This chapter considers neuroscience translations and attempts to apply our knowledge of the nervous system in practical approaches. I start by discussing the traditional areas of translation, neurology and psychiatry, and the extent to which a focus on neurobiological aspects can help in addressing these conditions. I then turn to more recent claims that neuroscience can inform educational practice, including claims of pharmacological cognitive enhancement, and neurocriminology claims that we will be able to predict and prevent criminal behaviour by identifying the neural mechanisms involved. The discussion covers brain imaging and heritability approaches that try to identify biological bases that can be targeted in translations and interventions, highlighting the caveats associated with these approaches and the claims made from them.

The chapter situates children’s poetry within the print culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and how such poetry provides insights into the shift from a reliance on British practices and literary models to a sense of literary distinctiveness and independence. It discusses how early alphabet books developed literacy as well as inculcated social and political values. It also considers how some children’s verse disseminated the trope of the lost child in the bush, while other verse familiarised children with the Australian environment. It discusses the emergence of fairy and fantasy worlds based on distinctly Australian settings following World War I, and a growing depiction of Australian progress. The chapter discusses the pedagogic role of school readers and their role in mediating continuing connections to Britain and a specifically Australian identity. The chapter also discusses the significance of columns for children in periodicals, and how their encouragement of children to write which led to the rise of a number of child poets.

This chapter examines meritocracy as central to conceptions of ‘the people’ at the mid-century. It focuses on Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, and Storm Jameson, figures closely linked to the Workers’ Educational Association, a network that stimulated thought on class and culture. Meritocracy bifurcated the early formations of cultural studies. For Williams, meritocracy and intelligence create cultural fragmentation to be resisted by the abolishment of the eleven plus, a manoeuvre that would facilitate a common culture as Williams advocated for working-class intellectual power. For Hoggart, who was tentative about the working-class intellect, the social mobility of those found mentally able in the scholarship examination created a degradation of traditional working-class culture, which the adult education movement evaded. Storm Jameson’s novel A Cup of Tea for Mr Thorgill (1957) embodies tensions surrounding communitarian ethics versus individual advancement and elite cultural standards versus cultural inclusion as it examines concerns shaping cultural studies at the mid-century.

This chapter presents Murakami Naojirō’s multifaceted life in chronological order. Providing details about Murakami’s educational background, career stages, and publication history, this chapter traces his imperial agendas and epistemological impact in East and Southeast Asia. It emphasizes the entangled nature of his life and work as a translator historian and scholar diplomat who held influential academic positions during the Japanese Empire, as well as his rehabilitation in Jesuit-led Christian history circles toward the end of his life. A variety of genres have been consulted to develop a comprehensive understanding of Murakami’s professional life across archives, universities, and government offices and how his various posts shaped the global circulation of knowledge.

The right to education is a human right recognised by a number of international legal instruments and the civilised world. Agreement about the language used as the medium of instruction, however, is not so easily achieved – should it be available only in the official language or should it also be provided in minority languages? Is there a right or even a duty to learn the official language? There have been recent developments in international law clarifying this issue, and problems were also identified during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is abundant research that the COVID-19 pandemic had more negative effects on ethnic and national minorities than on the majority population, including in the field of education. Facilitation of access to education was ensured mostly in the official language, while students studying in minority languages were left behind.

This chapter draws on original data on church activism in defense of democracy to test various theories of why churches engage in democratic activism. It demonstrates that churches with more involvement in providing education are more likely to speak out in defense of liberal democratic institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, independent of country-level or denominational trends. In contrast, the data provide limited support for alternative explanations.

This chapter considers whether church education itself makes a difference to citizens’ democratic attitudes. Drawing on evidence from the handover of Catholic primary schools to the Zambian government in the early 1970s, it finds limited effects of the handover on students’ political attitudes except that Catholic schools foster more conservative gender norms. In Tanzania in the period before 1970, Protestant school attendance improves women’s citizenship on many dimensions compared to secular school attendance, but Catholic school attendance does not.

This chapter examines whether decisions of Catholic churches to speak out in support of liberal democratic institutions depend on their reliance on state fiscal transfers. It draws on a novel data set that measures the annual pro-democracy activism of churches through an examination of their public pastoral letters. An exogenous policy intervention – the introduction of universal primary education policies across sub-Saharan Africa between 1994 and 2008 – shows that the introduction of policies that increase church dependence on the state for financing of their schools reduces their willingness to speak out in defense of liberal democratic institutions.

This chapter explains how liberal democratic institutions provide a solution to the problem that rulers cannot otherwise credibly commit to forgoing the introduction of regulations that increase state control over church activities. In particular, churches have greater autocratic risk when they have historically invested in activities, such as church schools, that the state has high capacity to regulate. As a result, churches with significant education systems have greater incentive to speak out in support of liberal democratic institutions, although this incentive is mitigated when their schools are fiscally dependent on the government to operate.

This chapter provides a historical overview of church–state relations and church education provision in sub-Saharan Africa. It also demonstrates that churches have not had partisan coalition partners with closely aligned interests in this context, necessitating alternative approaches to ensuring political representation of their interests.

This chapter discusses the implications of the book for understanding democracy and democratic activism beyond churches in sub-Saharan Africa. It emphasizes that some churches employ coalitional strategies to advance their interests, and, in such cases, their attitudes toward liberal democracy are contingent on whether doing so will advance or hinder the power of their preferred parties. It also shows that some churches rely on liberal democracy as an institutional guarantee of their interests, suggesting that my argument applies to churches beyond Africa. It concludes by explaining how the theory can be applied to other types of actors in other regions of the world.

This chapter demonstrates that churches have often engaged in activism for liberal democratic institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, and yet existing scholarship provides little guidance in explaining why churches sometimes engage in this type of activism while others do not. It sketches out an argument for why some churches have an interest in liberal democratic institutions because they protect them from rulers unilaterally introducing regulations that reduce their control of key church activities. It argues that church schools have particular risk of regulation by rulers, giving churches that run greater number of schools particular incentives to support liberal democratic institutions. It also argues that this risk is mitigated when churches are highly dependent on the state for financing activities.