Ableism in academia: where are the disabled and ill academics?

Recent coverage in higher education newspapers and social media platforms implies that chronic conditions, illnesses and disabilities are becoming more prominent amongst academics. Changes to funding structures, increased globalisation, marketisation and bureaucratisation of higher education have resulted in a performance-driven working environment where teaching workload and pressures to publish are further intensified due to excellence exercises in teaching and research. The result is low morale and an ever-rising number of reported mental health issues, burnout and stress-related illnesses within academia. This article explores some of these issues in the context of higher education institutions in the United Kingdom. We draw on our research and our experiences as speakers regarding ableism in academia to provide food for thought, stimulate a debate and raise awareness of those academics experiencing chronic illness, disability or neurodiversity, whose voices are not heard.     

Resources of Grandparents: Educational Outcomes Across Three Generations in Europe and Israel

Educational attainment depends on parents' material and cultural resources. In many families, the grandparents also provide resources that directly or indirectly support their children's educational careers. That is why we applied a multigenerational view and tested if and under which conditions the resources of grandparents are relevant for the educational outcomes of their grandchildren. Using data from the fifth wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (N = 27,447), we examined the association between the education of children and the resources of their grandparents. The results show that the impact of grandparental resources is not generally negligible and not entirely mediated by the parental generation. The resources of the grandparents can be used as a substitute for a lack of parental resources. In addition, the “grandparent effect” also differs across countries, indicating that certain welfare state provisions seem to enhance or attenuate the relevance of grandparents' resources.     

Narrating Genocide: Time,Memory, and Blame

More than 20 years have passed since the Rwandan genocide, yet we know little about how Rwandans remember the violence. This article draws upon more than 100 interviews with genocide survivors to assess collective memories of the atrocity. We find that survivors organize their narratives by conceptualizing the genocide as a watershed event that divides time into two distinct eras. When discussing the pregenocide period, survivors focus on macrolevel events and structures, locating blame for the genocide in institutions rather than on Rwandan citizens. By contrast, narratives of life after the genocide focus on perceived progress since 1994. We interpret these findings in light of the state's memory projects, the potential functionality of the memories, and the time needed for collective memories to resonate.     

Rapid response to a college outbreak of meningococcal serogroup B disease: Nation's first widespread use of bivalent rLP2086 vaccine

Objective: To outline the reasoning behind use of bivalent rLP2086 in a Rhode Island college meningococcal B disease outbreak, highlighting the timeline from outbreak declaration to vaccination clinic, emphasizing that these two time points are <3 days apart. Participants: Staff, faculty, and students at College X eligible for vaccination. Methods: An outbreak response was initiated, advantages/disadvantages of available MenB vaccines were discussed, and a vaccination clinic was coordinated. Results: Bivalent rLP2086 was chosen as the vaccination intervention. We achieved a 94% coverage rate for the first dose. To date, this intervention has prevented further cases of Neisseria meningitidis serogroup B disease at College X. Conclusions: The close, efficient collaboration of public health stakeholders and College X led 94% of the eligible population to be safely vaccinated with at least one dose of bivalent rLP2086. This outbreak marked the first time bivalent rLP2086 was effectively used as an intervention response.     

Called to Medicine: Physicians’ Experiences of Career Calling

Using consensual qualitative research methodology, the authors explored physicians’ (N = 17) career calling experiences through semistructured interviews. Eight domains emerged: definition of calling, development of calling, calling's fit with career, maintenance of calling, emotional well‐being, relationships, recreation, and future. Within these domains, 17 general and 40 typical categories emerged. Results suggest physicians’ callings were influenced by others, met with both support and barriers, and chosen because of fit with interests, prosocial motivation, or religious/spiritual influences. Calling positively and negatively influenced emotional well‐being, relationships, and recreation and was expected to continue after retirement. Counselors are encouraged to use a narrative lens to conceptualize clients’ calling development, use job crafting techniques to support calling maintenance, and prepare clients for postretirement career calling development. Future research might examine when and why a medical calling's strength may change over time.     

‘The Realm of Maiden Beauty’: Spectres of Slavery,Rebellion, and Creolisation in the Landscape of Cable’s Louisiana

Using a creative interdisciplinary method of enquiry, this article seeks to exorcise the spectres of revolutionary creolisation embedded in George Washington Cable’s 1880 novel The Grandissimes. It probes, in particular, the secreted traces of the Creole diaspora triggered by the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804, and attempts to peel back the manifold layers of ideological occlusion embedded in the (ostensibly white, Anglo-American) narrative frame of Cable’s omniscient narrator and his protagonist Joseph Frowenfeld, which suppress the connections between inter-American identities across diverse, revolutionary, creolistic worlds in Louisiana and the Gulf South. Unlike other studies examining traces of the Haitian Revolution in The Grandissimes, which tend to focus on the parallels between fictional and historical figures in Cable’s southern romance, this article dissects the subtle allusions to the revolution and the attendant diaspora found in the plantation infrastructures and the urban landscape of Cable’s Louisiana. In so doing, it demonstrates how Saint-Domingan migrants affirmed and reinvigorated the cultural landscape of the ‘Creole’ South and ‘circumvented’ the ideological spread of ‘Americanness’ at the time of the Louisiana Purchase, and during successive moments thereafter.     

“Understanding” as Support for Emerging Adults Whose Parents Have Chronic Health Conditions: A Life-Span Communication Perspective

To better understand the “chronic burden of care” in the United States, we focused on an underrepresented demographic of youth caregivers in families, emerging adults (EAs). EAs are a newly recognized population of youth, 18–25 years of age, who are developmentally between adolescence and young adulthood. Guided by the life span communication perspective, we interviewed 98 EAs (30 males and 68 females, M age = 19.09, SD = 1.72) about their experiences providing support to a parent with a chronic health condition. Many EAs in this study said they provided “understanding” and our interpretive thematic analyses uncovered two broad meanings of the word: it is a form of support that EAs both have and communicate. When EAs have understanding, they have knowledge about the health condition and how it affects their parent. They also have acceptance to some degree that the health condition is a fixture of their lives and that their parents are imperfect and fallible people. They communicate the understanding they have through reciprocating support, sacrificing, being obedient, avoiding sensitive topics, and projecting emotional strength. We discuss the findings and their implications for emerging adult development as well as parent-child relational development parallel to difficult long-term health issues in families.     

Beyond conventional wisdom: community cultural wealth and the college knowledge of African American youth in the United States

African American youth are generally as likely as their peers from other racial and ethnic groups to aspire to earn a college degree; yet, in spite of their aspirations these students remain under-represented in college enrollment and graduation. Part of the disparity between these students’ aspirations and the realization of their goals may lie in their minimal college knowledge and nominal participation in postsecondary preparatory activities that have frequently been caused by the historic, and ongoing, systematic disenfranchisement of African Americans. During interviews, college students reflected on how similarly-aged family members, peers, co-workers, and parishioners assisted with various aspects of college preparation and enrollment. The community cultural wealth framework helps us understand the reason for, and importance of, this ‘lateral mentorship’ in the fulfillment of these students’ college aspirations. Consequently, educators and educational systems are challenged to be more responsive to the college preparatory needs of traditionally under-represented college-going populations.     

New developments in behavioral pricing research

Behavioral pricing extends traditional price theory by exploring consumers’ reactions to prices from a psychological perspective. With the constant and substantial evolution of this research field, we review the progress on the state of knowledge on consumers’ processing of price information and price behavior. To this end, we develop a framework to classify the advances made in behavioral pricing research during the past decade. We discuss conceptual developments, the contribution of the adoption of new theories, and new relationships and pricing phenomena. We show that several concepts have undergone conceptual developments (e.g., price search) while other concepts are new to the literature (e.g., participative pricing mechanisms). Regarding theoretical developments, the adoption of theories from other disciplines has contributed to enhance understanding of price-related effects. Finally, new pricing phenomena, such as the zero price effect or the placebo effect of price promotions, challenge the traditional view of consumers’ response to price information. Furthermore, a number of recent empirical findings contradict existing knowledge on price-related concepts and phenomena. Thus, it is of prime importance to integrate the latest findings with prior literature. From the key findings in the literature, we derive directions for future research.     

Identity boxes: using materials and metaphors to elicit experiences

This paper considers the use of identity boxes as a data collection method to elicit experiences. Participants were asked to respond to questions using objects to represent their answers. The rationale for using identity boxes was to allow for a more embodied, less textual approach. The identity boxes were then also used to create an artistic installation as one form of data analysis. The reflection section in this paper shows that the approach posed potential risks around the emotional vulnerability of participants, with participants experiencing the project as cathartic and therapeutic. Some participants struggled with the process of thinking through objects as difficult. Although using a less conventional approach to research led to deeper, richer reflections and thus relevant, interesting data, concerns were raised around relevance, generalisability, and more generally the evaluation of the research. The paper concludes with a reconsideration of the identity boxes as a method.