Search Results (84)

In a media ecosystem marked by misinformation and disinformation, democratic resilience requires new strategies for digital and media literacy and participation. In the proposed model, the University, through transnational Cooperation Partnerships, activates applied research laboratories that generate high-social-impact communication prototypes. The European case studies Respectnet and DigiFunCollab demonstrate that the conscious use of digital media, transforming students from passive users into conscious creators, reduces vulnerability to cognitive biases, filter bubbles, and echo chambers, thereby limiting manipulation in democratic processes and stimulating civic participation. The imitative diffusion of such practices generates virtuous circles of collective learning. The theoretical framework combines institutional isomorphism, reinterpreted as a virtuous isomorphism of best practices, with democratic resilience and the UNESCO MIL and DigComp 2.2 frameworks. The methodology adopts a mixed-methods design with a quantitative prevalence. The qualitative phase includes focus groups with national stakeholders and a national report (regulatory analysis, training needs, SWOT on social entrepreneurship) preliminary to course design. The quantitative phase involves monitoring training pathways (online course and project work) and a final questionnaire. Indicators include the number of participants, certifications, projects developed, and engagement levels. By systematically implementing this approach, the Academy fuels multi-stakeholder institutional dialogue. Knowledge transfer creates communicative culture and strengthens the democratic capacity of communities. This approach confirms the role of Visual Education as a tool to integrate the University’s three missions, thus structurally reinforcing democratic resilience. Full article

This article advances a critical rethinking of digital transformation in craft-based and socially embedded production systems by examining ateliers of social integration as community-led solidarity spaces where sewing and embroidery practices intersect with relational, care-oriented, and collective dimensions. Existing debates on digitalisation remain largely centred on automation, scale, and efficiency, overlooking how technology operates within care-based and territorially embedded economies. To address this gap, the article develops an alternative analytical framework grounded in relational economies and the ethics of care. While the phenomenon is transnational, the empirical analysis focuses on the Italian context and draws on data from CreAbility, an ongoing action-research project aimed at building a digital community of micro and small fashion enterprises, associations, and designers characterized by social and cultural impact. Against dominant, scale-oriented models of innovation, the article conceptualises ateliers of social integration as relational ecosystems in which value is co-produced through social ties, inclusion practices, and localized knowledge. From this perspective, digital technologies serve as situated mediators that extend and amplify proximity-based relations. This reframing challenges linear and growth-centred accounts of digital innovation, instead proposing a non-linear, care-centred, and place-based model of digital transformation. Methodologically, the study adopts a mixed-methods design combining quantitative and qualitative techniques. Data were collected between June and July 2025 through an online questionnaire distributed to a broader population of Italian ateliers of social integration and were complemented by participatory focus groups involving organisational representatives. The findings show that these ateliers operate as infrastructures of proximity in which production, care, and community are co-constitutive, and where digital practices support forms of extended embeddedness rather than substitution. In doing so, the article contributes to debates on digitalisation, social innovation, and the care economy by showing how alternative, relational, and non-scalable models of production can reshape the meaning and the trajectories of innovation. Full article

Despite being a biodiversity hotspot, the Republic of Seychelles faces a critical challenge with an estimated 90% of its food imported. This dependency exposes the country to global supply disruptions and climate-related risks, while pressure on protected ecosystems continues to rise. In response, the Erasmus+ Capacity Building Higher Education GreenTraINT project (Green Training INTernational Program for agriculture, livestock farming, and conservation), co-funded by the European Union (2024–2026), aims to strengthen local expertise in sustainable agriculture, livestock farming, and biodiversity conservation. Through a transnational partnership involving European and Seychellois universities and institutions, GreenTraINT is co-designing innovative higher education modules tailored to the island’s priorities in agriculture, livestock, and biodiversity conservation. This paper focuses on a detailed needs analysis conducted in early 2025 across a diverse group of 84 stakeholders, including students, educators, NGOs, and professionals. The findings reveal a strong demand for applied training in sustainable food systems and biodiversity conservation, blended teaching methods, and programs that bridge theory with hands-on skills. Inspired by other Erasmus+ projects such as NETCHEM and SPARKLE, GreenTraINT adopts a multi-stakeholder, needs-driven approach that aligns international academic expertise with local development goals. As a key milestone, a Summer School in 2026 will pilot the newly developed modules. In the long term, GreenTraINT seeks to leave a lasting legacy by integrating its curriculum into national education pathways, thereby contributing to food security and environmental resilience. With less than four years remaining to achieve the 2030 Agenda targets, the project positions higher education reform as a strategic accelerator for SDG implementation in small island developing states (SIDS). By linking curriculum innovation to measurable sustainability priorities, GreenTraINT helps narrow the SDG implementation gap in vulnerable island contexts. The project offers a model for international collaboration in higher education for sustainability in SIDS. Full article

Frailty is a multifactorial geriatric syndrome marked by reduced physiological reserves and increased vulnerability to adverse outcomes. This multicenter observational study adopted a One Health approach to examine the association between frailty and biological sex, denture use, and antidepressant medication, as well as their impact on bite force, in two transnational cohorts of physically active older adults. The sample included 499 individuals aged ≥60 years (295 from Brazil and 204 from Portugal), all with functional dentition and regular physical activity. Frailty was assessed using the adapted Fried phenotype and classified as non-frail (G0), pre-frail (G1), or frail (G2). Oral health, depressive symptoms (CES-D), bite force, and self-reported use of dentures and antidepressants were analyzed. Frailty was significantly associated with biological sex (p < 0.001), with higher prevalence among women, especially in G2. Antidepressant use was associated with frailty in the Portuguese cohort (p < 0.001) and in the total sample (p = 0.005), but not in Brazil. No significant association was observed between denture use and frailty. However, Brazilian participants without dentures showed significantly higher bite force (p < 0.001), indicating a functional oral health effect. Frailty was associated with female sex and antidepressant use, while bite force emerged as a complementary functional marker for geriatric assessment. Full article

Generative AI chatbots are becoming routine study companions in STEM, which raises a pedagogical question: what do students expect human lecturers to do differently when AI support is ubiquitous? This study examines STEM undergraduates’ expectations for a transformation of the lecturer role and their social ambivalence toward AI chatbots in Sino-foreign transnational education (TNE) programmes in China. We administered an online survey to 467 consenting undergraduates across four partnership institutions (three with sufficient subgroup sizes for institutional comparison). The survey instrument captured adoption readiness, perceived AI-enabled learning enhancement, expected changes to the lecturer role (multi-select), perceived social enhancement and social reduction mechanisms, and perceived support needs; it also asked an open-ended question, collecting 454 usable comments. We report descriptive statistics, χ² tests, Spearman correlations, and exploratory content analysis results. Students expected lecturers to shift from content delivery to facilitation: 52.7% anticipated that chatbots would handle routine questions, enabling more discussion and practical activities, and 49.7% expected greater emphasis on guiding deep thinking and problem solving. Perceived social impacts were strongly ambivalent: 92.2% endorsed at least one social enhancement and at least one social reduction mechanism, and enhancement and reduction indices were positively associated (ρ = 0.547, p < 0.001), a pattern that remained stable under alternative scoring and response-style trimming (ρ range = 0.526–0.590). Importantly, higher social ambivalence was linked to stronger expectations of lecturer governance and orchestration, including the curation of chatbot resources (42.5% vs. 9.7% in high vs. low ambivalence; χ²(1) = 44.12, p < 0.001) and accuracy checking (27.6% vs. 13.4%; χ²(1) = 8.82, p = 0.003). We therefore propose ambivalence literacy as a conceptual framework for responsible AI integration: a teachable capability to recognise and navigate simultaneous social benefits and risks of AI use, and to translate that recognition into concrete expectations for lecturer governance, orchestration, and facilitative teaching design in AI-integrated transnational STEM programmes. Full article

Propitiating, or “adopting” child spirits is a traditional practice in Thailand that briefly joined a transnational trend in the mid 2010s of adopting dolls that had the look and feel of the realistic reborn dolls that were trendy in the United States in the 1990s. These “angel dolls,” or luk thep, are a recent innovation in the diverse practices of propitiating child spirits that highlight the intimate, familial, and affective dimensions of these spiritual practices. In recent decades new iterations of child spirit propitiation have emerged focusing on intimacy with the spirit, and the shifting aesthetics of the material form away from human remains or abstractions, to increasingly life-like or appealingly child-like material forms, and the increasing interest in mass-produced commodity forms of child spirits. A new-animist analytic identifies within these practices forms of personhood that are inter-dependent and relational. Full article

This study investigates the family language policies (FLPs) of two North Indian Muslim families residing in Saudi Arabia, focusing on how they navigate multilingualism to balance cultural heritage, religious practices, and sociolinguistic adaptation. Using Spolsky’s FLP framework and a qualitative case study approach, the research examines the dynamic roles of Urdu, Arabic, and English in these households. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with mothers and children to explore language ideologies, practices, and management strategies. The findings reveal that Urdu serves as a cornerstone of cultural identity, while Arabic is pivotal for religious education and social integration. English plays a supplementary role as a tool for academic and professional aspirations. Despite shared goals, the families adopt distinct approaches: one emphasizes heritage preservation and liturgical Arabic, while the other integrates Arabic more comprehensively alongside Urdu. These insights contribute to FLP scholarship by highlighting the intersection of language, faith, and identity in transnational families in non-western context, offering practical implications for educators and policymakers working with multilingual communities. Full article

Language and discourse are central forces shaping representations of self and family creation in adoption narratives. Informed by theorizations of agency, as well as language and legitimacy, two transnational adopted persons engage in a collaborative autoethnography through electronically exchanged letters about the authors’ experiences as international and interracial Korean-American adopted persons. The resulting analysis uncovered how language and identity can intersect in adoption narratives, complicating adopted persons’ stories and their telling of them. The authors also explored the agentive potential of mushfake as hybrid and emerging discourse/Discourse. In narrating their experiences, the authors illuminated how adopted persons and other members of marginalized groups can exercise their agentive authority to take up and demand recognition of self-proclaimed identities which are situated in spaces of in-betweenness and becoming. Full article

This article examines how K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025) portrays women’s agency and sorority while curating Korean cultural specificity within the context of global streaming. Adopting a Gender Media Studies approach, the study conducts a scene-indexed close reading of nine key sequences, applying a coding scheme (co-presence, agency, solidarity, body framing, choreography–camera, colour) and a cultural-codes matrix that classifies elements as retained, hybridised, or globalised. Findings show a consistent pattern: when two or more women protagonists appear together, agency and sorority co-occur; this is visible in the narrative arcs and through full-body staging, ensemble composition, and a persistent we/together rhetoric. Korean local specificity is divided by purpose: English-led song hooks extend transnational reach; retained social anchors (space, ritual, foodways, and folklore) preserve locality; and hybridised cues (stylised folklore; idol/traditional blends) manage cultural density without erasure. Authorship and industry context align with this encoding, combining a women centred creative core and Korean cast with on-screen emphasis on women’s friendship, repair, and shared agency. Two tensions remain: traditional attire in spectacle numbers, and the narrow body diversity in the idol-slim body ideal, inviting comparative and interpretative scrutiny. Overall, the case demonstrates how an animated musical can emphasise women’s empowerment and cultural specificity without reducing either to mere marketing tools. Full article

This study explores how sustainable culinary tourism fosters rural diversification and resilience in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). Despite increasing recognition of gastronomy as a driver of sustainable tourism, comparative analyses across macro-regional contexts remain limited. The paper addresses this gap through a qualitative comparative analysis of twelve thematic culinary trails involving seventy-three small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) developed under the INTERREG Baltic Sea Region Programme’s BASCIL project. Drawing on documentary analysis, stakeholder consultations, and thematic coding, the research identifies six interconnected pathways: agritourism and farm-based experiences, rural gastronomic branding, culinary festivals, digitalization, sustainability and circular economy practices, and European Union (EU) policy support. Results reveal that culinary tourism strengthens local economies, reinforces cultural identity, and promotes transnational cooperation, while challenges persist in professionalization, digital adoption, and infrastructure. The study underscores the enabling role of EU frameworks in scaling innovation and embedding gastronomy within rural development strategies. It concludes that culinary tourism operates as a strategic lever for sustainable rural transformation, integrating economic, social, and environmental dimensions, and calls for further longitudinal research on its long-term socio-economic and policy impacts in the BSR and beyond. Full article

The transnationalism phenomenon is at the forefront of today’s globalized world. This ethnographic self-reconstruction recounts a personal story as a transnational. I reflect on my engagement in continuous transnational migration practices, and on how these have and continue to mediate my identity [re]construction and my development of conocimiento. These insights help not only contribute to the under-explored body of literature that has adopted a comparative stance in looking at transnationalism and education on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border, but also seek to promote conversation around the behaviors and cognitive benefits of those who engage in such ongoing migration practices and are immersed in educational settings. Full article

In critical adoption scholarship, significant attention has been devoted to the searching and returning transnational adoptee, while those who opt not to search altogether remain largely overlooked. This article addresses this gap by examining the experiences of transnational adoptees who, despite being raised in the 1990s and 2000s amid increasing openness about origins and adoption, choose not to search. Drawing on two anthropological studies with Bolivian adoptees in Belgium and Nepali adoptees in Spain, the article explores how agency and choice are shaped in relation to the decision not to search. It further examines how socio-political, cultural, and historical legacies—such as the enduring secrecy surrounding adoption and the privileging of closed familial models—have shaped adoptees’ convictions toward their origins, including the decision not to search. Foregrounding the perspectives of non-searching adoptees reveals that their position is not merely oppositional to that of the searching adoptee but rather emerges from the very same structural conditions within the adoption system—namely, a system built on silence, erasure, and restrictive notions of belonging. Full article

Grounded in frameworks of decoloniality and transnationalism, this study examines how organizational behaviors in education—particularly in teacher preparation—can shift to more inclusively serve transnational youth, challenging Eurocentric, nation-bound assumptions about pedagogy, belonging, and professional development. The present study aims to understand Mexican-origin returnees and transnational migrants who came back to Mexico to pursue English teacher preparation degrees in Guanajuato and Hidalgo after spending significant periods of time on either side of the Mexico-U.S. border. Our study aimed to recognize and describe the experiences that shaped their English teaching practices and professional commitments to teaching English as a foreign language. Using narrative inquiry within a longitudinal qualitative study of 28 Mexican-origin pre-service English teachers, our research was guided by frameworks of decoloniality and transnationalism. Our findings reveal that for participants, U.S.-based teaching approaches were recalled most often as the best compared to Mexican ones. Participants also reflected on how their experiences of learning and adapting to a new culture contributed to their professional identity and how their ability to adapt constituted a form of international-mindedness. We argue that through the comparison and adoption of multiple decolonial practices, teacher preparation programs can produce culturally responsive pedagogies that cross borders. By illustrating how teacher preparation programs can cultivate culturally responsive pedagogies that transcend national boundaries, the study highlights the potential of decolonial and transnational perspectives to transform organizational behavior at multiple levels of educational practice and policy. Full article

During the COVID-19 pandemic, migrant workers in Singapore endured one of the longest and most stringent periods of confinement globally. Segregationist policies were intensified as the state imposed strict disciplinary regimes over workers’ mobility and everyday lives, framed as public health interventions but functioning also as labor discipline and social control. This study asks: how did migrant workers experience, narrate, and endure life under such conditions of confinement? Drawing on sixteen in-depth interviews with South Asian male construction workers, conducted in dormitories and makeshift worksites, we adopt a grounded theory approach to elicit contextually grounded accounts of life under lockdown. The analysis highlights three interrelated themes: emotional regulation, migrant masculinity and the gendered politics of endurance, and digital connectivity as an affective infrastructure. These practices enabled workers to carve out agentic spaces within structures designed to render them passive. Our findings reveal that even amid fear, surveillance, overcrowding, and economic precarity, workers combined stoicism, transnational kinship ties, religious routines, and solidarity to sustain resilience. While initially guided by Foucauldian notions of surveillance and biopower, the study advances a counter-Foucauldian insight: that institutional control is never total, and migrant narratives of resilience offer nuanced understandings of agency under constrain. Full article

Organic foods, functioning as credence goods in sustainable consumption, compel consumers to rely on extrinsic cues for quality evaluation. To address this challenge, this study employs a qualitative, phenomenological approach, conducting ten in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Romanian organic food consumers. The resulting data were systematically analyzed through thematic analysis to uncover decision-making patterns. The findings reveal a sequential hierarchy in which credible transnational certification (the EU organic logo) serves as a non-negotiable gatekeeper of trust, followed by country of origin—particularly local—which functions as an emotional and heuristic differentiator signaling authenticity and freshness, while price acts as a pragmatic arbiter, mediating trade-offs between ideal preferences and budget constraints. Based on these findings, this study proposes the Trust–Emotion–Pragmatism model as a nuanced framework for understanding organic food choice, suggesting that local producers can enhance competitiveness by first establishing trust through certification, then leveraging the emotional appeal of local origin, and finally adopting effective pricing strategies. Full article