Efforts to include animal perspectives in decision-making are gaining attention, yet how to meaningfully represent these perspectives remains underexplored. This study investigated how university students engaged in taking the perspective of dairy cows and calves when introduced to the practice of cow-calf separation — either through a verbal description or a visually immersive video capturing the animals’ point of view. Focus groups were conducted to examine the range and depth of participants’ responses, and transcripts were thematically analysed. Results revealed that participants across both treatments acknowledged the animals’ experiences, particularly the emotional significance of the maternal bond. However, those exposed to the video condition engaged in more emotionally detailed and complex discussions, often referencing specific animal behaviours and vocalisations. The video appeared to enhance perspective-taking by increasing contextual richness, encouraging participants to interpret the animals’ experiences more vividly. While many participants expressed empathy or sympathy, others reported distress or hesitancy, citing challenges, such as anthropomorphism or uncertainty about accurately accessing animal perspectives. These findings underscore the potential for visual interventions to deepen understanding of non-human perspectives, while also highlighting psychological and cultural barriers to animal-inclusive decision-making. Our results suggest that perspective-taking can be a valuable tool in promoting ethical engagement with animal welfare. However, further research is needed to explore how such engagement influences actual decision-making, and how to balance emotional connection with critical reflection.

This article contributes to the understanding of the racial politics underpinning nation branding through a two-step mixed-method analysis of the Image Bank of Sweden, an online promotional material provided through the branding platform Sharing Sweden. First, an exploratory quantitative analysis reveals a paradox: while White individuals overwhelmingly dominate the images of Sweden, Black and Asian individuals appear at rates disproportionate to their actual demographic presence – particularly in contexts related to education and student life. Second, a multi-modal discourse analysis of images and texts shows how the representations of higher education and student life mobilize racialized bodies to project an image of Sweden as diverse, modern, and globally competitive. At the same time, White students’ portrayal is accompanied by messages of Swedish traditions, reinforcing existing views of Sweden as a White nation. Ultimately, we argue that such portrayals reproduce the logics of tokenistic multiculturalism and commodification of racial difference and whiteness within the aesthetic economy of nation branding.

The standard Bayesian solution to the paradox of the ravens maintains that the degree of confirmation provided by seeing a non-black non-raven is positive but negligible compared to that provided by seeing a black raven. I show that, unless we impose severe and unmotivated restrictions on the subject’s priors, this has the consequence that the cumulative confirmation provided by all the non-black non-ravens the subject expects to see is non-negligible compared to the cumulative confirmation provided by all the black ravens the subject expects to see. If this is so, however, then the paradox retains its full force.

This paper examines central themes in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time from the perspective of María Lugones’s account of world-traveling. By thus reading Heidegger through Lugones rather than vice versa—a methodology I call “centering the margins”—I challenge a tendency in comparative work to approach historically undervalued work through a more canonical voice. I argue that doing so has interpretive consequences that tend to be occluded on a standard comparative approach: (i) a critique of the indexed nature of Dasein and the broader Eurocentrism of Heidegger’s project; (ii) a more nuanced account of the methodological value of lived experience; and (iii) a problematization of the early Heidegger’s recapitulation to a unified account of the self. Rather than ameliorate canonical philosophy by offering specifications to insufficiently differentiated philosophical accounts, turning to the margins on this methodology allows us to see where a canonical philosopher resorts to traditional motifs—the dangers of what Lugones calls “ossification in the homeplaces.” The epistemic advantages of marginalization notwithstanding, centering the margins is self-destructive in that the final aim is the dissolution of that dichotomy and the freeing up of new epistemological terrain.

Discussing recent literature on online financial practices, this article argues that ‘finance becoming tech’ assumes the form of particular financial situations in the everyday, to be understood in terms of Erving Goffman’s concept of interaction order. While the interactionist strand in the social study of finance foregrounds the role of techno-social situations in the constitution of finance, this article suggests applying Goffman’s notion of the ‘interaction order’ to that debate and demonstrates the latter’s capability to reconstruct the techno-social mechanisms through which finance emerges in the everyday. Unlike the notion of ‘situation’, that of ‘interaction order’ addresses the constitution of situational boundaries through interactional procedures as they refer only partially and selectively to circumstances of their social contexts. Against this background, online financial practices are analytically contoured as techno-social situations that enable the emergence of finance as a matter of the everyday. It is argued that the enabling condition for this commingling of everyday and financial processes is a specific delimitation of the digital-financial interaction order from parts of its political economic context – in particular, the uncertainty that structurally characterizes the financial economy.

During commercial harvesting (shooting) of kangaroos, pouch young of shot females must be euthanased to prevent suffering. The current euthanasia method, manually applied concussive (or blunt force) trauma to the head, can be effective but is not always applied consistently and is often perceived by observers to be inhumane. The captive-bolt device (CBD), which fires a steel bolt that either penetrates or impacts the skull, could provide a more suitable alternative. We reviewed a range of potentially suitable CBDs and assessed the effectiveness of four types on live animals. Effectiveness of CBDs was determined by assessing behaviour, electroencephalogram (EEG) and evaluating brain and skull trauma post mortem. Pouch young were also euthanased using manual blunt force trauma for comparison. Shooting with a penetrating CBD produced brain activity that was inconsistent with consciousness in 100% (n = 20) of animals. Behavioural indicators of consciousness and normal-like EEG were not detected after shooting with the CBD and damage to the brain was extensive. Seven out of 29 (24%) joeys shot with a non-penetrating CBD were either still breathing (n = 1) or recovered breathing (n = 6) after shooting. All seven animals had no or only mild damage to the medulla. We conclude that a cartridge-powered, penetrating CBD and manual blunt force trauma can both achieve immediate unconsciousness in pouch young, but a second step to exsanguinate the animal must still be performed. Penetrating CBDs are preferred to manual blunt force trauma since they are more repeatable, less reliant upon operator skill and confidence and more likely to reduce animal (and observer) distress.

This article revisits the development of the field of British queer history to argue that the division that began in the later 1970s—between works focused on the periods before and after the late nineteenth century—has obscured underlying methodological unities that developed within the scholarship since the 1990s. The failure to emphasize common cultural history methodologies that have been the hallmark of the best works analyzing same-sex desire and transing gender for the period from the late seventeenth century onward is due in part to the separating off of histories of same-sex desire between women from those studies focused on men. This article argues that a Foucauldian understanding of power, the liberal public sphere, and liberal political systems, all dating from the late seventeenth century, provide a unified context for the formulating and unraveling of a wide range of self-understandings in relation to gender and sexual desires. What explains the developments of the late nineteenth century stems from the first such self-understandings being formulated for the requirements of a rights-bearing subject within a liberal political system. This approach highlights the ethical component of public political identities, and the consequences of this for British queer history going forward.

Microaggressions have been a topic of significant debate in the psychological and social sciences. Despite an extensive body of empirical evidence, numerous misconceptions persist. This paper deconstructs common misconceptions surrounding microaggressions and addresses their origins, underlying biases, and empirical refutations. We explain the mechanisms that cause and maintain microaggressions through a CBT lens. We examine widely propagated misconceptions, including claims that microaggressions lack scientific validity, are too subjective to measure, and are not indicative of racism or other forms of prejudice. Drawing on the substantial literature base, including validated psychometric scales, experimental studies, and cross-cultural analyses, we demonstrate that microaggressions are not only real but also have significant psychological and social consequences. Empirical evidence links microaggressions to outcomes such as depression, anxiety, and lower self-esteem, reinforcing their relevance in clinical, educational, and workplace settings. CBT models provide a useful lens for understanding how individuals navigate the psychological complexities associated with microaggressive behaviours, helping explain why some people resist acknowledging microaggressions and their consequences. Lastly, we highlight the importance of education for reducing the prevalence of microaggressions and mitigating their harmful effects. Our goal is to provide clinicians with correct information so that they may skilfully and empathetically help clients experiencing microaggressions, and to no longer accept microaggressions as a harmless, misunderstood, or dismissed phenomenon. By debunking these misconceptions, this work contributes to a more scientifically grounded understanding of microaggressions, emphasizing the necessity of continued research and intervention efforts to address the impact of discrimination in society.

Key learning aims

1. (1) Build awareness around the various misconceptions associated with microaggressions.

2. (2) Knowledge of why these misconceptions exist, where they came from, and why they are important to consider and refute.

3. (3) Refuting misconceptions with scientific explanations and evidence.

4. (4) Understand how CBT clinicians can better prevent and respond to microaggressions.

Urban surfaces play a central role in mediating microclimatic conditions, influencing not only human thermal comfort but also the viability of urban biodiversity. This study explores porous, geometry-driven design strategies for urban surfaces and evaluates their thermal performance as a preliminary step toward future building envelope systems that accommodate more-than-human inhabitants. With the nest microclimate of cavity-nesting wild bees as the target condition, three experimental setups were conducted using 3D-printed (3DP) porous nesting aids fabricated via Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) from biobased polymers and compared to a conventional reed-based nesting aid. The samples were installed on a southeast-facing façade in Stuttgart, Germany, and internal nesting tube temperatures were monitored during August 2024. All 3DP samples maintained internal temperatures up to 1.6 K cooler on average than the conventional nesting aid and, critically, none exceeded the 40 °C threshold associated with high larval mortality. In contrast, the conventional nesting aid reached peak temperatures of 41.6 °C for over eight cumulative hours. While geometric and material variations produced only modest thermal differences among the 3DP configurations, the results demonstrate that porous geometries can reduce extreme heat exposure in sun-exposed urban contexts. These findings support further development of thermally responsive urban surface systems that integrate ecological performance criteria into building design.

Psychological research has long centered around questionnaire assessments, but now digital devices, especially smartphones, enable the collection of real-world behavioral data through mobile sensing. While this data collection method offers unique opportunities, it also introduces new methodological challenges, as mobile-sensing data are highly complex and high in dimensionality (i.e., timestamped events with millisecond resolution), requiring advanced preprocessing to derive psychologically meaningful variables. This article highlights these challenges by reviewing the current state of data preprocessing based on app usage logs from smartphones. Afterward, it presents three preprocessing cases that vary in complexity across the dimensions of data enrichment—which involves adding context to raw data by integrating information from external and internal sources (including ecological momentary assessments)—and data aggregation—which entails summarizing data in different ways, from basic descriptive statistics to sophisticated machine-learning models. For each case, potential pitfalls are identified, and extensions are discussed to refine our preprocessing pipelines and accommodate different data types and research questions. By outlining these preprocessing strategies, this manuscript demonstrates the rich potential of mobile-sensing data for extracting nuanced behavioral variables beyond simple person-level summaries and aims to inspire the development of more advanced research questions based on sensing data.

In the 1790s, hundreds of refugees arrived in Philadelphia from revolutionary Saint-Domingue. Though it is well known that the Alien Acts were promulgated at least in part in reaction to the large French presence on US soil and the threat of war with France, other barriers to entry and to remain on US soil are not often connected to the arrival and presence of French refugees. Using records of the Philadelphia courts, prison, and almshouse, this article situates the French refugee experience within the early United States’ broader kaleidoscope of restrictions on mobility, assistance, and rights to remain. For the French Black population, their race and class rendered them especially vulnerable to forms of mobility control focused on criminals and the mobile poor. Though the French were not ultimately deported for their political activities, a small number of French Black refugees convicted of theft were set on the move once again.