• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
• Publications close
• Other research products close
• GB close
• CA close
• Religions close
• OpenAIRE close

This article examines the institutional pathology of corruption within the Nigerian Navy, and its broader manifestation and implications within Nigeria’s maritime industry. Beginning with an examination of the disappearance of the vessel, MT African Pride, in October 2003, the article reflects on the African Pride case to show that far from being a one-off incident, it was indicative of the opportunism and criminality that naval operations within the oil-rich Niger Delta have generated. Other primary case studies relevant to corruption within Nigeria’s maritime industry, and interrogated by the article, include the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA). The article shall also examine a range of secondary case studies. These are relatively brief meditations on incidents, individuals and maritime industry private contractors and government parastatals, which are relevant to the debate to naval and maritime corruption in Nigeria.

Since 11 September 2001, Islam has been viewed as a threat to global stability rather than as a potential factor for peacebuilding and development. Therefore, most studies on Islam have been framed around security. Although research on the security threat posed by Islamist extremists is understandable, the main purpose of this study is to explore and give more attention to positive and continued contributions of Islamic faith to Somalia’s history and its current situation. To date, Islam has had an enormous constructive impact on Somali society at different stages of its history. It has strengthened peace capacity and development aspects such as literacy, socio-economic factors, justice, urbanisation, common identity and shared future aspirations, which have risen above clan divisions. In terms of methods, this study employs descriptive and analytical research methodologies. In conclusion, despite the current negative interpretation, activities, and actions attributed to the extremist Islamist groups in Somalia and beyond, Islam, on the other hand, has contributed enormously to civilising Somalis, shaping their common identity, nurturing a culture of peace, and improving social development. As it has been in the past, it maintains the potential to provide for Somalia’s future stability and prosperity.

Commentators claim that drug repositioning (ie developing new uses for authorised drugs) significantly slows when generics are authorised and, therefore, law reform is necessary to encourage more R&D. This study empirically examines this claim by analysing records of clinical trials. It finds that once generics are authorised: i) commercial trials continue at ‘active’ rates for approximately half of the drugs studied, and ii) the number of hospital and university trials actually increases. These findings cast doubt on whether additional incentives are needed. They also indicate that a more effective way to reposition drugs is for recently established government programmes to embrace IP strategies and leverage the hospital and university trials as an R&D pipeline.Keywords: drug repositioning, patent law, regulatory protection, clinical trials, empirical study, generic drugs.

The word “micro” or “mini” is increasingly appearing in relation to pilgrimage. A Guardian article in December 2021 described a guided pilgrimage walk in Sussex as a “micro pilgrimage”; in the spring of 2022, six “micro pilgrimages” took place in southern England. However, what is a micro pilgrimage, and what has prompted its sudden surge in popularity? This article explores this seemingly innovative practice, focusing on Britain, where it is particularly prevalent. It shows how and why micro pilgrimages became particularly prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic, and discusses their continuing popularity today. A micro pilgrimage is usually understood as a pilgrimage which is completed in one day or less, an idea—the article argues—which has arisen from assumptions that short pilgrimages are a departure from the norm. The article challenges this notion by showing that, throughout Western history, long journeys have been in the minority. However, while arguing that micro pilgrimages have been with us since the Middle Ages, the article also recognizes that there is much which is indeed new about modern forms of the practice.

This paper explores universal basic income (UBI) in relation to crisis, from COVID-19 to techno-economic disruptions to work and prospective post-capitalist transition. Critical debates around automation, wage labour and post-work are brought into conversation with emerging trends in urban political economy around foundational infrastructure, smart cities and platform capitalism. To deliver the socio-economic transformations promised by UBI’s advocates, it is argued that more radical structural interventions in capitalist asset ownership and property relations, alongside democratized state investment in technological development, universal basic services and infrastructure, are necessary counterparts to any sufficient UBI – that is, if we hope to construct new systems of collective coordination capable of contending with complex epidemiological, economic and ecological crises.

An increasing number of researchers support reproducibility by including pointers to and descriptions of datasets, software and methods in their publications. However, scientific articles may be ambiguous, incomplete and difficult to process by automated systems. In this paper we introduce RO-Crate, an open, community-driven, and lightweight approach to packaging research artefacts along with their metadata in a machine readable manner. RO-Crate is based on Schema$.$org annotations in JSON-LD, aiming to establish best practices to formally describe metadata in an accessible and practical way for their use in a wide variety of situations. An RO-Crate is a structured archive of all the items that contributed to a research outcome, including their identifiers, provenance, relations and annotations. As a general purpose packaging approach for data and their metadata, RO-Crate is used across multiple areas, including bioinformatics, digital humanities and regulatory sciences. By applying "just enough" Linked Data standards, RO-Crate simplifies the process of making research outputs FAIR while also enhancing research reproducibility. An RO-Crate for this article is available at https://www.researchobject.org/2021-packaging-research-artefacts-with-ro-crate/ Comment: 42 pages. Submitted to Data Science

In this article, we respond to the Special Issue theme by addressing the complexities of religious identities in archipelagic communities where the dual role of the sea as conduit and barrier has impacted the parish system, farming estates and community life. The focus is primarily on nineteenth and twentieth century testimonies and material evidence, approached within a broader chronological context going back to the Middle Ages. Using qualitative GIS mapping of the habitations of the people memorialised in two burial grounds in Orkney, we visualise the active role of the islander in constructing identities linking people and place at parish, community and personal levels. The results show that the people with memorial stones were buried within a long-established parochial structure but did not adhere to ecclesiastical norms, with district burial grounds being favoured over a single parish churchyard. We conclude that this approach demonstrates the complexities of identities within an island community and identify its applicability in other contexts combining material culture and historical documentation to investigate religious island identities.