Research-informed teaching: a clinical approach

In a bid to attract students amidst increasing competition within the sector, many universities claim that their teaching is “research-informed”. However, there is some disagreement amongst academics about what actually counts as research-informed teaching and therefore how it should be developed and delivered. Furthermore, whilst academic reputation is a key factor for prospective university applicants, the primary objective of the majority is to enhance employability. Institutions must therefore be careful to ensure that research-informed teaching is developed in a way that is perceived to help rather than hinder this fundamental objective. This article seeks to define research-informed teaching and then considers whether clinical approaches to both teaching and research can offer more widely applicable strategies for effective integration of the two. Two case studies are considered: first, the writer’s own experience as a solicitor in private practice; and secondly, Hallam Law, Sheffield Hallam University’s pro bono law clinic. It is submitted that by adopting a clinical approach to the research and teaching on more orthodox, academic modules, it may be possible to develop and deliver research-informed teaching in a way that enhances employability and therefore appeals to prospective law students.     

“Driven to Tears”: Britain,CS Tear Gas,and the Geneva Protocol, 1969–1975

This analysis considers a controversy over whether the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the treaty prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in warfare, covered CS “tear gas.” Widespread deployment of tear gases by American forces in Vietnam after 1964 attracted much international criticism as many believed the Protocol banned such agents and pressure gradually built on the British government to clarify its interpretative position. Its tabling a disarmament initiative to prohibit production and possession of biological weapons in July 1969 exacerbated the situation, provoking allegations of diverting attention from chemical weapons as a favour to America and the “Special Relationship.” Meanwhile, the outbreak of the “troubles” in Northern Ireland earlier the same year, where British forces also used CS, presented further difficulties. Britain rejected inclusion of CS under the Protocol in February 1970 but wrestled at great length over the decision and its consequences under the Harold Wilson and Edward Heath governments. Largely absent from historical accounts, this episode allows an examination of a complex, convoluted issue that had potentially wide-ranging ramifications for the interpretation of international relations and treaties. Similarly, re-creating confidential inter-departmental decision-making processes, particularly comparing scientific and legal interpretations, the processes of governmental bureaucracy and the role played by civil society demonstrates why an element with little immediate linkage to British overseas affairs proved such a conundrum.     

Connecting smallholders with dynamic markets: a market information service in Zambia

Commodity markets have changed significantly in the past two decades, with smallholders increasingly requiring robust market intelligence to understand and secure benefit from the new environment. This article explores the approach to, and lessons stemming from, an IFAD-financed market information service in Zambia. It finds that by locating the service within a pre-existing institution with legitimacy and credibility, the service has secured the interest of a wide range of actors, and has better enabled smallholders and traders to access and utilise relevant, up-to-date, and actionable information to shape decision-making. The article concludes by discussing the key considerations that shaped the institutional analysis, and the issues that will influence the financial sustainability of the service.     

Choosing China: public perceptions of ‘China as a model’

This article examines East Asians and Chinese nationals who select ‘China as a model’ of development. The analysis looks at both macro and micro explanations to show that China's standing as a development model is not in sync with its status as a rising global and regional power. At the macro level, the focus is on country-level patterns, while the micro analysis is drawn from the third wave surveys of the Asia Barometer Survey data conducted from 2011 to 2013 in 13 different countries. The findings suggest that political values, history, geography and socio-economic conditions correspond to different views of China as a model and that those outside of China who select the country as a model are quite different from those in China itself.     

Fighting for Migrant Labor Rights in the World's Factory: legitimacy,resource constraints and strategies of grassroots migrant labor NGOs in South China

China's dizzying economic achievement is not mirrored in its labor rights protection record. Migrant workers in particular do not enjoy rights commensurate with their contribution to the economy. The pervasive infringement of labor rights and the failure of the official protective system have jointly created a niche for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). This article investigates the grassroots migrant labor NGOs in the Pearl River Delta region, an area which has seen unprecedented increases in labor disputes both in terms of quantity and intensity. Making extensive use of in-depth interviews and participatory observations, it examines the strategies and tactics NGOs use for survival and growth in a hostile external environment. This article reveals that administrative illegitimacy and resource shortage have been the two key challenges for grassroots NGOs; in order to survive, they have developed a series of strategies to enhance legitimacy and explore resources. In the meantime, however, antagonistic thinking still drives the government's response to grassroots organizations unless the latter can skillfully balance political ideology and actual operation. Yet, overall, most NGOs still managed to survive despite various difficulties. Reciprocity and mutual trust are of critical importance to peaceful coexistence, if not cooperation, between the state and the grassroots. The building of long-term healthy labor relations in China necessitates more liberal thinking and collaborative governance.     

The Educational and Professional Goals of International Students in Public Service Degrees

International student enrollment in public service degrees such as Public Administration in the United States has grown rapidly. Harnessing this growth to improve the knowledge and expertise of employees in public service is a vital opportunity. However, our survey of public service schools shows that international students perceive an extensive lack of support with financial and linguistic challenges. Furthermore, schools practice little performance evaluation concerning international student experience. We conclude that schools collect more data on international students and communicate better information about programs to improve services and ensure that students know accurately what to expect from their overseas education.     

The Political Economy of Competitiveness and Continuous Adjustment in EU Meta-Governance

This article asserts that attempts to resolve the crisis through recent changes in European meta-governance are just the latest phase in a project to secure “continual adjustment” in European societies to the systemic demands of competitiveness. The structural pressures experienced at the scale of European societies are located in the process and scale of world market integration. This New Materialist scalar-relational approach sees adjustment to the systemic demands of competitiveness as likely to continue into the future and suggests that the scope for alternative more Keynesian programs of reform through EU meta-governance is highly constrained.     

From Personalism to Contractualism: A Review of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project's Latest Documentary History of Emancipation

Since 1982, the collaborative editorial project of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project has published four volume of documentary material placing African Americans as slaves, soldiers, and newly free people, at the center of the process of slave emancipation in the US South. This review of the Project's fifth volume of records, Land and Labor, 1865, critically examines its contribution to our understanding of the emergence of free labor relations in the economy of the postbellum rural South. There, three forces collided in the efforts to remake labor relations after the Civil War ended slavery in the US: the efforts of slaveholders to control property and labor; the aspirations to ‘access to land and control of their own labor’ of former slaves; and the desire of Northerners to impose their own notions of ‘free labor’ as a set of contractual relations on both. Land and Labor, 1865, demonstrates how former slaves and their actions can be placed at the center of the evolution of Reconstruction policy.