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The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated food insecurity and insufficiency in the United States. However, the causes of food insufficiency among people with disabilities during the pandemic are not well understood. This paper examined how loneliness and household structure are associated with food insufficiency among working-age adults (ages 18–64) with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using 2021 National Survey on Health and Disability data, we conducted logistic regression to estimate the association between loneliness, household composition, and food insufficiency. Measures of household structure, such as the number of children in the household and living with other adults, were not associated with food insufficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondary analyses found that loneliness had a strong association with food insufficiency for those who live alone. Respondents who lived alone and reported feeling lonely had the highest odds of being food insufficient during the pandemic. Our findings indicate that in addition to household structure, it is important to assess psychosocial well-being, such as measures of loneliness, when examining food insufficiency among working-age adults with disabilities.

Although an increasing number of PhD holders will continue their careers outside academia, we know little about their further career prospects. To develop a better understanding of how this group constructs and justifies a successful career outside academia, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 47 PhD graduates from different disciplines (humanities, social and beta sciences) who have obtained elaborate experience working outside academia.

Drawing on a multi-career perspective, we explored the motivations of the PhD holders when making such career transitions. The findings from the interviews demonstrated how PhD holders’ main motivations were associated with their perceived organizational, community and cognitive careers. Our data analysis revealed that these motivations related to PhD holders and can be grouped along four key tensions:

• distanced from real life (academia) versus appreciating the practical impact of their research (currently);

• competition and performance orientation (academia) versus enjoying their current multidisciplinary collaboration towards a common goal (current);

• Individualism and loneliness were typically experienced in academia versus autonomy and intellectual stimulation in their current work; and

• lack of stable career perspectives in academia versus current options for competence-based development and personal growth.

distanced from real life (academia) versus appreciating the practical impact of their research (currently);

competition and performance orientation (academia) versus enjoying their current multidisciplinary collaboration towards a common goal (current);

Individualism and loneliness were typically experienced in academia versus autonomy and intellectual stimulation in their current work; and

lack of stable career perspectives in academia versus current options for competence-based development and personal growth.

Thus, while discontinuation of an academic career may easily hold a pejorative connotation, the analysis of the PhD holders’ motivations revealed important and rewarding opportunities in pursuing a career in other sectors. Overall, from our study, we can conclude that while a major gap may exist between careers in academia and ‘the corporate world’, shifting careers between these worlds is not as ‘unthinkable’ as commonly believed.

This culminating chapter reviews the impacts of the pandemic on global systems of education. Drawing on the insights of the preceding chapters, this chapter offers three ideas for the future. First, schools of education should engage in innovative learning experiences including in person, online and hybrid learning opportunities. Second, staff support and development are key areas for future growth. Similarly, the third area for future growth is deeper consideration of student well-being and development. The pandemic placed these ideas at the forefront of conversation, and schools of education are positioned to continue that conversation, taking action to create transformative educational experiences.

First-generation college students in the United States are a unique demographic that is often characterized by the institutions that serve them with a risk-laden and deficit-based model. However, our analysis of the transcripts of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 22 “first-gen” respondents suggests they are actively deft, agentic, self-determining parties to processes of identity construction that are both externally imposed and potentially stigmatizing, as well as exemplars of survivance and determination. We deploy a grounded theory approach to an open-coding process, modeled after the extended case method, while viewing our data through a novel synthesis of the dual theoretical lenses of structural and radical/structural symbolic interactionism and intersectional/standpoint feminist traditions, in order to reveal the complex, unfolding, active strategies students used to make sense of their obstacles, successes, co-created identities, and distinctive institutional encounters. We find that contrary to the dictates of prevailing paradigms, identity-building among first-gens is an incremental and bidirectional process through which students actively perceive and engage existing power structures to persist and even thrive amid incredibly trying, challenging, distressing, and even traumatic circumstances. Our findings suggest that successful institutional interventional strategies designed to serve this functionally unique student population (and particularly those tailored to the COVID-moment) would do well to listen deeply to their voices, consider the secondary consequences of “protectionary” policies as potentially more harmful than helpful, and fundamentally, to reexamine the presumption that such students present just institutional risk and vulnerability, but also present a valuable addition to university environments, due to the unique perspective and broader scale of vision their experiences afford them.

This chapter provides an overview of the strategic implications of chatbot use and implementation, including potential applications in marketing, and factors affecting customer acceptance. After presenting a brief history and a classification of conversational artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots, the authors provide an in-depth review at the crossroads between marketing, business, and human–computer interaction, to outline the main factors that drive users' perceptions and acceptance of chatbots. In particular, the authors describe technology-related factors and chatbot design characteristics, such as anthropomorphism, gender, identity, and emotional design; context-related factors, such as the product type, task orientation, and consumption contexts; and users-related factors such as sociodemographic and psychographic characteristics. Next, the authors detail the strategic importance of chatbots in the field of marketing and their impact on consumers' perceived service quality, satisfaction, trust, and loyalty. After discussing the ethical implications related to chatbots implementation, the authors conclude with an exploration of future opportunities and potential strategies related to new generative AI technologies, such as ChatGPT. Throughout the chapter, the authors offer theoretical insights and practical implications for incorporating conversational AI into marketing strategies.