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This chapter explores the extent to which female public relations (PR) practitioners perform professionalism in the workplace by interrogating and examining their professional behaviours. Using an ethnographic approach, where the researcher is immersed in the field, it uncovers the lived experiences and behavioural responses of women working in PR agency environments in the United Kingdom and enables a rich description of professional behaviours to emerge.

Fawkes argues that research into roles in PR ‘has tended to assess roles using management rather than sociological theory’ (2014, p. 2). That is not to say that all PR research adopts the same paradigmatic stance. Several scholars have encouraged the development of a research agenda rooted in social theory. Holtzhausen called for a move away from what she termed the ‘modernist approach to organizations’ (2002, p. 251), which focuses on management discourse, and encouraged instead a focus on the postmodern concept of discourse, where meaning is constructed and conveyed through social and institutional practices.

In seeking to discover the ‘lived experience’ of female practitioners, this chapter locates professionalism in the context of their behaviours and enables individuals to articulate their understandings of the relationship between performance and professionalism. Using Goffman's (1959) work on social encounters as performances in conjunction with Foucauldian discourse and Feminist theory, this chapter explores the three stages of performing professionalism – preparation, performance and reception – through the eyes of women working in PR agencies in the United Kingdom to explore their lived experience and determine how gender affects their performance of professional behaviour.

Applying mitigation measures during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in ‘locking down’ of economies, and disrupted agri-food markets worldwide. Income losses and food price increases negatively affected food security. The ‘stay-at-home’ policy led some households towards a positive shift in eating habits and maintaining these changes could contribute to better nutrition. The Russia–Ukraine war and soaring energy and food prices contributes further to the pressure on the global food system and urgency to consider longer term resilience capacities of national food systems.

The aim of the chapter is to identify and review food security challenges that governments and societies have faced during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond, with specific emphasis on Poland.

The methodological approach was to undertake a narrative literature review and to analyse a number of indicators relating to food security at the national level. These were quantified using data from Economist Impact, the World Bank, the European Commission, FAOSTAT and Statistics Poland.

The 2019–2022 Global Food Security Index for Poland remained quite stable, but the number of food insecure people increased significantly. Hence, urgent government measures are needed to ensure food security for all. Since 2021, high food inflation has reduced food affordability and is expected to remain high due to the Russia-Ukraine war, market pressures on energy prices and climate-related weather conditions. Greater food self-sufficiency in Poland is a key strategy to build up the resilience of the national food system.

Sustainable development is generally a difficult concept to explore in an educational setting. Those attempting to teach it require the inter- and transdisciplinary skills to be able to foster in the students not only the knowledge assimilation but also the deep acquisition of values (Faham, Rezvanfar, Mohammadi, & Nohooji, 2017; Lambrechts, Mulà, Ceulemans, Molderez, & Gaeremynck, 2013). Sustainable education is embedded in the curriculum of Food Technology students throughout their four-year degree at Harper Adams University. In this chapter, a brief description of how the curricula are organized is presented. Emphasis is given to one module in the final year of the degree where the content and pedagogical practice as well as the pedagogic nature of the learning environment is analyzed in the light of the literature. The teaching and learning practices developed, and the extent to which they equip the students with skills such as critical thinking, analysis, reflection, and complex problem solving is explored. Two case studies are presented, namely the Loess Plateau (China) and the Chiapas Coffee Farmers (Mexico). These serve to contextualize the extent that students can draw from teaching and learning strategies in the module as well as other experiences (personal or from other modules) and use these to frame the students’ learning.

In this ever changing world, managing our ecosystem and creating a sustainable future seems to be one of the biggest challenges facing humanity. This challenge is further enhanced by ignorance or apathy of people toward the concept of sustainability. In most cases, students who are our future generation are left without any insight, commitment or even understanding their role and responsibility toward creating any meaningful beliefs and actions related to sustainability. Sustainability education is becoming crucial, mainly for young generation so that they have an understanding of concepts such as economic prosperity, resource equity, energy uses, and environmental health and concerns. While educating them on sustainability begins in institutions of education, it is important that sustainability education is well entrenched in the curriculum and everyday practice of their lives. This chapter introduces the volume series on sustainability where authors from different parts of the world narrate their own experience of imbibing sustainability into their curriculum and teaching sustainability to students.

This paper investigates the intricate process of integrating historically excluded social groups into long-established routines. Drawing on a dialectical perspective, the research explores how persistence and change emerge through the interplay of opposing forces, shedding light on the dynamics of integrating new participants while ensuring stability in established routines. The empirical focus is on an Armed Forces’ ground combat training (GCT) course, examining the integration of the first female officers after the formal ban on their participation in close-combat roles was lifted. The findings reveal a nuanced evolution of routine adaptation and truce reformation, characterized by three dialectical cycles: tentative truces, experimental truces, and enactment truces. These cycles involve negotiations between continuity and reformation, accommodation and resistance, and modification and preservation, uncovering a dialectical dance where organizational actors invest intense effort in maintaining the status quo while accommodating ambiguity and settling tensions. The findings extend our understanding of routine dynamics by illuminating the performative aspect of truce-making, highlighting the effortful processes involved in accommodating new participants. This paper establishes a connection between routines and dialectics, providing novel avenues for exploring complex organizational challenges and emphasizing micro-strategies employed by routine participants to address differences in practice. It also contributes to the field of organizational inclusion by offering a dialectical understanding of integration, showcasing the intricate dynamics involved in integrating historically excluded groups into established routines.