Reparations for colonialism and colonial-era atrocities have moved from an unrealized demand of citizens, politicians, and thinkers in the Global South to a project with some results in the real world. Key markers include the return of numerous art objects from museums in the Global North to their countries of origin;1 the release of the Caribbean Community and Common Market’s (CARICOM) proposal for reparations;2 and Namibia’s agreement with Germany on compensation for the German genocide against the Herero people in 1904–083—along with the resultant controversy. These developments follow earlier claims for reparations directed to—and their eventual acceptance by—the governments of Canada and New Zealand, domestic courts in the Netherlands and the UK, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.4 At the same time, it remains the case that reparations for colonialism are overall few and far between.

Mental health or psychological forensic assessments are a growing practice in immigration adjudication, but the practice is not well understood. Several studies have measured the impact of medical or mental health forensic reports in immigration adjudication; yet none have documented when mental health forensic reports are sought or how they are conducted in practice. This article undertakes an interdisciplinary empirical documentation of the practice of forensic mental health assessments in immigration adjudication. A core focus of our survey was documenting the role of mental health forensic immigration assessments in substantiating migrants’ trauma and bolstering credibility. Our preliminary findings identify ways to improve the practice of mental health assessments within the immigration context toward practices that are more consistent with the science of trauma and memory.

In many developing countries, law students face challenges in accessing authoritative legal resources, including statutes, case law, and journal articles, due to the high costs of subscription-based databases such as LexisNexis, HeinOnline, and Westlaw. In Nigeria, additional subscription online resources are available, including LawPavilion, Legalpedia, and Compulaw. These platforms are all rich in content and currency; however, they are often unaffordable for both law students and law libraries. To overcome these challenges, there are many initiatives and movements administered by government institutions, universities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that provide access to both primary and secondary sources of law. Included in the latter group are the Legal Information Institutes (LIIs), Google Scholar, the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), and Justia. This paper examines the role of free legal databases as an alternative for law students and how these freely accessible platforms can support the access gaps that subscription-based legal research tools have often created. The study is conceptual in nature, with reliance on existing literature and analysis of freely available legal information resources to support legal education.

The dividing line between work and non-work structures all contemporary European societies. Decisions on what work is done, by whom, at what price, and under which conditions, shape individual lives and underpin economic, political and social institutions through the production of wealth and inequality. If the dualism of work and non-work invests activities and interaction with meaning and value, producing cultural and social status along the way, it is historically highly contingent. Neither ‘work’ nor ‘non-work’ means the same thing across time and space. Yet, while dialectically dependent on one another, non-work has received far less attention by contemporary historians, who have by and large followed a pattern of identifying work with labour, whether in capitalist or socialist configurations. In contrast, the present forum suggests an integrative perspective in which both the practices and habits of not-working while at work and forms of wageless life beyond unemployment figure prominently.

We identify strong cross-border property rights as a driver for the globalization of innovation. Using 67 million patents from over 100 patent offices, we construct novel measures of the three stages of innovation diffusion: adoption, sourcing, and collaboration. Exploiting staggered bilateral investment treaties (BITs) as shocks to cross-border property rights, we show that signatory countries increase technology adoption and sourcing from each other; they also increase R&D collaborations. The results are particularly strong for countries with weak domestic institutions and technologies with high imitation risks. Increases in R&D-related foreign investments explain most of the results.

Despite significant efforts to assess conservation status, many endemic plants in Brazil remain largely unstudied, including Stachytarpheta, a genus of Verbenaceae with 90 species in the country, of which 82 are endemic. Working with the Brazilian National Center for Plant Conservation, we evaluated all endemic Stachytarpheta for the IUCN Red List. We concluded that 57% of endemic species are threatened (Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable), 6% are Near Threatened, 22% are Least Concern and 10% are Data Deficient. Threatened species are found exclusively in the Cerrado, Caatinga and Atlantic Forest biomes, where they face threats from livestock farming and ranching, agroindustry, mining and an increased frequency and intensity of wildfires. These species predominantly grow in campos rupestres and savannahs, especially in the Espinhaço Range in Bahia and Minas Gerais states and Chapada dos Veadeiros in Goiás state. At least 68% of the threatened species have one record within a protected area. We highlight the importance of Chapada Diamantina in Bahia and the Diamantina Plateau in Minas Gerais within the Espinhaço Range for the conservation of threatened and unprotected species. This study underscores the important role of taxonomists in the assessment of threatened species, emphasizes the need for further field surveys to gather key information about Data Deficient species and highlights the restricted distribution of several Stachytarpheta species in Brazil.

Flows of particles through bottlenecks are ubiquitous in nature and industry, involving both dry granular materials and suspensions. However, difficulties in precisely controlling particle properties in conventional set-ups hinder the full understanding of these flows in confined geometries. Here, we present a microfluidic model set-up to investigate the flow of dense suspensions in a two-dimensional hopper channel. Particles with controlled properties such as shape and deformability are in situ fabricated with a photolithographic projection method and compacted at the channel constriction using a Quake valve. The set-up is characterised by examining the flow of a dense suspension of hard, monodisperse disks through constrictions of varying widths. We demonstrate that the microfluidic hopper discharges particles at a constant rate under both imposed pressure and flow rate. The discharge of particles under imposed flow rate follows a Beverloo-like scaling, while it varies nonlinearly with particle size under imposed pressure. Additionally, we show that the statistics of clog formation in our microfluidic hopper follow the same stochastic laws as reported in other systems. Finally, we show how the versatility of our microfluidic model system can be used to investigate the outflow and clogging of suspensions of more complex particles.

The relationship between international law on reparations and jus cogens is an uneasy one. The law on reparations is a settled part of classical international law, with roots so deep that its place in international law is taken for granted.1 The oft-quoted dictum in the 1928 Chorzów Factory case which sets out the requirement for reparation to “as far as possible, wipe out all the consequences of [an] illegal act and re-establish the situation” which would have existed but for the unlawful act was said, at the time, to be based on “international practice and … decisions of arbitral tribunals.”2 The same is not true of jus cogens, a relatively new entrant to the mainstream of international law, whose pedigree in the system is less assured, and whose application, as opposed to mere references, by international courts is almost non-existent.3 Yet, at the same time, at the heart of both reparations and jus cogens, is the notion of justice. The idea of undoing the effects of a wrongful act is intrinsically about (re)balancing the scales, while the notion of jus cogens seeks to infuse the system of international law with community values and a spirit of justice.

Over the past five years, China–Africa engagements have undergone significant changes, mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Padraig Carmody (2021) describes the pandemic’s effect on China’s global engagements as a critical juncture. This is because due to its extended lockdown, China prioritized domestic consumption and sustainability of its economy, buffering it from external pressures. This led to China restructuring its position in the global supply chains, exposing Africa’s dependency on China and other external powers for both financing and manufactured goods. With most African countries’ economies dependent on exports of primary commodities, these shifts in the global supply chain and reorientation of the Chinese economy led to financial depression in Africa, leaving countries unable to finance critical development projects and service their foreign debts.

This article revisits Bertolt Brecht’s interpretation of Mei Lanfang, whose Moscow performance reportedly sparked Brecht’s idea of the V-effect. By placing both figures within the early twentieth-century media landscape, characterized by a fascination with attractions, this exploration delves into the transmedial and transcultural currents that sculpted Brecht’s misunderstanding that Mei appeared surprising to the audience. Framed by his exposure to early, particularly silent, cinema, Brecht views Mei’s performance through a cinematic lens, further amplified by Mei’s emphasis on exhibitionist visuality and traditional Chinese theatre’s inherent attraction-based tendencies. Brecht, moreover, overlooked the historical and practical aspects of Mei’s artistry, which sought to enchant rather than shock the audience. This article endeavours, through its transmedia exploration, to cast new illuminations on the myriad pathways of interpreting global theatrical dialogues.