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The experiences and challenges encountered by Travellers especially in education is something that I am truly passionate about and want to give others a better insight into. Irish Travellers are defined by the Irish Traveller Movement as a historically recognised minority within Irish society. The group is distinct because of a strong history of sharing an identity, a language and a set of values (Irish Traveller Movement, 2019). In Ireland, there are approximately 31,000 Travellers (Central Statistics Office, 2023). Irish Travellers are a minority ethnic group that experiences discrimination and marginalisation in society (Boyle et al., 2020). According to a large body of evidence, Travellers stand out as a population that is disproportionately disadvantaged in terms of work, housing, health and education (Baker, 2021). One aspect of Irish Travellers' inequality is their educational disadvantage. The hope is for this chapter to make others more knowledgeable on these types of areas so that it can lead to more positive outcomes for Travellers.

This study aims to identify the political alignment and political activity of the 11 Presidents of Britain’s most important scientific organisation, the Royal Society of London, in its early years 1662–1703, to determine whether or not the institution was politically aligned.

There is almost no information addressing the political alignment of the Royal Society or its Presidents available in the institution’s archives, or in the writings of historians specialising in its administration. Even reliable biographical sources, such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography provide very limited information. However, as 10 Presidents were elected Member of Parliament (MP), The History of Parliament: British Political, Social and Local History provides a wealth of accurate, in-depth data, revealing the alignment of both.

All Presidents held senior government offices, the first was a Royalist aristocrat; of the remaining 10, 8 were Royalist or Tory MPs, 2 of whom were falsely imprisoned by the House of Commons, 2 were Whig MPs, while 4 were elevated to the Lords. The institution was Royalist aligned 1662–1680, Tory aligned 1680–1695 and Whig aligned 1695–1703, which reflects changes in Parliament and State.

This study establishes that the early Royal Society was not an apolitical institution and that the political alignment of Presidents and institution continued in later eras. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the election or appointment of an organisation’s most senior officer can be used to signal its political alignment with government and other organisations to serve various ends.

The COVID-19 crisis has sped up digital transformation and technologies by several years. Customers have dramatically shifted to online channels, and businesses have quickly responded by offering additional canals for online shopping and payment. Customers have also been exhibiting greater preferences for contactless payments, and mobile banking has therefore become a norm in both developed and developing countries. This study aims to understand the antecedents of mobile banking actual usage in an early adoption stage setting (i.e. Morocco) through a comprehensive conceptual model combining the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, the DeLone and McLean IS success model and additional constructs extracted from extent literature. The moderating effects of age, gender and education are also examined and analyzed using multigroup analysis.

Based on data collected from 616 Moroccan users, the authors empirically tested the proposed conceptual model using structural equation modeling.

First, consumer M-banking actual usage has a significant effect on customer satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty; at the same time, attitudinal loyalty was significantly influenced by customer satisfaction. Second, while M-banking actual usage was significantly influenced by effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, price value, habit, service quality, trust, attitude and perceived security, the results show no significant impact of system quality and information quality. Third, the relationship between M-banking actual usage and its antecedents was significantly moderated by age, gender and education.

The findings help bank practitioners to understand the importance of meeting customers’ needs and expectations as a prerequisite in enhancing actual usage, satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty. More importantly, the authors emphasize the need for demographically oriented strategies to target different demographic segments of customers.

The study bridges a gap in M-banking literature by offering a thorough understanding of consumers’ mobile banking use during the pandemic. The findings provide evidence of the applicability of the conceptual model proposed in this research. Furthermore, the reflection of the moderating effects of gender, age and education emphasizes the mobile banking usage disparities among dissimilar demographic segments.