Knowledge production in higher education: Between Europe and the Middle East

With a selected focus on Europe and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Knowledge production in higher education presents a reflexive understanding of how Europe is taught and studied at MENA universities and how knowledge about the MENA is produced in Europe. This focus is based on the observation that higher education is rarely an apolitical space and an acknowledgement of how ‘every view is a view from somewhere'. It therefore explores the politics of institutes of higher education in view of often competing scholarly practices. Furthermore, it examines the historical evolution of French, German and Italian scholarship on the MENA;analyses the cases of Malta, Palestine and Turkey with their respective liminal characteristics in between the MENA and Europe, and how these impact on higher educational approaches to the study of the Other;considers critique as the driving force not only of the higher educational establishment but of liberal and illiberal contexts, with a specific focus on Denmark, the Netherlands and Egypt;and examines influences upon knowledge production including gender, the COVID-19 pandemic (with a focus on the UK and Syria) and think tanks. © Manchester University Press 2023.

Managing risk in commercial property development projects during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from China

The COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest global health crisis in years. China is the first market primarily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with unprecedented lockdown measures bringing real estate and other economic activities to a standstill. This study has two objectives: (1) to identify the risks critical to the risk management of commercial real estate (CRE) development projects based on the project life cycle stages and (2) to identify the stages most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the risk factors at different stages. Three rounds of the Delphi study were conducted with nine experts involved in the construction project. The findings indicate that the construction, lease and sale phases are prone to significant risks. Additionally, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) identified ‘health and safety risk' as the most critical risk factor during the construction phase and ‘marketing and payback risk' as the most critical risk factor during the lease and sale phase. This study enhanced the effectiveness of risk management practices for implementing CRE development projects in China.

Examining labour market hierarchies in Slovakia from the perspective of intra-EU migration and return

This paper applies the concept of hierarchised mobility to study return migration in Slovakia in the context of the country's EU accession. The analysis is based on the national Labour Force Survey dataset, covering a decade of labour migration and return between the 2008/2009 financial crisis and the Covid pandemic, concentrating in particular on the short-term labour market outcomes for less skilled return migrants. It is found that even under improved economic conditions, patterns of labour mobility set in the aftermath of the EU's Eastern enlargement continued to persist, together with structural inequalities in the Slovak labour market. Returnees in Slovakia face a markedly higher unemployment rate relative to stayers, and are less likely to be self-employed shortly after their return to Slovakia, compared to stayers or migrants. Returnees were also more exposed to instability in their jobs than migrants and stayers. From this perspective, return migration itself is a reflection of hierarchised mobility, as returnees clearly occupy the least stable jobs, and are the most exposed to instability in their employment. It appears that migration patterns from and to Slovakia are ingrained within the broader functioning of the European labour market.

Imagining Feminist Academic Collaborations Beyond Exceptionalized Crises

In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, universities and colleges across the United States began to unroll plans to shift residential teaching to remote or virtual learning environments. As feminist scholars primarily located in the US academy, we are invested in mapping longer genealogies of crises in the settler-colonial US academy, delineating how racist, imperial, and hierarchical structures that are replicated and reinstated by the academy formulate continuous and ongoing discursive and material violence towards racialized, classed, and gendered minorities. By centering what we refer to as feminist modalities of care tthat center collective, communal, and transnational feminist interventions, this article challenges the imperatives of academic success and survival beyond the logics of emergency and crisis. We explore the interlinked transnational discourses of emergency and crisis, mapping their travels and circulations in local and global academic networks in ways that reproduce systemic inequalities and the politics of value that inform power hierarchies within the academy. Energized by a refusal to normalize crises, this essay is invested in showing how feminist interventions, here explored under three modalities, including research and teaching collaborations and coalitions that take place inside and beyond the academy and against its competitive logics, can challenge the imperatives of academic survival premised on notions of individualistic care, productivity, and worth.

The neo‐nationalist ascendency: further thoughts on class, value and the return of the repressed

March 2020. On the borders of EU Europe, with the Covid pandemic threatening human lives, sociality and welfare everywhere, Syrian refugees on the ‘Balkan Route', bombed out of Idlib, are being beaten in the forests with wooden clubs by Romanian border guards before they are thrown back onto Serbian territory for further humiliations.1 Romanian return migrants, fleeing the Italian and Spanish Corona lockdowns en masse, are being told over the social networks that they should never have come back, contagious as they are imagined to be and a danger for a woefully underfunded public health system for which they have not paid taxes. Further South, the Mediterranean is once again a heavily policed cemetery for migrants and refugees from the civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa – collateral damage of Western imperial delirium and hubris – as Greece is being hailed by the European President for being the ‘shield' behind which Europe can feel safe from the supposedly associated criminality. Viktor Orbàn, meanwhile, has secured his corrupt autocracy in Hungary for another indefinite stretch of years after the parliament gave him powers to singlehandedly fight the Covid pandemic and its long-run economic after-effects in the name of the Magyars and in the face of never subsiding threats from the outside to the nation. Orbàn will also continue, even more powerfully so now, to fight immigrants, gypsies, gays, feminists, cultural Marxists, NGOs, George Soros, population decline, the EU, and everyone else who might be in his way. Critique from the EU is in Budapest rejected as being ‘motivated by politics'. Vladimir Putin, too, has just been asked by the Russian parliament to stay on indefinitely in his regal position, so as to safeguard Russia's uncertain national future. Erdogan of Turkey is sure to be inspired and will not renege from his ongoing and unprecedentedly brutal crackdown on domestic dissent and ‘traitors to the nation' while his armies are in Syria and Libya. Turkish prisons will continue to overflow.All these, and manifold other events not mentioned here, are part of processes in the European East that have been continuous (as in ‘continuous history versus discontinuous history') for at least a decade, all with a surprisingly steadfast direction. They appear to be diverse, occasioned by ethnographically deeply variegated and therefore apparently contingent events. Anthropologists, professionally spellbound by local fieldwork, are easily swayed to describe them in their singularities. But that singular appearance is misleading. These and similar events are systemically rooted, interlinked, produced by an uneven bundle of global, scaled, social and historical forces (as in ‘field of forces') that cascade into and become incorporated within a variegated and therefore differentiating terrain of national political theatres and human relationships that produce the paradox of singularly surprising outcomes with uncanny family resemblances. These forces can be summarily described as the gradual unfolding of the collapse of a global regime of embedded and multi-scalar solidarity arrangements anchored in national Fordism, developmentalism and the Cold War, into an uncertain interregnum of neoliberalised Darwinian competition and rivalry on all scales, with a powerfully rising China lurking in the background. Neo-nationalism appears from within this unfolding field of forces as a contradictory bind that seeks to enact and/or re-enact, domestically and abroad, hierarchy and deservingness, including its necessary flip side, humiliation. That is one aspect of the argument I have been trying to make since the end of the nineties (for example Kalb 2000, 2002, 2004), when such forces began to stir in the sites that I was working on and living in: The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Hungary and Poland.That universalising argument is easily corroborated by events in the west of the continent, which paint a similarly cohesive though phenomenologically variegated picture.2 Marine Le Pen nd Matteo Salvini are still credibly threatening to democratically overthrow liberal globalist governments in France and Italy on behalf of the ‘people' and ‘the nation', and against the elites, the EU, immigrants, the left and finance capital. Dutch politicians, in the face of the global coronavirus calamity, still believe one cannot send money to Italy and the European South lest it will be spent on ‘alcohol and women'. Anonymous comments in the Dutch press on less brutal newspaper articles often echo the tone of the one that claimed that Southern countries were mere ‘dilapidated sheds … and even with our money they will never do the necessary repair work' (NRC 30 March 2020, comments on ‘Europese solidariteit is juist ook in het Nederlandse belang'). Until its impressive policy turn-around in April/May 2020 in the face of the Covid pandemic and the fast-escalating EU fragmentation amid a world of hostile and nationalist great powers, the German government did not disagree. It was Angela Merkel herself who set up the Dutch as the leaders of a newly conceived right-wing ‘frugal' flank in the EU under the historical banner of the Hanseatic League to face down the federalist and redistributionist South. That Hanseatic banner suggested that penny-counting, competitive mercantilism and austerity, and its practical corollary, an imposed hierarchy of ‘merit' and ‘successfulness', must hang eternally over Europe. Britain, meanwhile, has valiantly elected to leave the EU in order to ‘take back control' on behalf of what Boris Johnson imagines as the ‘brilliant British nation' (The Economist 30 January 2020). It would like to refuse any further labour migrants from the mainland, and seek a future in the global Anglosphere, beefed up by a revitalised British Commonwealth where hopefully, when it comes to ceremony, not juridical equality but imperial nostalgia and deference will rule (see Campanella and Dassu 2019).

Determinants of tourism attractiveness for Taiwan's offshore islands

Evaluating the influence factors of the attractiveness of offshore island tourism will help to understand customers' motivations in choosing tourism activities, and for the travel operators to improve their promotion of tourism products. This paper employed the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method to empirically analyze the determinants of tourism attractiveness of Taiwan's offshore islands. The results indicate that the 'substantial aspect' is the most important evaluation dimension on offshore island tourism attractiveness. Among the 16 influence factors, the 'natural resources of regional attractions,' 'cultural heritage and cultural resources,' and 'well-established and convenient transportation' are the most three determinants about the tourism attractiveness of Taiwan's offshore islands. Furthermore, some discussions concerning the key determinates are provided for Taiwan's offshore tourism.

Exploratory Analysis of Twitter Data to Support Decision-Making in Law Enforcement: An Analytical Study of COVID-19 Using the NodeXL Tool

The COVID-19 epidemic constituted a crisis for health facilities in 2020. This was due to less medical staff available, degrading employment conditions, and higher death rates. These conditions led to tweets (messages posted on Twitter) launching hashtags titled #ln_solidarity_with_the_Egyptian_doctors (#Solidarity_with_doctors_Egypt) to urge medical staff in Egypt to strike for better working conditions. This resulted in less medical care being provided and threats to public security. This study addresses the exploratory analysis of "Twitter Platform" data during the COVID-19 pandemic in Egypt in April 2020 to test documented mechanisms to process mass data and identify accounts that lead the public opinion-gathering processes on Twitter. It analyzes the hierarchical structure and their ideological belonging. The study uses the URL Decoder/Encoder tool to transfer Arabic hashtags into codec symbols. The study deduced that dialogue clusters on Twitter formed Community Cluster Networks in the study sample. Findings proved significant in determining the accounts leading the public opinion-gathering process. They were recognized through the coordination and arrangement function, as well as the hierarchical structure of the group and their intellectual and ideological tendencies. Finally, the study confirmed the increase of decision makers' opportunities in gathering accurate information and producing high-quality inferences when using multiple open-source analytical tools, especially information exploratory analysis tools.

Rethinking Migrant Hierarchies: Non-Citizen Political Engagement and Policy Cycles in South Korea

Most migrants in South Korea reside in the country as foreign citizens. Access to citizenship and social rights are tied to residence status, resulting in differential treatment of foreign-born residents. This article contributes to research on non-citizen hierarchies by demonstrating the formation of fluid hierarchies through a case study of non-citizen political engagement in South Korea during Covid-19. The study employs critical policy discourse as an analytical lens to examine policy cycles as they develop through negotiations between state and society. The findings show that the hierarchization of non-citizens evolves throughout policy cycles and operates incoherently across sets of policies. The formation of fluid hierarchies is discussed with implications for migration policy and the study of migrant hierarchies. © 2023 by INSTITUTE OF KOREAN STUDIES.

What can anarchism do for nursing?

The notion of mutual aid, which Peter Kropotkin introduced in the 19th century, goes against the logic of competition as a natural condition, and instead shows how mutual aid is a more important factor to consider for the survival and flourishing of a group. The best cooperation strategies allow organisms to adapt to different types of changes in their environment-and we have witnessed a lot of these changes since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This propensity towards cooperation is not a foreign concept, despite how it seems to be overshadowed by individualism in Western societies. These reflections then lead us to believe it is possible to apply the anarchist philosophical principle of mutual aid to our social organizations, rather than giving priority, again and again, to competition and professional hierarchies, especially in healthcare systems, and particularly in hospitals were the majority of nurses work. For us, anarchist philosophical precepts, including but not limited to mutual aid, can be the key to a more adequate functioning of healthcare institutions. Anarchism can help to imagine the first steps needed to take to gradually move away from ideologies that encourage competition, professional hierarchies, and illegitimate authority. In this paper, we will first explore some anarchist philosophical precepts before turning to mutual aid as it is currently conceptualised, then highlight several concrete ways it is visible in nursing, as well as ways it can be applied in hospitals, and healthcare systems.

Comment on 'Speaking up during the COVID-19 pandemic: Nurses' experiences of organizational disregard and silence'.

AIM: We aimed to highlight some salient thoughts regarding the importance of addressing the challenges nurses face when speaking up, particularly in situations involving power, hierarchy, fear and threat, and boost scientific and professional debates around this timely topic, starting from the qualitative article published by Abrams et al. (Journal of Advanced Nursing; 2023). BACKGROUND: Although acknowledging the contribution of nurses to patient care and their ability to detect and manage potential safety hazards through observations and insights, nurses may encounter challenges in expressing their concerns, particularly in situations that involve power dynamics and hierarchical structures. In this regard, Abrams et al. (Journal of Advanced Nursing; 2023) studied nurse challenges in speaking up during COVID-19, identifying key elements related to speaking up, consequences and responses. Discussing this topic may aid scientific and professional debate. DESIGN: Commentary on a qualitative design performed with a social constructionist approach to critically evaluate how nurses spoke up during the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting outcomes. METHOD: Searching for relevant literature to support acknowledging and addressing obstacles nurses face when expressing concerns by speaking up and promoting scholarly and professional discussions on this topic. FINDINGS: The challenges faced by nurses when speaking up during the COVID-19 pandemic might reflect broader social, cultural and academic trends: power dynamics, hierarchical structures, deference to authority in healthcare organizations and a lack of attention to nurses' experiences in the literature can make it difficult for nurses to raise their concerns. CONCLUSION: Creating a supportive environment that values nurses' perspectives can help healthcare organizations tap into their knowledge and make data-driven decisions leading to better patient outcomes, job satisfaction and organizational performance. Effective policies, best practices and research are necessary to understand nurses' experiences in speaking up and designing strategies to create healthy work environments.

The blurring line between freelance journalists and self-employed media workers.

This study uses the question, 'what makes a freelancer specifically a journalist' as a starting point for investigating the ways Australian freelance journalists experienced and managed precarious employment in COVID-19 impacted 2020. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 32 self-identified freelance journalists, we analyse the types of work they did, the influence of the precarious job situation on their work choices and the consequent ways they chose to display their identity as journalists. Our findings reveal a complex picture, which calls into question some of the binaries established around journalism. While nearly all participants had to resort to work outside journalism in 2020, at least half still displayed strong links to journalism, demonstrated by their sense of belonging to a community of journalists, and their continued interest in doing self-funded public interest journalism as 'passion projects'. However, we also noticed a blurring between the descriptors of journalist and writer, based partly on employment opportunities but also, importantly, on interest in increasing creativity in the journalistic space. These results lead us to question work-test definitions as a signifier of a freelancer's bond to journalism and to propose, instead, that freelancers merit a new standing in the flattening hierarchy of journalism.

Information System for Leisure Time-Management in Quarantine Conditions

The research is devoted to the study of the problem of planning leisure time during quarantine periods (forced staying at home) using information technology tools. The need for adaptation and modification of the usual forms of leisure activity to the new format has been determined. The methods of providing recommendations were studied. Using the Analytical Hierarchy Method, the optimal type of system for the implementation of the proposed solution was chosen-a recommendation system. The algorithm of the recommendation system, which offers alternatives for spending time during periods of forced staying at home, is described. A weighted hybrid mechanism was used to provide recommendations. The recommendations feature of the developed prototype of the information system is the provision of offers that contain, in addition to passive types of leisure, also active ones that take into account the characteristics of each of its users. © 2022 IEEE.

GLOBAL HEALTH GOVERNANCE POST-COVID-19: TIME FOR A HIERARCHICAL ORDER?

The COVID-19 has renovated the debate about global health governance. Many scholars have proposed that the World Health Organization (WHO) should assume the position of a central coordinator with hierarchical powers. This article presents four main objections to this project: the problems with ‘one-size-fits-all' policies, the heterogeneous distribution of power within multilateral institutions, the risks of crowding out parallel initiatives, and the democratic principle. Testing the WHO's ability as a provider of technical information, an OLS regression, analyzing the first year of the coronavirus health crisis, from January 2020 to January 2021, in 37 countries reported in the World Values Survey Wave 7, shows a negative relationship between the population trust in the WHO and the number of cases of COVID-19. This indicates that there is a valid case for countries to strengthen the WHO's mandate, but not to create a hierarchical global health structure.

An indicator framework for assessing the readiness of hospital in the smart healthcare transformation

The technical and management issues that existed in traditional healthcare institutions, such as relatively lagging technologies, untimely information, have received increasing attention. In recent decades, the reconstruction or transformation of smart healthcare system has emerged as a new research trend. Especially with the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, the smart healthcare system realizes the timely allocation of medical resources and sharing of information. Therefore, this paper aims to develop an indicator framework for assessing the hospital’s readiness in transforming towards smart healthcare. First, based on the literature review, an indicator framework of readiness of smart healthcare transformation is developed for smart healthcare transformation, which includes three hierarchies of “ smart facility management (smart FM)”, “medical system (MS)” and “organizational management (OM)”. Secondly, an online questionnaire survey is conducted to test the validity of the indicator framework. Based on factor analysis, the indicator framework is proved to be effective as a whole, and all the 26 indicators are significant. Finally, the readiness of case hospital “A” in the smart healthcare transformation is examined by fuzzy synthetic evaluation method. The findings of this paper provide an assessment tool for medical institutions to self-evaluate their status in the information construction process.

Factors Evaluating the Crisis Preparedness of a City in the Era of New Normal: Based on an Analytic Hierarchy Process Survey of Korean Experts *

This study aimed to identify the key components of crisis preparedness and understand the relative importance of various public relations (PR) factors to suggest efficient ways to prepare for a pandemic crisis, such as COVID-19. We highlight the process-oriented approach of crisis preparedness in addition to the static readiness in response to a crisis. Specifically, we conducted an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) using focus group interviews and a pairwise comparison questionnaire with 25 PR experts írom academia, industry, and local governments. The experts highlighted a three-level hierarchical structure of crisis preparedness. At the highest level, issue management (43.3%) was relatively more important than crisis communication (30.4%) and risk communication (26.3%). Overall, we observed that process-oriented crisis preparedness (e.g., monitoring issues, building positive and resolving negative issues, and reporting crisis) are relatively more important than the static preparedness system (e.g., budgets and printing periodicals, or classic offline PR tactics such as communication with different stakeholders and interest groups). Overall, we highlight the importance of pre-crisis readiness over post-crisis readiness, preemptive PR over typical offline PR activities, and intangible trust-building based on systematic information monitoring.

DEVELOPMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE DECISION SUPPORT TOOLS IN DISTANCE LEARNING QUALITY MANAGEMENT PROCESSES

The object of this study is the quality of distance learning. The need for procedures to assess the quality of this form of education was manifested most clearly in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, wars, and other global problems, which predetermine the relevance of the study. The study considers the construction of a decision support model for assessing the quality of distance learning. Underlying the method is a combination of the method of expert assessments and the criterion model of data analysis, the basic method for analyzing the data obtained is the method of hierarchy analysis. Structural and functional schemes of the quality management system for distance learning are proposed. During the study, 10 criteria and 52 indicators were selected, and the weight of each indicator was calculated. Based on the weight values obtained, a scheme of the criteria model of decision support was built to assess the quality of distance learning. During the expert evaluation of the criteria and indicators, it was determined that the weight of indicators within the criterion ranges from 0.09953 to 0.34262. Such a difference in weight values indicates the optimality of the set of indicators within the criterion. Due to the combination of a criteria-based approach to data analysis in combination with the method of expert assessments, the model can be easily adapted for a point assessment of individual components and finding problem areas in the implementation of distance learning and management decision-making. The results of the study reported here may be of interest to both heads of educational institutions and employees of services involved in processing information about the organization and reporting for strategic decision-making © 2022, Authors. This is an open access article under the Creative Commons CC BY license

Collaborative public service provision archetypes in healthcare emergencies: a case of COVID-19 administration in Sri Lanka

Purpose>This paper examines how the properties and patterns of a collaborative “networked hierarchy” incident command system (ICS) archetype can provide incident command centres with extra capabilities to manage public service delivery during COVID-19.Design/methodology/approach>The paper illustrates the case of Sri Lanka's COVID-19 administration during its “first wave” (from 15 February to 1 September 2020). Primary data were collected through in-depth interviews with government officials who were directly involved in the administration of the COVID-19 outbreak. Secondary data sources were government publications and web sources. The data were analysed and interpreted by using narrative analysis and archetype theory respectively.Findings>The findings highlight how Sri Lanka's public sector responses to COVID-19 have followed a collaborative “networked hierarchy” ICS archetype. More specifically, the government changed its normative ICS “properties” by incorporating a diverse group of intergovernmental agencies such as the police, the military, the health service and administrative services by articulating new patterns of collaborative working, namely, organisational values, beliefs and ideas that fit with the Sri Lankan public service context.Originality/value>In responding to high magnitude healthcare emergencies, the flexibility of a collaborative networked ICS hierarchy enables different balances of organisational properties to be incorporated, such as hierarchy and horizontal networking and “patterns” in public service provision.

Economic Development of the Iraqi Gas Sector in Conjunction with the Oil Industry

The relevance of this article is due, on the one hand, to the importance of the oil and gas industry in the development of Iraq and, on the other hand, the inability to enhance the existing capacities of the gas industry due to both serious systemic internal causes and external problems. The objective of this article is to study the prospects of the gas industry in conjunction with the oil industry, and develop a strategy for their development based on the forecasting of future scenarios. In the article, the research methods used included a systematic analysis of economic, social and cultural conditions, considering the history of Iraq, including a review of statistical data and a variety of sources. The article proposes a method for choosing the industry development strategy on the basis of an analytical hierarchy process, based on an algorithm of iterative processes using an analysis of hierarchies. To clarify the actors’ policies and strategic goals and to find the optimal solution, repeated iterations of the choice of strategy have been proposed. The strategies were divided into alternative strategies for future scenarios, which were evaluated in actions as able to achieve the goals by determining the consistency ratio and the consistency index. As a result of the study, we can highlight the analysis of the centralized system of oil and gas resources’ management that has developed in Iraq, which has a complicated “top-down” delegation of decisions and responsibility, with decisions made at the political level and resources distributed from above, which precludes individual industries from performing their functions, and also limits the effective implementation of strategic development priorities. The development factors for the gas industry in Iraq were identified and systematized with a rationale for the direction of the industry’s strategic development. Groups of factors were identified: market-affecting determinants of the development of the gas industry, as well as other considerations that may, to a lesser extent, affect the development of Iraq’s gas industry and the oil and gas complex as a whole. The results, assessing the significance of the actors’ goals, can be taken as a basis for development strategies for the oil and gas industry, to improve the contract system of the gas industry in conjunction with the oil industry.

Rome’s GRAB—Great Bicycle Ring Route—As Complex Landscape Infrastructure

This paper aims to describe the design strategy adopted in Rome to support and enhance sustainable mobility. It is a strategy aimed at promoting new green infrastructures for urban accessibility, daily sports practice and social inclusion in a historic city, stratified and not very inclined to change. Therefore, the dissemination of this experience is useful for planning a sustainable future for heritage cities that ensures an appropriate and equitable balance between conservation and development. Sustainable mobility is now considered one of the most important challenges for metropolitan areas and large conurbations. In these terms, Rome is a weak city. The city’s great bicycle ring route (GRAB), an integral part of the Extraordinary Tourism Mobility Plan 2017-22, is a key infrastructure for increasing more sustainable and healthier modes of travel, even on a local scale. The GRAB project, whose complex infrastructure provides multiple services, differs from a simple cycle path network. Its complexity refers to an ability to attract different types of users in different types of urban contexts—historical settings, monuments, newer neighborhoods and areas of contemporary urbanization. The project results can be measured first in relation to its progress (already funded, in the executive planning phase, with the approval of the first construction sites expected by 2022). A second important result is the participation of institutional bodies and citizens’ associations, which will oversee the construction and maintenance work as well as infuse into the project a constant vitality, in a true civic ecology perspective. Third, the results are important for enhancing metropolitan area accessibility and the environmental and social re-activation of the areas crossed, achieved directly and through the project’s realization. The GRAB strategy belongs to the new generation of landscape projects that have radically changed the priorities and hierarchies of intervention in the contexts of contemporary urbanization. These projects are based on the ecological analysis of the context but are located close to the fluctuating dynamics of contemporary metropolises and the problems of exclusion and marginality—both spatial and social—linked to the very rapid ecological, economic and demographic transformations.

THE INTIMATE AND THE EPIC IN PLUNGE: A WRITER - DIRECTOR'S APPROACH TO HETERARCHICAL COMPOSITION

Drawing on these associations of spectacle and the physicality of elite sport to both celebrate and critique the commodification of young athletes, Plunge was a site-specific interdisciplinary work which I wrote and directed in the lead-up to the 2018 Commonwealth Games.4 Performed at a key Games venue, the Gold Coast Aquatic Centre, the production played with notions of heightened visuality and intimate confession, scale and distance, to explore the psyche of elite pool athletes. In the dual role of writer-director, I explored the dynamic push-pull between headphone listening and layered viewing and the collision between intimacy and spectacle to examine people and place, and interrogated what processes best balance audience participation, perception and dramatic meaning in multi-sensory, site-specific work. While Plunge was narrative-led - following the dramatic arcs of three characters - it operates within the paradigm of Postdramatic Theatre, identified by Hans-Thies Lehmann as featuring 'parataxis, simultaneity, play with the density of signs, musicalisation, visual dramaturgy, physicality, interruption of the real, situation/ event'.5 Parataxis, described as a 'de-hierarchisation of forms'6 by Lehmann, occurs when simultaneous genres of performance (including dance, narrative theatre, video and sound practice) coalesce so that they are 'employed with equal weighting;play object[s] and language point simultaneously in different directions of meaning and thus encourage a contemplation that is at once relaxed and rapid'.7 My intention with Plunge, then, was to explore how truly equal the weightings could be between the performance strata of a polyvocal work, particularly when dense listening and heightened visuality were occurring at the same time. Mikhail Bakhtin first used the term 'polyvocal' to describe the diverse source materials of nineteenth-century Russian novels, which could not be categorised into genres because of their blend of styles, language, folk culture and contemporary literary forms.8 Polyvocalism implies an interactive system in which the elements are in dialogue with one another - what Bakhtin termed 'dialogism' - whereby disparate voices contradict, juxtapose and resonate with each other such that they cannot be reduced to a single classification.9 Plunge's form was structured to shift between modalities of engagement for the audience: from contemporary dance/ physical theatre to video to text-heavy listening, with postdramatic, fragmented paradigms applied to the dramatic unity of characters within a narrative construct.