning outcomes. The study shows that visualization in IT training performs not only an illustrative but also cognitive, operational, and communicative functions, whereas media analysis expands the preparation of future teachers for critical work with information, digital citizenship, and the methodologically grounded use of media resources at school. As a result, the article proposes groups of practices that are advisable for integration into the educational process: visual modeling of algorithms and processes, media content analytics, the creation of original educational media products, the use of dashboards and digital learning traces, as well as the critical use of generative artificial intelligence. It is substantiated that the effectiveness of such integration increases when it is implemented progressively, organized in an interdisciplinary way, grounded in the professional tasks of the future teacher, and based on the combination of technical, pedagogical, and media literacy components of training.

Abstract Social scientists have long examined the relationship between war and state formation, especially in Europe and Latin America. However, work on non-European and colonial cases questioned the significance of war for state formation. Analyzing the Israeli case, I examine the relationship between war and state formation in a colonial context by focusing not on war itself but on the crises war may cause. I argue that war can shape state formation in a colonial context and suggest that theorizing crisis in political development reveals novel ways in which the relationship between war and state formation plays out. Empirically, I show that some of the main obstacles that hampered Zionist colonization and state formation in Palestine were the country’s health conditions, which seriously deteriorated during World War I. These health-related obstacles to colonization and state formation were removed by the work of American Jewish organizations after the war. Importantly, the critical work of these public health organizations stemmed from the local and global crises caused by the war. I also consider how responses to the postwar health crisis in the Jewish sector shaped the plight of Palestinian Arabs. Having noted the significance of crisis, I build on existing literature to theorize it as a potentially structurally transformative “event.” But unlike eventful analyses, I claim that transformative crises are not necessarily rifts or radical breaks from past patterns. Rather, preexisting patterns and conditions that precede eventful crises shape how transformation plays out.

Volumes of literature and critical works have been written in an attempt to situate the place of politics in literature. Some postcolonial writers have argued vehement that it is practically impossible to write apolitical literature in the postcolonial world. This paper considers Alobwed ’Epie and Ayi kwei Armah as writers in “Postcolonial Politics”. Their novels are considered here as political pamphlets designed to castigate specific political regimes which have transformed the lives of the citizens into a perpetual nightmare. It equally examines the novels as those that expose some of the most gruesome and nauseating realities of postcolonial leadership politics. Furthermore, this paper sustains the argument that in the novels under study, the masses are projected as people who have been politically, economically and socially deceived, marginalized, oppressed, persecuted, enslaved, exploited and brutalized as a result of excessive greed, corruption, nepotism and tribalism. These ills are the major viruses that continue to deprive the pauperized masses from the benefits of independence as the transition from the colonial to the neo-colonial regimes was a mere change of political actors but the leadership tactics remained the same. From a Marxist and New Historicist theoretical paradigms, the analyses reveal that there is a thin line between the world of the novels and the social climate in which they resonate and adumbrate. Consequently, the novelists succeeds in transforming political realities into eternal truths of the human condition in postcolonial Africa. The analyses further stress that the novels offer synthesis of the people’s political experiences reconstructed in prosaic form. As such, the novelists consider the servant leadership and the moralization of political leadership as condition sino qua nons towards a free, fair and transparent society.

Purpose This paper aims to apply a “revisiting” approach to past game literacy-based research. Starting from a media literacy and videogame making oriented PhD project, it explores how the discussion of past research can be evolved, but also questions what young research subjects gain from participating in research of this nature. Design/methodology/approach With a frame of longitudinality, this research takes a long view of the experiences of participants from a game making project, against how they consume texts in their lives now. It considers the kind of artefacts (design work, videogames) produced in the original research against a revisiting of some of the student-participants, interrogating their digital media literacy, practices currently, along with discussing their memories of being involved in this research project. With the previous PhD work taking place in the school where the researcher was a teacher, this new research reviews the role creative practice can have in classrooms. Findings Revisiting the data from past PhD research, which drew positive conclusions about the role game making can have in the teaching of literary texts, and in literacy progression generally, this paper then overlays new interview data from some of the past participants, affirming the power of critical game work in schools. Originality/value The combination of a PhD methodology that was itself novel with a revisiting of research subjects in the present offers an original insight into the effectiveness of games-based classroom research over time.

Diagnosis of Leukemia from Bone Marrow Flow Cytometry Data Using Deep Learning and Explainable Artificial Intelligence.

The Special Issue “Technological Convergence in Visual Arts: Integrating AI, Data-Driven Systems, and Immersive Media for Creative Transformation” invites original research, reviews, and creative–critical works that examine how rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, data-driven systems, and immersive technologies are reshaping visual arts. It focuses on the evolving intersections of computational intelligence, virtual and augmented environments, and artistic practice—highlighting shifts in creation, curation, authorship, ethics, and audience experience. Emphasizing interdisciplinary inquiry across visual arts, media studies, design, and cultural studies, the issue seeks theoretically rigorous, methodologically innovative, and practice-based contributions that explore new forms of storytelling, interactive installations, virtual exhibitions, and digitally mediated cultural expression, ultimately advancing discourse on the transformative impact of technological convergence on contemporary creative practices. Issue Editor: Dr. Chaitanya ShinkhedeAssistant Professor, School of Media and Communication, MIT World Peace University, PuneEmail: chaitanyashinkhede@gmail.com Dr. Tejee IshaHead of Department & Assistant Professor, Faculty of Mass Communication & Media Technology, Shree Guru Gobind Singh Tricentenary University, Gurugram, Haryana – 122505, IndiaEmail: totejeeisha@gmail.com Dr. Harish BarapatreYadavrao Tasgaonkar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Karjat, Maharashtra, IndiaEmail: Jksa.Saudi@gmail.com Dr. Balkrishna K. PatilAssistant Professor & Head of Department, PhD in Computer Science, Former Tech Lead, Nashik, Maharashtra, IndiaEmail: balkrishnapatileng@gmail.com Dr. Bayram ÇAĞLARLecturer, Kocaeli University Ömer İsmet Uzunyol Vocational School,Department of Auditory Techniques and Media Production, TurkeyEmail: bcaglar@kocaeli.edu.tr

ABSTRACT Indigenous Queer Studies prioritizes Indigenous queer worldviews in response to western settler-colonial cis-heteropatriarchal societies and their ongoing occupation. While performing critical anti-colonial work, Indigenous Queer Studies also invests in the salvage and continuity of sovereign embodiments, expressions, and desires produced and maintained by Indigenous societies for thousands of years globally. Extending out from the focal point of gender and sexuality, this article explores the possibilities between Indigenous Queer Studies and the emergent field of Indigenous Fat Studies as mutually beneficial and co-constructed sites that hold potential to further embed the self-determined agenda of contemporary Indigenous Studies as a humanizing and future-oriented academic project. This article will engage these interconnected fields of inquiry through the perspectives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+SB peoples who have reinvigorated conversations about Indigenous identities and embodiment as sites of resistance to settler-colonialism in so-called Australia. This will be explored by examining how Indigenous fat/queer embodiments challenge settler-colonial imaginaries through socio-political issues including racialized homo/trans/queerphobia, misogyny, fatphobia, and introduce conceptualizations of Indigenous sovereignty which recognizes, validates, and affirms the level of inclusivity that Indigenous relational theory encompasses.

Social work supervisors have the power to shape the next generation of social workers. Thus, it is imperative that social work supervision take an antiracist/antioppressive approach to effect transformational change for the individuals and families with whom we work rather than supporting and maintaining systems and practices that cause harm. This article proposes applying the SHARP (structural oppression, historical context, analysis of role, reciprocity and mutuality, and power) framework to reflective supervision (RS) for this purpose. RS emphasizes important factors for social work supervision such as collaborative meaning making and emotional learning. However, alone, RS does not explicitly address the pervasive issues of racism and oppression that inevitably show up in social work practice. Therefore, authors apply the SHARP framework to RS to promote critical consciousness, mutual accountability, and transformational social work practice. This article introduces the SHARP framework and RS, outlines how each component of SHARP enhances RS, and suggests practical applications.

Editorial introduction to the special issue on 'Climate Justice, Food Insecurity and Social Work' in the international journal of Critical and Radical Social Work.

French gastronomy is a significant aspect of French life, combining culture and language, providing plenty food for thought and analysis on their interaction, interpenetration, and mutual influence. In this article, the author proposes to consider the phenomenon of synergy in the development of French gastronomy and gastronomic literature. The gastronomic tradition in France developed not only as a culinary art, but also thanks in large part to the works of culinary critics and the literary works of chefs themselves. The article diachronically examines national characteristics and the broad genre palette of this interaction. Language captured culinary ideas, methods, and knowledge, transmitted and disseminated them through intellectual literary forms, and cemented them in the national consciousness. The empirical material for this article includes cookbooks, philosophical works, works by chefs and literary critics, and journalistic materials from the printed press, which have not previously been published in Russian and are unfamiliar to Russian readers, which determines the novelty of this study. The methodological framework of the work relies on an interdisciplinary approach and incorporates a range of scientific methods, including contextual-interpretive analysis, historical description, a diachronic approach, cultural-background interpretation, and an axiological method related to the study of culture as a set of values. The relevance of the topic stems from the linguistic and cultural focus of the study: the French gastronomic tradition has been understudied from a linguistic perspective. At the same time, gastronomic discourse in France is socially significant, embodying value-oriented categories of interest to researchers in various fields of the humanities.

This paper expands epistemic boundaries in civil war discourse. It investigates the intersection of symbolism and humour in recreating a historical and tragic event, such as the civil war, using J.O.J Nwachukwu-Agbada’s “A Bath in the Dust”, a short story in his anthology, A Small Dirty Pillow Other Stories. It is different from other critical works on civil war literature, which focus solely on relevant ideological, social and thematic engagements of the war. Through the lens of symbols and humour, the thematic thrusts of the war are revealed and interrogated. The study deploys the theory of New Historicism in the critique of the primary text, since the story is a historical event. The theory of New Historicism assumes that literature is an account of its historical moment. It analyses a text based on the power structures and ideologies of the times that produced it. Meaning in New Historicism is essentially not a fixed one since history is not linear and there is no single voice or interpretation that embodies a given historical moment. The methodology used in the story is close reading, implicating aspects of the theme, plot and characterization. The findings of the paper are relevant: one, symbolism and humour are potent literary tools through which a historical moment can be recreated and appreciated, and two, style can effectively implicate theme in a work.

For much of the 20th-century, developmental endocrinology was structured around a binary model that positions male differentiation as an active, hormone-driven process and female development as the passive consequence of androgen absence. This framework has profoundly shaped both experimental practice and conceptual understanding in reproductive and developmental biology. Yet, empirical evidence in molecular endocrinology, combined with insights from feminist science studies and the history of science, invites a revitalization of the long-standing critique of the persistence of this model. This review critically re-interrogates the longstanding notion of female sex development as an outcome of mere androgen deprivation. First, through a historical analysis of key experimental systems in 20th-century embryological endocrinology, we trace how this conceptual pattern emerged and became stabilized within the discipline. We show how the methodological privileging of androgenic mechanisms over other hormonal pathways contributed to defining femaleness as absence. Second, drawing on research in developmental and molecular endocrinology, we review the roles of oestrogens and their receptors in mammalian female genital development. Synthesizing these findings, we support a less reductionist model that opens the possibility to more research on oestrogen-dependent female sex differentiation and defines female sex development as an active, regulated process rather than a default state. Finally, we situate the 'absence' model of femaleness within its broader cultural and symbolic contexts. Through a material-semiotic analysis, we demonstrate how scientific concepts of sex are co-constituted with wider social meanings, and how this interplay shapes what is rendered visible or invisible in biological research. Emerging from a multidisciplinary dialogue between biomedicine, the history of science, and feminist science studies, our review highlights how cultural assumptions of gender are embedded within scientific practices of analyzing sex-differences. By integrating reflexive humanities perspectives with empirical biomedical research, we argue for a more accurate and equitable understanding of female development - one that recognizes oestrogenic activity as central to sex differentiation and challenges the reduction of femaleness to hormonal absence. This cross-disciplinary engagement illustrates the transformative potential of re-examining foundational scientific paradigms through collaborative, critical inquiry. Research on how sex develops in mammals was based for a long time on a simple binary model: male development is an active process driven by androgens, while female development happens passively when these hormones are absent. Our article re-challenges this long-standing view by referring to the history of the concept of female sex development as a passive process and reinforcing the critical works already available on its continued persistence. First, we trace how this 'female as absence' model emerged in 20th-century developmental endocrinology. Second, we review empirical evidence showing that oestrogens and their receptors play active roles in shaping female genital development, and we present a model of oestrogen-dependent pathways in this process. Third, we situate the idea of femaleness as absence within its wider cultural and symbolic background, showing how scientific concepts are influenced by historical and social meanings. Bringing together perspectives from biomedicine, the history of science, and feminist science studies, we use a multidisciplinary dialogue to show how gender bias becomes embedded in both research design and clinical interpretation. Recognizing these biases is not only a matter of scientific precision but also of improving health outcomes - for example, in the diagnosis and care of people with differences of sex development or in the advancement of women's health.

Designers of the United Nations’ “Green Transition” have warned that individual behavior in the West is overly consumptive, and they have called upon education campaigns and sustainable technologies to change the dietary lifestyle of Western consumers. In this essay, I question this focus on lifestyle. As anthropologists and critical public health scholars have noted, while the term lifestyle connotes habitual, cultural practices, its use reinforces individualized, profit-driven behaviors. When it comes to the Green Transition, attention directed toward “lifestyle” undermines the collective political action necessary to combat global warming. This commentary suggests that global experts are right to center the role of food in achieving carbon neutrality, but rather than focus on dietary lifestyle, we should focus on how to use food and feeding to sustain the critical work of collective change.

Based on a formally sampled survey of 120 post-9/11 transatlantic science fiction (SF) novels in English published between 2002–2011 inclusive, and a thematic reading of thirty-eight of these works, this paper analyses the place and treatment of surveillance and security in the culture of Empire. The paper identifies several important post-9/11 interventions in SF and argues that, in comparison to some of the weak mainstream literary work on 9/11 and the Long War, SF has produced some of the bleakest and most insightful responses. However, it also argues that there is a clear transatlantic division between the critical, sharp, and cynical work being produced by British SF authors and the predominantly nostalgic, militaristic, or techno-utopian responses of North American SF authors. It concludes with some reflections not just on the place of post-9/11 surveillance and security in SF but on the continuing relevance of SF to critical surveillance and security studies, and in broader social terms.

INTRODUCTION: As artificial intelligence, algorithms, and data-driven technologies become more embedded in social services, education, health care, and justice systems, concerns continue to grow about how these tools may reproduce existing social inequities. METHODS: From a critical social work perspective, this article examines the ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) development and implementation can reinforce racism, ableism, classism, and other forms of structural oppression particularly through predictive and surveillance-based decision-making practices. The article explores how data-collection practices and algorithmic design are shaped by historical and institutional bias, despite frequent claims that these technologies are neutral or objective. Drawing on examples from criminal justice, child welfare, and health settings that utilised custom-built enterprise models, the analysis highlights the risks of opacity, universalisation, and feedback loops that can deepen harm for marginalised individuals and communities. FINDINGS: In response, the article advances an intersectional power analysis and proposes a critical participatory practice approach to technology development. By centring the knowledge, experiences, and leadership of those most impacted by AI-driven systems, this approach positions technology as a potential tool for transformational justice rather than social control. CONCLUSION: The article concludes by arguing that ethical engagement with AI in social work requires ongoing reflexivity, political accountability, and meaningful community participation.

ABSTRACT Given the extreme circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic, this article explores how critical social work can be an effective approach to social work practice during a global crisis. After analyzing the contemporary context of widening social inequalities spurred by the pandemic, an overview of the major assumptions, commitments, and the role of critical consciousness in critical social work theory is given. The destabilizing of the status quo paired with the exposure of deepening structural inequities during the pandemic offers an opportunity for critical social workers to instill hope and advocate for long-lasting systemic changes related to social care.

Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into literature searching has the potential to enhance research synthesis by improving the identification of conceptually rich or otherwise difficult-to-locate evidence. Theoretical or conceptual literature reviews, including realist reviews, often involve resource-intensive searches because they aim to trace nuanced ideas, mechanisms, or conceptual relationships across multiple sources. This case study illustrates the use of AI-powered tools to support and streamline such literature searching, using a realist review as an example. We applied AI tools-Scite and Undermind-in the context of a realist review to facilitate the identification of relevant studies. Seed papers and key informant papers guided the search, and a novel classification system (grandparent, parent, and child papers) was used to systematically organise studies for developing and refining theoretical constructs. Transparent screening procedures and decision-making frameworks were employed to ensure methodological rigour and reproducibility. The integration of AI tools supported the retrieval of conceptually relevant literature and helped manage complex datasets. The classification system enabled structured organisation of studies, supporting iterative testing and refinement of theoretical constructs. The workflow demonstrated flexibility and adaptability, suggesting potential applicability beyond realist review. Our findings suggest that AI-powered tools can support literature searching, particularly in identifying conceptually relevant studies. However, these tools do not replace the critical interpretive work required by researchers. Human judgement remains essential to assess relevance, evaluate nuanced concepts, and make informed decisions throughout the search process, with AI serving as a valuable adjunct rather than a substitute.