Non-Taster: A Photo Essay About a Loss of Taste and Breakfast

Non-taster is a photo essay exploring the elusive connections between the change of taste and the immigrant experience based on my story of losing taste at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. The world, which used to be dirty, viscous, and alive has rapidly become hygienic, distanced, and virtual. I documented the packaging and food sauce for breakfast via a series of scanned images and photographs during the second and third lockdown in London. The photos of spicy sauce and food packaging reveal the desire to reconnect with the senses. Alongside apathy, nostalgia, and homesickness, Non-taster laments the changes of the senses and desires in the post-pandemic period.

How Time is More than Money: The Mural as a Labour of Love

This article proposes that of all the different ways that social connections are formed the most important factor is time. Given how central it is to the development of relationships, the article argues that projects aiming to improve community relations should extend their duration rather than truncate it for the sake of cost-efficiency or quick and apparent success. The project of specific focus is the making of community murals which is laden with potential but only when it is conceived in the entirety of the process rather than simply as an end product. This potential is based on the idea that more time, if used carefully and critically, can play a greater role in fostering positive relations in contexts where civic engagement is strained. Several case studies will be referenced from the United States of America and Northern Ireland, two societies that share both a tradition of mural making and social division, in terms of race relations and ethnonational/religious sectarianism respectively. Practical insights from these cases substantiate the central argument that the mural process affords moments for valuable cross-community contact, critical discussion, and meaningful reflection. When this approach is adopted, time can be best served in repairing social connections, creating new bonds and even mitigating further tension.

Could Industry-Funded PhDs Be the Future of Academic Impact?

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Reading Domestic Noir Novels Together in Brighton and Hove

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Reconnecting through Publishing

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Foreword: (Re)Connect, (Re)Establish a Bond

In this issue, Excursions Journal invited researchers to (re)connect. The articles assembled here speak about this wide variety of possible approaches and perspectives, highlighting the (re)connections that shape our social and individual lives.

Species Thinking Without Agency: The Afterlife of Slavery, Clones, and Blurring Subject and Object in the Anthropocene

The overwhelming scale of climate change demands new ways of bridging national, cultural, and taxonomic differences. However, ecocritical frameworks that emphasise non-human agency in an attempt to make human individuals empathise with other people, other species, and the earth are haunted by the tenacious spectre of nineteenth-century classical liberalism’s characterization of personhood through specious, fragile dichotomies that can largely fall under the general rubric of agency versus determinism. The putatively opposed terms of these binaries are malleable, and control of their designation is a key element of control societies. Contemporary scholarship has identified several ways subjects bleed into objects, but, even though the ‘individual’ should theoretically collapse under its own ontological pressure in our current biopolitical age, neoliberalism largely holds onto classical liberalism’s central dogma of a person as an agential individual. I analyse the novel Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro and its critical analyses to show how the plight to recognise agency is a prison of analysis that upholds an ideal of the individual as the bastion of personhood. As seen through the afterlife of slavery post-emancipation, those in power can discursively recognise the humanity in people formerly designated 'things' while still perpetuating systematic exploitation and dehumanisation. The metric of ‘agency’ as a unit of hope is an epistemic barrier to effective political rhetoric regarding climate change and species thinking.

A Politics PhD Student’s Experience of Reaching Out

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Online Courts: Re-Assessing Inequality in the ‘Remote’ Courtroom

This paper explores the repercussions of the virtual hearings within the context of socioeconomic inequality in the justice system. Following the imposition of ‘lockdown’ conditions in the UK in March 2020, the Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) rapidly introduced an online court system resulting in thousands of hearings being swiftly transferred onto audio or video-calling platforms. This study is based on interviews with six barristers and solicitors practising in the criminal and family courts, focusing on what the online court experience can reveal about the disparity in socioeconomic status between those judging and those being judged. Conducting a thematic analysis of the interview data, I argue that the disruption to the courtroom dynamics caused by online hearings highlights tacit functions of the lawyer’s role in supporting their clients to navigate the daunting court experience and comply with courtroom customs. I ultimately conclude that concerns regarding the loss of solemnity of proceedings reveal assumptions of both the traditional and virtual court environment and suggest that further research is needed before committing to permanent technology reforms.

Is the Grass Greener in a Post-Pandemic World? (Re)Connecting Humanity with Nature for a Just Recovery

This article assesses the potential for reconnecting human and non- human nature in global post-COVID-19 recovery plans. The article utilises a critical perspective on the neoliberalisation of nature as a framing, as well as the case of sustainability and deforestation in forest risk commodity supply chains, to assess whether sustainable development initiatives and neoliberal environmental governance adequately protect the interests of vulnerable human and non- human nature. It finds that existing approaches to sustainable development in international governance prioritise liberalised global markets and the neoliberalisation of nature through commodification, privatisation and marketisation, thus furthering an unjust human-nature dichotomy by placing humans separate from nature and removing the intrinsic value of non-human materiality. It identifies a synergy between the global campaign to ‘build back better’ after COVID-19, environmental regulation and principles of Wild Law. The article concludes by recommending that a just post- pandemic economic recovery must realign the human experience as a part of the wider whole of the non-human natural world.