This chapter establishes the foundation for the book by challenging the traditional view of dyslexia as merely a reading disorder in childhood. It frames dyslexia as a persistent neurodevelopmental syndrome that affects working memory. Drawing on scientific evidence and decades of diagnostic experience, the authors argue for a shift from superficial behavioural definitions to a deeper understanding of dyslexia’s neurological basis. They critique circular definitions focused solely on reading difficulties and emphasise the importance of distinguishing between skills (learned behaviours) and abilities (underlying cognitive capacities). The chapter also critiques pseudoscience and postmodern trends that prioritise anecdotal or ’lived’ experiences over falsifiable, empirical research. It calls for better integration of findings across disciplines to improve support and interventions across the lifespan. By placing dyslexia within a broader cognitive and developmental framework, the authors aim to clarify its impact on life beyond education and propose working-memory inefficiency as a core deficit that explains both academic and functional challenges.

This chapter examines the various definitions and models used to conceptualise and diagnose dyslexia. The authors critique traditional approaches such as the discrepancy model and response to intervention (RTI), arguing that these methods are inadequate – particularly for adolescents and adults. Instead, they advocate for the profile of strengths and weaknesses (PSW) model, which accounts for underlying cognitive inefficiencies, such as working-memory deficits, to explain functional impairments in skills such as reading and writing. The chapter also explores the biological and neurological foundations of dyslexia, including genetic influences and structural brain differences, and challenges simplistic or euphemistic views such as ’neurodiversity’ that may obscure understanding. Emphasising a scientific, empirical lens, the authors reject models based purely on social narratives or lived experiences, advocating instead for the biopsychosocial model that integrates biological, psychological, and environmental factors. Dyslexia is positioned not merely as a reading issue but as a complex cognitive disorder with broad implications across the lifespan. The chapter closes by asserting the need for clear, evidence-based conceptual models to foster self-understanding, improve assessment, and guide effective intervention.

This chapter focuses on rapid automatic naming (RAN) as a key cognitive process involved in reading and a frequent area of weakness in individuals with dyslexia. RAN tasks require individuals to quickly name a series of familiar items (e.g. colours, numbers, letters, objects), engaging multiple cognitive systems including visual recognition, phonological retrieval, and processing speed. The authors explain that slow naming speed is not just a surface-level problem but reflects deeper inefficiencies in how the brain accesses and retrieves stored verbal information. Deficits in RAN are shown to correlate strongly with reading fluency and word retrieval challenges. The chapter discusses how RAN measures, particularly when used alongside phonological-processing assessments, can improve the accuracy of dyslexia diagnoses – supporting the ’double-deficit hypothesis’ that suggests that both phonological and naming-speed deficits can contribute to reading impairment. Unlike phonological awareness, RAN is less amenable to direct intervention but remains diagnostically valuable. The authors argue for its inclusion in comprehensive assessments and emphasise its role in revealing broader processing inefficiencies that extend beyond reading. Overall, RAN is presented as a sensitive cognitive marker of dyslexia that contributes meaningfully to understanding variability in reading development and fluency.

This chapter focuses on the role that constitutions play in national identity, particularly in states that are recently independent and constrained by a colonial legacy. It uses Fiji as a case study, exploring how British colonialism influenced conceptions of Fijian national identity in the constitutional texts of 1970, 1990 and 1997. The chapter explores the indigenous ethno-nationalist ideals that underpinned these constitutions, which led to the privileging of indigenous Fijian identity within the wider national identity. However, in 2013, Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama introduced a new constitution which shifted away from previous ethno-nationalist underpinnings towards a more inclusive national identity through the promotion of a civic nationalist agenda. In doing so, Bainimarama’s goal of reducing ethnic conflict has seen a constitutional re-imagining of Fijian identity, which includes the introduction of new national symbols, and a new electoral system, alongside equal citizenry clauses within the Constitution. This study offers a unique insight into power and identity within post-colonial island states.

Since the late 1990s, Dalit (‘Untouchable’) activists have sought to respond to and contest caste-based discrimination by significantly expanding the scope of Dalit sameness. The idea of a shared, expansive Dalit identity beyond local or national contexts has allowed both for a global layer of activism to develop and for formerly disparate groups or communities to affiliate themselves with the cause against casteist perceptions of pollution, hierarchy and status. Consequently, Dalit identity to some—especially Indian activists long committed to its realisation and relevance—turns into an increasingly ambiguous and evasive subject position, while others relate to it is a novel, enabling nodal point for communal belonging and for contesting entrenched forms of marginalisation. In sum, these developments, nonetheless, equal acts of opposition and resistance. Drawing on interviews with Dalit activists in India, Nepal and the UK, the chapter explores how the above reformulation of Dalit sameness, on the one hand, affects the possibility to speak of a singular envisioning of transcending casteism and, on the other, destabilises established certainties regarding what pollution and purity signify.

Millions of people across Turkey protested police violence, state totalitarianism, urban gentrification, and a host of other concerns during the Gezi Park protests in late May 2013. The protests merged with Gay Pride Istanbul and fundamentally changed queer and trans peoples’ relationships with the Turkish public. This chapter establishes “the queer common” as the sexualized lines of flight which destabilise the normal ways queers are governed – a concept for understanding queer resistance against the state. The chapter argues that the state and other institutions manipulate the public to assert one acceptable model of heteronormative belonging. This assemblage (which brings together the police, the family, Sunni Islam, media and other institutions) naturalises Turkish citizenship. The chapter draws on interviews with queer activists to explore queer resistance at Gezi, challenges to ‘normalised’ Turkish identity, and the renegotiation of the state’s production of violence against queer and trans people.

In Italy, Romani peoples have been subjected to social exclusion and marginalisation for centuries. Policy responses have been based on meeting the needs of a ‘nomadic’ population. Over the years, permanent ghettos evolved, characterised by institutional abandonment, neglect and extreme decay. This chapter will pay attention to the realities of these establishments from the perspective of the Romanies. It will examine how Romani ‘camp-dwellers’ managed to exercise what remained to them of their free agency. In this context, the camp is not just an exogenous institutional means of control and segregation but also an endogenous tool of ‘resistance’ to government exclusionary efforts. This study argues that the camp should also be seen as the outcome of an explicit strategy. This was prompted partly by the ‘camps policy’ and the tendency to categorise all Romani peoples as ‘nomads’. But it was also produced by the Romanies themselves who have internalised the external logic and used it as a way of defending their status quo. While perceiving mainstream society as a threatening environment, the ‘camp’ became a powerful weapon to protect the in-group (us) against the out-group (them) heightening what I call ‘collective identity-closure’.

This chapter provides a new account of identity and practices of agents in the context of post-conflict peacebuilding. It investigates how place, habitus, and fields of interaction alongside the performative roles shape the identity of agents and their socialization in practice. To explore the relation between the agents’ presence and their impact on peacebuilding, this paper bypasses the exclusionary dichotomies between local/international and liberal/indigenous agents, and develops a typology of six types of agents horizontally arranged around their insideness and outsideness towards a particular conflict-affected place. Using human geography and critical hermeneutics, this paper categorises ‘agents of peace’ in six different types: existential insiders, subjective insiders, empathetic insiders, behavioural insiders, objective outsiders, and existential outsiders. The core argument of this article is that the differentiation of agents around the geographical and performance towards a particular place facilitates the exploration of pluralist forms of agency and a more nuanced understanding of dynamics in post-conflict societies. An expanded and plural view of agents captures better the fields of interaction and hybridization, agential knowledge and narratives, modes of governance, and various everyday practices that enable or inhibit sustainable peace.