This volume provides a wide-ranging overview of contemporary African political theology (APT). Focusing on Christian expressions of APT, it brings together a distinguished group of Africanist scholars to explore the overall landscape and primary themes of APT today. These themes include its search for identity, the conceptual question of what constitutes the political, the relation with political theology more broadly, and its generative quality. The book engages with questions of both substance and method regarding what African political theology is and how to do it. Whilst it does not ignore expressions of APT that abet corruption, wealth disparities, economic extraction, and poor governance, the volume contends that APT oriented toward justice and peace proves a more genuine expression of Christian tradition. It will be of particular interest to scholars of political theology, African religion and politics, and Christian ethics.

Covering a twenty-five-year period, this book of unpublished keynote speeches calls for a move away from individualistic approaches to therapy and towards socially-oriented and socially-engaged practices. Retaining the directness of the original speeches, Keith Tudor represents his critical ideas on positive mental health, transactional analysis, person-centred psychology, and psychotherapy and politics, arguing for the psychological and social worlds to be brought together to develop therapies that are as much a part of promoting positive mental health as they are ways of responding to distress and dis-ease. The book takes a critical perspective to challenge both therapists and the psychological professions to make themselves and their therapies more accessible and more relevant to the contemporary world. It provides guidance for how clients can engage actively in therapy, while also providing a framework to critique therapy in an informed way.

This wide-ranging and engaging book will be of interest to psychotherapists, mental health practitioners, researchers and students of psychotherapy.

This book offers an in-depth exploration of how organizations can effectively combine artificial intelligence (AI) and human expertise to revolutionize decision-making processes.

As part of the transition from data-centric to decision-centric models, the book presents the Knowledge 5.0 paradigm-a framework that integrates advanced analytics, AI, and human judgment to create superior decision-making systems. This research monograph provides both theoretical foundations and practical applications for understanding the future of knowledge management in the digital age. This book features comprehensive models for integrating AI-driven insights with human expertise, providing a multi-disciplinary approach that includes decision sciences, cognitive science, information systems, and organizational theory. Readers will gain insights into hybrid intelligence systems, the ethical governance of AI in decision-making, and real-world applications across various sectors like business and healthcare. It also addresses the challenges and opportunities of Knowledge 5.0, positioning it as a critical tool for organizational innovation and performance.

Tailored for academics, researchers, and advanced practitioners in knowledge management, AI, and organizational decision-making, this book will also be valuable for postgraduate students and professionals in business analytics, corporate R&D, and think tanks focused on emerging technologies and their impact on decision-making frameworks.

Chapters assess current and historical overt and covert racism in healthcare, going beyond individual prejudice to examine how discrimination is built into organisational frameworks, health research and market regulations. Employing empirical, theoretical and practice-oriented research, contributors cover diverse fields such as elder care, sexual health services and pharmaceutical regulation. They also consider emergent debates around anticolonial work in education and community engagement. In documenting and interrogating racism in health, this Handbook contributes towards the development of a sustainable anti-racist and decolonial practice.

The Handbook of Racism, Ethnicity and Health is a key resource for scholars and students across the social sciences, especially critical health studies and critical race studies. By illustrating how racism takes place in care, educational and market settings the Handbook is of interest for healthcare policy makers and practitioners.

The African continent will be hit hardest by climate change, despite its people contributing the least to global warming. Indeed, African rural populations have a long tradition of adapting their needs to the soil, vegetation and climate. This tradition is understudied yet is significant for adapting to climate change. This book provides insight into how these communities have lived and used their land in relation to climate and vegetation.

This 36th volume of Palaeoecology of Africa presents an interdisciplinary perspective on the historical relationship between humans and their environment, as well as the evolution of the climate in sub-Saharan and tropical Africa. It also explores the challenges posed by climate change and its consequences. It covers a wide geographical area extending from west to east across the center of the African continent. Furthermore, this book covers a broad timeframe, from Pleistocene and Holocene epochs, through the Iron Age, to the last five millennia, up to the present day. Using data and archaeological findings, this book sheds light on Africa's environmental history and climate dynamics. Natural resource exploitation, changes and degradation in vegetation, climate change and the relationship between humans and their environment are introduced and discussed by numerous case studies with the aim to stimulate the international climate debate and future sustainable management practices. Junior and established scientists from Germany, Switzerland, South Africa and Madagascar have strengthened their cooperation and networking in sub-Saharan Africa, a region rich in natural resources and home to a diversity of people, vegetation and animal species.

This Open Access book establishes a strong foundation for future research into the climate and vegetation of sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the relationship between humans and natural resources. It enables us to understand the dynamics of climate change and how humans adapt to their natural environment. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with climate evolution, vegetation dynamics and the transformation of the natural environment by humans, particularly in the sub-Saharan and tropical regions.

This groundbreaking, interdisciplinary collection is one of the first scholarly books in the world to address the impacts of Covid-19 restrictions on the Global South.

Bringing together health and social scientists from around the world--including many leading figures from Global-South countries such as Angola, Bolivia, Colombia, India, Kenya, and Nigeria--the book shows how, in low- and middle-income countries in particular, Covid responses often exacerbate problems and inequalities around education, gender, socioeconomics, and politics and political economics. They negatively and disproportionately affect routine medical treatments; vaccination programmes; access to maternity and neo-natal care; child learning and socialization; women's caring responsibilities; gender-based socioeconomic differences; and rates of domestic violence, all while accelerating existing trends towards political authoritarianism and damaging democratic processes.

In offering in-depth perspectives on all these problems, this book ultimately challenges practitioners to include Southern perspectives in future emergency response-planning, and it develops both global and multidisciplinary paradigms to guide them in their efforts.

Qualitative Research Approaches for Psychotherapy: Further Reflexivity, Methodology, and Criticality provides a theoretically informed, scholarly, reflexive, critical text, comprising chapters that connect readers with their own emerging and/or established research projects. The collection builds on the first volume in this series, introducing and exploring the complexity of a range of different research approaches and their ontological, epistemological, and methodological underpinnings. Each chapter acts as a prompt for psychotherapy researchers to think and feel their way, differently, into their research endeavours. This is a collection of compelling and challenging essays, from authors in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres and from a wide range of theoretical and cultural perspectives, that elucidate and exemplify established and emerging approaches to undertaking qualitative psychotherapy research.

No matter how smart we are, we end up grappling with ideas that resist understanding. In this book, Byzantium is identified as the archetypical civilization that nurtured its innermost doubts. It shows how religious dogma was riddled with inscrutable quandaries, where the highest imaginable entity-God-is considered incomprehensible. Byzantine writers develop a doctrine of divine knowledge as a holy hiatus, and many of the features of Byzantine culture that look odd or irregular to modern eyes are expressions of a religious outlook that venerates a God who cannot be grasped.

From this perspective, Byzantium From the Inside Out solves many puzzles. Why did Byzantine artists paint pictures where spatial recession points the wrong way? Why did they create mosaics and icons with a gold backdrop when it negates space? Why were the faithful so terrified of a worm that chewed their flesh in the grave after death? Why did Byzantine people sigh so much, and why did they speculate about what people did not say rather than what they did say? And why were they constantly reproaching themselves?

Beginning with what is special about Byzantium, the book reveals how incomprehensibility became a dimension of later aesthetics. The study of this inside-out civilization gives non-Byzantinists a new reason to look back to Byzantium, where the aesthetics of incomprehensibility were born. Byzantium From the Inside Out uses philological methods to support its theories, but it does not demand a knowledge of Greek and is written in accessible language.

This important volume focuses on the politics of education reform and the process involved with designing and implementing such reforms in the Gulf region, providing a novel framework for the little-researched K-12 education context in the region.

Chapters demonstrate the involvement, influence and motivation of the ruling establishment in reforming the educational system, and share the experiences of key politicians and policymakers through discussion of the challenges faced in reforming education and perceived outcomes in the region. Using Kuwait as example of teacher policy reform struggle, the chapters then provide a comparative analysis in relation to Qatar and Bahrain to demonstrate regional difference and posit a framework for Arab Gulf states to improve processes and implementation of K-12 educational reforms. Employing political theories to understand education reforms in the Arab Gulf states region from a political perspective, chapters use policy document analysis, international reports, and interviews with policymakers, educators, and faculty to explore solutions and underpin the framework presented.

Contributing much-needed discussion of education reform in the Gulf region from a political perspective, the book will be of use to scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of education policy and politics, international and comparative education, and educational change and school reform more broadly. Those with specific interest in how educational policy unfolds in regions that lack robust democratic history will also benefit.

The inspiring history of women in and around the NFL

Since the inception of the NFL in 1920, professional football has long been dominated by men. But there is a rich history of women who have made profound impacts on the sport for decades whose stories have never been collectively told--until now.

In Changing the Playbook: How Women Have Transformed Professional Football, the amazing stories of these football pioneers are finally revealed. Featuring women such as NFL owner Virginia Halas-McCaskey, scout Connie Carberg, CEO Amy Trask, journalist Lesley Visser, NFL coaches Jen Welter, Jen King, and Callie Brownson, and many more, their lives and careers reveal unique backstories, historic achievements, and incredible impact. These trailblazers faced many obstacles, misogyny, and hostility, but their persistence has led to a new generation of women joining the NFL ranks, forging a legacy that will not be forgotten.

From the "no women in the locker room" policies of the past to female coaches, scouts, executives, media, and officials in the present, professional football has come a long way. Inspired to tell these women's stories for his own daughters, Cash Lambert poignantly shares the courageous and powerful history of women in the NFL, their growing influence on the sport, and how they are changing football for the better.

Listening Pedagogies features an international collection of authors exploring listening as a core element of innovative pedagogical approaches. Serving as a collective manifesto, it advocates for pedagogies that foster generous listening in educational settings and invites readers to reflect on listening as a transdisciplinary practice.

The collection spans a wide range of fields, including early childhood, sound studies, arts-based and artist-led initiatives, Indigenous perspectives, policymaking, teacher education, language teaching, and multi-generational viewpoints. The three sections of the book highlight the diversity of the contributors' expertise and perspectives: 1) Reciprocal Listening examines how listening attentively deepens relationships not only among educators and students, but also among more-than-human entities and the environment; 2) Embodied listening explores listening as a sensing and moving practice with and within bodies; and 3) The Right to Be Heard acts as a call to advocacy for promoting local languages and expanded literacies.

Championing international and interdisciplinary collaboration, this book is recommended reading for researchers and educators with interests in early childhood education, arts education, arts-based research methods, and more-than-human relations.

Centering on timely local and global issues, this volume takes a multidisciplinary approach to explore the rich complexity of community development through an adult education lens. A wide range of experts unpack the nuances of community development within three focal areas: public pedagogy, people and social justice, and local and global perspectives. Readers will gain a robust understanding of the pillars of community development and community assets (e.g., physical, human, social, financial, environmental, political, and cultural capitals) and their importance in affecting positive change. Each chapter provides recommendations for practice, ideas for future research, and reflection questions, making this text an engaging, user-friendly resource that will provide lasting support and direction for students and scholars alike.

Leaders are the backbone of any school and how effective they are can make or break a school community. Yet school leadership is a complex journey fraught with pitfalls and challenges. In this inspiring book, Michael Chiles and Haili Hughes show that leadership isn't just having a title, but about actions, choices, and the ability to adapt to different situations.

The book introduces the Head, Heart, and, Hands model to help leaders navigate the challenges of school leadership. It focuses on the obstacles that often hold schools back, from personal struggles like self-doubt, overwork, and conflict avoidance to relational issues such as broken trust, resistant staff, and parent concerns. The chapters guide the reader through these challenges asking:

• Head: What do we need to understand? What's the real problem? What evidence matters? What strategy works best here?
• Heart: What values are important? How do we support people? How can we build and sustain trust?
• Hands: What actions should we take? What systems or routines will help? How can we empower others and track progress?

Written by two leading experts, this is essential reading for leaders who want to clear the path of obstacles and create the conditions where the whole school community can thrive.

Chapters evaluate theoretical, methodological and applied perspectives across key interconnected areas: characterising and contextualising loneliness, loneliness in particular settings and populations, and global and national initiatives on policy and practice. Contributors move beyond individual and interpersonal studies to pay particular attention to community and societal levels of analysis, where wider structural forces shape lived experiences. Assessing the delivery and effectiveness of intervention strategies, the Research Handbook builds a comprehensive picture of factors which increase the risk of loneliness, as well as those that foster meaningful connection.

The Research Handbook on Loneliness and Social Connection is a vital resource for scholars and students of psychology, sociology, social policy and mental and behavioural health. Practitioners and policymakers will also benefit from its actionable suggestions and multi-level analysis.

Die Arbeit analyisert zunaechst die rechtlichen, technischen und psychologischen Grundlagen rechtsgeschaeftlicher Kommunikation. Darauf aufbauend untersucht sie, welche Auswirkungen eine Automatisierung des Geschaeftsverkehrs auf die Methodik der rechtsgeschaeftlichen Auslegung hat. Sie zeigt, dass sich fuer die durch den Technikeinsatz aufgeworfenen Fragen auf Basis der hergebrachten Auslegungsdogmatik sachgerechte Loesungen finden lassen, ohne dass Geschaeftsrisiken aus der Sphaere der die Automatisierung einsetzenden Partei in die Sphaere der anderen Partei uebertragen werden, aber auch ohne dass Missbrauchsmoeglichkeiten eroeffnet werden, welche die praktische Anwendung der Vorteile von Automatisierungen verhindern.

An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology: Processes and Disorders provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of the field for undergraduate students. The fifth edition has been thoroughly revised throughout to provide a comprehensive introduction to the core topics of cognition, including memory, perception, thinking, and language. Uniquely, the chapters covering normal cognitive function are paired with chapters on their related clinical disorders such as agnosia, amnesia, and aphasia, The book therefore provides a balanced insight into the nature of cognition and its related disorders, which is not found in other cognitive books.

Key features:

• Completely revised and updated throughout to provide a comprehensive overview of current thinking in the field
• Accessibly written by experienced textbook authors and academic experts
• Features a wealth of real-world examples throughout to bring research to life
• Specially designed textbook features, chapter summaries, further reading, and a glossary of key terms

An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology will appeal to all students on an undergraduate psychology degree course, as well as to those studying in related clinical professions.

This book offers an integrated framework that actively leverages AI-driven analytics, empowering businesses to transform raw data into strategic insights, actionable intelligence, and informed decision-making. It expertly covers core AI techniques and presents real-world case studies from diverse industries. Furthermore, the book provides step-by-step methodologies for constructing effective AI analytics solutions, guiding readers through the practical application of these powerful tools.

The author empowers the reader to adopt strategies that actively increase predictive accuracy, automate complex analyses, and improve business processes, ultimately leading to better outcomes. The clear and structured chapters facilitate understanding, starting with the basics and progressing to advanced machine learning algorithms, equipping readers with hands-on skills for future practical applications. Key topics covered include neural networks, deep learning fundamentals, and convolutional and recurrent networks. The book illustrates this essential knowledge with real-world applications for solving complex business problems. Furthermore, it delves into Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods, sentiment analysis, text classification, and document analytics within the context of business cases like customer feedback analysis and market intelligence. By actively engaging with the material, the reader will learn and understand the tools for both predictive and prescriptive analytics, gaining valuable competitive insights and enhanced strategic decision-making capabilities. This comprehensive approach ensures readers can confidently apply AI to drive tangible business improvements.

This book is targeted at upper-level undergraduates and graduates in Business Analytics, Data Science, AI in Business, MBA in Analytics, and Digital Transformation. Industry professionals like business analysts, data analysts, data scientists, AI specialists, and decision-makers seeking strategic AI analytics implementation will also benefit.

With contributions from leading academics and practitioners, chapters analyse contemporary research and literature, emphasising how external expectations or perceptions can guide our choices. Exploring the Social Norms Approach as a practical intervention framework, the Research Handbook provides guidance on how to design and evaluate social norms-based interventions. Contributing authors utilise case studies to demonstrate the real world application of social norms-based mediations for the promotion of positive behaviour change.

This Research Handbook is a helpful resource for scholars and students of psychology, sociology, social policy and behavioural economics. Researchers and practitioners across the social sciences will equally benefit from its pragmatic approach to practice and scholarship.

Construction Dispute Resolution explores problems arising as a result of conflict within the contracting parties' principle-agent relationship. Timely and engaging, the chapters bridge the gap between academic literature and industry application, highlighting the importance of cooperative working and the underlying imbalances in conventional construction contracting practices. Cheung showcases research on suppressing dispute sources and the psychological influences affecting conflict resolution personnel.

Rich in theory and well-grounded with practice, the book will be invaluable to undergraduate and postgraduate students of construction management and law. Construction dispute practitioners will also find this to be a useful reference for the insightful deliberations and actionable recommendations.

Adopting a 'writing differently' approach, it brings together personal narratives that call readers to engage, reflect, and act on as academics.The book looks to the future, exploring how to increase inclusivity in academia by sharing experiences, recognising common challenges and identifying points of connection.

Towards Greater Equality in Academia is a valuable resource for scholars at all stages of their careers. From early career researchers to university management, the book inspires collective action towards shaping a more humane future in academia.

Recent efforts to advance conceptualisations of racial hierarchies have led to the emergence of new debates about the 'why' and 'how' of racism and racial domination. The chapters in this book address these questions by identifying both the mechanisms that produce racial hierarchies and the actors that keep these hierarchies operational, thereby anchoring the domination in its material manifestations, rather than subscribing to traditional theorisations.

Featuring contributions from leading scholars and emerging voices in critical race scholarship, this volume offers innovative theoretical frameworks for understanding structural racism. This book examines critical subject areas including family structure as the cause of inequality, the maintenance of intra-group ethnoracial hierarchies as a barrier to group solidarity, geography and histories of racial violence, and whiteness in organisations. Drawing on empirical research from the United States and Australia, the collection provides concrete examples of how racial domination operates across different contexts and scales.

This book is essential reading for scholars, students, researchers, and practitioners of race and racism studies, colonialism studies, critical race studies, family studies, organisational studies, political science, and anthropology. It offers new ways to name and theorise racial structure whilst providing actionable insights for those working towards racial justice. The essays in this volume were first published in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies.

This book addresses the urgent issue of nations being 'left behind' in an era defined by AI, advanced manufacturing, and knowledge-intensive industries.

Through incisive analysis, the book examines industrialization dynamics across Africa and Asia, using advanced econometric techniques like the ARIMA model to uncover the determinants of deindustrialization. Key chapters include comparative case studies of leading manufacturing firms in China and India, highlighting their strategies for innovation and global competitiveness. The book also delves into the role of infrastructure, education, R&D, and industrial policy in fostering or hindering economic growth, offering a unique perspective on why some nations succeed while others stagnate.

The Economics of Left Behind Regions is essential reading for scholars, policymakers, investors, and development practitioners seeking to understand and address global inequality. It provides actionable insights and a blueprint for nations striving to rebuild their productive systems and achieve sustainable growth in an increasingly knowledge-driven world.

Linguistic Reconstruction and Historical Ecology in the North Pacific Rim explores human-environmental interactions in the Northern Pacific Rim over the last 10,000 years. It introduces students and researchers to linguistic methods for reconstructing how humans have managed and modified landscapes over millennia. The chapters cover a variety of temporal and geographical ranges, including the coastal areas on both sides of the Pacific from Neolithic to medieval times.

This book engages a multitude of Indigenous languages, such as Sinitic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Turkic, Koreanic, Japonic, Ainuic, Amuric, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Yukaghiric, Eskaleut, Na-Dene and Salishan languages. As such, archaeolinguistics is showcased as a truly new frontier in Historical Ecology, bridging the natural and social sciences. The volume adds linguistics to a wide array of windows into the ecological past.

This volume is ideal for advanced students and researchers in archaeology, anthropology, genetics, ecology, and geography.

The book critically examines how visual culture, journalism, digital platforms, advertising, and storytelling shape public perception, social identities, political awareness, and cultural experiences across local and global contexts.

The book presents a diverse collection of scholarly studies that analyse contemporary issues in media and communication through critical, cultural, and technological perspectives. It includes discussions on cinematic representation, identity politics, visual symbolism, gender sensitivity, disability discourse, minority visibility, and digital culture. It investigates the role of films, advertisements, and news media in constructing social meanings and influencing audience behaviour, while others examine technological dependency, digital inequality, machine learning applications in journalism, and inclusive design practices in UI/UX. The volume also explores regional and global cultural narratives through studies on anime fandom, environmental justice movements, festival marketing, and diaspora representation. Combining theoretical frameworks with case-study-based analysis, the book demonstrates how media and communication practices continue to evolve alongside technological advancement, social transformation, and shifting cultural identities in the contemporary world.

This book is intended for researchers, academicians, postgraduate students, media professionals, and scholars in communication, journalism, film studies, cultural studies, advertising, literature, and digital media studies. It is especially valuable for readers interested in interdisciplinary approaches to media, identity, technology, and contemporary socio-cultural transformations.

A Continuing Journey of Currere invites readers into the evolving process of understanding currere, a concept introduced by William F. Pinar in the 1970s.

Rather than viewing curriculum as planned, currere frames curriculum as a lived journey of self-understanding. It calls readers to turn inward to explore themselves in relation to others and the world while situating within the entanglement of past, present, and future. Drawing on Pinar's work, this book provides an understanding of currere that is interwoven with cosmopolitanism, poetic inquiry, ethics, teacher education, and the idea of punctuated manifestations-moments of pause, shift, or intensification that disrupt experience. Currere, here, becomes a lived guide for navigating the fluidity of life, engaging readers in feeling and thought, the given and the possible, the inner and outer worlds.

Richly reflective and deeply empathic, this volume offers a pathway toward a more embodied, attuned, and fluid sense of self, transforming curriculum into an ongoing journey of exploration.