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Higher education institutions (HEIs) across the globe have turned to online technologies in a bid to address the unprecedented disruption to their educational function, created by physical restrictions implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Educators, learning professionals, administrators, managers - all have had to muster the courage and determination to salvage what their infrastructure and means have allowed. "A certain shift in mind-set has occurred. Over-simplified and over-generalised perhaps, but a clear directive was given that 'this has to be done online', in consequence of which the stance changed from 'this can't be done online' to 'how can this be done online?' This was the watershed moment. Even the fiercest opponents of anything technology have been engaging in the shift to online." While such commitment has been generative in actions within the initial period of negotiating the practical problem-solving of the 'pivot online', any self-congratulation and relief should be tempered with critical consideration of the ways in which emergency measures impact on equity in HE. This article offers reflections-in-action by 21 contributors from 18 institutions whose scholarship and/or practice in academic development (broadly conceived) spans 7 countries[1]. As individuals, we were drawn together through networks of existing concerns about equity[2]. Informed by critical traditions of scholarship and practice largely underpinned by a political ethos of social justice in the micro-curriculum, the thematic analysis in this paper outlines contributors' critical deliberations during the initial "firefighting" of this "watershed moment" where the "equality debate now overlaps much more with the digital transformation debate". The piece makes key assertions about what matters for equity at this pivotal moment: the conditional, spatial and institutional matters of context.

AbstractMajor knowledge gaps remain concerning the most effective ways to address mental health and psychosocial needs of populations affected by humanitarian crises. The Research for Health in Humanitarian Crisis (R2HC) program aims to strengthen humanitarian health practice and policy through research. As a significant portion of R2HC's research has focused on mental health and psychosocial support interventions, the program has been interested in strengthening a community of practice in this field. Following a meeting between grantees, we set out to provide an overview of the R2HC portfolio, and draw lessons learned. In this paper, we discuss the mental health and psychosocial support-focused research projects funded by R2HC; review the implications of initial findings from this research portfolio; and highlight four remaining knowledge gaps in this field. Between 2014 and 2019, R2HC funded 18 academic-practitioner partnerships focused on mental health and psychosocial support, comprising 38% of the overall portfolio (18 of 48 projects) at a value of approximately 7.2 million GBP. All projects have focused on evaluating the impact of interventions. In line with consensus-based recommendations to consider a wide range of mental health and psychosocial needs in humanitarian settings, research projects have evaluated diverse interventions. Findings so far have both challenged and confirmed widely-held assumptions about the effectiveness of mental health and psychosocial interventions in humanitarian settings. They point to the importance of building effective, sustained, and diverse partnerships between scholars, humanitarian practitioners, and funders, to ensure long-term program improvements and appropriate evidence-informed decision making. Further research needs to fill knowledge gaps regarding how to: scale-up interventions that have been found to be effective (e.g., questions related to integration across sectors, adaptation of interventions across different contexts, and optimal care systems); address neglected mental health conditions and populations (e.g., elderly, people with disabilities, sexual minorities, people with severe, pre-existing mental disorders); build on available local resources and supports (e.g., how to build on traditional, religious healing and community-wide social support practices); and ensure equity, quality, fidelity, and sustainability for interventions in real-world contexts (e.g., answering questions about how interventions from controlled studies can be transferred to more representative humanitarian contexts).

A search for dark matter linelike signals iss performed in the vicinity of the Galactic Center by the H.E.S.S. experiment on observational data taken in 2014. An unbinned likelihood analysis iss developed to improve the sensitivity to linelike signals. The upgraded analysis along with newer data extend the energy coverage of the previous measurement down to 100 GeV. The 18 h of data collected with the H.E.S.S. array allow one to rule out at 95% C.L. the presence of a 130 GeV line (at l=-1.5°, b=0° and for a dark matter profile centered at this location) previously reported in Fermi-LAT data. This new analysis overlaps significantly in energy with previous Fermi-LAT and H.E.S.S. RESULTS: No significant excess associated with dark matter annihilations was found in the energy range of 100 GeV to 2 TeV and upper limits on the gamma-ray flux and the velocity weighted annihilation cross section are derived adopting an Einasto dark matter halo profile. Expected limits for present and future large statistics H.E.S.S. observations are also given. ; The support of the Namibian authorities and of the University of Namibia in facilitating the construction and operation of H.E.S.S. is gratefully acknowledged, as is the support by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), the Max Planck Society, the German Research Foundation (DFG), the French Ministry for Research, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique-Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules and the Astroparticle Interdisciplinary Programme of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the United Kingdom Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the Institute of Particle and Nuclear Physics of the Charles University, the Czech Science Foundation, the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the South African Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation, and the University of Namibia. We appreciate the excellent work of the technical support staff in Berlin, Durham, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Palaiseau, Paris, Saclay, and Namibia in the construction and operation of the equipment. R. C. G. Chaves Funded by European Union Seventh Framework Programme Marie Curie, Grant Agreement No. PIEF-GA-2012-332350. ; Peer-reviewed ; Publisher Version