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Increasingly governmental policy around PhD education has resulted in greater university oversight of programs and student experience – often through creating central PhD Schools. While student experience is well researched, the experiences of Heads of these units, who are responsible for creating student experience, have been invisible. This exploratory Danish case study begins such a conversation: its purpose to examine the perceptions of five Heads of PhD Humanities Schools, each responsible for steering institutional decisions within Danish PhD policy landscapes.

A qualitative approach integrated three distinct analyses: a review of Danish PhD education policies and university procedures, each university’s job specifications for the Heads of the Schools and the Heads’ views on their responsibilities.

The Heads differentiated between their own and today’s PhD student experience. They had held prior leadership roles and fully supported institutional regulations. They cared deeply for the students under their charge and were working to achieve personal goals to enhance PhD experience. Their leadership perspective was relational: enhancing individual student learning through engaging with multiple PhD actors (e.g. program leaders) – when possible at a personal level – to improve PhD practices.

This study contributes an expanded perspective on how PhD School Heads constitute their roles by empirically linking: macro-national policies and institutional regulations and individuals’ biographies to their support of the PhD regimes – with implications for academic leadership generally. The authors argue research into PhD School leadership is essential, as it is such individuals who create the organisational settings that students experience.

In this chapter, we unpack what we experienced during the process of facilitating a group of early career researchers, and how we feel an approach to ‘humanising academia’ may have helped at least us to envision higher education not in terms of the struggle it is often depicted as but as a community and a safe space. Setting out with a conscious naivety, either ignoring (Taina) or ignorant of (Andrew) the ways things ‘should be done’ in academia, allowed us to start a critically supportive community of researchers. This chapter explores how this approach allowed us to engage with different modes of being together and to reconsider existing forms of togetherness. This ‘being together’ was related not only to academic hierarchies and positions but also to thinking, feeling and experiencing. Using lenses from affect theory and queer studies, we discuss how, without quite meaning to, we developed an ‘affective community’ of those interested in discovering alternative ways to approach the international dimension of higher education. This shows how enacting ideals of community can bring us to build a community beyond hierarchies and competition.

This final chapter pulls together some of the observations and findings from the others in the book, and presents a final argument for undoing the ‘affectless consensus’ of research. It synthesizes a number of ‘affective scenes’ that are present across the various chapters, and uses these to build an argument for why affect should not be understand as simply synonymous with emotion. It concludes with a proposal for an ‘affective project’ to build off the findings that are found in the book.

A piece of frequently given informal advice to those starting in the world of research is to ‘pick a topic you'll be able to stick with for three or four years’ – and often that's the end of it. This chapter suggests that we should understand the importance of confronting the ‘affective gap’ in how research is currently conceived. It does so by considering how usually we do not engage with the issues underlying this ‘sticking with’ and what allows us to sustain our attention and effort across the years of a research project. Through a case study of my own confrontation with the question of how I chose and changed my own PhD research topic, this chapter introduces the idea of affective research through an exploration of the concept of affect and its relevance to research. The first part of this chapter explores affect through a brief overview of four different scholarly literatures, to provide an initial framework and some clarity for what is often an opaque subject. This is then grounded through an affective engagement with the issue of choosing a research topic and how this affects our research. It concludes with a brief overview of the other chapters in the volume.

In 2011, a governmental initiative driven by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills invited the British Standards Institute (BSI) to write and publish a publicly available specification (PAS) for the reuse of waste electrical and electronic equipment entitled PAS 141. The specification's ambitious goals, chief among them to reduce the amount of e-waste generated in the UK, has prompted debate as to whether they are realistic and the extent to which they can be influenced by the certification. The purpose of this paper is to propose a comprehensive framework that can be used in future research to enhance understanding of the mechanisms by which the introduction of PAS 141 certification could lead to the fulfillment of its goals, that is, successful uptake. The authors believe this framework can serve as a roadmap for those interested in the investigation of this novel certification and its effect on the market for reusable electrical and electronic products.

This paper is based on interviews with reuse organizations and first hand experience as a participant in the steering group that elaborated the certification being investigated, i.e. PAS 141.

It is uncertain whether PAS 141 will fulfill its promises, which are, in the view of the authors, rather ambitious, e.g. reduce e-waste. Furthermore, more research is needed to examine the effect that the introduction of the certification has on the materialization of its goals, and on the complex inter-relationship that exist between the goals and what the authors define as intermediary necessary conditions.

This is the first attempt the outline the research needs that arise from the introduction of PAS-141, and the authors believe that there are other equally important questions that are yet to be presented and examined.

This paper proposes 28 hypotheses which will help future work to empirically establish: the possibility of PAS-141 attaining its goals and the main necessary conditions for that to happen. This information is pivotal to determine whether the certification is working and to pinpoint opportunities for improvement.

This works contributes to the understanding of the role of certification on the market of reused products, which employs a large number of people, and in particular, whose coming from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Although certification in general has been widely investigated in prior research, scant attention has been paid to certification in the context of electronic products. To the best of the knowledge, this is the first paper of its kind, as it is the first to examine certification in that context.

The purpose of this article is to provide an outline of the challenges of thermal management for more-electric, hybrid-electric and all-electric aircraft, and to notionally discuss potential solutions.

A code algorithm was developed to facilitate architecture-level analysis of the coupled relationship between the propulsion system, the thermal management system, and the takeoff gross weight of aircraft with advanced propulsion systems.

A variety of coupled relationships between the propulsion and thermal management systems are identified, and their impact on the conceptual design choices for electric aircraft are discussed qualitatively.

This conceptual article merely illuminates some driving factors associated with thermal management. The software is still in its adolescence and is experiencing ongoing development.

Thermal regulation in electric aircraft is shown to be a topic that should be addressed in tandem with propulsion system architecture definition and component selection. High-power electronics are expected to emit an immense amount of heat, and the common avenues of heat dissipation could substantially impact the aircraft’s weight, drag and performance. Conversely, strategic management of this waste heat could support subsystems or even produce additional thrust.

This paper aims to direct the attention of researchers and designers in the field of hybrid- or all-electric aircraft design toward the challenges and potential benefits of thermal management.

This paper describes a novel conceptual design software and discusses its logic flow and implications.

This paper aims to create a terminal area operations (TAO) analysis software that can accurately appreciate the nuances of hybrid electric distributed propulsion (HEDP), including unique failure modes and powered-lift effects.

The program was written in Visual Basic with a user interface in Microsoft Excel. It integrates newly defined force components over time using a fourth order Runge-Kutta scheme.

Powered-lift, HEDP failure modes and electrical component thermal limitations play significant roles on the performance of aircraft during TAO. Thoughtful design may yield better efficiency; however, care must be given to address negative implications. Reliability and performance can be improved during component failure scenarios.

This program has and will support the investigation of novel propulsion system architectures and aero-propulsive relationships through accurate TAO performance prediction.

Powered-lift and HEDP architectures can be employed to improve takeoff and climb performance, both during nominal and component failure scenarios, however, reliance on powered-lift may result in faster approach speeds. High-lift and system failure behavior may also allow new approaches to design and sizing requirements.

This program is unique in both the public and private sectors in its broad capabilities for TAO analysis of aircraft with HEDP systems and powered-lift.

Language is a fundamental element of any community, and academia is no exception. The styles of language that are used and valued reflect the principles and purposes of research and higher education. There is an established traditional ‘voice’ in academic writing, which aims to emphasise objectivity and accuracy, but at the expense of expressiveness and personal style. (I am writing this precis in this ‘voice’!) This chapter discusses how alternative and unusual styles of writing about research can be used to express different aspects of the research process, contextualise results and engage non-traditional demographics with research. The current formal academic writing style, typically utilising third-person and passive voice constructions, is intended to express accurate information objectively. Alternatives to the highly formal and technical style can be very effective and broaden the impact of the work. Literary techniques (narrative, fictionalisation, rhyme and meter) can be used to engage diverse audiences with research or express dimensions of research that may otherwise be lost, such as emotionality. This chapter discusses the why and how of creativity in academic writing.