This article critically examines the broad claims of the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs) that the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) is the ‘competent’ and ‘comprehensive’ framework for governing marine biodiversity in the area covered by its constituent instruments, implying that the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement) is therefore inapplicable within that same area under the ‘not undermine’ clause in its Article 5(2). Focusing on the specific topic of marine bioprospecting governance, our analysis breaks down ‘competence’ into spatial (where the ATS has legal authority to govern) and functional (the activities or subject matter it is empowered to regulate) dimensions and evaluates whether existing competences, as exercised, result in ‘comprehensive’ governance. We find the ATCPs’ claims to be legally and practically unsubstantiated to justify the complete or de facto exclusion of the BBNJ Agreement’s application in the area covered by the constituent instruments of the ATS: the jurisdictional competence of the ATS is fragmented, its functional competence is narrowly confined to the early, in situ dimensions of bioprospecting regulation, and its operational record of governing marine bioprospecting is negligible, relying on generic, non-tailored rules long recognized as inadequate. As such, the Antarctic marine bioprospecting case illustrates that a regime’s exclusionary claims regarding the BBNJ Agreement should be viewed with scepticism. Failing to do so may conceal the very gaps that the BBNJ Agreement was created to address.

Torri’r Llech (TLl) (Welsh for ‘breaking the rickets’) was a bloodletting practice which remained popular in Wales from at least the mid-nineteenth up to the mid-twentieth centuries. The practice involved cutting the ear (pinna) to induce bleeding. Indications were numerous and dynamic. Vernacular medical practices, including bloodletting, have enjoyed a long history in Wales and were influenced by a multitude of conceptual paradigms over the centuries. By drawing on original oral histories, newspaper accounts, as well as existing secondary source material, this article aims to situate TLl within the wider framework of bloodletting practices in Wales and Britain more broadly. In doing so, this paper also considers the ways in which TLl changed over time and how this dynamism proved a persistent threat to the authority of official medical institutions in Wales. By then discussing how TLl itself appeared to draw on diverse conceptual frameworks, it is argued that it may more accurately be defined as a practice within the confines of popular humoralism – a syncretic medical paradigm influenced by humoralism, astrology, Christianity, as well as local belief systems. Ultimately, TLl exhibited remarkable longevity and may have been practised as late as the 1970s–80s in parts of the Upper Swansea Valley, potentially representing the latest example of a humoral bloodletting practice native to the British Isles. This analysis challenges more linear narratives of biomedical ascendancy, showcasing how TLl coexisted with orthodox medicine in a pluralistic medical marketplace in which Welsh patients consistently exercised agency over their own care.

This article takes as its empirical reference the phenomenon of ‘migration in transit’, which gained relevance in 2018 with the arrival of thousands of migrants, mainly from Africa, on the southern coast of Spain, bound for other European countries. Based on a series of specific cases of irregular migrants, asylum seekers, unaccompanied minors or those at risk of statelessness involved in this phenomenon, I have attempted to trace their ‘legal routes’ and their determining factors (regulatory assumptions, legal documents, time frames, etc.) as if they were movements across the map of migration and asylum law. I conclude that, similar to geographical (im)mobility, although these legal itineraries are largely constructed on the basis of the legal provisions (requirements, deadlines, bureaucracy, etc.) set out in immigration and asylum regulations, there are also elements of social practice, such as legal advice, solidarity or social perceptions, which facilitate the transition between legal statuses.

This article explores the data entry labour demands of electronic death registration systems (EDRS), the jurisdiction-specific software systems developed in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s to ‘reengineer’ the process that informs vital statistics officials of deaths. Over decades of deliberations about how best to design and implement the tools, officials knew of two key issues that challenged death registration historically: the system moved slowly, and the data it produced was not always accurate. This article explores the techno-solutionism that led to the framing of EDRS as a tool that could solve these two issues simultaneously, improving both ease of data entry and the data’s integrity. But this flawed optimism about EDRS’s dual affordances, the paper argues, contributed to the tool’s sluggish implementation.

This article examines the late colonial performances of Adolphe Kisimba, a Congolese producer and performer who toured his show Mu Kongo – Mu Belgique to Belgium in early 1959. Developed under the auspices of the Belgian colonial state, this multimedia spectacular featured sketches, songs, a magic lantern light show, and a satirical “reverse ethnography” film of Belgian culture as narrated by Kisimba. This article traces Kisimba’s trajectory through state-sponsored shows such as Changwe Yetu, Spectacles Populaires, and the idiosyncratic Mu Kongo – Mu Belgique and argues that staged performance, and the international mobility that this art form inherently enables, served as a contested space in which Central Africans sought to redefine colonial hierarchies and through which they envisioned new professional horizons. The overlooked histories of Kisimba and late colonial African artists like him, this article suggests, offer new insights into African cultural negotiations and global outlooks before independence.

Despite the burgeoning international literature on the history of sexual violence, the topic of incest has received limited attention from historians. This article examines hitherto restricted archival files on thirty-seven offenders who were convicted of incest in the independent Irish state under the Punishment of Incest Act 1908 and, in doing so, provides a rare glimpse into exploitative sexual practices within Irish families in the decades after independence. The findings show that incest perpetrators were effectively a male preserve and that incest was almost always an abusive relationship that persisted over an extended period of time. The article also reveals that victims were invariably younger than offenders, some incest offenses involved alcohol, violence, and threats, many cases resulted in pregnancy, motherless children appear to have been vulnerable, and most of these crimes were premeditated and non-consensual. The article concludes by capturing the limitations of the 1908 Act in neglecting to cover sexual acts other than vaginal intercourse and embrace a broader range of family relationships.

Through the examination of a criminal trial that took place in Vienna in January and February 1968, this article explores postwar Austria’s treatment of pornography. It argues that the 1950 law criminalizing pornography in Austria was a product of the Second Republic’s consensus-driven politics and emphasis on international obligations under a 1923 international treaty against obscenity. The spectacle of the presiding judge berating defendants on trial in 1968 sparked public outrage and calls for legal reform. The Austrian government strove to liberalize the country’s obscenity laws but soon abandoned these efforts. Through a comparison to Denmark and West Germany, the article suggests that the failure of legislative reform in Austria resulted from an emphasis on political consensus and on international law, as well as the terms of the debate over pornography after the 1968 trial, focused on restraining judicial power rather than artistic liberties and free speech.

On 28 May 2025, the Higher Court of Appeal in Hamm (Germany) delivered a pioneering judgment in the case Lliuya v. RWE. The Court confirmed that German private nuisance law was applicable in the transnational context, and that the greenhouse gas emissions of the energy company RWE contributed to climate change and its adverse impacts. Based on the evidence provided, the Court concluded that the normative threshold of ‘imminence’ of a future, first-time property impairment was not reached. This article assesses the Court’s reasoning and the challenges it faced in determining ‘imminence’, considering conflicting scientific evidence. Against the backdrop of a legal and scientific analysis, the article argues that the physical laws underpinning climate change, and the scientific assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, form a baseline of ‘best available science’ for the legal assessment of climate risks. Case-specific evidence that deviates from this baseline requires careful consideration. Furthermore, the legal interpretation of causally relevant evidence must depend on whether the science provides a qualitative or a quantitative statement.

The article is focused on friendship and collaboration between two prominent alpine climbers: Stipe Božić from Croatia and Viki Grošelj from Slovenia. Following their joint endeavors beginning in Yugoslavia and proceeding within the setting of independent countries, the article discusses different framings of alpinist expeditions on which they embarked together, which range from a common Yugoslav enterprise to a nationally separate narrative. Highlighting that their primary motivation for cooperation was in sharing goals and professional compatibility, the article explores how personal narratives are transformed into national narratives. Finally, the article touches upon the value of friendship research for exploring everyday nationhood.

This article examines the expressed neutrality of Russophones in Latvia and Estonia toward Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Drawing on nationally representative survey data and four focus groups, the study employs a mixed-methods design to explore how individual dispositions, social contexts, and media perceptions shape neutrality. Logistic regression analysis shows that neutrality is strongly predicted by low interest in Ukrainian affairs, socioeconomic vulnerability, and—most decisively—reference group perceptions: respondents describing their milieu as neutral, mixed, or uncertain were dramatically more likely to adopt neutrality than those in pro-Ukraine circles. By contrast, opinion climate and perceived social isolation had weaker effects, while neutrality was reinforced by distrust of both Latvian and Russian media. Focus group data reveal neutrality as a negotiated stance, serving to manage social tensions and navigate contested information environments. The findings highlight neutrality as a socially embedded strategy rather than mere apathy or ignorance.

Globalisation and the multilingual turn in applied linguistics have exposed a persistent tension between learners’ linguistic repertoires and traditional monolingual pedagogies. It is out of this tension that translanguaging pedagogy (TP) emerged as an instructional framework grounded in translanguaging theory, witnessing a burgeoning empirical literature on its classroom value. However, the empirical evidence has failed to produce a coherent account of TP’s effectiveness in L2 education, as findings have exhibited considerable heterogeneity across instructional contexts, learner populations, and outcome measures. The present study sought to reconcile these inconsistent findings through a multilevel Bayesian meta-analysis of 108 effect sizes drawn from 40 independent studies among 3,145 learners. The pooled effect size of Hedges’ g = 1.014 (standard error = 0.138, 95% credible interval [0.748, 1.291]) establishes a positive and statistically credible effect of TP on L2 achievement. Moderator analyses identified educational level and target language skills as credible sources of heterogeneity, with tertiary-level learners and speaking outcomes yielding the largest effect sizes. Target language, linguistic distance, and treatment duration did not reach the posterior probability threshold for credible inference. These findings advance the theoretical understanding of TP and furnish an empirically grounded basis for instructional decision-making in L2 education.