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HMI Probation is committed to reviewing, developing and promoting the evidence base for high-quality probation and youth offending services. Academic Insights are aimed at all those with an interest in the evidence base. We commission leading academics to present their views on specific topics, assisting with informed debate and aiding understanding of what helps and what hinders probation and youth offending services. This report was kindly produced by Dr Coral Sirdifield and Professor Charlie Brooker, highlighting the importance of maximising positive mental health outcomes for people under probation supervision – both for the individuals themselves and in terms of wider societal benefits. While there are various barriers, there are a number of steps that service users, professionals and policy makers can take to help overcome these barriers. There is also a role for researchers in strengthening the evidence base, with a need for investment in research and evaluation linked to potential models of good practice. Most immediately, those working in health and justice need to be aware of the potential for exacerbation of mental health issues due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of recovery planning work, systems need to be in place to ensure that both staff and those being supervised can access appropriate support.

On the 21st and 22nd November at the University of Liverpool in London, NCRM held an innovation forum to explore the embryonic field of “investigative social research” and the methods that underpin it. A dynamic and frequently high impact contemporary field, investigative social research encompasses work by non-governmental organisation/civil society researchers, data and investigative journalists, open source investigators, lawyers and independent researchers alongside social scientists of all kinds, from anthropologists, criminologists, epidemiologists, geographers, historians and sociologists through to those involved in accounting, economics and financial studies as well as data science. This emerging global field is characterised by the breadth of output it produces: often fast-circulating studies, news stories, reports, trackers and apps which attract global public attention. Researchers in the field make heavy use of: “new data technologies and analytics and other means of intellectual cross pollination, exchanging ideas and sometimes working and writing together, side by side, across borders, and genres each of them with different perspectives, backgrounds, interests, professional expertise, not to mention internationally and culturally diverse geographic and economic circumstances” (Lewis 2018: 23). In this context, investigative researchers are developing approaches which, as Ruppert and Savage observe, “engage with new forms of data and analytic techniques, undertake rich empirical analysis as well as develop new resources for understanding [the world and what happens in it]” (Ruppert and Savage 2009: 17). In so doing, researchers are contributing to the development of distinctive new “ways of knowing” (ibid.). No longer the preserve of universities and academic disciplines, this opening up and reworking of “the methods and practices that researchers and analysts use to make sense of data” and do useful things with it (Arribas-Bel & Reades 2018: 5) is happening across disciplinary, sectoral and geographical boundaries (with collaborations spanning the globe and involving researchers from countries in the Global South as much as the North). Investigative social research, as the forum showed, is often data intensive, digitally enabled, highly collaborative and impactful and gives rise to its own distinctive “politics of method” (Savage & Burrows 2007, Gray 2019). The purpose of the forum was to explore the methods that enable researchers in this field to pursue topics of social, political and economic import. Whether it is the investigations into the Panama and Paradise Papers, the identification of the Salisbury Novichok poisoners, the documenting of NATO airstrikes as well as civilian deaths across the Middle East, the verification of political violence in Africa through crowd-sourced video and photographic imagery, the tracking and tracing of those infected by COVID-19 during the current pandemic or in quickly contextualising and framing emerging news stories by drawing on new datasets and analytical techniques, investigative social research engages with important aspects of our lives.

During the last 12 months, COVID-19 became a global problem. Universities and drug companies are working together for the development of treatments. Vaccines appear to be one of the most promising treatments, and trials are completed, and others are ongoing. All these studies tend to use a common comparator, the percentage of vaccine efficacy (VE%), calculated using the following formula VE=(1-RR) x100. A recent study published in a renowned medical journal presented large trial results using a different formula VE=(1-OR) x100. We compared the analysis using relative risk (RR) versus an odds ratio (OR), and we did not find any large difference in the results. Nevertheless, we would advise using RR instead of OR in the interests of accuracy, for best practice.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, massive open online courses (MOOCs) assisted HEIs in delivering remote teaching in the situations where university could not provide it in a traditional setting. Even before the pandemic there has been an interest in the MOOCs usage in different national contexts, with an expansion of research on the use of MOOCs in non-Western countries (see Altalhi, 2021; Fianu et al. 2018; Hamdan et al. 2018; Roshchina, Roshchin, & Rudakov, 2018). Building on the previous research, this study aims to analyse MOOCs acceptance and usage among academics in Russian higher education by applying the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model (Venkatesh et al., 2003) to answer the following research question: What factors affect academics’ acceptance and usage of MOOCs in Russian Tertiary Education? By doing so, the study intends to explore factors that influence MOOCs usage among academics in Russia and provide insights on how to support the adoption and the usage of MOOCs within higher educational institutions. Furthermore, the study can contribute to the methodological discussion on the research of MOOCs using UTAUT model and test the model in the context of Russian higher education.

This is a landmark publication for the field of design. It was catalysed by unprecedented circumstances, as designers around the world had to rapidly deploy their competencies in strategic problem-solving to help humanity in the fight against an invisible enemy during a global pandemic. In alliance with other disciplines, from medicine to mechanical engineering, from computing to anthropology, designers everywhere have addressed the challenges and produced remarkable results through a diversity of initiatives. This Special Issue presents a peer-reviewed sample of these initiatives.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted all facets of human relations on a magnitude not witnessed in the post-World War II era. Due to the interdependence of countries in the international system, it is not surprising that the unfolding public health crisis has had significant ramifications for the functioning of the global economy as well. In responding to this global health crisis, and the associated fallouts, the academic community has a crucial role to play in finding solutions to the hydra-headed problems we all face. Driven by this sense of urgency and responsibility, AfronomicsLaw put out a call for contributions in April 2020 for a symposium issue focusing on COVID-19 and International Economic Law in the Global South. This Symposium will last for a full four weeks. This paper provides a broad summary of the 37 insightful essays accepted for the symposium issue. The essays have been grouped into four major themes: (1) International Trade and International Investment Law and Policy, (2) Intellectual Property, Technology and Agriculture, (3) Sovereign Debt, Finance and Competition Law, and (4) Governance, Rights and Institutions.

This study uses corpus linguistics to analyse opinions on messaging and public health measures from one resource—comments posted in response to articles containing references to borders from The Guardian online. Overall, commenters made international, national, and regional comparisons between the and other places, which they considered to be better models for pub health (e.g., Scotland, Germany, and New Zealand). They used criticism of public health measures and guidance as a means to politicise the pandemic; some ironically adapted campaign slogans tocomment on leadership and its political decisions. Commenters did not extend lenience to others, who did not follow guidance, despite otherwise finding the messaging confusing. They expressed concern over socio-economic inequalities (class, financial, and regional) resulting from, or exacerbated by, the implementation of COVID-19 measures. Finally, they offered little support for the measures or leadership but did offer recommendations for changes to measures. These results will inform a wider investigation into the reception and evaluation of public health messaging and related measures, and how these change over time following interventions such as the introduction of new messaging campaigns.