Shreya Sridharan, University of Warwick
Welcome to the latest issue of Reinvention: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research, Volume 15, Issue 1 (15.1). This is the second edition of the year, following our special issue in February, and an aim that we are consistently pursuing this year is to foster innovation in our work and our publication. In that regard, we bring you a new feature this time, a music concert review, which I hope will be the first of many such pieces to come. We have also begun to publish more creative work, as seen in our special issue, and I hope that this brings forth a new perspective on creative practice as research.
As an interdisciplinary journal, we publish papers that examine many topics, and it is often difficult to see the threads that pull these papers together. In this issue, we feature papers from three key disciplines – biological sciences, history and law – and the underlying themes that connect these papers are innovation and inclusion. The scientific papers deal with new and innovative areas of research, such as tissue engineering and regenerative agriculture, while the papers from the humanities deal with themes of diversity, identity and inclusionary perspectives. At first, this seems dichotomous, but there are already links to be made: innovative medical practices such as tissue engineering improve accessibility to medicine, and the focus on sustainability in methods such as regenerative agriculture enables us as a society to be more inclusive of future generations. The humanities papers that we present advance new frameworks and reimagine existing systems through the lens of diversity, but what they offer is, in fact, innovation. Thus, I urge you to look for and make the connections between these two themes as you read this issue. I offer one way to do this later in this article.
Before I introduce the papers we present in this edition, I would like to take a moment to reflect on Reinvention’s own identity and aims. We are first and foremost an undergraduate research journal, but the two pillars of our journal are interdisciplinarity and internationality. Our focus on publishing interdisciplinary research makes our journal both selective and accessible to students – we have no limits by subject, but we do encourage our authors to identify cross-disciplinary themes and the relevance of their research. I believe that this is in itself a form of innovation and something that I hope we can inspire other publications to follow. Further, as we accept submissions from students all around the world, we are taking steps forward in making academia more inclusive and accessible. While we admittedly work within constraints due to language, we strive to showcase student work from varied backgrounds, including students for whom English may be a second language. Inclusion and innovation are undoubtedly valued at Reinvention and, as I hope our readers can see, are reflected in our publications.
Edition 15.1 of Reinvention brings eight original research papers and two reviews – a review of the exhibition A Picture of Health: Art, Medicine & the Body and a review of the Chineke! Orchestra’s recent concert at the Warwick Arts Centre.
To begin with, ‘Appetite Control With Ageing: A Narrative Review Focused on the POMC and AgRP Neurons’ by Adam Plotkin is an outstanding scientific review of the anorexia of ageing, which is a reduction in food intake with increased age. The author explores current research on appetite regulation and dysregulation with age – specifically pharmacological agents that are currently used – and provides incisive insights on where future interventions might go.
Alisha Fulton’s ‘Efficacy of the Ecosystem Services Approach in Transitioning to Regenerative Agriculture in Australia’ is a review examining the regenerative practice of crop diversification using an Ecosystem Services Approach. An ecosystems approach is a framework for looking at ecosystems as a whole and reconciling human and environmental needs. Fulton argues that crop diversification can be a useful tool to ensure food security in the face of further climate change and posits regenerative agriculture as the way forward.
In ‘Biodegradable Synthetic Polymers for Tissue Engineering: A Mini-review’, Harrison Moon, Emily Hartley and Ana Neves review the field of tissue engineering, an innovative area of medicine. They discuss the development of biodegradable scaffolds – including requirements, degradation factors and mechanisms – and explore different synthetic polymers and fabrication techniques used for tissue scaffolding. This extensive review of cutting-edge research shows that while tissue engineering using scaffolds is still in infancy, it has strong potential for clinical use, and the authors indicate that one way forward would be to create a comprehensive polymer database to enable further research and applications.
‘The Fog that it has Drawn upon Itself’: What Now for the ICC after failure in Darfur?’ by Nicole Chiarion Casoni explores the perceptions and criticisms of the International Criminal Court (ICC) using its investigation of the conflict in Darfur, Sudan. Chiarion Casoni argues that although there are practical issues with enforcement and jurisdiction, the major systematic weakness of the ICC is its roots in the Global North, which harm its global legitimacy and position as a judiciary of international law. This paper moves us to critically reflect on the positions that international organisations operate from and how their operations can be made more inclusive and equal – something that is truly valuable across disciplines.
Helen Yesberg’s ‘Libraries, Piracy and the Grey Area In-Between: Free Digital Media during the COVID-19 Pandemic’ discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the consumption of free digital media and hones in on the effect this has on the authors and libraries that supply these media. The author’s focus on consumption through piracy offers interesting insights into the (tense) relationship between publishers and libraries. The pandemic has brought challenges to maintaining a balance between protecting authors’ rights and meeting consumer needs, and this paper provides an avenue to discuss how the digital accessibility of media can be made fair and sustainable.
Gervaise Alexis Savvias, in ‘Comments on Intersectionality’, explores the need for intersectionality in contemporary law. Intersectionality views issues from a multi-axis perspective and, in this context, refers to adapting legal structures to acknowledge people’s diverse identities. This is a particularly relevant paper because intersectionality as a concept has come to the forefront as of late. Savvias convincingly argues that intersectionality as a framework shows how only when systems recognise discrimination across different dimensions can we truly progress to a more equal and inclusive society.
In ‘Amid Rebellion, Invasion and Revolution: Ottoman Centralisation in Lebanon, 1861–1915’, Charles Ough dissects historical perspectives on Lebanon in the reorganisation period after 1860 known as the mutasarrifiyya. The author contends that existing literature on this period has a nationalist bent, presenting the mutasarrifiyya as nurturing quests for an independent Lebanese nation. Using a new set of sources from The National Archives and Ottoman texts referenced in secondary sources, Ough posits a different view – that Istanbul’s centralisation worked against European influence and made Lebanese secession less certain. This paper, as in Chiarion Casoni’s work, encourages us to contemplate how we develop perspectives on history and to ensure that we listen to all the relevant voices to paint a better picture of history.
Finally, ‘From Baroque Spain to 1600s Amsterdam: Emergent Judaism in the Literary Works of Ex-New Christian Miguel de Barrios’ is a student–staff collaboration, presenting an interesting amalgamative study of Spanish literature and history. Arielys Morffiz González, Fabi Zeller-Márquez and Matthew Warshawsky analyse sonnets and plays known as autos sacramentales by Miguel de Barrios. De Barrios was a Hispano-Portuguese Jewish author from Amsterdam, and the authors show that, at a time when non-Catholic practices were prosecuted, Barrios’ work glorifies Judaism and expresses the identity of Hispano-Portuguese Jews. The authors also identify several factors that affected Barrios’ expression, such as the importance of Amsterdam as a centre for Sephardic settlement. This paper presents a poignant portrait of how communities use various forms of expression to uphold their identities when faced with discrimination or oppression.
In the first of its kind, Curtis Leung reviews a concert by the Chineke! Orchestra, weaving together historical insights about the pieces and articulate appreciation of the performances. The concert featured Petite Suite de Concert by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Piano Concerto in A Minor by Edvard Grieg and Symphony No. 6 in F, The Pastoral Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven. The Chineke! Orchestra aims to celebrate and promote diversity within classical music and offers opportunities for ethnically diverse classical musicians across Europe. We are immensely honoured and proud to feature a review of their performance, and Leung’s impressive research demonstrates how the orchestra, the music they played and the contexts of the pieces themselves showcase and foster diversity and inclusion.
Lastly, Jess Adler reviews A Picture of Health: Art, Medicine & the Body, an exhibition at the Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum. The exhibition presents works addressing health and medicine across various media, such as marble statues, art prints, photographs and historical artefacts. This exhibition was very fitting for the journal, given its own interdisciplinary approach of combining art and medicine, and Adler provides an engaging review, bringing in her own knowledge as a medical student.
The papers in this issue embody both aforementioned themes; however, I now argue that they are not two themes but rather one. Inclusion has become a widely discussed topic of late, and diversity and inclusion as a concept is being applied across many contexts, from corporate organisations to academia to media. While it may seem as if innovation is a separate thread, I believe that to truly innovate, we must include. Innovation cannot come without considering different identities, needs and interests. It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention and, as valuing diversity becomes much more necessary, it brings with it the necessity for further invention and reinvention – an idea beautifully captured in our cover by Inés Robledo. Thus, when looking back on this issue, I hope our readers can reconcile how innovation and inclusion are mirrors of each other and promote each other, both in academia and elsewhere.
Before I conclude, I must thank Elle Pearson, one of our Assistant Editors, for initiating and managing both the reviews. She has consistently been a voice for innovating our journal, and I am deeply grateful for her efforts. I would also like to thank Inés Robledo for her work on our social media, as she continually creates new and engaging content. I congratulate and thank all our contributing authors. I hope this experience has been as rewarding and valuable as possible. Finally, to all our readers, thank you for your interest in our journal, and I hope our future issues can further push the limits of undergraduate research.
To cite this paper please use the following details: Sridharan, S. (2022), 'Reinvention: Innovation and Inclusion', Reinvention: an International Journal of Undergraduate Research, Volume 15, Issue 1, https://reinventionjournal.org/article/view/1170. Date accessed [insert date]. If you cite this article or use it in any teaching or other related activities please let us know by e-mailing us at Reinventionjournal@warwick.ac.uk.