During the inter-war years, the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire in Brussels launched a publicity campaign aimed at attracting foreign tourists, Belgian day-trippers and local visitors. Using traditional methods (posters, postcards) alongside innovative techniques (radio interviews, department store exhibitions), the museum tapped into emerging urban tourism marketing trends. Inspired by American practices, director Jean Capart collaborated with travel publishers, railway companies and tourism associations to brand the museum as a must-see destination. While official tourist offices played a minor role, private stakeholders were crucial. These efforts reflected broader societal shifts: a push for more democratic access to culture, economic challenges post-World War I and a growing belief in the power of advertising. Marketing was seen as a solution to financial pressures on the museum, aiming to boost attendance and public support. Although the campaign raised the museum’s visibility and enhanced Brussels’ appeal, visitor numbers remained low, limiting its overall success.

The Anthropocene concept has been widely embraced, with scholars and practitioners demonstrating its potential to challenge the most tenacious frameworks of modernity even as the Holocene remains the officially designated geological epoch. This special issue takes up the Anthropocene’s conceptual provocations as a heuristic for the study of space and semiosis, laying groundwork for new theoretical and methodological frameworks through which sociolinguistics can address planetary crisis. After locating the sociolinguistic study of space within the field of linguistic and semiotic landscapes, this introduction critically reviews the colonial origins of the Anthropocene. Three directions for the study of space and semiosis are then proposed: (i) entangled and expanded space, (ii) attunement as method and praxis, and (iii) political economy as planetary actor. Six contributing articles are summarized, followed by a discussion that charts a path forward for sociolinguistics in planetary crisis. (Linguistic/semiotic landscape, environment, nature, posthumanism, climate change, space, attunement, political economy, coloniality)

The digital age, while promising tools to advance health care, has simultaneously ushered in new forms of power asymmetry, with extractive data practices risking the perpetuation of historical injustices and structural inequities. Achieving epistemic justice in health data governance initiatives demands a fundamental shift in how knowledge is produced, legitimised and applied. It requires a concerted effort to delink from colonial epistemic hierarchies and to embrace the rich plurality of ways of knowing, ensuring that health data genuinely serves the well-being and prioritises the self-determination of those from all walks of life. This article critically examines Transform Health’s equity- and human rights-based ‘Health Data Governance Principles’ through a decolonial lens, interrogating their potential to foster equity in the rapidly expanding field of digital health. Grounded in a decolonial imperative, the article challenges dominant epistemologies that underpin current global health frameworks. The conceptual foundations and practical applications of the Health Data Governance Principles are then explored in light of the findings of an empirical study undertaken by the author which examined the Principles themselves, organisational perceptions thereof, and efforts towards their operationalisation. In particular, it interrogates whether these principles align with and address the needs and values of historically marginalised communities. Central to this analysis is the introduction of a decolonial nexus that brings into relation the decolonial concepts of ‘health data justice’, ‘epistemological delinking’ and the ‘vernacularisation of human rights’. This approach is intended to not only to expose epistemic injustice within prevailing health data governance models but also to centre emancipatory praxis in reclaiming knowledge, rights and representation in digital health agendas.

This article is an attempt to reconstruct the history of the first Nigerien psychiatric service, and diverse aspects of the ordinary functioning of Pavillon E in Niamey (Niger): the organisation of daily life, the position occupied by coopérant doctors, the precise perimeter and development of practices taken from social and community psychiatry, and relationships with the outside world (families, police, legal system, the public health office).

This research allows us to rehistoricise and refine the details of a period from 1950 to 1980 which, up until now, was viewed as fixed and anachronistic. We draw on precious sources of empirical data – medical and administrative archives, students’ dissertations, oral sources – which invite us to reconsider both colonial/post-colonial (dis)continuities and the temporal caesuras in the literature or in reports from the time.

This landscape of mental healthcare appears to be more or less deeply affected by regional and international dynamics, such as the French coopération system, the networks of ethnopsychiatry and transcultural psychiatry, or the network of pharmaceutical groups and their subsidiaries.

Studying this service also raises the issues of the chronology and daily life of post-independence psychiatric care in francophone West Africa. Finally, our research interrogates the intellectual partitions between reforming disalienist movements and day-to-day psychiatry, and addresses fundamental epistemological questions on how historiography can restore the balance of knowledge between them.

As increasing numbers of students disclose mental health conditions, this study is the first to examine mental health status as a critical variable in foreign language anxiety research. Using a mixed-methods approach and drawing on data from 262 languages students at the Open University, it systematically compares foreign language speaking anxiety (FLSA) experiences between students with and without declared mental health conditions. Vocabulary retrieval emerged as the primary anxiety trigger common to all learners, however, significant distinctions emerged: students without mental health conditions expressed more academic-focused anxieties, whereas those with mental health conditions faced confidence and identity-based barriers. Students with mental health challenges are less likely to speak spontaneously and undertake spoken assessments, often opting to avoid online synchronous sessions entirely, requiring different coping strategies. The findings are analysed through a Universal Learning Design lens and reveal the need for tailored support and innovative pedagogical solutions, including AI-powered practice environments and self-compassion interventions specifically designed for online language learning contexts, to address the emotional barriers faced by students with mental health conditions. The study offers broader implications for inclusive (language) course design and learner engagement.

The Taiwan Incident of 1874 – a prolonged Sino-Japanese confrontation over the killing of Ryukyu castaways, whom Japan claimed as its subjects – marked the full maturation of a new mode of Qing war preparation. This mode was characterized by global coordination, domestic and international competition, and the swift mobilization of personal connections to secure foreign weapons and loans – resources that were often interconnected. Facilitated by the efforts of various actors, this internationalized approach became a standard practice during the empire’s final decades. As the empire could no longer rely on domestic self-sufficiency in arms and funding, Qing military operations came to reflect the broader influence of global military and financial resources. The Qing empire’s capacity to mobilize global resources in pursuit of national objectives helps explain its resilience in an era dominated by imperial powers.

The first international expositions appeal to the imagination and have an almost mythical status, but for most participating countries, they were just a form of good marketing. The prevailing idea in literature is that the expositions were platforms for nation-building undertaken by national governments. What is still lacking, however, is research into the intersection of urban, regional and national identities at these events, and the role of the city in this process. This article, which is part of the special issue Urban Tourism Promotion in Belgium and the Netherlands, addresses this gap by examining the presence of Belgian city pavilions at the expositions in Belgium between 1885 and 1958 through the lens of urban tourism promotion. By analysing the different groups involved in tourism promotion at these events, the article reveals that cities were not merely venues for large events, but also served as platforms for identity promotion through urban tourism promotion.

The American War for Independence scrambled the concept of political allegiance and belonging. In James H. Kettner’s apt phrase, “subjects became citizens.” Where British law denied the possibility that a subject could renounce the obedience owed to their sovereign, Americans asserted through force of arms “the right to choose their allegiance.”1 Influenced by a contractual notion of political compact and by the mayhem of a violent civil war, people shuffled and sometimes reshuffled into camps of revolutionaries, loyalists, and neutrals.2

This article examines media discourse about commuting travel time in Australia’s two largest metropolitan areas – Sydney and Melbourne – between 1970 and 2000. In major newspapers from each of the cities, reportage and commentary conveyed expanding commuting geographies oriented towards the mass pursuit of home ownership enabled by public policy and reflective of pluralism around households’ time use preferences. In a period when time use was widely understood as increasingly pressured, the choices available to households were frequently portrayed as responding to a wide range of opportunities but co-existed with discourses of market-driven compromise and consequences.

Organized crime generates violence, economic instability, and institutional challenges, forcing millions of citizens worldwide to change their place of residence annually. While the experiences of those fleeing violence are well-documented, less attention has been given to frontline workers assisting them. This study addresses this gap by examining the types of coping mechanisms that frontline officials use to protect women escaping organized crime in Mexico. Drawing on 24 in-depth interviews with key actors from governmental and non-governmental organizations, we identify three types of coping mechanisms: individual, institutional, and social. These strategies demonstrate the resilience and ingenuity of workers navigating resource shortages, legal constraints, and personal safety risks. Our findings contribute to the literature on organized crime by illuminating how those working on the ground adapt to systemic deficiencies and protect victims. By understanding these strategies, we hope to inform more effective policies to support frontline officials and mitigate the societal harms of organized crime.

This article examines the structure and role of the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) in rural Ulster in 1922. It is argued the actions of the USC during this period have not received sufficient academic or public attention. The origins and organisational structure of the Specials are considered and it is claimed that the force’s decentralised make-up made it almost impossible to control. In terms of personnel, access to newly released archives gives unique insight into the force. Traditional assumptions about the connection between the pre-war Ulster Volunteer Force and the USC are questioned. Furthermore, it is found that few ‘B’ Specials had prior service with the British army. Overall, it is concluded that the Specials were an almost exclusively Protestant force made up of inexperienced and at times ill-disciplined recruits, most of whom were ill-suited to any policing role. Furthermore, it is argued that the Specials played a significant role in shaping post-partition identities in Northern Ireland.