From Fashion Colours to Spectrum Analysis: negotiating femininities in mid-Victorian women's magazines

This article closely examines the first set of accusations in the Matthew Hopkins witch‐hunting phenomenon in early modern England by paying particular attention to the female actors. It reveals that Matthew Hopkins was not only a member of the elite group that lent credibility to the witchcraft accusations arising from within the community, but he also had kinship ties with Susan Edwards, mother of the child supposedly bewitched to death by this group of women. This impacts on the traditional historiography concerning Hopkins's role as a witch‐finder. Secondly, the evidence reveals a group of marginalized women who befriended and supported one another. It is argued that this group of independent women, meeting together without the supervision of a man, challenged the social order. Witchcraft was a social phenomenon that had the ability to satisfy many divergent needs. When multiple agendas converged, a suggestion by a cunning person could end in the execution of many victims. The author suggests that the so‐called witches' meeting was actually a prayer meeting of semi‐literate, devout women, who fell outside the parameters of the ‘godly’ community of Mistley parish. In this case, the accusations may not have spread any further than the two women who were initially suggested by the cunning woman, if it had not been for the women's group meetings.     

Meeting the demand for skilled and experienced humanitarian workers

The humanitarian aid sector faces a growing skills shortage, at a time when it aspires to expand the scale, quality, and impact of its response to humanitarian needs. Rapid staff turnover has been identified as one of the major constraints on both staff capacity building and organisational learning. A study undertaken for Oxfam GB supports previous findings that traditional human-resource practices in the humanitarian field, with many staff employed on short-term contracts, have inhibited skills development and constrained programme and organisational learning.     

Non State-wide Parties in Spain: An Attitudinal Study of Nationalism and Regionalism

The contribution of regional parties to the development of thestate of the autonomies in democratic Spain is the focus ofthis article. One of the most important features of the transformedstate is non-statewide parties (NSWPs) that have emerged asa result of diversity and expressions of regionalism. The levelof electoral strength and institutional presence, attitudinalbases of their electoral support, and perceptions of the territorialspace and representation of NSWPs are analyzed.