Search results

On becoming a good probation worker

The Confederation of European Probation detects a clear need for a central record of training and qualification requirements, standards or curricula for probation and community supervision practitioners in EU Member States. Hogeschool Utrecht (UAS) has been commissioned to conduct a survey to collect an overview of qualification requirements and training of probation workers in order to set up a network to share knowledge, competencies and expertise among members’ states. The research question is: What kind of formation precedes the start of a career of a probation worker in the various EU Member states and how does it develop throughout his or her career? In order to answer this question, an online survey with closed and open questions has been send out among CEP members that provide or are responsible for probation services. Twenty of them filled out the questionnaire covering 18 different countries.

Becoming a democratic citizen

Becoming orphans repeatedly

It goes without saying that with literally fading boundaries between social communities (this comes together with advanced technology), it is much more complicated for individuals to find their place in a social community. In other words, it 's hard for us to make our address known to the abstract (virtual) society that we could belong to. Since such physically rooted address barely exists, this may be even impossible. "Cogito ergo sum" may be replaced by" I app so I exist".

Towards Becoming an Ecology of Care

Thinking about care in the organization of an ecology is central to the interdisciplinary research group Care Ecologies; found during a lockdown in the spring of 2021 and hosted by ARIAS Platform for Research Through the Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. In Towards Becoming an Ecology of Care group members Valentina Curandi, Inte Gloerich, Ania Molenda, Maaike Muntinga, Natalia Sanchez Querubin, Nienke Scholts and Marloeke van der Vlugt, offer an initial articulation on their approaches and principles – performative practices, reflection, speculations - of what an ecology of care could be. While each bringing in different understandings of care, staying with those differences shaped the ways in which the agenda of the research group has been (un)settled. To exchange knowledge and experiences, the group uses various on- and off-line frameworks, like presentations and practice sessions. Exploring how activities that sustain a research group – coordinating, meeting, writing and documenting – may be done with care, this paper attempts to present a speculative proposition for functioning as a research ecology on and around care. Bringing into focus what care can do, while being attentive to what is neglected. This is not only done in writing but also becomes visible in the accompanying images compiled of material and immaterial memories. It is an ongoing process, for which the writing of this paper became a catalyst for reflection. While not aiming for clear answers the authors invite themselves and others to become more aware, devising and testing work strategies for care-based practices.

Becoming solar

In this article we examine the experiences of the first and second author who have changed themselves to become newly attuned to the sun, or who have “become solar”. Motivated by calls to approach solar design in novel, less technocratic ways, we reflect on their one-year journey to gain a new relationship with solar energy as an explicitly more-than-human design (MTHD) approach. We argue that their perception of solar energy progressively worked to decentre them as human actors in this new solar-energy arrangement, revealing other nonhuman actors at play, instigating situations of care and attention to those nonhumans and ultimately guiding them towards what it means to be solar. For solar design, we see this approach as creating a new lens for solar designers to draw from. For MTHD, we see this acting as a practical example for designers seeking to begin transforming themselves in their own practice by taking initial steps towards a MTHD approach.

Becoming Vincent : dramatized story in Etten-Leur