Challenging Institutional Racism in International Relations and Our Profession: Reflections, Experiences, and Strategies

Attempts to create a more inclusive discipline and profession have been commended by many and derided by some. While these attempts have pushed for change, particularly with regards to more equal representation of gender and race among faculty, policies aimed at creating a more inclusive environment are often tokenistic, administrative and bureaucratic, and fail to address structural and institutional practices and norms. Moreover, the administrative and bureaucratic policies put into place are generally targeted at a single categorical group, failing to take into account the manner in which identities are intersecting and overlapping. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion often gets driven by Human Resources and Marketing rather than owned by the wider university. This forum draws from a variety of contributions that focus on describing the lived realities of institutional racism, its intersections with other forms of discrimination, and strategies for change. In putting together this forum, we do not aim to create a checklist of practical steps. Instead, we hope to signpost and make visible the successes and failures of previous challenges and future possibilities that must be taken by both faculty and administrations.

MEMBANGUN KESADARAN KRITIS ORANG MUDA MANGGARAI DALAM MENANGGAPI FENOMENA BUNUH DIRI DENGAN PENDEKATAN CATEGORICAL GROUP GUIDANCE

Bunuh diri adalah fenomen yang mencemaskan masyarakat beberapa tahun terakhir di wilayah Manggarai Raya. Angka bunuh diri cenderung meningkat selama tiga tahun terakhir. Sebagai dosen di Universitas Katolik Indonesia St. Paulus, kami terpanggil menanggapi fenomena ini dengan melakukan kegiatan pengabdian masyarakat. Kegiatan ini menggunakan pendekatan bimbingan kelompok kategorial. Pendekatan ini dilaksanakan dengan bentuk ceramah, diskusi, curah pendapat, dan berbagi pengalaman. Bimbingan dilakukan pada komunitas-komunitas orang muda di asrama atau tempat tinggal. Dampak dari kegiatan ini adalah: 1) orang muda semakin sadar akan eksistensi dirinya sebagai harapan keluarga, masyarakat, gereja dan bangsa; (2) Munculnya kesadaran kritis orang muda dalam memosisikan diri di tengah perubahan dan perkembangan yang begitu pesat; (3) Bertumbuhnya sikap optimis akan hidup yang lebih baik dalam diri orang muda dengan mulai merencanakan masa depan dengan baik sejak saat ini.

The emerging concepts of participation and belonging in social pedagogy

During the last few decades, the concepts of participation and belonging has frequently been used within the social welfare field in general, and within the field of disability research specifically. Additionally, in Scandinavia the concept of participation has become increasingly used in social work and social pedagogy programmes at universities. However, there’s rather little known about how participation can be understood and related to social pedagogy, since the concept has a broad range of meanings, e.g. a sense of belonging. This paper aims to identify and discuss understandings of participation and belonging with relevance for social work and social pedagogy. Empirical illustrations have been gathered with ethnographical methods and analysed in accordance with an interpretive tradition. It is argued that the concept of participation can be attributed to different meanings in different ideological, theoretical, and institutional practice contexts (e.g. schools that offer special needs programmes, the transition to working life, online social networking). Consequently, it’s a challenge to provide adequate definitions of the concept. The inference drawn is that the aspect of belonging as it relates to social participation can be attributed to its particular importance for social pedagogy. An implication for professional practice is the need to pay attention to alternative identifications that are not based on notions of a stable, constant sense of belonging to a categorical group.

Covering groupoids of categorical rings

A categorical group is a kind of categorization of group and similarly a categorical ring is a categorization of ring. For a topological group X, the fundamental groupoid ?X is a group object in the category of groupoids, which is also called in literature group-groupoid or 2-group. If X is a path connected topological group which has a simply connected cover, then the category of covering groups of X and the category of covering groupoids of ?X are equivalent. Recently it was proved that if (X, x0) is an H-group, then the fundamental groupoid ?X is a categorical group and the category of the covering spaces of (X, x0) is equivalent to the category of covering groupoids of the categorical group ?X. The purpose of this paper is to present similar results for rings and categorical rings.

Imaging Brain Development: Benefiting from Individual Variability

Human brain development is a complex process that evolves from early childhood to young adulthood. Major advances in brain imaging are increasingly being used to characterize the developing brain. These advances have further helped to elucidate the dynamic maturational processes that lead to the emergence of complex cognitive abilities in both typical and atypical development. However, conventional approaches involve categorical group comparison models and tend to disregard the role of widespread interindividual variability in brain development. This review highlights how this variability can inform our understanding of developmental processes. The latest studies in the field of brain development are reviewed, with a particular focus on the role of individual variability and the consequent heterogeneity in brain structural and functional development. This review also highlights how such heterogeneity might be utilized to inform our understanding of complex neuropsychiatric disorders and recommends the use of more dimensional approaches to study brain development.

Some Results on Strict Graded Categorical Groups

We present some applications of strict graded categorical groups to the construction of the obstruction of an equivariant kernel and to the classification of equivariant group extensions which are central ones. The composition of a graded categorical group and an equivariant group homomorphism is also determined.

CATEGORICAL GROUPS, KNOTS AND KNOTTED SURFACES

We define a knot invariant and a 2-knot invariant from any finite categorical group. We calculate an explicit example for the Spun Trefoil.