Journals
2026 EN
Uys Mia · Swart Sandra
This article analyses equestrian performances in South Africa in Frank Fillis’s Circus between 1882 and 1910. We show how he was influenced by an array of popular acts, such as war re-enactments and hunting spectacles, where horses provided both elements of authenticity and idealized empire through the romantic spectacle of the military. However, we argue that the ‘imperial’ battled the ideographic, as uniquely South African tropes were added to appeal to the local audiences. We further contend that a specific style of equestrian act was developed around the gender of the rider, which served to buttress – rather than trouble – the gendered status quo. Finally, we analyze Fillis’s use of ‘wild horses’, especially zebras, whom he deployed to showcase his ability to tame their ‘wildness’ – mirroring the vaunted imperial civilizing mission. Overall, we explore the distinct and shifting role horses played in Fillis’ circus ring – a transcultural arena of animal capital.
Journals
2026 EN
Chowdhury Soumyadeep
The Indian General Elections of 2024 commenced with a much hyped ‘Abki Baar 400 Paar’ slogan by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party aiming for a parliamentary supermajority, winning 370 seats alone and over 400 constituencies together with its allies. The elections concluded with a third consecutive BJP victory albeit reliant on regional parties like the Telugu Desam Party and the Janata Dal (United), crucial pre-poll allies for a parliamentary majority. While the seat targets were often proclaimed as an emotive or psychological mark for the BJP and its cadre, what is often being overlooked, is a clear arithmetic calculus which seems to have shaped the BJP’s electoral strategy in the recent Lok Sabha polls. Retaining the 303 seats it won last time around in 2019, reclaiming some 50 odd seats which the party had won earlier but couldn’t win in 2019 while expanding into some newer constituencies where it had never emerged victorious before. The formula of ‘Gain, Regain and Retain’ thus strategically summarises BJP’s ‘Mission 370’. Using election data provided by the ECI and Lokniti - CSDS, this article shall assess the BJP’s performance along these three parameters while analysing state-specific and sometimes even sub-regional or constituency level reasons for the same. It argues that an impressive retention rate despite notable losses paralleled by modest to low success rates in reclaiming older seats and expanding into newer constituencies explain the sobering victory of the party in this election placing the BJP in pole position to form a third consecutive government with support of its allies. In conclusion, this article shall also reflect on the nature of the BJP as a political party and the Indian party system in current times offering key strategic insights, electorally relevant for the BJP and the Opposition in and after 2024.
Journals
2026 EN
Sutoris Peter
This article is based on an exploratory study of jeevanshalas , a network of ‘schools for life’ run by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), an anti-dam movement in the Indian states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Based on participant observation and conversations with movement leaders, teachers, administrators, parents and community volunteers, and on participatory research with children living in the localities of Jeevan Nagar and Trishul, Maharashtra, this article illuminates how the NBA—which did not succeed in its mission of stopping the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam— reinvented itself through education. It argues that the jeevanshalas offer a model of long-term sustainability for social movements whose aim is not necessarily to grow the movement’s membership but to catalyse wider societal change that might eliminate the need for the movement. The findings suggest that the NBA’s understanding of the social purpose of education reflects a view of young people as political agents whose voices shape the community’s collective future, in marked contrast with India’s state-run depoliticising education system. The jeevanshalas thus represent a previously under-researched model of social movement led education whose explicit aim is not to train movement agents but to leverage the transformative potential of education to address underlying patterns of oppression. The article theorises this rearticulation of the concept of ‘social movement schools’ through Spivak’s notion of ‘infrastructural followup’, which parallels recent debates about the nature of prefigurative politics.
Journals
2026 EN
Zhu Biyun · Paquette Jonathan
This article reframes the international work of galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) through cultural transnationalism: a broad, multi-actor field within which cultural diplomacy is one narrower modality. Methodologically, we combine a two-stage review (targeted search and exploratory snowballing) with content analysis, organized by a three-domain (mission, market, diplomatic) framework. We demonstrate that GLAM’s cross-border practices are routinely co-produced by these logics and sustained by networks and infrastructures that extend beyond the state. This perspective clarifies how institutions and communities collaborate, circulate knowledge and negotiate identity and memory, even where official agendas are absent or contested. It also exposes structural biases that privilege Western flagships and undercount grassroots and non-Western initiatives. We advocate a conceptual realignment that nests diplomacy within the wider transnational frame and a more inclusive research agenda.
Journals
2026 EN
Aleksiak Dobrawa · Kuleta-Hulboj Magdalena · Zielińska Anna
This paper focuses on teaching global citizenship education (GCE) under unfavourable socio-political conditions. It is argued that GCE requires discussion of controversial topics; however, in some contexts it may be challenging. Using data from qualitative focus groups with 16 teachers from Poland, this study examines what topics are considered controversial in Poland; what are the contextual obstacles for teaching GCE; why teachers continue to address controversial GCE topics; and what strategies they employ. A thematic analysis led to the following conclusions: (a) GCE is seen as a blend of acceptable and unacceptable topics; (b) despite difficulties, teachers continue to incorporate GCE driven by their inner motivation and a strong sense of mission; (c) teachers developed several strategies helping them to ‘smuggle’ even controversial topics into their teaching. Combining the modus operandi of missionaries and guerrillas, they are able to help students become global citizens. That is why we call their attitudes part-guerrilla, part-missionary.
Journals
2026 EN
Esculies Joan
Historiography has assumed that the United States did not pay attention to the Catalan nationalist movement and its demands for self-government at the end of the First World War. The article, on the contrary, demonstrates, using diplomatic documentation from the American embassy in Madrid and the American mission at the Paris Peace Conference, that the Americans had good knowledge of the campaign for autonomy that took place in Catalonia in the fall of 1918 and the winter of 1919. And, likewise, that two trends coexisted within American diplomacy: one favourable to getting involved in Spanish domestic politics to carry out a reform of the monarchy or even promote a republic and guarantee autonomy to Catalonia and other regions, and another in favour of staying on the sidelines. The article opens a field for deeper inquiry into the knowledge and interest of Wilsonian diplomacy in stateless nationalisms.
Journals
2026 EN
Sullivan Lauren
This reflective essay explores how early experiences in a public library shaped the author’s understanding of libraries as spaces of belonging, empathy, and lifelong learning. Drawing on both personal narrative and professional insight, the essay connects these experiences to the author’s current work in an academic library and to the broader mission of librarianship as defined by the American Library Association’s Core Values of Librarianship. The piece also incorporates perspectives from librarian-mothers whose experiences illuminate the profession’s evolving balance between service, scholarship, and family life.
Journals
2026 EN
Socha Thomas J.
Reflecting on the 25-year history of the Journal of Family Communication , this essay recalls the Founding Editor’s experience launching the journal, looks back on an inaugural essay, and argues that going forward the field of family communication would benefit by incorporating two emerging discipline-wide paradigm shifts – positive communication and communication design – to add positive family communication design to its mission of family communication theory, research, and education.
Journals
2026 EN
Gabalán-Coello Jesús · Vásquez-Rizo Fredy Eduardo
A vision related to accreditation is presented, analyzing the concept of quality assurance from the internationalization of higher education, taking as references: Regional Accreditation System for University Careers (RASUC) and Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)). The methodology developed monitors learning outcomes in an international accreditation model, focused on institutional coherence, analyzing institutional mission, guiding functions, graduate profiles, learning outcomes and evaluation instruments, to validate the model. As a conclusion, a deductive model of learning outcomes assessment is generated, which incorporates a cascade information system, articulated by levels, using information and knowledge management as a transversal axis.
Journals
2026 EN
Hwang Soomin · Choi Hyunyoung · Kang Yoojin
+1 more
Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), a long-lived and well-mixed greenhouse gas, is a key driver of global warming. Accurate, long-term monitoring of its spatiotemporal variability is essential for understanding carbon dynamics. While the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite provides one of the most precise column-averaged CO 2 (XCO 2 ) measurements, its limited spatial coverage and short record since 2014 constrain long-term global analysis. Many studies thus highly rely on chemical transport models (e.g. Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) and CarbonTracker) when applying machine learning (ML) approaches. However, their coarse resolutions often lead to spatial smoothing. In this context, we present a novel ML-based framework based on residual learning with the Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LGBM) to reconstruct global, gap-free XCO 2 at 0.1° resolution for the period 2003–2019. By explicitly modeling the residuals between high precision OCO-2 observations and the coarse resolution CAMS-EGG4 reanalysis, the proposed framework mitigates spatial smoothing effects and enables the extension of XCO 2 estimates beyond the temporal coverage of the OCO-2 mission. The resulting product was strictly validated through internal cross-validation (random, spatial, and temporal) and external in situ validation, showing strong agreement with OCO-2 satellite observations (R 2 = 0.93–0.96, RMSE = 0.80–1.11 ppm) and ground-based measurements (R 2 = 0.98, RMSE = 1.17 ppm), respectively. Compared to CAMS-EGG4, the LGBM-based XCO 2 product also outperforms by offering higher accuracy and resolving the spatial smoothing limitations caused by its coarse resolution. By bridging gaps in satellite data across space and time, this high-resolution XCO 2 product enhances applications in climate research, emission source attribution, and greenhouse gas policy assessment.