Les études récentes ont montré que les femmes ont participé, tout au long du Moyen Age, à l’activité économique. Pourtant, leur place dans la production artistique médiévale est généralement ignorée des historiens de l’art, alors même que l’étude de la production d’un artiste ou d’un milieu montre clairement, par les sources et les œuvres, qu’elles ont été présentes à chaque étape du processus de création. La confrontation de la norme à la pratique, par l’analyse de la réglementation de la gilde (...) de Saint-Luc de quatorze villes (Nord, Flandre, Hainaut et Brabant) et des registres d’inscription à la gilde des métiers du livre brugeois, a permis de mettre en perspective les activités des femmes dans les métiers d’art. Elles apparaissent comme maîtresses, ayant passé la maîtrise du métier – et pas seulement de métiers dits féminins –, dirigeant l’atelier, aux côtés du mari ou seules (célibataires ou veuves) apprenties, formant parfois des garçons ou des filles au métier. Elles sont aussi les premières victimes des crises économiques. (shrink)

Few historical figures have been more important in modeling the ideal of impartial critical scholarship than Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536). Yet his critical scholarship, though beholden to no one, was not dispassionate. James Tracy shows how Erasmus the scholar sought through his writings to promote the moral and religious renewal of Christian society. Tracy finds the genesis of the humanist's notion of a "Christian republic" of pious and learned individuals in his "Burgundian," or Low Countries, roots. Erasmus's vision (...) of reform, Tracy argues, sprung from a humanist tradition focusing on the importance of teaching (_doctrina_), a tradition from which Erasmus departed in his optimism about human nature and his deep suspicion of the powers that be. Amid the storms of Reformation controversy, he pruned back the "dissimulation" by which he had thought to convey different meanings to different readers, yet in the end he could not control the way his words were read. If Erasmus's scholarly ideal carries an enduring fascination, so too does his dilemma as a man of circumspection who would also be a reformer. (shrink)

Lowe, Ian The late Donald Horne was a truly important Australian intellectual. His 1964 book The Lucky Country caused a sensation and was a runaway bestseller. As the cover of the sixth edition published in 2008 says, 'the book was a wake-up call to an unimaginative nation, an indictment of a country mired in mediocrity and manacled to its past'. The title came from the introduction to the book's final chapter. It described Australia as 'a lucky country run mainly by (...) second-rate people who share its luck'. The phrase 'the lucky country' quickly became part of the language, though its message was often misrepresented by people who had not even read the book, or had not grasped its ironic meaning. While he acknowledged that 1964 Australia was possibly 'the most evenly prosperous society in the world', Horne argued that we were living on other people's ideas and held back by leaders he called 'empty-minded public wafflers'. (shrink)

As developed and developing countries move towards greater technological development in the 21st century, the need for engineers has increased substantially. Japan is facing the dilemma of insufficient engineers; therefore, the country has to rely on foreign workers. This problem may be resolved if there is a continuous effort to increase the number of women engineers, who currently represent only 1%–2% of engineers in Japan. In this study, the satisfaction level of the learning experience of Japanese female engineering students (...) was measured to determine its relationship with the students’ intention to choose engineering as their profession. Socio-cultural influences on the respondents’ intentions to pursue careers in the field were also studied. The findings revealed that learning experience was directly related to female students’ intention to pursue their career in engineering whereas socio-cultural values of a society have strong influences on students’ motivation to pursue careers in engineering in general. Additionally, some strategies are proposed to attract young girls to pursue engineering courses, as well as for current female engineering students to continue their studies and choose professions in the field as their career. (shrink)

So far as we can judge from his one completely preserved play and extensive fragments of others, Menander carefully worked out the movements of his characters on and off stage, so as to give an appearance of realism, within certain conventions, and avoid inconsistencies that might distract the audience. Menander's observed practice confirms the famous anecdote, according to which he regarded the construction of a plot as of primary importance, adding the lines as secondary. Thus a character who returns to (...) the stage after an earlier exit always re-enters through the same stage door or wing by which he made his exit; if, for example, he makes his exit in the direction of the market-place, he will be seen by the audience to return from there. Although the ancient evidence is confused, it seems clear, at least, that convention allowed the Athenian audience to regard one wing as leading to the market-place, the other to the country. Similarly, dramatic time is carefully articulated by means of the conventional choral interludes which divide a play into five acts. Some acceleration of dramatic time is possible within an act, but major lapses of dramatic time take place between acts; if a character makes an off-stage trip of some length, for example to the market-place, his exit and re-entry are separated by a choral interlude. Within the act a strict unity of time is maintained and dramatic time does not greatly exceed performance time. (shrink)

This new Major Work is a five-volume collection in Routledge’s Major Themes in Education series. It charts the history and development of higher education. Encompassing the period since 1760, the principal focus is on the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although more recent developments are also addressed. The rise and development of universities and of higher education in Britain provides the central theme of the collection and is used as a model for developments elsewhere in the English-speaking world. Particular attention is (...) paid to the United States and the British Empire, but some material on other European countries and on the rise of higher education in countries such as Japan and China has also been included. Thus, at the core of this collection is the dissemination of a university ideal around the globe and its particular implications and interpretation in specific societies and locations. (shrink)

It is well established that intelligence testing in its modern form developed and was deployed slightly differently in several countries, most notably France, England and the United States. Less widely recognized is the fact that its originators were all part of a close network of scholars who liaised internationally, exchanged ideas and were thoroughly acquainted with each other’s work. Their exchanges resulted from the transnational drive to develop a new social science of psychology involving a determination to find empirical (...) evidence on which to base understandings of the human mind. This soon led to the development of a means of testing human performance, not least in the field of intelligence. In the process, close contacts between all those who were to be pioneers of intelligence testing around the globe developed, in touch with and feeding off each others’ ideas. This article is an account of the development of that network. (shrink)

The Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings (GCC) aims to stop the export of unethical research practices from higher to lower income settings. Launched in 2018, the GCC was immediately adopted by European Commission funding streams for application in research that is situated in lower and lower-middle income countries. Other institutions soon followed suit. This article reports on the application of the GCC in two of the first UK-funded projects to implement this new code, one situated (...) in India and one in Pakistan. Through systematic ethics evaluation of both projects, the practical application of the GCC in real-world environments was tested. The findings of this ethics evaluation suggest that while there are challenges for implementation, application of the GCC can promote equity in international research collaborations. (shrink)

Higher education is starting to embrace its role in promoting student wellbeing and life skills, especially given the concerning levels of poor mental health and uncertainties in the future job market. Yet, many of the published studies evaluating positive educational teaching methods thus far are limited to interventions delivered to small student cohorts and/or imbedded within elective wellbeing courses, and are focussed on developed Western countries. This study addressed this gap by investigating the effectiveness of an institution-wide compulsory course (...) informed by the principles of Seligman’s Wellbeing Theory. The course was delivered at a British university in a developing country in Southeast Asia. It purposefully sought to nurture growth-oriented outcomes and was taken by an entire cohort of year one undergraduate students. We tested the effectiveness of the curriculum content and staff coaching style in achieving life skills, and evaluated how these perceptions influenced students’ subjective wellbeing. A convergent mixed-methods design was used with 350 survey respondents and 11 interviewees. Perceived life skills scores showed a 2.5% improvement at the end of the course. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling tested the predicted relationships between variables. All relationships were statistically significant, but the influence of course design and educators’ style on life skills acquisition was moderate, while the effect on subjective happiness and life satisfaction was very weak. Qualitative data indicated that while quantifiable benefits to wellbeing might not be immediate, students did anticipate longer-term benefits for happiness and life satisfaction. This finding suggests that such a novel educational approach is well-received by Asian students and may sow the seeds for future benefit by positively impacting on their skills, behaviours, attitudes, and values. To achieve optimal flourishing at university, we recommend exploring teaching practises that combine positive education with coaching psychology practises. (shrink)

This book presents a rich collection of research studies on the theory and practice of CSR in Asia. It includes valuable contributions of practice-oriented researchers from various Asian countries such as Brunei, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore, and from several non-Asian countries, such as Australia, Canada and the USA. The book presents a comprehensive overview of the practice of CSR in Asia. Normally CSR is seen in the Western angles, but here, in this book, Asian (...) philosophies and thoughts are also examined. Touted as the first of its kind, the book also compares Western and Asian perspectives on CSR and presents them in the light of Asian philosophies and thoughts, such as Confucian, Islamic (Koranic), Indian (Vedantic) and other Asian ways of looking at CSR in their own rights and perspectives. (shrink)

A large proportion of nursing home residents in developed countries come from ethnic minority groups. Unmet care needs and poor quality of care for this resident population have been widely reported. This systematic review aimed to explore social conditions affecting ethnic minority residents' ability to exercise their autonomy in communication and care while in nursing homes. In total, 19 studies were included in the review. Findings revealed that ethno‐specific nursing homes create the ideal social condition for residents to express (...) their care needs and preferences in a language of choice. In nonethno‐specific nursing homes, staff cultural competence and nursing home commitment to culturally safe care are crucial social conditions that enable this group of residents to fulfil their autonomy in communicating and in participating in their care. In contrast, social conditions that undermine residents' ability to express their care needs and preferences include low levels of staff cultural awareness and cultural desire, negative attitudes towards residents and limited organisational support for staff to improve culturally responsive and culturally safe care. In conclusion, it is important to optimise the social conditions to support ethnic minority residents to communicate their care needs and preferences. (shrink)

Historical studies may become classics for the wrong reasons, as did Henry Thode's Francis of Assisi or Michelet's Joan of Arc, which we now regard as cultural icons in their own right, emblems of specific elements of the cultures of the era in which they were written. We do not, however, read them for the insight they provide into their declared subjects, nor are their conclusions those of current scholarship. Other studies become classics for the right reasons. The year 1999 (...) marks the eightieth anniversary of the publication of Johan Huizinga's Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen: Studie over levens- en gedachtenvormen der veertiende en vijftiende eeuw in Frankrijk en de Nederlanden, “The Autumn [or Harvest, or Waning, or Decline, or Evening] of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life and Thought in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in France and the Netherlands [or the Low Countries, or the Burgundian Low Countries].”. (shrink)

Belgium and the Netherlands are the first countries in the world that have legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide. Since September 23, 2002, Belgian physicians can perform an act of euthanasia without at the same time performing a criminal act. In the Netherlands, the act on euthanasia went into force already on April 1, 2002. This special issue of Ethical Perspectives on ‘Euthanasia in the Low Countries’ offers a forum for critical dialogue on the different aspects of this new (...) legal situation in Belgium and the Netherlands.First, the legal situation will be introduced. In his contribution, Herman Nys makes a careful comparison of both laws. In spite of the fact that Belgium and the Netherlands are the first countries in the world that legalized euthanasia, the differences between the Belgian and Dutch law are fundamental. As Nys indicates, the scope of the Dutch law is more specified since it explicitly includes physician-assisted suicide while it remains unclear whether the Belgian act is also applicable in cases of assisted suicide. There are also fundamental differences regarding the persons regulated by the law, the health condition of the patient, the obligations of the physician with respect to the request and the health status of the patient, and the notification procedure.However, not only are there fundamental differences between Belgium and the Netherlands on the level of the law. Also the public debate and the values underlying the the debate show dissimilarities. In the Netherlands this debate took more than twenty years and the subsequent law on euthanasia reflected an existing medical practice. In Belgium, on the contrary, the parliament came to vote on the euthanasia law after only half a decade of debate. In our contribution , we identify the right to autonomy understood as ‘self-possession’ as the central value in the Belgian debate. Guy Widdershoven asserts that the moral basis of euthanasia in the Netherlands is different. He argues that the Dutch debate — and by now Dutch practice — cannot be reduced to the "principlist canon of autonomy and beneficence". Instead, the values of responsibility, deliberation and care are claimed to be central to Dutch euthanasia practice.In his contribution, Daniel Sulmasy offers an exhaustive analysis of the notion of dignity that constantly arises in the debate on euthanasia. For Christian churches and Catholic healthcare institutions, the recent legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide is at least challenging. Jan Jans describes the way in which the main Christian churches in Belgium and the Netherlands engaged in the debate and reacted to the eventual legalization. Chris Gastmans presents the view of the Flemish Association of Catholic Healthcare Institutions.Law-making with respect to euthanasia is one thing. Bringing the law into practice is somewhat different. The question arises to what extent the new legal situation will bear upon the medical practice. Particularly, the responses of physicians are difficult to assess in advance. Physicians face the dilemma to report or not to report. They can take up their responsibility and report their practices of euthanasia, thereby exposing themselves to critical examination and possibly criminal prosecution. On the other hand, the physician can opt for safety and decide not to report his involvement in one of his patients’ euthanasia. In the latter case, the introduction of new legislation would have missed the mark. To this day, the only available data with regard to physicians’ reactions to an established legal framework wherein euthanasia is legalized come from the Netherlands. In his contribution, Albert Klijn presents the reactions of Dutch physicians to the new legal situation in their country and, particularly, the performance of their duty to report cases of euthanasia. Since the vote on the law in 2000 and the establishment of ‘regional review committees for termination of life on request and assisted suicide’ in 2001, the reports of euthanasia have declined. Klijn considers two possible explanations. On the one hand, there is insecurity about how the newly established regional review committees will evaluate physician' reports. On the other hand, the increased investment in research on palliative care and the availability of palliative sedation are held responsible for the drop in reported cases.This very interesting suggestion by Klijn needs further clarification. Therefore, the meaning of palliative care and the possibility of palliative sedation are elaborated in the contribution of Bert Broeckaert and Rien Janssens.With this special issue on ‘Euthanasia in the Low Countries’ we hope to have answered the numerous requests for further information on the Belgian and Dutch situation. Data, clarification and critical review may shed more light on the development of a practice, which some still consider as non-medical behaviour. This issue may therefore also function as a catalyst for further medical, ethical and legal debate. (shrink)

In his Inleidinge tot de Hollandsche Rechts-geleerdheid, Hugo Grotius wrote an accessible introductory overview of Hollandic law, in which he combined insights from the learned law (ius commune) with the particular law of Holland. The Inleidinge was read by generations of Dutch law students, and would thus become very influential in the Roman-Dutch tradition. This contribution studies how the topic of representation, especially in a business context, was treated in Grotius’s Inleidinge. On the basis of an analysis of the Justinianic (...) Corpus iuris, the medieval ius commune tradition and – especially – early modern scholarship from the Low Countries, it is argued that Grotius’s Inleidinge by and large followed the communis opinio among the learned scholars, although on one important point – namely the acquisition by a third party of a claim on the basis of a stipulatio alteri – Grotius went beyond that communis opinio and, thus, opened the way for a gradual wider legal acceptance of active direct representation. (shrink)

Summary Historical scholars have recently turned their attention to local communities, resulting in a lively debate about the role of regions and provinces in Western Europe. This has quite predictably led many to question this resurgence of local identities in order to discover the cultural roots and the geographical boundaries of these identities and their interaction with the formation of nation-states in the literary, artistic and political practices of the past two centuries. This article provides an introduction to one specific (...) transnational intellectual network, the Guild of Saint Thomas and Saint Luke, which in the latter half of the nineteenth century served as a forum for the different local identities which were influential in the Gothic (and Catholic) Revival of the Low Countries. The interaction among the most influential members during the annual excursions of the Guild and the choice for the locations of these meetings resulted in different ideological discourses about the position and the borders of ‘Christian art’ in the Low Countries. Due to both internal and external influences these discourses very soon integrated into the national frame, making the definition of a potentially common style for the whole area impossible. The analysis is based on existing literature on regionalism and the Neo-Gothic Revival, and on archive material concerning the first meetings of the Guild. The above-mentioned observations offer the opportunity to underline the peculiarity of transnational permanent networks composed by a fluctuating number of participants and to stimulate debate about the applicability of this example to other geo-cultural contexts. (shrink)

What impact has Christianity had on law and policies in the Lowlands from the eleventh century through the end of the twentieth century? Taking the gradual 'secularization' of European legal culture as a framework, this volume explores the lives and times of twenty legal scholars and professionals to study the historical impact of the Christian faith on legal and political life in the Low Countries. The process whereby Christian belief systems gradually lost their impact on the regulation of secular (...) affairs passed through several stages, not in the least the Protestant Reformation, which led to the separation of the Low Countries in a Protestant North and a Catholic South in the first place. The contributions take up general issues such as the relationship between justice and mercy, Christianity and politics as well as more technical topics of state-church law, criminal law and social policy. (shrink)

The importance of the Low Countries as a centre for the study of foreign languages is well-known. The mutual relationship between the Dutch grammatical tradition and the Western European context has, however, been largely neglected. In this collection of papers on the history of linguistics in the Low Countries the editors have made an effort to present the Dutch tradition in connection with that of the neighbouring countries. Three articles by Claes, Dibbets and Klifman deal with the (...) earliest stages of the development of a grammar for the Dutch vernacular. Several important European figures worked in the Low Countries; their contribution to linguistics is discussed in articles on Vossius (Rademaker), Spinoza (Klijnsmit), and one of the most original phoneticians of European linguistics, Montanus (Hulsker). Vivian Salmon's article is a survey on the relations between English and Dutch linguistics in the field of foreign language teaching. In the 19th century Dutch linguistics had a special relationship with German general and historical linguistics; four articles deal with this period (Jongeneelen, van Driel, le Loux-Schuringa, Noordegraaf). Finally, there are three articles by Kaldewij, Hagen and van Els/Knops on the development of three branches of linguistics in the 20th century: structuralism, dialectology and applied linguistics. This volume should be of interest for all specialists in the history of linguistics in Europe, who are interested in the interdependence of the various traditions. (shrink)

It will hardly come as a surprise to anybody even only remotely familiar with the general thrust and orientation of ‘Christian ethics’, that the question of euthanasia has been and still is seen in general as a moral disvalue and/or an evil that should be resisted. The bottom line of this approach is the theological notion that human life is a gift of the Creator and therefore a good to be nurtured, promoted and worth protection. Euthanasia, and especially its depenalization (...) and legalization to different degrees in the current laws of the Netherlands and Belgium, is evaluated as contrary to this requirement of protectability. Both during the debate on euthanasia and in reaction to various attempts to legislate on this matter, Christian churches in the Netherlands and Belgium have raised their voices and addressed the public at large, their own members and politicians in order to influence reflection and deliberation.In this article, I will first describe the argumentative way in which the major Christian churches in the Netherlands and Belgium have dealt with what they considered the challenge of the demand to legalize euthanasia in their respective countries. Given the important differences between the courses of events in both countries, the part on the interventions in the Netherlands will be considerably longer than the one on Belgium. No doubt, the most important reason for this difference is the fact that the public discussion on euthanasia together with efforts to change the penal law prohibiting it, took shape in the Netherlands already from 1968 on. Next to this, the fact that the major Christian churches in the Netherlands were not in agreement on the proper approach also contributes to a more differentiated picture. In the third part of this article, I will present some comments and a moral theological evaluation of the core of the argumentation forwarded by the Christian churches. (shrink)

Owing to the growing internationalisation of research, educational researchers in the Netherlands are increasingly expected to publish through the medium of the English language. Though this undoubtedly benefits the communication between scholars, there are also side-effects. This paper discusses problematic issues from three perspectives: (i) the use of a non-native language for communication between scholars in the area of education; (ii) the use either exclusively, or not, of a publication record of such publications for purposes of recruitment and promotion of (...) staff; (iii) the relationships between research groups of different disciplines and/or universities. It will be argued that the demand to publish exclusively in a non-native language has damaging effects as far as the context of education is concerned. Not only will it lead to a denial of one's own background and culture, but the uniformisation, (which is the result of it), will also stifle the rich educational landscape by allowing the publication only of items of international interest. The model of the natural sciences is not adequate for the context of education because of the necessarily more local character of the content of educational problems and production of strategies to deal with these. Thus it will become clear that the integrity of the educational researcher is at stake as the research area is selected. (shrink)

This is an ambitious and wide-ranging biography of Erasmus of Rotterdam, one of the most famous Renaissance humanists. In part a riveting narrative account of the philosopher's journeys from his monastery to service with a great Burgundian bishop, and from there to Paris, England the Low Countries and Switzerland, this comprehensive and definitive biography also looks at the history of ideas in which Erasmus played a vital role. Covering the formative years of Erasmus the humanist, this new study (...) makes full analyses of all his early writings, ncluding his Letters, his contributions to Renaissance dialogue and essay, and particularly his Adagia, the colloquies, and the Praise of Folly. After years of intensive research, and in an area which is essentially multidisciplinary, Professor Schoeck brings together serious historical, literary, theological and philosophical study in a unique way. (shrink)