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In August 2007, over 6,000 sociologists gathered in New York to attend the 102nd meeting of the American Sociological Association and discuss the possibility of radical social transformation in post-modern capitalist society.¹ The adoption of the conference theme ‘Is another world possible?’ was theoretically significant, for it seemed to call into question one of the most fundamental assumptions upon which critical sociology depends: that despite the rarity of radical social change, it is possible, desirable and even imperative to imagine and struggle for better alternatives to existing ways of being. From phenomenological insights into the contingency of our subjective interpretations of reality to the imperative of reconciling ‘appearance’ with ‘reality’; from the long history of collective movements to defend human dignity to the ‘politics of small things’ (Goldfarb, 2006), critical theories of society presume that human fates are not determined and futures are not reified, and that the possibility of possibility is a pre-condition for ‘normal’ human existence. This is not to say that progressive alternatives to the status quo are not often and everywhere repressed to some degree and in some form, or that they are equally distributed or attainable. But as Gustavo Gutierrez once remarked, a ‘commitment to the creation of a just society and, ultimately, to a new human being, presupposes confidence in the future’ (2003, p. 197).

This article offers an in-depth exploration of university communications practice by describing and analysing a publicity and recruitment campaign, called ‘Challenge Everything’, carried out by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in 2018. By providing insight into internal sense-making around the campaign it contributes to literatures in science communication and communication management.

This qualitative research uses semi-structured interviews and informal organisational ethnography, mobilising concepts of sense-making and auto-communication to guide analysis. The focus is on how organisation members made sense of the Challenge Everything campaign.

The analysis focuses on four key themes within organisational sense-making about the campaign: the openness of the campaign meant that it was readily picked up on and personalised by university staff; its meaning was always contextual, shaped by organisation members' roles, interests, and concerns; its controversy seems to primarily derive from questions of representation, and specifically whether organisation members recognised within it their own experiences of university culture; and its development points to the rise of new forms of expertise within university organisation, and the contestation of these.

The research offers only a partial snapshot of one instance of university communications. However, in demonstrating how public campaigns also operate as auto-communication it has important implications for strategic communication within complex organisations such as universities.

The research has particular value in offering an in-depth qualitative study of university marketing practices and the effects these have within an organisation.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on approaches that acknowledge and make explicit the role of emotion in the entrepreneurship education classroom. As entrepreneurship educators, the authors are aware of the affective impacts that entrepreneurship education has on the students and the authors continuously reflect on and support the students through, what is acknowledged in practice, an emotionally charged experience. With this in mind, the authors outline how a variety of disciplines engage with the role of emotions and how an interdisciplinary approach to the topic can support pedagogy.

The authors synthesise relevant arguments from four discrete disciplines: neuroscience; psychology, education and entrepreneurship, which have not previously been combined. The authors argue that the role of emotion in learning generally, has been investigated across these disparate disciplines, but has not been brought together in a way that provides practical implications for the development of pedagogy.

By synthesising the findings from four bodies of knowledge that engage with emotion, entrepreneurship and education, the authors start to develop a theoretical model based around the concept of the emotional ecology of the classroom.

The role of emotion in entrepreneurship education is an emerging topic and the authors’ synthesis of research supports further investigation. The authors’ insights will support educators to develop classroom environments that acknowledge relationships between students and between students and educators. Such engagement could help educators and students to appreciate, acknowledge and address the emotional aspects of entrepreneurship education.

The paper starts to develop new theory around emotions in entrepreneurship education, developing the idea of the emotional “ecology” of teaching environments and highlighting how this might support future research agendas.

This paper endeavours to translate Peirce's ideas into paradigmatic sociological theory in general, and praxis linked to that paradigmatic theory. Greater comprehension of the general usefulness of a Peircian Pragmaticist semiotic perspective (and ‘fallibilism’) will enhance social action and collective responsibilities. As a philosopher, C. S. Peirce interpreted the world, but he himself did not attempt to change it. How can we incorporate a unifying ‘perspective’ such as Peirce's theory into ‘method’ (both methodology and techniques)? How does that an emphasis on methodology improves sociology as an empirically based, rigorous discipline (a human ‘science’) and various forms of praxis, especially applied sociology and public sociology? If politics is going to have any long-term impact, there has to be a degree of sophistication about the theories involved (e.g. conservation of fundamental human rights and liberties, reform within liberal parliamentary democracies, transformation within neo-conservative regimes, applied sociology in professions and occupations like social work and criminology, Feminist critique and action, GLTB action, neo-Gramscian critiques and Michael Burawoy's ‘public sociology’ in the narrow, technical sense.) Praxis can include many forms of political activity that are not specifically informed by any well-developed and coherent theory. In terms of Peirce's Pragmaticist semiotics, we can translate theoretical awareness into praxis, to interpret and to change the world. Good theory and methodology is the most practical way to promote useful social action, applied sociology and public sociology. Anything less than Peircian Pragmaticism and semiotics tends to lead to fragmentation of ‘paradigms’ or postmodernist nihilism.

Any endeavor to circumscribe, with a certain degree of precision, the nature of the relationship between social science and critical theory would appear to be daunting. Over the course of the past century, and especially since the end of World War II, countless efforts have been made in economics, psychology, political science, and sociology, to illuminate the myriad manifestations of modern social life, from a multiplicity of angles. It is doubtful that it would be possible to do justice to all the different variants of social science, in an assessment of their relationship to critical theory. Moreover, given the proliferation of critical theories since the 1980s, the effort to devise a “map” that would reflect the particular orientations and intricacies of each approach to critical theory also would be exacting, in its own right.¹

Any endeavor to circumscribe, with a certain degree of precision, the nature of the relationship between social science and critical theory would appear to be daunting. Over the course of the past century, and especially since the end of World War II, countless efforts have been made in economics, psychology, political science, and sociology to illuminate the myriad manifestations of modern social life from a multiplicity of angles. It is doubtful that it would be possible to do justice to all the different variants of social science in an assessment of their relationship to critical theory. Moreover, given the proliferation of critical theories since the 1980s, the effort to devise a “map” that would reflect the particular orientations and intricacies of each approach to critical theory would also be exacting in its own right.¹