This talk examines how corpus linguistics and artificial intelligence treasure the potential to reshape contemporary language learning ecologies. It argues that the rapid normalisation of generative AI has intensified the need for pedagogical models that combine low-friction access to language support with transparent methods grounded in attested usage. Drawing on ecological perspectives and recent empirical research, the talk shows how AI-driven environments expand opportunities for language learning while creating risks related to opacity and over-reliance. Corpus linguistics, data-driven learning and corpus literacy offer a complementary foundation by providing traceable evidence, reproducible analyses, and practices that foster learners’ critical judgement. Two convergence scenarios are proposed: AI as an extension of DDL, and corpus literacy as the operational core of critical AI literacy. Together, these scenarios illustrate how open-box pedagogies can reconcile responsiveness and accountability, ensuring that AI-mediated learning remains anchored in transparent processes and empirically grounded language knowledge.

This study conducted an approximate replication of Teravainen-Goff (2023) to validate the Intensity and Perceived Quality of Engagement Scale for university students in the Japanese EFL context. Teravainen-Goff (2023) developed this scale based on an action-oriented definition of engagement and proposed a novel approach to measuring engagement among secondary school language learners in the UK. The study identified an 18-item, five-factor structure from a pool of 36 items through exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In this replication, we examined the validity and reliability of Teravainen-Goff’s scale in a different context, focusing on the replicability of the EFA results. We undertook this replication because engagement is context-dependent and EFA results can vary across samples. We compared the factorial structure with that of the initial study while modifying the target language and participant demographic. Results revealed a 22-item, six-factor structure with good fit. Although the same underlying factors emerged, several notable differences were observed. This approximate replication provided stronger evidence for the psychometric properties of the scale in a new context. Transparent documentation of modifications to the initial study and systematic comparison offered a promising approach to building robust evidence for engagement research and improving the rigour of questionnaire-based research overall.

This article argues that the extent and longevity of dry conservancy systems in urban England between the 1870s and 1920s is underappreciated for its impact on health and disease. Using Birmingham as a case-study, it advances knowledge on the systemized development of municipal pail systems and offers a deeper understanding of living with conservancy. It draws out the importance of looking at the fly problem and the transmission relationship, largely ignored until the second decade of the twentieth century. It also explores and challenges existing ideas in the debates surrounding investment in sanitation infrastructure and mortality decline.

The contribution that coal miners made to the reconstruction of Europe is hard-wired into popular memory, with widespread tales of the selfless sacrifice that saw miners conduct extra shifts and work longer hours for the nation. This article compares three conflicts that arose when miners were ordered to go the extra mile: the campaign to have miners in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais basin (France) make up public holidays in early 1945, the extension of the Saturday shift in the coal mines of the Ostrava-Karviná basin (Czechoslovakia) in late 1946, and the calls on miners in the Ruhr basin (Germany) to conduct extra shifts to provide the population with coal for the winter of 1946/47. Where trade unionists invoked patriotic sentiments and, when that failed, ethnic resentments to motivate miners to go the extra mile, this article shows that generational conflict between old and young miners was the driving force behind these disputes.

This article addresses the expansion of urban public services in major Nordic cities, from 1850 to 1920. We argue that changes in political discourse were the driving force that prompted politicians to act on behalf of the urban public, significantly before the rise of the universal welfare state. The discursive changes are explored through three analytic concepts: publicness, urban citizenship and the welfare city. We start by presenting a short overview of the development of urban public services. Then we demonstrate how these concepts may be used in conjunction to explain the historical changes. Finally, the material effects are discussed in three case-studies, addressing freshwater pipes, public transport and municipal health care, respectively.

This article examines the historical and ongoing role of public agricultural research and extension in shaping avocado production in southern Turkey. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, expert interviews, and documentary analysis, I find that the making of Turkey’s avocado production base owes to a century-long state involvement in agricultural research and development. Contrary to the assumption that global markets single-handedly shape contemporary production and export geographies in the global South, in the case of Turkey’s avocado production it is not the market per se, but extensionists on the ground who actively advocate for risk-taking, efficient, export-oriented production methods. Despite the push for export-oriented production, smallholders continue to prioritize the domestic market by choosing to produce locally popular and more cold-hardy cultivars that are less prone to frost damage. Findings suggest that while public agricultural research and development were indispensable in creating the material conditions for this high-value crop boom in southern Turkey, farmers’ agency and local contextual factors ultimately shape the trajectory of this production geography. The analysis also demonstrates a persistent disconnect between the state’s agricultural vision and farmers’ realities, which explains why the avocado boom has remained a primarily domestic, rather than export-oriented, phenomenon.

This article explores the complex cultural processes that engineered the production and circulation of British evangelical periodicals in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It draws on a vast collection of missionary archival material from Tahiti to show the patched-together character of evangelical periodicals, constituted by highly mobile texts that connected readers across vast geographic distances. Furthermore, it illustrates how readers responded to periodicals: how they represented the intellectual worlds of the early missionaries and complicated their conceptualizations of home and mission, in particular. The article avoids characterizing periodicals as purely propaganda, instead examining how they worked to extend evangelical networks and how they fit into wider systems of knowledge production. The article makes contributions to the study of religion, media, and the materiality of knowledge, bringing the evangelical knowledge industry into a globalized context that intersected with the mission field.

When a country sees multiple mass mobilisations over time, what accounts for variation in where protest occurs across the different protest waves? This article examines the case of mass protests in Ukraine 1990-2004, exploring how the emergence and development of activist networks aligns with changes in the geospatial dispersion of protest over time. It draws on archives and interviews with activists made available by The Three Revolutions Project, and newspaper reports from Ukrainska Pravda, Korrespondent.net and Radio Svoboda, utilising protest event analysis, along with QGIS software to visually represent findings. The article presents novel empirical findings on the geospatial scope of protest events across Ukraine from 1990 onwards, and demonstrates some of the ways in which regional activist networks expanded, developed, and sought cross-cleavage collaboration, aiming to facilitate increasing nationwide mobilisation. It provides valuable context for understanding subsequent Ukrainian mobilisation, such as the 2013-14 Euromaidan protest, and ongoing resistance to Russia’s full-scale invasion.