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1 – 10 of 13Peter Szyszlo and Charles Lebon Mberi Kimpolo
The evolving COVID-19 pandemic has made multidimensional impacts on tertiary education, research, and skills development. Yet, no area of academic activity has been more disrupted…
Abstract
The evolving COVID-19 pandemic has made multidimensional impacts on tertiary education, research, and skills development. Yet, no area of academic activity has been more disrupted than the international dimension. These effects are even more pronounced in Africa considering pre-existing challenges, dependence on Northern expertise and resource asymmetries. The scale of the pandemic demands global action, further highlighting the importance of internationalization and “third mission” activities to advance training, research, and innovation to address major STEM challenges. This chapter focuses on the internationalization experiences of the Skills for Employability program, a five-year (2016–2021), $8.5 million project supported by Global Affairs Canada and Mastercard Foundation to advance STEM education and skills development across Francophone Africa. By using the SFE program as a case study, the authors apply an international and comparative lens to critically examine the programmatic shifts which have taken place since the closure of in-person academic activities and suspension of international travel. A key element of this inquiry will be to unpack the institutional shifts which took place as a result of the network-wide lockdown, specific responses and strategies employed, as well as adaptive internationalization measures taken in response to COVID-19.
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Antonio Davola and Gianclaudio Malgieri
The attempt to establish a common European framework for core platforms' duties and responsibilities toward other actors in the digital environment is at the core of the recent…
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The attempt to establish a common European framework for core platforms' duties and responsibilities toward other actors in the digital environment is at the core of the recent scholarly debate surrounding the Digital Markets Act (DMA) proposal. In particular, the everlasting juxtaposition between the “data power” – as emerging from recent cases (Section 2) – that dominant tech companies enjoy and the concept of consumer sovereignty (Section 3) lies at the core of the proposal's attempt to identify digital core platforms as market gatekeepers. Accordingly, this chapter critically investigates the divide between power imbalance and consumer sovereignty in light of the architecture designed by the DMA, with a specific focus on its effectiveness in identifying gatekeepers' power drivers (Section 4). After highlighting the main critical aspects of the pertinent rules, opportunities for fruitful developments are then identified through the reframing of some of the notions considered in the proposal, and namely the role of “lock-in” effects and “data accumulation” (Section 5). Lastly, this chapter suggests that the DMA advancements – while desirable – are bound to be fragmentary in the absence of a wider appraisal of the nature of data power imbalance dynamics in the modern digital markets (Section 6).
Academic literature and news media on young people’s activism predominantly champions young people who align with liberal or progressive values, evident most recently in the…
Abstract
Academic literature and news media on young people’s activism predominantly champions young people who align with liberal or progressive values, evident most recently in the youth-led climate strikes around the world. Research is often undertaken by scholars who see their work as advocacy for children and young people, countering deficit-based depictions of politically disengaged or ill-informed youth. Yet, this scholarship rarely includes young people whose forms of political activism align with conservative, right-wing, or even alt-right politics. Such ‘selective advocacy’ reinforces a limited picture of the who and what of young people’s political participation. In this chapter, I explore what it might mean for the field of youth studies to provide a more complex picture of young people’s activism and the necessary discomfort that emerges when the desire to advocate for young research participants conflicts with a researcher’s own political and moral concerns. Through a feminist post-structural frame, I examine media and public discourses surrounding instances of young people’s activism in conservative, right-wing, and alt-right spaces. I present the case of a conservative protest organised by a group of university students and targeting a drag queen hosted children’s story time at a library in Brisbane, Australia. This case highlights the importance of maintaining ‘epistemic uncertainty’ when it comes to the complexity of youth and activism. If we are to provide a fuller picture of youth activism, I argue that it is important not to overlook less ‘comfortable’ forms that do not neatly align with the progressive advocacy that dominates the field of youth studies.
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Sibusiso D. Ntshangase and Ikechukwu O. Ezeuduji
This chapter presents a recent study which explored the impact of entrepreneurship education on South African tourism students' entrepreneurial intention, regarding starting a…
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This chapter presents a recent study which explored the impact of entrepreneurship education on South African tourism students' entrepreneurial intention, regarding starting a tourism-related business after graduation. The study used a structured questionnaire to collect data from randomly selected tourism students in a South African comprehensive University. Study findings show that entrepreneurship education has an influence on tourism students' entrepreneurial intentions and perceptions of desirability and feasibility. The study results moreover reveal that having entrepreneurial family background and entrepreneurship education played a role in achieving entrepreneurial attributes and desirability. The adoption of various reform programmes targeted at enhancing the graduate employability and/or self-employment, such as the inclusion of a new entrepreneurial track to the undergraduate curriculum, is one of the study's recommendations for the department of tourism studied. Students should be encouraged to apply for the entrepreneurship education track, which includes business training as well as customised coaching and mentorship sessions with accomplished businesspeople, as early as in their first academic year.
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Resul Mercan and Mustafa Sandıkcı
The concept of bleisure is a tourism term that has emerged recently and has become popular. Participation of employees, especially managers and people in business who go on…
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The concept of bleisure is a tourism term that has emerged recently and has become popular. Participation of employees, especially managers and people in business who go on business trips, in leisure activities during their full-time business trips has revealed the bleisure trend. Although bleisure has emerged as a term in recent years, it has been seen that people combine vacations and business trips in previous years.
Considering the research on bleisure tourism, it is thought that bleisure tourism can be helpful to increase employee productivity. The fact that individuals who go on business trips very often are away from their family or friends can create a social deformation. However, people who go on business trips within the scope of bleisure tourism sometimes can take their close friends or family members with them. This provides extra motivation for bleisure tourists and increases work efficiency. However, it is beneficial to plan bleisure tourism. Excessive entertainment or shopping can lead to distraction, being late for work and being over budget on a business trip. For this reason, bleisure should be planned jointly with tourism agencies and companies.
Bleisure tourism will benefit business travellers, travel companies, hotels, restaurants, other tourism businesses and local people. For this reason, it is necessary to focus on studies related to bleisure tourism, a new tourism trend.