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The purpose of this paper is to identify whether or not females believe they associate with the culture of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by investigating the perceptions of female students currently enroled in STEM courses.

The paper presents data from a survey on female STEM students’ “Perspectives of women in STEM”, “Parents’ Science qualification”, “Supports in their STEM Course” and their “Science identify” through a social capital lens. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to analyse the data.

The main findings were that female STEM undergraduates believe social bias, balancing work and family life and lack of role models are the main cause of less women in STEM professions and leadership positions. There were statistically significant differences between how male and female students identified with certain traits, with less females claiming to be intelligent and know about latest discoveries than males.

To eradicate stereotypical views of scientists, it is recommended that Irish higher-education institutions introduce initiatives to increase the socialisation of STEM females within female networks and develop female students’ self-awareness of their own capabilities. The expansion of STEM networks could act as a means to facilitate female students adopting positive science identities, increasing their science capital.

In Ireland, there is a paucity of literature relating to females’ experience of STEM in higher education. This paper provides evidence that despite their engagement with STEM, female undergraduate students subscribe to the stereotypical image of the scientist. This study highlights the need to change the culture experienced by female STEM undergraduates in Ireland so as to improve the experiences and trajectories of women in higher education.

In this chapter, I explore how the queer-coding, gendering and policing of the monstrous female villain figure of twenty-first-century fairy tale media is interrogated and renegotiated in the transformative narrative tradition of femslash fan-fiction. With fan studies often focusing on the most popular, vocal fandom spaces and cultures, femslash (female-female) fan-fiction has been undertheorized in academic scholarship, just as queer female desire is routinely invalidated by the mainstream media properties that inspire femslash fans (Cranz, 2016; Gonzalez, 2016; Ng & Russo, 2017; Stanfill, 2017). By romantically and sexually pairing female villains with the heroines against whom they are canonically cast as antagonists, femslash fans of Once Upon a Time and The Devil Wears Prada subvert the heteronormative and anti-feminist plot machinery that pits women against each other. The engagement of femslash fan authors with the depiction of the characters Regina Mills and Miranda Priestly as literal and figurative ‘Evil Queens’ in their source texts highlights the extent to which both women are situated as ‘villains’ because of their position as ‘unhappy queers’ who obstruct heteronormative happy endings (Ahmed, 2010; Pande & Moitra, 2017; Strauch, 2017). While in the Swan Queen fiction somewhere, someone must know the ending (maleficently, 2012), Regina is only the Evil Queen in her son's imagination, as he tries to make sense of her infidelity, The Lily and the Crown (Telanu, 2013) recasts Miranda Priestly as Pirate Queen Mír, guilty of mass-murder, rather than merely acerbic barbs (as in the film). Through close readings, I argue that the way these texts ask their readers to consider the limits of both villains' desirability, by playing with the terms of their respective criminality, shows the extent to which nuancing and negotiating the ‘evil’ of these ‘queens’ is structurally embedded in these femslash fandoms. The femslash fannish investment these texts reflect, in both the figure of the queer female villain and those who desire her, proposes an alternative version of happiness to the heteronormative happy ending, one that does not attenuate the queer codes that position these ‘Evil Queens’ as monster-outsiders to it, but embraces that monstrosity as a site of power, progress and futurity.

This paper aims to assess whether governance processes that are taking place in the Chinchiná River basin, a coffee culture region in the Andean region of Colombia, are adaptive to climate variability and climate extremes.

A mixed research method was used by reviewing secondary research sources surrounding the institutional governance system of water governance and disaster response and semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with producers and members of organizations within the institutional governance system.

This study found that there is a low response to extreme events. Hopefully, the growing national awareness and activity in relation to climate change and disaster will improve response and be downscaled into these communities in the future. Although, some learning has occurred at the national government level and by agricultural producers who are adapting practices, to date no government institution has facilitated social learning taking into account conflict, power and tactics of domination.

This paper improves the understanding of the vulnerability of rural agricultural communities to shifts in climate variability. It also points out the importance of governance institutions in enhancing agricultural producer adaptive capacity.

The health information management (HIM) profession lacks clarity around leadership and leadership development. To date, little empirical research exists on this topic, and it is unclear if broader approaches for healthcare leadership are suitable. This paper aims to explore which the leadership styles are relevant to the HIM profession. The findings were also used to inform a discussion on how HIM professionals could develop these leadership styles.

Through a systematic scoping literature review, deductive thematic analysis was undertaken to extrapolate common themes around this style of leadership based on transversal competency domains that reflect twenty-first century skills (i.e. critical thinking and innovation, interpersonal, intrapersonal and global citizenship) (Bernard, Watch and Ryan, 2016; UNESCO, 2015). This approach enabled the findings to be discussed from a leadership development perspective.

Analysis of the literature revealed that a relational leadership style through a team-based approach is required. Literature studies on how to develop leadership competencies were not found.

Future policy and research implications include the need for research on transversal competencies to determine if they can shape HIM leadership development.

This leadership style and competencies proposed are relevant across many occupations and may have broader applications for leadership research, education and development.

This paper defines the style of leadership required in the HIM profession and identifies a succinct set of contemporary competencies to inform the development of this type of leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to explore Indigenous Works’ efforts to facilitate Indigenous-led research that is responsive to the socio-economic needs, values and traditions of Indigenous communities.

This paper is grounded in an Indigenous research paradigm that is facilitated by Indigenous-led community-based participatory action research (PAR) methodology informed by the Two Row Wampum and Two-Eyed Seeing framework to bridge Indigenous science and knowledge systems with western ones.

The findings point to the need for greater focus on how Indigenous and western knowledge may be aligned within the methodological content domain while tackling a wide array of Indigenous research goals that involve non-Indigenous allies.

This paper addresses the need to develop insights and understandings into how to develop a safe, ethical space for Indigenous-led trans-disciplinary and multi-community collaborative research partnerships that contribute to community self-governance and well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodological approach to assist and prepare rural community members to make policy makers better aware of their information needs.

The methodological approach developed in this study both combines sequences of mapping presentations and small group discussions, based on ethnographic findings and climate change scenarios and also supports the integration of local and scientific knowledge in an effort to build upon local community members understanding of climate change. Participatory mapping sessions are designed and implemented in three rural communities of the Canadian prairies.

The application of the methodological approach developed in this study results in a set of rural community recommendations, relevant to policy makers, in an effort to ameliorate the potential future impacts of climate change at the local community level.

The need for developing venues capable of integrating the multiple dimensions (e.g. social, economic, biophysical); the multiple realities (e.g. rural community members, scientific community members); and the multiple modes of inquiry (e.g. qualitative, quantitative) involved in climate change vulnerability and adaptation.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the successes and challenges of adaptation to climate change focusing on water governance institutions in Saskatchewan, a province located in the western Canadian prairies.

A framework of vulnerability and adaptive capacity to the effects of climate change is employed. Data are obtained through qualitative research conducted through interviews and focus groups with stakeholders and people playing a role in water governance in Saskatchewan.

There have been many positive institutional developments which have improved Saskatchewan's adaptive capacity. The most promising is the creation of local watershed advisory committees that are poised to implement on‐the‐ground water management decisions. What is lacking, however, is a long‐term comprehensive climate change and adaptation plan, with built‐in flexibility to address present and future climate variability. Without a long‐term baseline plan and vision, Saskatchewan rural communities and the agricultural sector will remain vulnerable to present and future climate‐induced water stress.

The research shows a need for an increased inter‐disciplinary approach addressing environmental issues, and an increased need for academic‐government‐industry partnerships working towards capacity‐building for sustainable climate change adaptation responses.

This inter‐disciplinary research study is the first of its kind conducted in this region of Canada, and blends contributions from physical and social scientists, government and rural stakeholders.

This paper aims to report findings of a study of vulnerability that identified adaptation strategies of male and female farmers in two regions of Eritrea. The country is suffering from food shortage because of climate and non-climate stressors. As such, erratic rainfall, chronic droughts and extreme weather adversely affect crop production. This paper answers the question of how policy instruments and cultural practices, and their interaction, increase or reduce the vulnerabilities of male and female agricultural producers, including producer perceptions of how instruments and culture can be improved.

Interviews and focus groups were conducted in the two study regions in Eritrea. Documents and transcripts of the interviews and focus groups were coded by theme and analyzed.

Findings revealed that the main rainy season has reduced from four to two months, and the minor rainy season has often failed. As a result, exposure and sensitivity to climate change affects all farmers. These climate change impacts together with Eritrean government policy instruments, including the limited availability, affordability and accessibility of agricultural inputs such as land, fertilizer, seeds, and male labor exacerbate the vulnerability of agricultural producers. Tigrinya farm women are the least able to adapt to extreme weather because of an unequal distribution of resources resulting from cultural, patriarchal views of women which have prevented them from being regarded as equal primary farmers and further limit their access to the resources mentioned. This vulnerability is exacerbated by the prescribed military service of men in their community (which is not prescribed in the matrilineal Kunama community). Producers perceive that addressing this gender inequality and improving government instruments, most importantly getting rid of mandatory military service, will improve adaptation.

Concrete recommendations made by the community are reported.

This paper presents important findings from qualitative research conducted in Eritrea.

Conducting academic searches within online digital libraries can be a difficult task due to the complexity of the searcher’s information need. The interfaces for such digital libraries commonly use simple search features that provide limited support for the fundamental strategies that academic searchers employ. The authors have developed a novel visualisation interface called Bow Tie Academic Search to address some of these shortcomings, and present in this paper the findings from a user evaluation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A controlled laboratory study was conducted to compare a traditional search interface to Bow Tie Academic Search. In total, 24 graduate students were recruited to perform academic searches using the two candidate interfaces, guided by specific sub-tasks that focus on citation and keyword analysis strategies.

Although the use of the core visualisation and exploration features did not reveal differences in retrieval effectiveness or efficiency, the query refinement features were found to be effective. Strongly positive impressions of usefulness and ease of use of all aspects of the system were reported, along with a preference for using Bow Tie Academic Search for academic search tasks.

This study provides insight into the potential value for providing visual and interactive interfaces for supporting academic search tasks and strategies. While the quantitative improvements over the traditional search interface were minimal, the qualitative measures illustrate the value of Bow Tie Academic Search.

In this chapter, the authors contribute to the scholarly discourse on poverty, inequality, and economic mobility within low-income families who have children with disabilities. Few extant studies have addressed issues of socioeconomic mobility relative to families with children who have disabilities. Accordingly, we employed analyses of secondary longitudinal ethnographic data from the Three-City Study to explore socioeconomic mobility among 31 mothers of children with disabilities in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio. The authors examined two central issues that emerged in our ethnographic data: (1) mothers’ aspirations regarding their socioeconomic mobility, and (2) the barriers which make it difficult for them to reach their mobility aspirations. The authors also considered the role of family comorbidity and cumulative disadvantage in this inquiry. Through our analyses of mothers’ talks regarding socioeconomic mobility, we identified three domains of their aspirations – work and career, education, and intergenerational. We also identified three “barrier bundles” – pragmatic needs, relationship and social liabilities, and socio-emotional concerns – which compromised mothers’ abilities to be upwardly mobile. In essence, we found that mothers’ aspirations were not aligned with the barriers that precluded them reaching their goals. The authors conclude with a discussion on the implications of this research for future studies.