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The purpose of this paper is to present emergent findings from an evaluation of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden (SAKG) Program showing that the program promoted appreciation of cultural diversity and inclusion of culturally diverse groups.

The findings reported here are from the qualitative component of a mixed-method, nonrandomized, pre- and post-comparison evaluation study. Focus groups and interviews were held with school principals, teachers, program specialist staff, parents, volunteers and children at the program schools.

In a culturally diverse school, the program enhanced the school’s capacity to engage and include children and families from migrant backgrounds. In less diverse settings, the program provided opportunities for schools to teach children about cultural diversity.

Assessing the program’s impact on multicultural education was not a specific objective of this study, rather these findings emerged as an unanticipated outcome during interviews and focus groups that explored participants’ views on important changes to schools associated with the program. Thus, the quantitative component of the evaluation did not assess the extent of this program impact and further research is recommended.

The program may have particular value in culturally diverse schools, providing benefits in terms of engagement of children and families and potentially, in the longer term, associated improvements in learning outcomes.

These findings suggest that the program can help to promote social equity and inclusion for culturally diverse groups.

This paper highlights critical equity implications associated with school-based programs’ capacity to include culturally and linguistically diverse groups.

Post-disaster research presents particular challenges for the qualitative researcher due to the wider contextual demands of media attention, public debates and intense scrutiny of policy and service delivery. It highlights the importance of reflexive practice to identify and address any unintended influences on the research processes and outcomes. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this paper the authors present three case studies of post-bushfire research to demonstrate how the authors adopted a reflexive approach to address external pressures on the conduct and presentation of the research.

There are various types of reflexivity identified in the literature to identify influences on the research participant and the research findings arising, for example, from the way the researcher shapes the research findings (personal reflexivity), and the influence of the research process (epistemological reflexivity). In this paper the authors argue for a different reflexivity: one that is political and has a direct influence on the researcher.

Adoption of political reflexivity is an important tool in post-disaster research to ensure that external influences do not undermine the integrity of the research processes, findings and dissemination.

The importance of reflexivity in research is well recognized as a means of addressing power and unintended influences on research participants and research processes. The authors introduce the notion of political reflexivity to this debate in recognition of the need to address the potential for research findings and reports to be compromised by political agendas.

Seeking ways towards a sustainable future is the most dominant socio-political challenge of our time. Marketing should have a crucial role to play in leading research and impact in sustainability, yet it is limited by relying on cognitive behavioural theories rooted in the 1970s, which have proved to have little bearing on actual behaviour. This paper aims to interrogate why marketing is failing to address the challenge of sustainability and identify alternative approaches.

The constraint in theoretical development contextualises the problem, followed by a focus on four key themes to promote theory development: developing sustainable people; models of alternative consumption; building towards sustainable marketplaces; and theoretical domains for the future. These themes were developed and refined during the 2018 Academy of Marketing workshop on seeking sustainable futures. MacInnis’s (2011) framework for conceptual contributions in marketing provides the narrative thread and structure.

The current state of play is explicated, combining the four themes and MacInnis’s framework to identify the failures and gaps in extant approaches to the field.

This paper sets a new research agenda for the marketing discipline in quest for sustainable futures in marketing and consumer research.

Approaches are proposed which will allow the transformation of the dominant socio-economic systems towards a model capable of promoting a sustainable future.

The paper provides thought leadership in marketing and sustainability as befits the special issue, by moving beyond the description of the problem to making a conceptual contribution and setting a research agenda for the future.

The latest financial crisis has stressed the need of understanding the world financial system as a network of interconnected institutions, where financial linkages play a fundamental role in the spread of systemic risks. In this paper we propose to enrich the topological perspective of network models with a more structured statistical framework, that of Bayesian Gaussian graphical models. From a statistical viewpoint, we propose a new class of hierarchical Bayesian graphical models that can split correlations between institutions into country specific and idiosyncratic ones, in a way that parallels the decomposition of returns in the well-known Capital Asset Pricing Model. From a financial economics viewpoint, we suggest a way to model systemic risk that can explicitly take into account frictions between different financial markets, particularly suited to study the ongoing banking union process in Europe. From a computational viewpoint, we develop a novel Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm based on Bayes factor thresholding.

Cochlear's first product, the 22-channel Nucleus implant, was the result of a research programme that has been dated back to 1967, when Graeme Clark, an ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeon, commenced doctoral work on the electrical stimulation of the hearing nerve. Following the completion of his PhD in 1969, Clark was appointed the inaugural Chair in Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne. When he joined the university in 1970, his primary objective was the practical application of his PhD research: namely, the development of a ‘bionic ear’, an electronic device that would stimulate the hearing nerve in the profoundly deaf. He realised early on that lack of resources would be one of his major impediments:across the road [from my office] the experimental research laboratory was in a disused hospital mortuary. When I looked at the mortuary my heart sank. It was dilapidated and bare. There was a stone table in the centre, but little else. The walls needed painting, and the light diffused poorly through the high windows. Anyway, I had no money to buy equipment even if the laboratory itself were satisfactory. (Clark, 2000, p. 54)

This study analyses how media choices can be used in the construction of social identity.

We approach the topic through the analytical lens of identity work. We present a case study of a community of IT students during their first year of studies, including participant observation, focus groups, and surveys. We focus on what community means to the individuals located within a specific social context. This allows us to examine ICT use and adoption holistically as a key aspect of community formation and identity maintenance.

We depict everyday interactions in which the choice of an older information communication technology, Internet Relay Chat, serves participants in their quest for social belongingness in their community and in distinguishing the community positively from other social groups. This chapter describes how identity work is accomplished by adopting and valuing shared, social views about users versus non-users, including: (1) emphasizing the skills and efforts needed for using Internet Relay Chat (IRC), (2) undermining the use of other technologies, and (3) deploying and referencing IRC jargon and “insider humor” within the broader community.

By examining online and offline social interactions in a defined community over time, we expose the process of identity work in a holistic manner. Our analysis emphasizes the underlying process where media choices can be harnessed to fulfill the need to identify with groups and feel affirmed in one’s claims to both personal and social identity.

This paper surveys theoretical and practical issues associated with a particular type of information retrieval problem, namely that where the information need is pictorial. The paper is contextualised by the notion of a visually stimulated society, in which the ease of record creation and transmission in the visual medium is contrasted with the difficulty of gaining effective subject access to the world's stores of such records. The technological developments which, in casting the visual image in electronic form, have contributed so significantly to its availability are reviewed briefly, as a prelude to the main thrust of the paper. Concentrating on still and moving pictorial forms of the visual image, the paper dwells on issues related to the subject indexing of pictorial material and discusses four models of pictorial information retrieval corresponding with permutations of the verbal and visual modes for the representation of picture content and of information need.

This study aims to explore the individual lived crucible experiences of women leaders in higher education (HE) and business as the catalyst to investigate organisational inequality regimes that prevent women leaders from fully participating, contributing and flourishing at work. Drawing upon Bolman and Deal’s four-frame theoretical organisational model, this study analyses women’s lived crucible leadership experiences to better understand the organising processes and practices that render intersectionality invisible that reinforce and perpetuate inequality regimes.

A collaborative autoethnographic research method was selected for data collection. The research team members each selected one significant crucible moment from their professional career and used the Gibb’s six-part reflective cycle to document their narrative and reflect on their leadership experience. A reflexive thematic analysis was used based on Braun and Clarke’s six phases.

The study features the importance of creating a climate in organisations that acknowledges the need for greater equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) to support women leaders. Four global themes emerged from the analysis of the leadership narratives: organisation, power dynamics, emotional distress and perseverance and intersectionality. These themes illuminate a greater understanding of organisational life for women and confirm the presence of inequality regimes of gender and race.

This is the first study to explore the impact of women leaders’ crucible experiences through the lens of the Bolman and Deal’s model that highlights the need to consider an EDI lens as the fifth frame.