scholarly journals Presidential Address: A View From the Lectern

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-16
Author(s):  
J. E. Rea

Abstract This paper explores the relationship among teaching, research, and publications for, the author argues, a good teacher must carry out advanced historical research and >report results to a wider academic audience. This observation leads to an examination of three kinds of questions which challenge the historian as teacher: the first, questions to which the primary and secondary literature provide no answer; the second, questions to which standard works offer no adequate response but which inspire research and rethinking and thereby lead to a new understanding of the issue; and the third, questions which can be fully answered only by informed speculation. The paper then illustrates the challenge posed by each type of question by looking at important incidents in twentieth-century Canadian history: the first, why Prime Minister Borden on 1 January 1916 doubled Canada's manpower in the Great War to five hundred thousand; the second, why did the tariff disappear as an issue from elections after 1935; and the third, why did the Cabinet accept the forced resignation of J. L. Ralston as Minister of National Defence in November of 1944? The specialised knowledge required to respond to such questions necessarily enriches our overall understanding of the past.

2007 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
John Stewart Russell Ritchie

ABSTRACTThis Presidential Address is delivered towards the end of the 150th anniversary year of the Faculty of Actuaries, and is timed to coincide with the International Actuarial Association and Groupe Consultatif holding meetings in Edinburgh. It deals with the growing globalisation of the Profession, reviews the key developments arising out of the Morris Review and the implications of current changes. It then moves on to examine communication and the role the Profession can play with the media. A comparison between actuarial practice in life and pensions follows, with suggestions for a closer alignment between pension expectation and pension reality. Comment is made about the prospects for healthy life expectancy. Finally, the relationship between the Faculty and the Institute of Actuaries is debated, and a consultation with Faculty members is launched.


2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Gerald Friesen

Abstract The spatial dimensions of contemporary society differ substantially from those prevailing in earlier centuries and even in the first half of the twentieth century. The change requires a re-thinking of “region,” one of the fundamental concepts in discussions of Canada as nation-state. In the past, the concept of region has enabled Canadians to come to terms with physical, cultural, and historical differences within the country and to imagine the community as an appropriate and cohesive whole. In the conditions created by changing trade patterns, global migration, and electronic communication, the concept of region has to be revised if it is to serve as one of the underpinnings of the contemporary nation-state. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, this paper advocates the use of three regional concepts in place of one. Denoted, instituted, and imagined regions acknowledge the social change, the negotiation, and the contingency that must be part of a spatial approach to Canadian history.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sigeto Tanaka

This paper reports the findings of a review of literature on a series of surveys on working hours in Japanese workplaces, conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. The surveys have attracted public attention since Prime Minister Abe Shinzo deployed flawed data from the latest survey, conducted in 2013, to build up his argument for a labor reform bill in the Diet in January 2018. This scandal led to a partial retraction of the bill. An inspection team of the Ministry subsequently explored how and why flawed data were generated by the survey. However, the inspection team's report was inadequate: It only focused on how the 2013 survey carelessly replicated previous surveys. It left unresolved questions of how the past surveys were conducted, and how they affected labor policies. I reviewed primary and secondary literature on the series of surveys, which started from 1986 and deeply impacted the work of the deliberative council on labor policy, to uncover defects in the structuring of questionnaire s, sampling schemes, control of inspectors, statistical analysis, and result reporting. I observed symptoms of imprecise and incomprehensible explanations of various elements of the surveys by the Ministry in these 30 years, with no criticism leveled at the surveys before the scandal in the Diet in 2018.


2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-98
Author(s):  
Philip Morris

2010 marked the 90th anniversary of disestablishment; and the Archbishop noted in his April Presidential Address to the Governing Body that though disestablishment had been forced on the Church and its result had been to deplete assets, congregations had twice raised sufficient money to secure the Church's territorial ministry. Though the Church now had fewer attenders, clergy and ordinands than hitherto, it had survived greater challenges in the past. In his September address, as well as looking outwards and comparing the relationship between Gaza and Israel with apartheid in South Africa, he warned that the ‘Big Society’ might merely make life harder for the most vulnerable and reminded the Government that everyone needed good quality education, health and other public services.


2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Naylor

The question of the relationship of the Roman Imperial Cult and Revelation has occupied the attention of scholars throughout the past one hundred years. During this time, major shifts have taken place both in the assessment of the Roman Imperial Cult in the context of the Roman Empire and in the interpretation of its role with respect to the book of Revelation. This article surveys and assesses these trends. It begins with a discussion of studies on the Roman Imperial Cult from the standpoint of classical studies. Next, texts within Revelation typically cited as indicating a response to emperor worship are introduced. The third and final section focuses upon studies on Revelation, with particular focus given to interpretive approaches, Christology, and the question of persecution under Domitian.


Author(s):  
Katja Uusihakala

Focusing on Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s apology to British child migrants in 2010, this article proposes that public apology, as a moral and political act, is a compelling site for examining attempts to redefine and redress previously silenced pasts. Postwar child migration has been something of a silenced chapter in British history. In my research I examine one such child migration scheme, namely a project which sent select British children (aged 4 to 13) to colonial Southern Rhodesia—today’s Zimbabwe—between 1946 and 1962. Through this case, I discuss two intertwined aspects of the transformative intentions of apologizing. First, the apology aims at amending the relationship between the apologizer and the victims and at remodeling the recipients’ political subjectivities. Second, the apology discloses distinct, but contradictory, understandings about the relationship between past, present, and future. It emphasizes the continuous effects the past has in the present, but simultaneously purports to create a temporal break with the past, marked by a moral transformation of the state. However, although the apology aspires and has potential to give voice to those previously silenced and to re-articulate a more legitimate version of the past, its framing eliminates the broader historical context of the Empire. Thus, while partially overcoming silences, the article suggests, the apology also reproduces and reinforces others.


Author(s):  
Besfat Dejen Engdaw

Decentralization and good governance are policy instruments whereby the world in general and African in particular have pursued it for the past 40 and 50 years. Despite empirical studies not yet being conclusive, decentralization helps to improve good governance. Decentralization and good governance are brought into Africa following the beginning and end of structural reforms, to bring economic development, respectively. The chapter has six parts. The first part deals with the introduction and background of good governance and decentralization. The second part highlights the meanings or concepts and elements of good governance, and issues and concepts related to decentralization. The third part insights the relationship between decentralization and good governance. The fourth part gives some highlights about decentralization and good governance in Africa, and when and why decentralization has been introduced among African nations. The fifth part investigates the relationship between decentralization, good governance, and economic development; and the last part provides conclusion.


1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (117) ◽  
pp. 66-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gailey

For Ulster Protestants, riven by division since the fall of Terence O’Neill as prime minister of Northern Ireland in 1969, the recent troubles have seen their future steadily being conceded by default. Where there was certainty, there is now confusion; where there was once leadership, there are now only leaders. Not surprisingly, there have been wistful glances back to the mythical heroes of the past, in particular to Sir Edward Carson, who had steered them through the home rule crisis of 1912–14 to the promised land of Northern Ireland. Carson not only mobilised all Ulster Protestants, but also organised a largely successful rebellion and in time squared the circle to become one of the few rebels in English history to go on to be a law lord. Moreover, he was also a British leader, being four times in office, twice in the cabinet, and for twenty years one of the dominating figures in Tory politics. It is this duality that made Carson’s position exceptional in Anglo-Irish relations and contributed to the immense authority he periodically enjoyed. Indeed, in Ulster before the Great War his sway assumed near-charismatic proportions. Viewed as a case study in leadership, therefore, his career was, in terms of British politics, unique.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Mátyás Márton ◽  
Gábor Gercsák ◽  
László Zentai

Abstract. Hungarian presenters gave several papers on this project at cartographic conferences and published articles on the state of the work in the past decade. The project undertaken by the Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) serves the saving of cultural heritage, namely a globe, a significant work of art. The project is named after its maker, Perczel. The work, which lasted for more than ten years with interruptions, was crowned by the birth of three imposing artistic copies of the globe. This part of the project completed in half a year was organized by the Archiflex Studio and led by Zsuzsanna Lente, restorer artist. The first copy decorates the office of the Hungarian prime minister in the former Carmelite cloister in the Buda Castle. The second copy is placed in the National Széchényi Library, where the original globe is kept. The third copy went to the University Library of ELTE. The physical embodiment of the globe makes it a real public property: Perczel’s globe is a work of art that represents great scientific and cultural values.The present paper reviews shortly the manuscript globe made by Perczel in 1862, and presents the stages of the digital re-creation and restoration of the globe map carried out at the Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics at ELTE, which led to its physical reconstruction, the birth of its artistic copies. Finally, some cartographic “juicy bits” follow: the representation of non-existent “ghost” islands on the globe and some interesting graphical solutions that are unusual today.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 450-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
K M Fierke ◽  
Nicola Mackay

This article seeks to explore the quantum notion that to ‘see’ an entanglement is to break it in the context of an ‘experiment’ regarding the ongoing impact of traumatic political memory on the present. The analysis is a product of collaboration over the past four years between the two authors, one a scholar of international relations, the other a therapeutic practitioner with training in medical physics. Our focus is the conceptual claim that ‘seeing’ breaks an entanglement rather than the experiment itself. The first section explores a broad contrast between classical and quantum measurement, asking what this might mean at the macroscopic level. The second section categorizes Wendt’s claim about language as a form of expressive measurement and explores the relationship to discourse analysis. The third section explores the broad contours of our experiment and the role of a somewhat different form of non-linear expressive measurement. In the final section, we elaborate the relationship between redemptive measurement and breaking an entanglement, which involves a form of ‘seeing’ that witnesses to unacknowledged past trauma.


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