Queen Margaret University is a university, founded in 1875 and located in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is named after Saint Margaret, wife of King Malcolm III of Scotland.
This study examines the structural, political, and epistemic conditions shaping the production and publication of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) research within events management journals. Drawing on interviews with authors and events journal editors, the findings reveal that EDI scholarship is often constrained, not by a lack of interest, but by misalignment between researchers' commitments, and the neoliberal academic systems in which they work. Journal rankings were identified as powerful determinants of publishing decisions, often compelling scholars to prioritise prestige and career security over the perceived professionally risky disciplinary fit. Events journal editors are all too aware of the tensions with EDI research, leading to strategic behaviours to promote other EDI-related practices, such as encouraging special issues, diversifying editorial boards and supporting inclusivity with reviewers. Overall, the marginalisation of EDI research stems from intersecting pressures, such as metricised performance regimes, disciplinary hierarchies and, in some regions, hostile political climates. Advancing EDI within events research requires institutional courage to broaden conceptions of quality, normalise social justice scholarship and challenge the structural conservatism embedded within academic publishing.
The frequency and severity of extreme weather events have increased due to climate change, with floods emerging as one of the most common climate change-induced disasters the world over. South Africa is one of the countries most susceptible to floods in Southern Africa. Among the main factors exacerbating the impact of floods, particularly in urban areas in Africa, is waste. This article contributes solutions in dealing with the flood and solid waste challenges in urban informal settlements in South Africa through exploring the potential benefits of knowledge systems integration in tackling such challenges. Using the case of the Quarry Road West informal settlement in eThekwini Municipality, KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa, the paper discusses the roles played by scientific, practitioner and local knowledge systems in responding to flood risk and solid waste challenges in this area over the years and the benefits that could be realised if these knowledge systems are deployed in a systematically integrated manner.
The concepts of health systems strengthening and health systems resilience are conceptually different but often used interchangeably in health policy and systems research and practice. Operationalising them can be difficult, but both are particularly relevant in contexts of conflict, violence and institutional fragility. In the current landscape of increasing complexity of humanitarian crises and constrained resources, understanding their meaning can be helpful to reaffirm their significance and value for achieving equitable access to care for the most vulnerable populations.We propose reframing health systems strengthening and resilience across three key dimensions: actors, levels and time. Donors and multilateral and international organisations need to explicitly recognise and engage a broader range of local health systems actors, including community-based, faith-based and non-state actors, alongside national authorities. Actors should work across levels, from individual and communities to district and national domains, minimising gaps and vulnerabilities. It is also crucial to adopt longer time frames in the conception, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of interventions to strengthen health systems and increase their resilience in fragile and conflict-affected settings. This timeframe shift can help mitigate potential unintended long-term consequences of short-term interventions, support sustainability, improve learning capabilities and enhance transformation.Such a three-pronged shift demands a deeper engagement with the affected communities and local health actors. It entails transferring decision-making power to them rather than exclusively transferring risks. This can ground health systems strengthening and resilience interventions in the contextual reality and needs rather than in externally defined priorities and frameworks.
Financial protection is a key goal for universal health coverage, but globally, this indicator has been lagging, especially for low-income households. Understanding how to improve it is urgent. This rapid evidence review examined the effectiveness of interventions, which affected financial protection in health across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). A systematic search of published literature identified empirical studies reporting on outcomes such as out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE), catastrophic spending, impoverishment, and care foregone for financial reasons, with data extracted and categorized using structured tools. A narrative synthesis was used to interpret the evidence. The review included 214 studies published between 1999 and 2024, covering interventions in 39 countries. About one-quarter of studies assessed equity, often revealing mixed or regressive effects. Financial protection is affected through multiple channels, but evaluations still largely focus on health-sector-specific interventions, failing to examine potentially impactful wider policies. Insurance schemes were the most studied intervention type, with mixed results. Demand-side financing, such as vouchers or cash transfers, and user fee reforms often struggled to benefit the poorest due to structural barriers and indirect costs. Provider payment reforms were more likely than other categories to show adverse effects, including unintended supplier behaviour changes that drove up OOPE and costs to the system. Less frequently evaluated interventions, such as social protection and behaviour change programmes, showed some positive effects. Whilst no single intervention consistently ensured financial protection, the evidence points to the value of interventions that act across multiple sectors and health areas. Designing reforms with an explicit objective of improving financial protection, with local context, system capacity, and equity in mind and adjusting based on continuous monitoring, can support achievement of improved and equitable financial protection.
Understanding the level of confidence an eyewitness intends to communicate is important for criminal justice. However, eyewitnesses vary considerably in what they mean-even when using the same phrase-and evaluators vary in their interpretations too. Building on that work, we show how the criminal justice system could leverage where agreement does exist. We produced a tool (a lexicon) for helping eyewitnesses and legal actors to understand how people on average interpret confidence. The tool could be used to guide the communication of eyewitness confidence. Three replications demonstrate that the structure of the produced lexicon is relatively, though not perfectly, consistent across samples and English-speaking cultures. Study 5 shows that eyewitnesses' numeric translations of phrases from the lexicon when they spontaneously produce them result in similar distributions of meaning as those we obtained from non-eyewitness interpreters in Studies 1-4. Furthermore, the lexicon elicited a similar confidence-accuracy relationship as asking for confidence on a 0%-100% scale or in eyewitnesses' own words. While one might argue that this suggests reliance on the eyewitness's own words is sufficient, we argue that research-based evaluations of own-words confidence-here and in prior research-likely overestimate the confidence-accuracy relationship because researchers systematically interpret own-words confidence. In practice, individuals make unaided (and variable) interpretations of verbal confidence judgments. Therefore, our results suggest a lexicon could produce a superior confidence-accuracy relationship in practice.
