Kathryn Trees

This chapter focuses on the factors influencing Mekong Delta farmers’ satisfaction with health insurance services in the context of agricultural practice. The study identifies three key factors affecting farmers’ satisfaction with health insurance services: participation and payment procedures, hospital service quality, and the support of hospital and social insurance staff. Statistical analysis indicates that these factors significantly impact farmers’ satisfaction levels, with women rating health insurance services higher than men. Moreover, the study underscores the importance of improving access to quality care and enhancing client satisfaction to address the challenges faced by farmers in accessing healthcare services. The research employs a mixed-method approach, including surveys, interviews, and focus group discussions, to gather empirical data from 180 farming households in An Giang, Can Tho, and Soc Trang provinces. The chapter recommends policy reforms to address the socio-economic and environmental changes in the Mekong Delta, advocating for the integration of technological innovations such as telemedicine and artificial intelligence (AI) diagnostic tools to enhance healthcare accessibility. The study’s implications extend to the Vietnam Ministry of Health and Social Security Agency, providing insights to identify areas for improvement in health insurance policies and social security systems. The research contributes to the ongoing discourse on enhancing healthcare services for rural populations, with implications for policymakers, healthcare providers, and social security agencies.

During the Second World War (1939–1945), Western Australian author Rix Weaver published her New Holland trilogy comprising Behold, New Holland! (1940), New Holland Heritage (1941) and Beyond Cooralong (1945). These novels were highly popular at the time of publication, serialised in magazines and on radio and reportedly taught in local high schools. Though published in the 1940s, these novels are of significant cultural importance because they provide a relatively rare historical depiction of the establishment and development of the Swan River colony (later known as Perth) from 1830. Even more unusual is the emphasis on the lives of women in these works. Arguably Weaver’s trilogy contains a dual narrative, one devoted to the early colonisation of Western Australia between 1830 and the 1880s while the other personalises the settlement stories through her heroines Jane Mabie and her daughter Jennifer in conjunction with their families. Through the historically grounded romantic stories of Jane and Jennifer, the experiences of women are depicted within early settler history. In this article, we read Weaver’s trilogy as “romantic historical fiction” (Teo & Fresno-Calleja, 2025) where the trilogy format calls into question the kinds of endings and closures given to their heroines. Overall, we argue that Weaver’s context while writing, the trilogy format and historical setting contribute to the individual and collective, not always happy, ending(s) of these novels.

This article explores Anthropoiesis, the authors’ eco-performance installation presented as part of the European Cultural Centre’s Time, Space, Existence  exhibition at the Venice Biennial during the Venice Biennale Architettura 2023. Drawing on David Farrier’s Anthropocene Poetics (2019), the project investigated how ecocritical texts might be reconceived as multisensory artworks, advancing the concept of slow listening to engage with the Anthropocene’s scalar extremes. By integrating spoken word performance, soundscapes and visual poetry, Anthropoiesis sought to disrupt anthropocentric narratives, compelling audiences to confront the disorienting temporal and spatial dynamics of ecological crises. Foregrounding the urgency of improving attunement to landscapes, the article situates Anthropoiesis within the broader challenge of anthropogenic planetary destabilisation. Its multidisciplinary design reimagines Farrier’s ecocritical text as a sonic and visual assemblage, layered with living, organic and technologically generated soundscapes. Positioned within a nested exhibition alongside Ainslie Murray’s Registry of Itinerant Architectures and Joshua Zeunert’s Shallow Roots, Deep Incisions, offered a multisensory exploration of fluctuating scales and temporal horizons, creating an immersive experience to transcend traditional narrative structures. The article argues that sonic ecologies can help to reorient audiences within fractured Anthropocenic landscapes. Through the lens of slow listening, it analyses how the installation provokes reflection, destabilises linear perceptions of time and space and facilitates poiesis as a threshold moment of ecological revelation. Discussion moves from the project’s interdisciplinary approach to examine the transformative possibilities of careful listening as a critical and creative intervention. In doing so, it seeks to foster heightened attentiveness to more-than-human presences and advance collaborative performance-making to address the sublime tensions of the Anthropocenic moment.

Following increased awareness that the economic impacts alone do not justify support for tourism, studies on residents' perceptions have gained importance. Most early studies of tourism that used social exchange theory (SET) to study residents' perceptions were in advanced countries rather than African countries. This paper provides an empirical discussion of how SET can be used to explore residents’ perceptions of tourism in Southeastern Nigeria to contribute to research on the topic. In-depth interviews were conducted with 208 residents. Results of this study indicated that residents' perceptions of tourism could be influenced by creating opportunities for gender equity, community development and cultural preservation, fear of copying new behaviour from tourists, and local perceptions of foreign white tourists. The study concluded that a theoretical understanding of residents' perceptions of tourism requires identifying and addressing issues that influence such perceptions, which is essential for developing the industry in the area.

There is a shortage of literature on the nature of tourism development and the socio-cultural impacts in Nigeria, making it challenging to identify and discuss strategies for building on positive aspects. Unplanned tourism leaves local people aggrieved, whilst planned tourism may provide economic benefits and help to revive their culture. Although tourism development in Nigeria is affected by terrorism and insecurity, the government is willing to develop the industry. Therefore, research is needed to understand tourism development and socio-cultural consequences. This paper reports on a study conducted in Southeastern Nigeria, which confirmed that tourism is in the early development stage, and the local people noted that significant adverse impacts are not observable. The paper proposes strategies for addressing potential negative socio-cultural impacts, including being realistic, working together, creating equal opportunities and education/awareness. This paper provides valuable information for planners and developers on possible ways of developing resident-friendly tourism destination.

Advocacy for the responsible development of tourism continues to attract attention from scholars. The emergence of responsible tourism in the 1990s was a call to action, and for a move from setting agendas (sustainable tourism) to stakeholder accountability. As tourism is still developing in Nigeria, this paper discusses strategies for supporting responsible tourism development in the Southeastern region of the country. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were organized with 166 stakeholders, including staff of tourism parastatals, traditional rulers, the representatives of men, women and youth and local security agencies. Findings identified possible strategies for determining if, when and how responsible tourism development might occur. These strategies include stakeholder empowerment, funding for tourism supporting facilities, boosting security and capacity for implementing tourism policies. The findings suggest that if well implemented, the tourism strategies are central to achieving future resident and tourist friendly development.

At the time of writing, the global pandemic COVID-19 is an ongoing world health crisis. One of the many ramifications of the pandemic is the impact on universities and colleges worldwide (Leung et al. 2020; UNESCO 2020; WHO Regional Office for Europe 2020). The disruption to classes that would usually involve face-to-face learning, the discontinuation of exchange programmes, and the spread of the virus, in general, has led to alternative methods of education using distance or online learning…

Collaboration and community participation are crucial for securing sustainable tourism and highlight the need to listen and respond to the broad range of stakeholders’ voices, opinions, and concerns. These concepts dominated the discourse of sustainable-responsible tourism and gave rise to collaboration theory as well as various types of community participation. Many scholars in both Western and emerging economies have employed these concepts; however, there is limited research on how they apply in the Nigerian tourism industry. Therefore, this exploratory research discusses collaboration and community participation in tourism development in Nigeria, using the Southeastern region as a case study. In this area, tourism is in the early phase of growth. The paper reports on interviews and focus group discussions used to interact with tourism stakeholders in the region (traditional rulers, men, women, and youth representatives, chief priests, security agents, and tourism officials). Results showed that while the stakeholders are willing to collaborate, challenges affecting their efforts include autocratic governance structures leading to mistrust, clash of responsibilities, inadequate funding for security, lack of tourism awareness and little respect for local culture. The paper concludes that to develop a resident-friendly tourism destination and sustain collaboration and community participation, stakeholders require education about tourism and opportunities to participate in planning.

Popular fiction for women has been variously criticised and derided for a focus on romance plots and superficial themes. Marian Keyes, a prolific author of contemporary women’s popular fiction, however, utilises romance to explore serious contemporary issues. This paper examines the representation of one of these serious issues, domestic violence, in Keyes’ novel This Charming Man (2008). The novel’s multi-story plot gradually weaves together the histories and experiences of four female protagonists from their individual points of view. Each protagonist has had a romantic involvement with one ‘charming man’, the rich and powerful Irish politician Paddy de Courcy. Chapters devoted to each woman are interspersed with short vignettes that recount moments of Paddy’s violent behaviour. The narrative organisation of This Charming Man represents domestic violence in a way that prioritises healing, physically, mentally and emotionally, for the protagonists through telling their stories and sharing those stories with other characters and readers. This form of creative writing prompts reader engagement and reflection. Such readerly engagement may increase awareness of this issue and potentially lead readers to actively seek change in their own lives.