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This paper aims to examine the effectiveness of PhD support groups as an intervention that improves mental well-being and increases confidence in timely PhD completion.

Participants of six PhD support groups, which we co-facilitated, completed a survey at the start of the intervention and at the end of the eight weeks of attendance. The survey measured subjective well-being and confidence in completion using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale and statements from the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (2017 and 2019). The final survey also included open-ended questions to identify the helpful factors of the intervention.

Participants’ subjective well-being scores increased considerably over the eight weeks of group attendance and improved from initial score ranges associated with risk of depression or psychological distress. As a result of feeling understood and supported by other group members, participants felt less isolated and anxious, were more satisfied with their life and work-life balance, and felt more confident about completing their PhD within the institutional time frame. The results confirm previous findings on the positive effects of social support and the relationship between poor well-being and attrition.

Support groups could form an integral part of university support as they increase well-being and could improve retention.

Existing literature mainly highlights factors that affect postgraduate researchers’ well-being, with limited research on innovative interventions. This paper investigates the impact of social support in a facilitated peer group that focuses on the emotional and psychological aspects of the PhD experience, rather than peer group learning or support with specific research tasks.

Manufacturing manager, Alan Jackson and senior production engineer, Peter Allen talk to Jack Hollingum about Lewmar Marine's major investment in robot‐automated cell manufacture.

The main objective of this research is to interrogate the cultural and historical significance of deities in Igbo land, using the Ogwugwu Mmiri deity in Okija as a case study. The study presents evidence that the Ogwugwu Mmiri in Okija has helped preserve the Igbo cultural heritage and traditional values, norms and precepts, which counters the narrative that Christianity undermined these aspects of Igbo society in the past.

The research on the Ogwugwu Mmiri deity in Okija centered its discussion on the Okija community in the present-day Anambra State, Southeastern Nigeria. The research relied on qualitative methodology through the participant observation method. Primary and secondary sources of data were used to interpret the study area. The researchers visited the research site and maintained the Covid-19 protocol during the interview sessions.

The study reveals that Africans practiced religion prior to the arrival of missionaries and challenges the prevailing notion that colonial religions erased the indigenous beliefs of the Igbo people. By examining the worship of the Ogwugwu Mmiri deity, the research observes that the community has embraced a dual religious system, where both Christian and traditional worshipers revere the deity. However, the study concludes that the deity's existence in Okija was not impacted by the government's invasion in 2004.

The traditions, beliefs, customs and norms of a society reflect past events and guide daily interactions with the environment. This is exemplified by the historical discourse surrounding the Ogwugwu Mmiri deity in the Okija community, where the deity's activities align with Christian beliefs and norms. The research demonstrates how young people and indigenous inhabitants protect and preserve their cultural heritage and traditions from external influences.

If it has become possible in recent times to talk of a jurisprudence of Franz Kafka,¹ it should be realised firstly that two things dear or indispensable to the writer will have long been disfigured in the study of law: desire and its assemblage. “For spiritual nourishment,” he writes of his legal education I have nothing but sawdust, which, to crown it all, has been chewed over already by thousands of mouths before me (Kafka, 1966, p. 94, as cited in Legendre, 1997, p. 101).Jurisprudence, after all, would be a very specialised field in which one must speak a very specialised and sober language; a particular form of expression inseparable from a particular investment of desire. But Kafka’s problem with legal studies, if it can be viewed as a problem of sawdust, would not be for example what else one can chew, but simply this: how else to put one’s mouth to use? In other words, how to invent a mode of expression as the only real way to desire, or alternatively how to desire as the only real way to express oneself. For this, one always finds a machine – literature, letters, childhood or animal machines perhaps, as Kafka discovers for himself. And of course the various juridical machines through which desire is assembled and organised according to strict formalisations of content and enunciation. Jurisprudence would still not have come close to laying its hands (or its mouth) upon this assemblage in which it, as a small or even marginal component, discovers its functionality: a legal assemblage of desire.

The British North American colonies were the first western economies to rely on legislature-issued paper monies as an important internal media of exchange. This system arose piecemeal. In the absence of banks and treasuries that exchanged paper monies at face value for specie monies on demand, colonial governments experimented with other ways to anchor their paper monies to real values in the economy. These mechanisms included tax-redemption, land-backed loans, sinking funds, interest-bearing notes, and legal tender laws. I assess and explain the structure and performance of these mechanisms. This was monetary experimentation on a grand scale.

Our Dublin correspondent telegraphed last night:

To the Most Rev. M.A. Corrigan, Archbishop of New York:

Archive footage is now a staple of much cinematic and broadcast production. This chapter explores some of the ways in which archival material has been recycled and considers some of the tensions between filmmakers, archivists, and audiences throughout the process of research, production, and screening. It considers some of the controversies associated with the repositioning of material in short-form, narrative and documentary filmmaking, particularly in relation to content that was never intended for exhibition in the public sphere. Drawing upon Benjaminian ideas of accessing authenticity in a form that has been reproduced, it considers the responsibility of both filmmaker and viewer in critiquing moving image content that has borrowed, self-consciously or surreptitiously, from earlier filmic forms. It concludes by making recommendations for an ethical approach to recycling archival material in research contexts that are pertinent to the burgeoning field of academic creative practice, with a particular focus on the stakeholders involved and a reasonable contextual positioning of the source material in its remediated form.

Although Leutwiler's initiative in taking to the field has been well-documented by scholars and the University of Illinois alike, the role of the UPenn figure, “Benjamin Franklin” or alternately in Illinois narratives “William Penn,” has received little attention (Spindel, 2001; King & Springwood, 2001). Leutwiler's adoption of the “Chief Illiniwek” persona, which will be discussed in-depth later, was not a response to inquiries by the UPenn band who hoped to utilize their articulated personae of “Benjamin Franklin” during a halftime skit as other scholars have suggested. Leutwiler adopted the untitled personae that became the basis for the “Chief” two years earlier during experiences as a Boy Scout and for performances at his alma mater, Urbana High School.⁶ Although the University of Pennsylvania solicited the Illinois band and assistant director Raymond Dvorak in particular, to create its own figure to interact with “Benjamin Franklin” in a show of “good sportsmanship,” Lester Leutwiler was already performing as an “Indian” before the supposed 1926 inception.⁷ In fact, his performance was so well known to his classmates at Urbana High School that the yearbook contained multiple references to Leutwiler's penchant for dressing as his Indian persona at school events (Urbana High School, 1925). Importantly, then the UPenn invitation can be read as the opening of a new arena for performances of Indianness – the sports field – not as an inciting event in the creation of “Chief Illiniwek.” Focusing on “Chief Illiniwek” as a sports mascot has eroded the larger cultural context of performances of Indianness that was being undertaken in local and national venues including Urbana High School.