Digital Commons Network^™

The Impact Of Prophet Ibrahim’S Supplications In The Qur’An On The Flourishing Of Islamic Pilgrimage, Tariq H. M. Elhadary, Razaq Raj

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

The supplications of Prophet Ibrahim (pbuh) in the Qur’an have had a significant impact on the flourishing of Islamic Pilgrimage and have also provided spiritual guidance for those who visit these sacred sites. Through his supplications, Prophet Ibrahim (pbuh) expressed his love for the sacred places associated with the Islamic faith. His prayers for both the visitors and residents of these places, are believed to invoke divine blessings and protection upon them. Prophet Ibrahim’s supplications in the Qur’an also encouraged Muslim pilgrims (often referred to as religious tourists) to visit these holy sites by reminding them of the great rewards …

Pilgrimage And Tourism Marketing Concepts, Prospects, And Challenges In Two Developing Countries: Bangladesh And Ghana, Md. Javed Kawsar, Michael Evans, Rashed Khan

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This contextual paper analyses the significance of pilgrimage and tourism marketing concepts, prospects, and challenges in two developing countries, Ghana in the West of Africa, and Bangladesh in the South of Asia. The focus of this study is to assess the present marketing and promotion of tourism in the two countries which are different in population size, economy, and tourism contribution towards each country’s GDP.

Within the context of nature-based tourism initiatives in Bangladesh, it is imperative to measure future prospects of tourism marketing ventures related to pilgrimage. The development of marketing for tourism can be helpful for delivering stability …

Automatic Speech Recognition Models For Pathological Speech: Challenges And Insights, Kesego Mokgosi, Cathy Ennis, Robert Ross

Conference papers

Conversational avatars provide innovative platforms for enhancing therapist-patient interactions in speech therapy by offering real-time feedback. However, the performance of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) models on disordered speech, such as dysarthria and stuttering, remains underexplored. The effectiveness of these systems hinges on the accuracy and processing speed of ASR models when transcribing pathological speech, particularly in real-time scenarios. This study evaluates several pre-trained ASR models, including Whisper-large- v3-turbo, Canary, DistilWhisper, and NVIDIA’s stt-en-fastconformer-ctc-large across three datasets: Common Voice (standard speech), TORGO (dysarthric speech), and UCLASS (stuttered speech). We assess the models using Word Error Rate (WER), Real-Time Factor (RTF), and …

Review Of Foreign Tongues, Grace Neville

Journal of Franco-Irish Studies

Review of Foreign Tongues: Victorian Language Learning and the Shaping of Modern Ireland, by Phyllis Gaffney, Dublin: UCD Press, 2024

Review Of It's Not Where You Live, It's How You Live, Tony Kiely

Journal of Franco-Irish Studies

Review of It’s Not Where You Live, It’s How You Live: Class and Gender Studies in a Dublin Estate, by John Bissett, Bristol: Policy, 2023

Texts, Affects And Teenagers: (Im)Material Transmissions Across France And Ireland, Taylor Still

Journal of Franco-Irish Studies

This article examines the circulation of texts between people, spaces and cultural perspectives, addressing disparate mediums from virtual transmission, including social media channels; to physical or material transmission in public space(s). Central to the internationalised transmission of texts, the recent emergence and popularity of channels such as TikTok and Instagram have allowed for more innovative, creative and collaborative literary practices. Focusing on young publics in particular, we interrogate how “viral” transmissive practices can work to re-produce, re-appropriate, and re-interpret literary texts. This article also focuses on the affective experience of these transmissive textual practices, and how the (non-)human interactions can …

Championing Food Studies Within The Field Of Irish Studies: A Serendipitous Autoethnographic Journey, Mairtin Macconiomaire

Doctoral

Food permeates every aspect of life and society, from birth to death—from the new-born’s first suckle to the food traditions associated with Irish wakes and funerals. Essential for survival, it has historically proven academically elusive, hidden in plain sight. Entangled with the domestic and the feminine, it was traditionally regarded as too mundane and too quotidian for consideration. Depending on how you define it, Irish Studies has somewhere between 50 and 100 years of history as an academic discipline. Food Studies is a more recent academic phenomenon, which has been steadily growing internationally since last decade of the twentieth century. …

Exploring The Characteristics Of Conversational Agents In Chronic Disease Management Interventions: A Scoping Review, Ekaterina Uetova, Lucy Hederman, Robert Ross, Dympna O’Sullivan

Articles

Objective

With the increasing global burden of chronic diseases, there is the potential for conversational agents (CAs) to assist people in actively managing their conditions. This paper reviews different types of CAs used for chronic condition management, delving into their characteristics and the chosen study designs. This paper also discusses the potential of these CAs to enhance the health and well-being of people with chronic conditions.

Methods

A search was performed in February 2023 on PubMed, ACM Digital Library, Scopus, and IEEE Xplore. Studies were included if they focused on chronic disease management or prevention and if systems were evaluated …

A Workforce Development Team’S Reflections On Social Work Retention And Turnover In South-East London, Uk, Mark Taylor, Shalini Abrol, Sharon Frieslaar, Corlea Taylor

Journal of Social Care

Statutory children’s services in England experience a high turnover of social work staff. Workforce development teams from these services are seen as part of the solution to reduce the haemorrhaging of social workers. However, how do those working in these teams imagine the world of staff turnover? This paper presents the perspectives of three experienced social workers from a workforce development team in South-East London on staff churn and retention. Informed by a collective experience of over 80 years in social work practice, management and mentoring roles, Sharon, Shalini and Corlea reflect and speculate on two contrasting experiences of social …

Investigating Gender Bias In Large Language Models Through Text Generation, Shweta Soundararajan, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference papers

Large Language Models (LLMs) have swiftly become essential tools across diverse text generation applications. However, LLMs also raise significant ethical and societal concerns, particularly regarding potential gender biases in the text they produce. This study investigates the presence of gender bias in four LLMs: ChatGPT 3.5, ChatGPT 4, Llama 2 7B, and Llama 2 13B. By generating a gendered language dataset using these LLMs, focusing on sentences about men and women, we analyze the extent of gender bias in their outputs. Our evaluation is two-fold: we use the generated dataset to train a gender stereotype detection task and measure gender …

Getting To The Point: Contrasting Directness And Warmth In Motivational Embodied Conversational Agents, Michael O'Mahony, Cathy Ennis, Robert Ross

Conference papers

Enhancing long-term engagement with conversational agents remains a significant challenge. Controlling the perceived warmth or directness of an agent’s personality through the style of its generated text could be used to increase user likeability. This paper reports an investigation of a Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) mediated study of two variants of a motivational embodied conversational agent to measure user perception of and attitudes towards warmth in interaction style. Results show a significant effect of users preferring an agent with a "more direct" personality for this scenario, though this effect is in many ways nuanced.

Comparing The Roles Of Secondary Schools And Universities In The Formation Of British Cabinet Ministers1922-2022, John William Hogan, Sharon Feeney

Articles

The role played by the education system in the creation and reproduction of governing elites, and its countervailing potential to create a more meritocratic and egalitarian society, has been a topic of enduring concern. However, these debates have been rendered opaque by an inability to directly compare elite formation systems both within and between countries. To resolve this problem, we employ elite formation quantitative indices to compare the roles of the secondary school and higher education systems, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in the formation of its political elite – cabinet ministers – between 1922–2022. …

Navigating Global Engineering Education Accreditation: Assessing Ethical Integration And Charting Pathways For Progress, Shannon M. Chance, J Seniuk Cicek, A R Bielefeld, S Hladik, Diana Adela Martin, D M Riley

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Accreditation in engineering has been widely adopted, enabled by notable harmonization among accrediting bodies worldwide. This alignment, facilitated by accords among nations and regions, fosters a shared understanding of expectations critical for the globalized engineering profession. While ensuring graduates are equipped with essential skills for international collaboration, engineering education grapples with defining and instilling ethics, and the problematic nature of this endeavor is complicated by vague and ambiguous terminology within accreditation documents. Addressing this gap requires navigating power dynamics among education, accreditation, and licensure alongside creating localized, meaningful educational experiences. This paper overviews one section from the forthcoming Routledge International …

In-Service Efl Practitioners’ Use Of Corpora In Private English Language Schools, Cathryn Bennett

Irish Journal of Academic Practice

Despite the call for corpora to be integrated into the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom, hesitancy amongst teachers is still reported within research (Poole, 2020). Teachers with the most challenging conditions for integrating corpora are private language schoolteachers who often teach a high number of hours minimising their opportunities towards professional development (Stanley, 2016; Mercer, 2020). Frankenberg-Garcia (2012) recommends that small corpus activities could bring corpora into their classrooms despite required syllabi. Therefore, a five-week training programme which introduces corpora and helps teachers to design these short corpus activities was designed. 19 in-service teachers from across the globe …

Towards Understanding The Post-Colonial In The Development Of Irish Economics, Joseph K. Fitzgerald Dr., Brendan K. O'Rourke

Conference Papers

This conference contribution is prompted by recent work where theories used to understand the economists in countries like France, Britain, Germany, and the USA (Fourcade, 2009; Maesse, 2015) were used to study the development of Irish economics profession. Work on Ireland (FitzGerald & O’Rourke, 2023), though using these frameworks, revealed the importance of Ireland’s colonial and post-colonial experiences in the social status of economics in today’s Ireland. Escobar (2011) points to the power of economists in development discourses focussing particularly on the case of Columbia and the interaction between USA economics with its southern neighbours in the period since the …

Catering And Hospitality Trade Press Periodicals: Their Emergence, Their Memories, Their Preservation, Carina J. Mansey

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

In Victorian England, cultural, industrial, technological, and financial flows led to two industries being subject to processes of professionalisation: catering and hospitality, and the independent press. As such, a new form of media emerged, the trade press, which catered for those working in the catering and hospitality industry. This press content documents not only the industry’s operations, but also the aspirations and attitudes of employees, their employers, and other key stakeholders. This allows for us to glimpse into past lifeworlds and extract forgotten memories. We are able to witness how ethnoscapes characterised the trade, but also led to integration conflicts. …

Creating A Gastrolinguistic Space: Food In Language Learning Materials Of Jesuit Missionaries During The Sixteenth To The Eighteenth Centuries, Zhongyuan Hu

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

This article investigates the intersection of language and gastronomy in European Jesuit missionaries’ language learning materials in China during the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Through the analysis of three key texts, the article emphasizes the significance of food-related content in fostering linguistic and cultural understanding. It provides a thorough examination of how these texts facilitated cultural exchange, highlighting the role of food in creating a space for dialogue between European and Chinese cultures. This article introduces gastrolinguistics, the combination and interaction of food and language, to explore how missionaries adapted to and learned about Chinese culture and introduced …

“Ptasie Mleczko,” “Schabowy” Or “Pierogi”? Polish Foods And Dishes In Ireland, Marzena Keating

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Following the accession of ten Central and Eastern European countries to the European Union in 2004, Ireland witnessed the influx of migrants, the largest group coming from Poland. To cater for their culinary needs specialized shops and dining establishments started to emerge in cities and towns across Ireland. Well-established supermarket chains, such as, for example, Supervalu, Tesco and Lidl, began selling typical Polish food products that would appeal to this community. Various events celebrating Polish traditions, including culinary ones, have been organized throughout Ireland. Additionally, Polish recipes have often occurred in Irish local and national newspapers. This research, based on …

Collective Memory, Culinary Continuity, And Solemn Repasts: Lagana, Itria And The History Of Pasta In Southern Italy, Anthony F. Buccini

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Though today it is communis opinio that the Arabs introduced pasta, especially dried pasta, to Sicily and from there it spread to the continent, there is no evidence to support this theory (Buccini 2013, 2015b, 2024). There is, however, ample evidence both textual and linguistic that this food has been known in southern Italy at least since classical times. Here I argue that an examination of holiday foods, especially those of what I call “solemn holidays,” provides further evidence that pasta has been an integral part of southern Italian cuisine for a very long time.

Seventy-Two Words For Potato: Irish Language Sources For Food History, Mairtin Macconiomaire, Dónall Ó Braonáin

Books/Book Chapters

The Irish word for generous is flaithiúil, which stems from the word ‘flaith’ or prince, so in Irish to be generous is to be princely. The Irish for the Department of Justice is An Roinn Dlí agus Cirt—literally, the department of the law and what is right: the Irish language separates the law from what is right or just. The Irish saying ‘Fáílte Uí Cheallaigh’—the welcome of the O’Kellys—carries memories of an exceptional hospitality event that happened seven centuries ago in east Galway/ south Roscommon but is still preserved in today’s speech.10 This chapter seeks to discuss the wealth of …

Bittersweet Spirits: Transnational Food Memory And The Persistent Production Of Non-Mainstream Alcohol In Trinidad, Shrinagar Indra Francis

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Whether we perceive the process of food leaving its mark on our culture as a function of genetic or collective memory, or a combination, informs the ways we interrogate the continued existence of these foods and their practices across time and landscapes. Within the postcolonial context, the process of re-embodiment is an inherently bittersweet one in that it comes as a consequence of loss and rupture and is motivated by a desire to be remade. Prior to colonialism, the production of alcohol was a profound aspect of the lives of the many peoples of West and West-Central Africa. Descendants of …

Butter Woman, Farmer’S Wife And Housewife Of The Year: Tracing Women In Ireland’S Domestic Food History, Gemma M. Carney

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

This article uses three distinct roles to sketch out the influence of women on Ireland’s domestic food history. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources including the Irish Butter Museum, the Irish Farmer’s Journal and qualitative interviews the article charts a course for tracing women’s integral role in the maintenance of food culture and traditions through a century of significant social and cultural change. As butter women, farmer’s wives, and housewives, women interacted with state and social structures in ways which demonstrate how patriarchal principles dominated Irish culture and society throughout the twentieth century. The paper concludes that …

Collecting Ireland’S Food Memories As A Resource For Food Tourism, John D. Mulcahy

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

An inventory by Teagasc’s National Food Centre, prepared for the Euroterroirs project in 1997, is a rare, if not the only, example of an attempt to recognise, document, and catalogue Irish traditional food and beverages. Even at that, given the brief provided by Euroterroirs, the inventory was limited to 100 local traditional products. But we know from Lucas (1960) that Irish food presents a remarkable continuity of traditions from the time of the earliest documentary evidence to the present. Food and beverages are such an integral part of Ireland’s cultural fabric that the threads, traces, and fragments are not only …

Life, Death, Salt: Salty Memories, Anne Meneley

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

I explore how some of my childhood memories were inspired by salt and preserved by it, from Star Trek to salt and vinegar potato chips. Once so valued as to be considered “white gold”, in the era of the ultra-processed industrial food that dominates contemporary North American food, salt has become more like “white death.” (“Pass the white death” is a joking request for the salt shaker.) A road salt shortage during Toronto’s icy winter of 2018-2019 inspired a joke about how the mayor will be forced to use Toronto’s expensive, Himalayan table salts to ice the roads! In a …

Gui Gedda: Memories Of A Great Provençal Chef – An Investigation Into The Origins Of Reboul’S La Cuisinière Provençale, Mathieu Belledent

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

In April 2023, an interview was conducted with the Provençal chef, Gui Gedda, to interpret his life story and determine his contribution to Provençal cuisine. During the course of the interview, Gedda recounted a compelling story about a meeting which took place between his grandmother and Jean-Baptiste Reboul, chef and author of La Cuisinière Provençale (1897), a book that is regarded as the bible of Provençal cuisine. According to Gedda, the recipes within the book are far from a fair representation of Provençal cooking. Gedda claims that Reboul himself had in fact confessed to his grandmother that he did not …

Dgs 2024 Full Programme, Dgs Committee

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

This is the Programme for the DGS 2024 - Food and Memory: Traces, Trauma and Tradition, as well as the Map of Producers who furnished the delicious food and drink we serve at lunch over the two days of the event.

Gpt Assisted Annotation Of Rhetorical And Linguistic Features For Interpretable Propaganda Technique Detection In News Text., Kyle Hamilton, Bojan Bozic, Luca Longo

Articles

While the use of machine learning for the detection of propaganda techniques in text has garnered considerable attention, most approaches focus on "black-box'' solutions with opaque inner workings. Interpretable approaches provide a solution, however, they depend on careful feature engineering and costly expert annotated data. Additionally, language features specific to propagandistic text are generally the focus of rhetoricians or linguists, and there is no data set labeled with such features suitable for machine learning. This study codifies 22 rhetorical and linguistic features identified in literature related to the language of persuasion for the purpose of annotating an existing data set …

Mass Tourism Management In Sintra World Heritage Site: The Role Of Tourist Guides, Luis Miguel Brito, Ilidia Carvalho

International Journal of Tour Guiding and Visitor Attraction Research

Information is power. Tourist guides hold this power as information givers, representatives of the tourists in the sites they visit and vice versa, and they can also persuade the tourists to do what is more convenient in each situation, thus contributing to sustainability through their interpretation. Arguably, in a situation of mass tourism, they can be very helpful. Mass tourism is viewed negatively by various intellectual currents and some critics in the field. It is usually associated with a lack of interest in culture, and it is understood as harmful to nature. It is in opposition to alternative, responsible, and …

Using Chatgpt To Generate Gendered Language, Shweta Soundararajan, Manuela Nayantara Jeyaraj, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference papers

Gendered language is the use of words that denote an individual's gender. This can be explicit where the gender is evident in the actual word used, e.g. mother, she, man, but it can also be implicit where social roles or behaviours can signal an individual's gender - for example, expectations that women display communal traits (e.g., affectionate, caring, gentle) and men display agentic traits (e.g., assertive, competitive, decisive). The use of gendered language in NLP systems can perpetuate gender stereotypes and bias. This paper proposes an approach to generating gendered language datasets using ChatGPT which will provide data for data-driven …

Navigating The Pathway To Entrepreneurship For Persons With Disabilities: Insights From An Irish Context, Thomas M. Cooney, Martina Brophy, Ahsan Habib

Reports

This report is a study of the challenges facing persons with disabilities who want to start a business in Ireland. It profiles the community and identifies the distinctive barriers to entrepreneurship that persons with disabilities endure. The report concludes by offering a series of recommendations regarding what actions should be taken to improve the pathway to entrepreneurship for persons with disabilities in Ireland.