An examination of the history of menageries in Ireland from 1790 to 1840 offers insights into how people related to and understood the animal world through exhibitions of exotic creatures. Menageries, featuring diverse collections of wild animals displayed in cages, were part of the broader entertainment scene at fairs and large social events in the early nineteenth century. Journeying across Ireland and Britain in horse-drawn caravans, these exhibitions evolved from modest attractions to significant commercial enterprises by the mid nineteenth century. While British menageries of the period have received considerable scholarly attention, Irish menageries have been largely overlooked. This article seeks to address that gap by exploring how the Irish public encountered exotic and rare animals in menageries during this period. Newspapers, advertisements for travelling menageries and contemporary accounts reveal that menageries played a meaningful role in bringing the wonders of the animal kingdom to the Irish populace, offering a glimpse into the exotic and the unknown.

Zimbabwe’s colonial and postcolonial governance systems provided generous space for the participation of individuals and private organizations in the management of the environment. In 1959, W. Rudyerd Boulton, a museum ornithologist from America established the Atlantica Foundation near Harare (then called Salisbury) later known as the Boulton Atlantica Foundation (BAF). The Foundation received its funding mostly from the USA (with CIA links) and became one of the earliest successful private institutions and ‘ecological research stations’ in the country and the region. This article uses the Boulton Atlantica Foundation as an entry point to address the documentation of small creatures such as birds and butterflies and the ultimate creation of historic collections or private archives. The Boulton Atlantica Foundation provides a template for understanding the complex nature of the creation and care of archival collections as well as the politics of their administration. It puts forward the argument that all archives are extensions of power and authority and that archives are not mere sources of information but active agents of global power systems. Environmental projects have remained outstandingly subtle platforms for the display of global powers. The article also seeks to put at the core of its analysis the human character and interests of founding persons as critical to collection development, care and eventualities; it aims to provide more insights into the uses or abuses of all archives and to show how postmodern analysis might unravel new insights into colonial collections.

The study of Byzantine sculpture in Greece made significant progress during the first quarter of the twenty-first century. The beginning of this period was marked by the first international conference on this subject, held in Athens in 2000, as well as by several monographs published by Greek scholars, which sparked renewed interest in the field. Greece is quite rich in sculptural material, much of which is still waiting to be studied and published.

This renewed research interest is mainly expressed in a series of publications of new material. Monographs, doctoral dissertations, and articles by Greek and foreign scholars have provided a large amount of new data covering various chronological periods and geographical areas of the country. The general trend in this activity is to offer well-documented groups and catalogues of sculptures, while there are fewer integrative works. What is missing from this production is interdisciplinary approaches and, in particular, laboratory analysis of the origin of marble and other stones used in sculpture.

Meanwhile, during the last quarter of the century, the Greek Ministry of Culture changed its attitude towards Byzantine sculpture. Two new museum collections dedicated to this art were inaugurated in Arta and Chalkida, while many works of sculpture were incorporated into new thematic Byzantine museums and archaeological museums throughout the country. In line with this policy, Byzantine sculptures are no longer neglected and overlooked in the gardens and storerooms of museums and archaeological sites, but play an important role in the narrative of permanent exhibitions.

Future challenges include documenting the hundreds of spolia scattered throughout the country, further studying unpublished material, interdisciplinary approaches, and further measures to protect sculptures that are still exposed outdoors and suffer from erosion and other dangers.

Madonna’s 2012 Super Bowl medley heralded viewers with the reworked opening to her 1990 hit “Vogue.” These bars accompanied a visual spectacle featuring Madonna dressed as Cleopatra, channeled through Elizabeth Taylor. Within a minute, four parallel nostalgic narratives unfolded: audiences were reminded of a mythologized temptress/Egyptian pharaoh, a recently deceased Hollywood screen siren, a superstar’s tabloid-topping thirty-year career, and (thanks to the score and choreography) the underground Harlem ball culture that inspired the song. Mapping these figures simultaneously onto herself, Madonna embodied what Svetlana Boym (2001) termed “reflective nostalgia,” conveying a desire to “obliterate history and return to private or collective mythology, to revisit time like space, refusing to surrender the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition.” As the song reaches its 35th anniversary, this article historicizes and analyzes Madonna’s many “Vogue” performances to reveal how she has used it as a site for nostalgic play to create her own enduring legacy.

This article combines Boym’s theories with Michael Dwyer’s ideas about “star legacies” as “critical affective responses” (2015) to argue that Madonna’s reimaging of “Vogue” throughout her career enacts what I call “nostalgic legacy building.” I examine the “timeless” narratives she has created to seal her iconicity by analyzing her various reworkings of the seemingly inert track alongside her embodiment of subversive historical figures. This research contributes to conversations about nostalgia’s roles in popular music performance, showing how artists can “revisit” musical texts to summon the past in performances aided by present trends and technologies to seal their infinite futures.

Intramural adult human remains, whether articulated or disarticulated, from Roman towns in Britain are uncommon. There is evidence for some remains to have been deliberately curated and/or treated post mortem in a particular way before final deposition. This paper focuses on the disarticulated human remains from late Iron Age and Roman Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum), noting the parts of the skeleton represented, their contexts, and whether there is evidence for curation or treatment post mortem. Twenty-one examples have been radiocarbon dated, enabling an assessment of changes in spatial patterning over time. An early and a late cluster are identified. The results from Silchester follow a review of comparable evidence from the major towns of Roman Britain. This reveals a broad similarity in patterning between Silchester and the Romano-British countryside. There are several urban parallels for Silchester’s late cluster, but only London for the early grouping.

In the recent history of private law theory, the task of restoring interpersonal justice to a position of chief importance has been undertaken by those who draw from the wellsprings of Kantian philosophy. But in defining the domain of interpersonal justice, Kantians have also narrowly confined it. In this article I offer a post-Kantian approach, taking reference from a method well established in political and moral philosophy, but yet to make a comprehensive impact on private law: contractualism. Contractualism anchors what we owe each other in the notion of interpersonal justification, offering a fresh understanding of persons, nexuses and relational reasoning. I show how this approach tackles key questions in private law – its institutions of empowerment, primary entitlements, remedial norms and practices, and the division of labour between public and private spheres – in a manner preferable to Kantian theory.

The aim of this review is to quantify the strength of evidence for the efficacy of exogenous enzymes (EE) in dairy calf rearing, by systematically identifying, consolidating and discussing existing research on the subject. This review identified 17 articles that measured the effect of EE alone or in combination with another treatment on indicator variables for calf performance, behaviour, health or environmental output; 15 studies realised a positive effect of enzyme supplementation on at least one variable, and one study realised a negative effect of treatment on body parameters. Inconsistent results were noted for effects of EE on growth and feed efficiency. Studies that combined EE with another treatment, did not tend to find performance improvements compared to stand-alone treatments. However, several studies were underpowered which could have limited their ability to detect effects on primary response variables. All papers that measured digestibility found an increase in fibre digestibility from enzyme treatment; however, this did not always result in improved feed efficiency or growth. Reductions in non-nutritive oral behaviour, increased resting time and rumination, were observed in studies measuring calf behaviour, as were enhanced rumen development and reduced cost of calf rearing; suggesting that EE could enhance calf health and welfare, whilst having additional advantages for rearing economics. Future research into the efficacy of EE in dairy calves is worth pursuing. However, a targeted and evidence-based approach to experimental design is required, with due consideration given to enzyme actions and interactions, as well as robust power analysis for sample size.

Between 2023 and 2024, the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project, in collaboration with the Libyan Department of Antiquities (DoA), organised and conducted a series of training workshops and fieldwork campaigns in Libya, funded by the British Council’s Cultural Protection Fund (CPF). The workshops provided training to over 20 members of the DoA in a newly-developed Machine Learning Automated Change Detection (MLACD) tool. This remote sensing method was developed by the Leicester EAMENA team to detect landscape change and aid heritage monitoring efforts. The MLACD method was applied to four case studies in Libya: Lefakat (Cyrenaica), Bani Walid (Tripolitania), the region south of Derna (Cyrenaica) and Jarma (Fazzan). Each of these case studies was followed by a survey campaign by Libyan archaeologists to validate the results of the method, survey the archaeological sites identified, record their condition and assess the disturbances and threats affecting them. This article will provide an overview of the aims and successful outcomes of the EAMENA-CPF training programme, as well as an introduction to the MLACD method and its application to Libyan heritage, providing background and context for the individual case studies, which will be published more fully in separate articles.

The lichen genus Lecanora is one of the largest genera of lichenized fungi. The core part of the genus is the L. subfusca group and within this group, Lecanora hybocarpa (Tuck.) Brodo, initially described from North America and thought to be endemic, has been reported from several European countries. However, the identity of these European specimens has been increasingly questioned. This study aimed to clarify the relationship between North American L. hybocarpa and European collections, including the morphologically similar L. sinuosa Herk & Aptroot. We performed morphological, chemical (TLC) and molecular analyses (nrITS and mtSSU) on a broad collection of specimens from Europe, Macaronesia and North America. Our phylogenetic analyses revealed that true L. hybocarpa has not yet been confirmed in Europe. Instead, several genetically distinct European taxa share the L. hybocarpa morphotype. Our findings resulted in the description of three new species: Lecanora cryptosinuosa (differing only genetically from L. sinuosa), L. macaronesica (characterized by quite large apothecia with constricted bases and a finely crenulate margin, and the presence of gangaleoidin) and L. subsinuosa (difficult to separate from L. sinuosa, but may sometimes be recognized by darker apothecial discs with inconsistent pigmentation, the occasional presence of a tiny pruina on young discs, and the usually thicker apothecial margin, dentate in the inner edge). Furthermore, we report L. pseudargentata as a new species for Europe. Due to the high morphological variability and cryptic speciation within this group, reliable identification often requires DNA analysis. Therefore, we propose using the name Lecanora hybocarpa agg. for all species sharing this particular morphotype. A key to the epiphytic esorediate species of the L. subfusca group in Europe and northern Africa is provided.

This article offers a critical synthesis of recent archaeological research on Byzantine Thrace (seventh–fourteenth centuries), emphasizing work undertaken in Bulgaria, Greece, and Türkiye over the past decade. Drawing on systematic excavations, regional surveys, and interdisciplinary projects, we highlight how new discoveries and re-examinations of legacy data have significantly reshaped our understanding of the landscape, settlements, and modes of connectivity in this strategically vital region. Key themes include long-term human–environment interactions, settlement hierarchies, and the interplay between urban and rural landscapes.

Case studies of fortified centres such as Skopelos, Philippopolis, and Karasura reveal Thrace’s integration into imperial defence and trade networks, while investigations of port landscapes at Firuzköy, Ainos, and sites along the Black Sea coast underscore the centrality of waterways in structuring economic and social life. Research on monastic landscapes, from Mount Papikion to the Kosmosoteira monastery at Bera, demonstrates how religious communities functioned as hubs of economic production and aristocratic patronage. Parallel studies of rural and rupestrian sites highlight the dynamism of the countryside, challenging urban-centric models and foregrounding the adaptability of local populations to political and environmental change.

Beyond individual sites, these findings reframe Thrace not as a peripheral hinterland but as a mosaic of interconnected microregions, each shaped by distinct ecological, cultural, and geopolitical conditions. They reveal both resilience and innovation in the face of shifting imperial borders, foreign incursions, and long-term environmental transformation. Yet the study also underscores the need for greater cross-border collaboration, as modern political boundaries continue to fragment the region’s archaeological record. By integrating diverse datasets and advocating for a transnational approach, this review situates Byzantine Thrace within broader Mediterranean discourse and highlights its potential to illuminate processes of connectivity, resilience, and change across the Byzantine world.

We prove cohomological vanishing criteria for the Ceresa cycle of a curve C embedded in its Jacobian J: (A) if $\mathrm{H}^3(J)^{\mathrm{Aut}(C)} = 0$, then the Ceresa cycle is torsion modulo rational equivalence; (B) if $\mathrm{H}^0(J, \Omega_J^3)^{\mathrm{Aut}(C)} = 0$, then the Ceresa cycle is torsion modulo algebraic equivalence, with criterion (B) conditional on the Hodge conjecture. We then use these criteria to study the simplest family of curves where (B) holds but (A) does not, namely the family of Picard curves $C \colon y^3 = x^4 + ax^2 + bx + c$. Criterion (B) and work of Schoen combine to show that the Ceresa cycle of a Picard curve is torsion in the Griffiths group. We furthermore determine exactly when it is torsion in the Chow group. As a byproduct, we deduce that there exist one-parameter families of plane quartic curves with torsion Ceresa Chow class; that the torsion locus in $\mathcal{M}_3$ of the Ceresa Chow class contains infinitely many components; and that the order of a torsion Ceresa Chow class of a Picard curve over a number field K is bounded, with the bound depending only on $[K\colon \mathbb{Q}]$. Finally, we determine which automorphism group strata are contained in the vanishing locus of the universal Ceresa cycle over $\mathcal{M}_3$.

Conflict related to the ‘Boko Haram’ insurgency has ravaged north-east Nigeria and its neighbouring countries for over a decade. Much public and media attention has focused on the insurgents’ apparent hostility towards Western (boko) education. Yet, education has received relatively little attention within scholarship of the insurgency. Drawing on eighteen interviews and group conversations with former members conducted in 2021 and 2024, we explore what role disenchantment with Western education played in the recruitment of members, and to what extent critical views were nurtured and perpetuated during the insurgency. Mobilizing insights from education research, we highlight how Western knowledge occupied an ambiguous status among the insurgents. Avowed opposition to Western education was at loggerheads with the practical and tactical needs of the insurgency, which dominated decision making on the ground. Encounters and experiences after leaving the insurgency further convinced our respondents that Western education was useful. The article highlights that we cannot understand how violent jihadi groups view education by looking merely at their propaganda and tactics, but that we need to pay close attention to the on-the-ground experiences of ordinary members.

Poetry played a unique role in disseminating anti-colonial thought and solidarity. I argue that the Anthology of Black Poetry in Portuguese (1958), and its circulation in Brazil, strengthen our understanding of this process. By tracing the production and circulation of this anthology as a cultural underground of decolonization, I demonstrate how its poetry articulated a grammar of blackness that resonated with the Brazilian, Thereza Santos. This grammar provided the foundation for Santos’s political solidarity with the African struggles for independence from Portugal. In the end, I reflect on the legacy and limits of poesia negra as a basis for solidarity.

We show that the $C^*$-algebra of a row-finite source-free k-graph is Rieffel–Morita equivalent to a crossed product of an approximately finite-dimensional (AF) algebra by the fundamental group of the k-graph. When the k-graph embeds in its fundamental groupoid, this AF algebra is a Fell algebra; and simple-connectedness of a certain sub-1-graph characterises when this Fell algebra is Rieffel–Morita equivalent to a commutative $C^*$-algebra. We provide a substantial suite of results for determining if a given k-graph embeds in its fundamental groupoid, and provide a large class of examples, arising via work of Cartwright et al. [‘Groups acting simply transitively on the vertices of a building of type $\tilde{\rm A}_2$ I’, Geom. Dedicata 47 (1993), 143–166], Cartwright et al. ‘Groups acting simply transitively on the vertices of a building of type $\tilde{\rm A}_2$ II’, Geom. Dedicata 47 (1993), 167–226] and Robertson and Steger [‘Affine buildings, tiling systems and higher rank Cuntz–Krieger algebras’, J. reine angew. Math. 513 (1999), 115–144] from the theory of $\tilde {A_2}$-groups, which do embed.

We show that the dynamical system associated by Putnam to a pair of graph embeddings is identical to the shift map on the limit space of a self-similar groupoid action on a graph. Moreover, performing a certain out-split on said graph gives rise to a Katsura–Exel–Pardo groupoid action on the out-split graph whose associated limit space dynamical system is conjugate to the previous one. We characterise the self-similar properties of these groupoids in terms of properties of their defining data, two matrices A, B. We prove a large class of the associated limit spaces are bundles of circles and points that fibre over a totally disconnected space, and the dynamics restricted to each circle are of the form $z\to z^{n}$. Moreover, we find a planar embedding of these spaces, thereby answering a question Putnam posed in his paper.

In this paper we study deformations of $C^*$-algebras that are given as cross-sectional $C^*$-algebras of Fell bundles $\mathcal A$ over locally compact groups G. Our deformation comes from a direct deformation of the Fell bundles $\mathcal A$ via certain parameters, such as automorphisms of the Fell bundle, group cocycles, or central group extensions of G by the circle group $\mathbb T$, and then taking cross-sectional algebras of the deformed Fell bundles. We then show that this direct deformation method is equivalent to the deformation via the dual coactions by similar parameters as studied previously in [4, 7].

This paper argues that interactions with artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, such as ChatGPT, can mediate genuine mystical experiences. Building off the framework of mystical experiences developed by William James, I argue that interactions with AI chatbots can mediate mystical experiences in a structurally comparable way to how guided meditation can produce mystical experiences. I conclude by raising various concerns about the implementation of AI technologies in our religious lives, including their use as mediators for mystical experiences.