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Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a social issue that continues to haunt humans globally. Despite the magnitude of research that has been conducted, the Sustainable Developmental Goals target 5.2, and the South African proposed National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide, South Africa experiences high incidences of IPV. In heterosexual couples, violence incidences are a concern that requires further research by scholars because cohabiting relationships are an increasing phenomenon within the African context. This study attempts to theorize from an African philosophical stance, focusing particularly on the African psychological perspective. In this chapter, The authors illuminate the nature and forms of violence that manifest in cohabiting relationships. This research explores participants’ experiences of IPV in cohabiting relationships.

This enquiry has been conceptualized using a qualitative constructivism paradigm with in-depth, unstructured one-on-one interviews. Interviews were conducted with 10 participants between the ages of 18 and 24 years recruited from the Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme in Vhembe District in Limpopo Province, South Africa. Thematic analysis was used to generate themes while narrative analysis was used for the participants’ stories. Participants shared their self-reflections on their IPV experiences, deciding to leave their relationships, and threats from their partners when they tried to leave the relationships.

Any teaching topic can have sensitive content, or at least be complicated because lecturers and students are likely to hold (based on their own experiences, interests, and values) strong opinions. This chapter explores the theoretical and practical issues of teaching cultural concepts. Colleagues are often left to negotiate the teaching of sensitive issues with little guidance on which to base their approach and educational practices. Therefore using the framework ‘Teaching Sensitive Topics Using Social Positioning’ developed by the authors of this chapter, and illustrative example, the chapter explores the practice of teaching cultural concepts in the curriculum to identify themes related to what can be learned and disseminated. An analysis of international social work (SW) is drawn on to think critically about education and the cultural appropriateness of the theories, practices and competencies utilised. The authors draw on their own knowledge and experiences as registered SW’s/educators/academics/researchers, and their own teaching in relation to sensitive topics at local, national and international levels.

Our experiences, whilst based on teaching in other countries, highlight a range of considerations for all educators in teaching sensitive topics. There is a need to learn from these lessons when adopting cultural concept practices to develop curricula. We recommend adopting reflexivity, flexibility, openness, empathy, and emotional intelligence, which should allow colleagues to teach culturally sensitive subjects by forging transcultural understandings and critically applying these understandings to their own culture.

This chapter reports on research that explores new and emerging extended reality [XR] technologies and how they might provide opportunities to trial, investigate, and put into practice their potential to reverse processes of atomisation, polarisation, and intercultural discomfort, in our contemporary society. This transdisciplinary practice-led research was underpinned by disciplines of computer science and engineering, social sciences, history, diverse community economics, human ecology, and Indigenous psychology. The collaboration between these various disciplines with the Māori and non-Māori community members allowed researchers to understand current societal stressors, prioritise relationality, and explore our shared values in the creation of XR experiences for exhibition in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums [GLAM] sector.

A discursive design framework motivated, inspired, provoked, persuaded, and reminded inspiring collaborators, and visitors to the exhibitions, the value of (re)connecting with people and overcoming interracial awkwardness through these curated experiences. The XR technologies provided women a platform to discuss and reimagine first encounters between people from different cultural backgrounds. The technologies included a 180° stereoscopic projection, Common Sense, in which Māori Elder Irene Hancy shared her insight about social engagement and haptic HONGI in which visitors were greeted by a Māori woman Tania Remana via augmented reality. This research has been motivated by a desire to promote and support intercultural understanding in Aotearoa New Zealand, and it extends research by other non-Māori and Māori scholars.

Woman's use of violence has been mainly conceptualised through woman's experiences of victimization. However, more recent perspectives emphasise the female agency, responsibility and meaning of woman's violence. Listening to the voices of victims of women's abuse is a powerful way of learning about woman's use of violence and its impact on the victims. We conducted focus groups with 41 men from four countries who experienced female-perpetrated abuse. Four major types of abuse were identified: psychological abuse and coercive control followed by physical violence and sexual violence. Psychological abuse ranged from verbal assaults and gaslighting to provoking physical altercations and reporting false accusations. Patterns of control included deliberate isolation, threatening false accusations and financial domination. Men reported that women initiated physical violence for various reasons, including jealousy and rage. Some women used different objects that could seriously hurt, including knife, while others slapped, bit, punched or kicked. Several men reported female-perpetrated sexual abuse. Woman's use of violence in the intimate relationship should be treated seriously. A more gender-inclusive approach to partner abuse is required that can focus on a better prevention of abuse for all victims.

Now and again the discourse of women's violence being ignored and minimised emerges, but what is already known about this subject? Within the domestic abuse literature, there appears to be a weighty discord between Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) and family conflict researchers. Both groups present very distinct findings regarding the motives and prevalence of women's use of violence. This theoretical chapter aims to provide an historical and contemporary grounded overview of how women's use of violence in domestic abuse incidents has been depicted in the literature within these two groups of researchers (VAWG and family conflict). This analysis will be especially focussed on the underlying rationale behind women's violence and its prevalence and impact.

As universities grapple with the question of how to prepare students for increasingly uncertain futures, the development of evidence-based frameworks to guide academic program¹ design is critical. Here, we propose a strategic framework with a high impact on program design, implementation, and evaluation as well as mentoring and support for academic program leaders. High impact can be achieved when program leaders are enabled to embed key future-focused capabilities and skills across the curriculum in a program. In order to ensure that these capabilities are systematically and cohesively embedded in students’ learning journeys, we suggest that academic program leaders (e.g., Directors of Studies, Subject Area Coordinators, etc.) require strategic approaches to program design, implementation, and evaluation, as well as mentoring and support. Such approaches would ensure that high impact practices are consistently employed, rather than being the exception in isolated courses.² At Queensland University of Technology, we have developed a holistic model to support “whole-of-program” design for award programs across faculties and disciplines, in a coherent and strategic way. The model we use is based on a framework for curriculum design called the Future Focused Curriculum Design Framework (FFCF), and is an iterative model that places learners at the center of their learning to enable meaningful change to the design of programs. The adoption of the framework is supported by curriculum design studios situated within each discipline-specific faculty,³ which are made up of curriculum and learning designers, working closely with academics in different faculties. A key element of the process is that curriculum design studios enable relationships and communities to develop (Wenger et al., 2002), which in turn allows for contextualized practice. This holistic model supports whole-of-program design for award programs, in a coherent and strategic way and enables communities of practice to emerge in an iterative manner. In this chapter, we share our experiences with using this model and the impacts it has achieved, and we reflect on ways it be adapted for future use and in other contexts.

The aim of this chapter is to describe the purpose of the introduction of the exchange rate commitment by the Czech National Bank (CNB) in the period from November 2013 to April 2017 and its effects on the real economy. The main reason for introducing the exchange rate commitment was concern about the possibility of a prolonged deflationary period in Czechia. Given that the standard monetary policy instruments had already been exhausted on easing the monetary policy conditions, the CNB Bank Board opted for an exchange rate commitment. The secondary objective of the exchange rate commitment was to boost the economy through the positive effect of a weaker koruna on exports. Next, we focus in more detail on the effect of the exchange rate commitment in the economy and the course of the foreign exchange interventions. Overall, we can summarize that the CNB's foreign exchange interventions were an extraordinary monetary policy instrument – in a market economy with inflation targeting and a flexible exchange rate – used in extraordinary times.

The growth of the healthcare industry since the middle of the nineteenth century has offered medical doctors a broad range of opportunities to develop their private practice. However, a major challenge was accessing the new medical technology at the core of this growth, as operation rooms, X-ray machines, laboratories and sterilization equipment were mostly centred in hospitals. Based on the case of Geneva, Switzerland, this chapter discusses the various strategies adopted by medical doctors to benefit from hospital infrastructure for their work. It demonstrates that collective entrepreneurship emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, when groups of doctors started to open collective clinics in response to the impossibility of using the infrastructure of the local public hospital linked to the University of Geneva. This heyday of collective private clinics lasted until the 1990s when listed companies and private investors took over and reorganized these private healthcare organizations.