The meanings of race and ethnicity vary across cultures and states. The differences are a result of different histories of colonization, migration, and, in consequence, racialization. The concept of race is a more encompassing category in Western European societies and the USA, where it is also a political commodity that structures social and political relations and views. The same concept in the Western Balkan states, organized along ethnic lines, still draws on the disputed biological notion of race. The same conceptual differences structure the views of racist as opposed to ethnic humor. The Western European idea of race as a cultural construct that lumps different social groups through the process of racialization and the interpretation of racism as an ideology that discriminates against any social group, informs the Western reading of both racist and ethnic humor. On the other hand, Balkan societies and their ethnic based structuration and distinct understanding of race and ethnicity inform different views of the concepts of racist and ethnic humor. In this respect, this study tends to empirically evidence the cross-cultural variations between European societies and the USA, and Balkan societies regarding the understanding of the differences between racist and ethnic humor.

This essay offers an ecocritical reading of decolonial love. It traces how, in Díaz’s fiction, people introject (post)colonial violence, redeploying its misogynist, masculinist, and sometimes violently hypersexual and racialized dynamics in their most intimate relationships. Díaz shows the connection between this kind of toxicity and the historical and economic forces that are laying waste to the planet.

This reflective practitioner essay asks what it means to teach law ‘as a conversation’ and who is heard as speaking law within that conversation. Drawing on teaching notes from an elite Indian law school writing classroom, the article analyses a staged counter-factual dialogue among four legal thinkers (Nicholas J. McBride, Patricia J. Williams, Kiruba Munusamy and Angela D. Gilmore). ‘Counter-factual pedagogy’ names a method that stages an ‘as-if’ encounter that is structurally unlikely within conventional legal education in order to make institutional defaults newly visible, including neutrality as epistemic rigour, professionalism as merit and doctrinal learning as separable from social power. The article reads the exercise through five literature-informed lenses (voice, neutrality, performance, justice, discomfort). No student quotations, paraphrases or artefacts are reproduced.

In English pronunciation teaching, the Nativeness Principle has been influential in the curriculum standards, instructional materials, and teachers’ beliefs in China. Even though subtle shifts toward the Intelligibility Principle have been seen since the 2010s, some unresolved questions and challenges about applying the Intelligibility Principle to classroom teaching still need to be answered and addressed, which is the main purpose of this article. Under the 5W1H framework (Who, Why, What, When, Where, and How), the study argues that intelligibility-focused teaching is more realistic and beneficial for Chinese students across age groups. It also explores key phonetic features and accommodation strategies for mutual understanding in pronunciation. It further suggests a phased approach to intelligibility instruction, starting with broad phonetic teaching in early grades and focusing on targeted features in later years, and recommends the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools for real-time feedback, while acknowledging that AI feedback can be biased on accents. Finally, the study points out the necessity for guiding teachers and for reliable intelligibility assessments, observing the influence of native-language familiarity on judgments. It calls for further research on explicit training in accommodation strategies, identification of prioritized pronunciation features, biases in AI tools, and context-specific intelligibility benchmarks.

The Roman Curia is the body of institutions that assist the pope in his ministry as supreme pastor of the Catholic Church. The much-awaited reform of the curia, by means of the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium, gave rise to strong hopes of decentralization and efficiency at the Vatican and the church. However, a close reading of this new norm does not immediately lead to concluding that any more ecclesiastical competences of the Holy See have been transferred to particular churches. Instead, the reform may be characterized as a decentralization of procedures, rather than competences, and a passionate call for the spiritual conversion and professionalism of Vatican officials. The reform is also in line with the type of synodal church that Pope Francis announced from the beginning of his pontificate, in which decisions are made after listening to everyone who is affected by that decision and by everyone who has something to contribute to the discussion. In this article, the author offers, for readers who are not experts in the law or doctrine of the Catholic Church, a discussion of the main changes brought by the reform, their significance, and possible consequences, as well as some recent changes introduced after the election of Pope Leo.

The World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the Pandemic Agreement in May 2025. The contentious Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) system was incorporated as an Annex, to be negotiated at a later date. Access and benefit-sharing (ABS) was introduced into international environmental law to make access to genetic resources conditional on, or ‘linked’ to, the sharing of benefits associated with using those resources. The negotiation for a multilateral PABS system represents a continuation of more than 30 years of ABS discussions, negotiations, diplomacy, and scholarly literature in international environmental law. This article takes a closer look at the term ‘delinking’, which was frequently used in the three years of negotiations for the Pandemic Agreement. We find that the terms ‘delinking’ and ‘decoupling’ have been used interchangeably to refer to at least three different scenarios in the operationalization of multilateral ABS models: where the country of origin of the materials is not necessarily the recipient of benefits; where the type and quantity of benefits are not linked to the use of a specific sample of genetic resources, or in situations that combine these two models. We propose an ‘ABS Modalities Spectrum’ as a useful tool for assessing ‘delinking’ proposals. Our analysis serves as a reminder to WHO member states about to embark on negotiations for the PABS Annex that multilateral ABS systems exist on a spectrum, and do not have to default to the contract-based multilateral models that have been favoured to date.

The late nineteenth-century animal marketplace was a thriving industry. The growth of empire and the development of new technologies and infrastructure facilitated the global movement of animals. As a result, many more reached Britain, where they were purchased by a range of customers for varying pursuits. Historians have explored the role of animal dealers in facilitating this market, but few have considered the influence of the ‘fancy of the private collector’ upon the trade. Taking naturalist, museum proprietor and zoo owner Lionel Walter Rothschild (1868–1937) as its case study, this paper explores the ways in which the scientific predilections of those with money and influence shaped the market and business practices of animal dealers, contributing directly to the ‘booms in beasts’ of the period. However, the retailing of animals involved more than financial transactions. Through an examination of the supply of animals to Rothschild’s zoological enterprise, this paper will demonstrate how scientific interests and purchasing power could combine to elevate customers from passive consumers, reliant on the capabilities of the animal dealer, to active collaborators. Working together, wealthy customers and dealers secured the further procurement of material, contributing to the construction of zoological knowledge, whilst also building their professional reputations.

The elderly are an overlooked cohort in early modern urban spaces. Where studies of old age have tended to focus on the spaces of the home or the hospital, studies of street space and urban mobility have often not considered age, or have focused on youth groups. This article examines the relationship between urban space and mobility, and old age in early modern Venice. It shows how elderly people used urban spaces and were a visible presence in the early modern city. In so doing, it demonstrates that attending to how and where elderly people moved can shed light on strategies for self-sufficiency and on histories of disability and care, as well as shedding new light on how urban populations used city spaces.

The article examines the Slovenization of public space in the Habsburg crownland of Gorizia and Gradisca from the late nineteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War. As in other ethnically mixed regions of the empire, public space became a contested arena shaped by the rise of nationalism, with competing national groups seeking to inscribe their ideologies onto the urban landscape. The Slovene national movement aimed to assert its identity and political aspirations through symbolic spatial interventions. However, owing to the specific circumstances of the Slovene community in the region—characterized by a predominantly rural population and internal divisions between liberal and conservative currents—Slovene spatial politics exhibited distinctive features compared to other nationally driven spatial strategies. The article traces the gradual assertion of a Slovene presence in local public space, from the first nationally inspired monument erected in 1898 to the construction of the national hall in the center of the provincial capital, Gorizia.