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Witchcraft Dialogues : Anthropological And Philosophical Exchanges, George Clement Bond, Diane M. Ciekawy

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Witchcraft Dialogues analyzes the complex manner in which human beings construct, experience, and think about the occult. It brings together anthropologists, philosophers, and sociologists, from diverse social and cultural backgrounds, to engage the metaphysical properties of witchcraft and sorcery and to explore their manifestations in people’s lived experiences.

While many Africanist scholars shun the analysis of witchcraft as an appropriate domain of investigation, the experiences, thoughts, activities, and powers that witchcraft encompasses have become increasingly the source of interest and debate. Concepts of witchcraft and the phenomena to which they are applied express something fundamental to the human condition and …

Disrupting The Demand For Commercial Sex To Combat Sex Trafficking And Destabilise Organised Crime Networks, Johan Van Graan

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Sex trafficking persists as a lucrative form of organised crime, sustained by ongoing demand for commercial sex. Using Rational Choice Theory, this article reframes sex buyers as active perpetrators and financial drivers of trafficking networks rather than peripheral actors. The article examines how buyers weigh risks and benefits when purchasing sex, especially in contexts with weak law enforcement. By analysing 53 active trafficking cases from 2021 and 36 prosecuted cases in South Africa (2007–2022), the research identifies clear patterns in buyer behaviour, network operations, and law‑enforcement responses. A central finding is the near-total absence of buyers in prosecutions, which reinforces …

Impunity: A Case Study Of Sex Trafficking In Nevada Brothel Prostitution, Christen Price

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

It is well-documented that legalization and other forms of official protection for prostitution lead to an increase in sex trafficking, including by encouraging demand for prostitution. This paper will consider the relationship between official protection, organized crime, and sex trafficking in pro-prostitution legal regimes, both historical and contemporary. Prostitution is legal in rural counties in Nevada that have fewer than 700,000 residents, if prostitution occurs within a brothel. There is significant overlap between sex trafficking and legal brothel prostitution in Nevada, as well as a nexus to corruption and organized crime, illustrating the normalization of coercion that occurs within legalized …

Disrupting Transnational Human Trafficking Networks: A Practitioner's Perspective On Intelligence-Driven, Offender-Focused Strategies, Rochelle Keyhan

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article examines human trafficking through the lens of organized crime and explores how this perspective can be applied to contemporary trafficking cases in the United States. While trafficking is often prosecuted as an isolated criminal act, many incidents are linked to larger transnational and domestic organized crime networks. The discussion highlights the activities of notorious syndicates, including international cartels, street gangs, and well-funded networks of sex buyers, demonstrating how these entities exploit vulnerable populations for profit. Reframing human trafficking as a sector within organized crime shifts investigative and prosecutorial strategies away from victim-dependent models, which often require survivors to …

The Confluence Of Conflict-Induced Vulnerability, Organized Crime, And Sex Trafficking In Receiving States: A South African Civil Society Perspective, Monique Emser

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The crime-conflict nexus has been well-documented in conflict-affected and post-conflict states. Criminal networks make use of manifold methods and strategies to exploit individual and structural vulnerabilities, particularly those affected by war, displacement, and precarious migration journeys, forming the backbone of most conflict-induced trafficking ecosystems, whether in countries of origin, transit, or receipt. This article examines the intersection of sex trafficking, diaspora communities, and organized crime within South Africa as a receiving state from a civil society perspective. It underscores the deficiencies in traditional, reductionist, enforcement-based approaches to counter-trafficking by the state, where nested subsystems, such as those produced by endemic …

The Nature Of Human Trafficking Enterprises: Analysis Of U.S. And International Prosecutions--And The Path Forward, Jay Albanese

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The primary objective of this research is to develop a description and typology of the nature of serious cases of human trafficking and how traffickers, their victims, and consumers (the demand) overlap and interact across locations. This study examines known human trafficking enterprises for which sufficient evidence has been obtained to result in prosecution. These are also serious cases because US federal and international prosecutions result when the offenses are interstate or international in scope. Using a sample of US cases prosecuted over three calendar years (2021-2024), combined with an international sample of cases, an effort is made to develop …

Sex Buying, Sex Trafficking, And Organized Crime: Introduction To A Special Issue, Marcel Van Der Watt, John A. Winterdyk

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Disrupting The Bonded Economy Of Sex Buying, Sex Trafficking, And Organised Crime Through Policy Change, Dellene Clark

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Emerging criminological research underscores how the economic drivers of trafficking for sexual exploitation reinforce organised criminal markets while reproducing the structural vulnerabilities of those in prostitution. Using South Africa as a case study, this article argues that evidence-based legislative reform is necessary to confront the systemic conditions that enable exploitation. It contends that achieving substantive equality requires recognising the criminogenic role of sex‑buyer demand in sustaining trafficking pipelines and criminal profitability. The Swedish/Nordic demand‑reduction model illustrates how asymmetrical criminalisation can suppress demand, reduce reliance on trafficked persons, and diminish the financial incentives that underpin organised crime. Such an approach reorients …

Leveraging Technology To Measure The Strength Of Demand For Commercial And Trafficked Sex, Michael D. Shively, Bob Rodgers, Courtney Furlong, Brooke Ruffin

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The article examines Transaction Intercept (TI), an artificial‑intelligence platform designed to reduce sex trafficking by disrupting the revenue streams that draw organized crime into the market. Transaction Intercept deploys decoy online ads that appear to offer commercial sexual exploitation or prostitution. Automated "decoy" personas connect to individuals who click on these ads and engage them in text conversations. These exchanges can remain fully automated, ending with deterrence messages, or be transferred to police for potential enforcement action or to trained volunteers who attempt to discourage further attempts to buy sex. Transaction Intercept generates extensive, real‑time data on local demand for …

Behind The Screen: Online Sex Buyer Networks And The Organized Criminal Promotion Of Exploitation, Ava Kamdem, Vanessa Bouché, Ben Silver, Nick Freeman, Justin Euteneier

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This study investigates the extent to which online sex buyer communities in the United States function as organized criminal networks pursuant to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime’s definition of organized criminal groups. Drawing from theories of organized crime, social network analysis, and digital ecosystems, we conceptualize sex buyers not as isolated actors but as participants in coordinated, mutually reinforcing networks that share information to facilitate exploitation, mitigate risk, and sustain criminal behavior. To test this framework, we scraped over 1.2 million posts from a publicly accessible sex buyer forum, comprising 72,974 unique users and nearly 800,000 direct …

Balancing War And Peace In Taekwondo Athlete Development: A Multi-Criteria Coaching Decision Support Framework Using Leadership Scale For Sports And Fuzzy Ahp, King Harold A. Recto, Hazel Jade L. Antonio, Jhyrald Anthony P. Dalida

Electronics, Computer, and Communications Engineering Faculty Publications

Coaching effectiveness is frequently evaluated through competitive outcomes, with the assumption that coaching behaviors directly influence athlete performance. This study examined the relationship between perceived coaching behaviors and individual win percentage among collegiate Taekwondo athletes using the Leadership Scale for Sports (LSS). Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were conducted across five coaching dimensions: Training and Instruction, Democratic Behavior, Autocratic Behavior, Social Support, and Positive Feedback. Results showed that none of the coaching dimensions demonstrated a statistically significant relationship with win percentage. Although coaching behaviors did not significantly predict win percentage, the findings suggest that athlete development is shaped …

Collegiate Athletes’ And Coaches’ Communicative Constitution Of Resilience: A Case Study, Lillian B. Feder

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

Resilience processes are communicative in nature and vital to the wellbeing and success of athletic personnel and organizations. However, the communicative components of resilience-building are largely ignored in sport scholarship and practice. This study seeks to bridge that gap by using the communication theory of resilience as a sensitizing concept to develop a thorough understanding of communicative resilience-building processes in athletics. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with members of a Division I college baseball team were analyzed using thematic co-occurrence analysis. Findings indicate that collegiate athletes and coaches experience resilience-building as a combination of mental toughness (i.e., persistence and discipline) and resourcefulness …

Visually Guided Foraging In Virtual Worlds: Domain-General Properties Of Search Behaviour, Sarah Salo, Alastair Smith

School of Psychology

Everyday human behaviour involves economically driven search for visually relevant targets in complex three-dimensional environments. However, psychological research has typically examined visual search and foraging mechanisms separately, with insights into search emphasising attentional efficiency, and accounts of foraging highlighting decision-making and cognitive control. In order to more closely examine the interrelation between these processes in fully motile environmental search, we devised a novel virtual reality paradigm that required participants to physically explore a large-scale 3D environment and collect multiple visually defined targets. The search environment was organised in patches, with search arrays presented across multiple tables. In single feature search, …

2026 August, Morehead State University. Office Of Communications & Marketing.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for August of 2026.

Telling Their Intensive Stories: Black/African American Intensive Care Unit Nurses And Their Perceived Encounters With Icu Workplace Racism, Sharon M. Butler

Theses & Dissertations

The 2022 American Nurses Association (ANA) study on racism and racial inequality within the nursing profession both acknowledges the presence of racism in nursing and provides evidence of the diverse negative social and psychological effects of racism on minority nurses. Although the 2022 ANA study sets a precedent and shows evidence of racism’s effects across the broader professional nursing workforce, there is limited nursing research literature that offers a focused presentation and understanding of the lived experiences of minority nurses and their personal perceptions of workplace racism. There is also limited nursing research on how workplace racism impacts cultural and …

The Effect Of Cerebellar Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation On Anxiety, Shivangi Bhardwaj

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anxiety is one of the most prevalent mental health disorders in the U.S. Individuals of all ages are affected by anxiety. Therefore, research into anxiety and its potential treatment has constantly been an area of interest. Newer approaches to managing anxiety include non-invasive stimulation techniques, such as Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), because of its accessibility and effectiveness. Past tDCS work typically focused on regions in the frontal lobe. However, tDCS over the cerebellum has not received as much attention compared to the cerebrum, despite recent work demonstrating cerebellar involvement in emotion processing. Thus, a better understanding of how cerebellar …

The Impact Of State Insulin Copayment Caps On Diabetics In The United States, Ryan C. Meyer

All Theses

Insulin is a life-saving medication for people with diabetes that helps regulate blood glucose levels throughout the body. A Type 1 diabetic cannot survive without insulin, and a Type 2 diabetic’s quality of life greatly diminishes without access and use of this drug. Currently, many diabetics skip, ration, or abstain from insulin due to financial barriers. As of June 2026, 29 states have enacted insulin copayment caps for state-regulated commercial health insurance plans to reduce the financial burden of insulin costs. This study examines the impact of these caps on all commercially insured diabetics in the United States, particularly on …

Towards Confucian Economic Democracy: A Relational Alternative To Possessive Individualism, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article offers a Confucian conception of ownership and a different approach to equality based on a concept of relational person that could provide an alternative philosophical framework for economic democracy. The Confucian concept of nonexclusive and nonabsolute co-ownership, conditional on owners fulfilling their social responsibilities and sustained in networks of relationships mitigates the drive to appropriation and resistance to redistribution even without formalizing legal rights of equal ownership. Confucian texts’ condemnation of wide disparities between rich and poor corresponds with distributive ideas that balance equal satisfaction of needs with merit-based incentives for productivity constrained by social harmony. Without advocating …

When The Best-Fit Model Is Not Best: The Glass Slipper Fallacy And Latent Growth Mixture Modelling, Jonathan L. Chia, Markus Wettstein, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Despite the use of latent growth mixture modelling (LGMM) to study longitudinal changes, existing practices may inadvertently impede this very investigation. Although subgroup trajectories may theoretically differ in their structure (e.g., some subgroups being linear, some curvilinear), the current convention advocates overreliance on the baseline model to derive subsequent profile trajectories, which may obscure these structural differences. In this article, we provide a brief description of extant LGMM practices, after which we explicate the pitfalls of the current approach. Finally, we provide a principled approach for LGMM research moving forward. Specifically, we recommend specifying a set of theoretically plausible models …

Artificial Intelligence (Ai) In Forensic Psychology: An Umbrella Review Of Potentials And Pitfalls, Ysabel Thereze Ang Guevarra, Nur Eva Alisha Binte Mohamed Hisham, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly embedded within forensic psychological practice, shaping how criminal risk, legal responsibility and public safety are assessed. AI tools are now used in recidivism prediction, behavioural analysis, deception detection and investigative support, high-stakes domains where errors can have profound consequences. Despite this rapid adoption, the existing literature remains fragmented, with most reviews confined to narrow subdomains and offering limited integrated synthesis of AI′s broader role in forensic psychology. Thus, this umbrella review addresses this gap by synthesising findings from 43 reviews obtained from five major databases, namely EBSCOhost ERIC, EBSCOhost PsycInfo, PubMed, Scopus and Web …

Caring With Ai: The Efficacy Of A Customised Chatgpt-Delivered Self-Compassion Intervention On College Students' Well-Being And Academic Functioning, Tracy Xi Chen, Chi-Ying Cheng, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

College students face various challenges, including academic pressure, social stress, and the transition into adulthood, which can lead to increased anxiety and other mental health issues. By recognizing personal struggles as part of a shared human experience and responding with kindness, self-compassion serves as a powerful strategy for enhancing resilience, facilitating better well-being and performance outcomes. Although effective, Compassion-Focused Therapy often requires substantial resources and time, limiting its applicability to college students. To overcome these barriers, the current study designed and evaluated Your Self-Compassion Companion, a ChatGPT-powered AI chatbot intervention grounded in self-compassion theory and delivered over three weekly 20-min …

Gender And Professional Identities In Businesswomen’S Negotiation, Chi-Ying Cheng, Amy J. Lim, Yi Wen Tan, Fiona Lee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Gender roles and expectations for women have been shown to account for why women tend to negotiate ineffectively in business settings. Drawing from the psychological literature on multiple identities, this paper examines how individual differences in perceived compatibility between gender and professional identities–captured by the construct Gender-Professional Identity Integration (G-PII)–shape businesswomen’s negotiation behaviors. Two studies examined how G-PII interacts with identity cues and cue valence to influence negotiation outcomes. We found that those who perceived their gender and professional identities as compatible (high G-PII) exhibited an “assimilation” effect–they negotiate more effectively when their professional identity was primed by professional identity …

The Ambivalent Wisdom Of Moral Disgust, Brandon Yip

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper has two aims. First, to provide a positive account of moral disgust. I suggest that moral disgust is a response to acts that are socially corrosive, namely, acts that undermine the normative structure to which an agent is attuned. I support this analysis with two lines of evidence: (1) moral disgust serves the important function of guarding normative structures from socially corrosive actions and (2) the analysis provides an illuminating explanation of moral disgust in a wide variety of cases. The secondary aim of this paper is to probe the normative implications of my positive account. I suggest …

The Effects Of Working With Unidentified Migrant Remains: Caregiving, Border Security, And Human Rights On The U.S.–Mexico Border, Jennifer Delaine Huddleston

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation explores how migrant death and the handling of unidentified remains operate within U.S. border governance, focusing on caregivers, forensic anthropologists, and volunteer search-and-recovery teams who recover, document, and try to identify the dead along the U.S.–Mexico border. Using classic grounded theory and reflexive visual ethnography, the study includes interviews, field observations, and documentary photography conducted in South Texas, covering Brooks, Maverick, and Webb Counties.

Instead of viewing migrant deaths as accidental humanitarian tragedies, this dissertation situates caregivers’ daily work within a historical trajectory of deterrence-based border policies, from Prevention Through Deterrence to modern state-led enforcement regimes. It demonstrates …

A Longitudinal Analysis Of Hospital Consumer Evaluation In Virginia, Tulay Akmandor Inac

Health Services Research Dissertations

Suboptimal patient experience signals a need to improve clinical efficacy, patient safety, and healthcare quality. The COVID-19 pandemic intensified hospital resource and staffing demands, reducing hospitals’ capacity to invest in patient experience improvement. Prior studies remain limited because many lack longitudinal structure and organized theoretical models, making temporal inference difficult and weakening analyses of patient experience disparities. To address these limitations, this dissertation incorporates three studies examining patient experience and pandemic-related effects.

In state-level markets comparable to Virginia, limited research has examined longitudinal patient experience trends across regional hospital systems using HCAHPS scores. The first study uses descriptive trend analysis …

A Qualitative Case Study Of Leadership Development In A Graduate Medical Laboratory Science Program, Demetra Castillo

EVMS School of Health Professions Theses & Dissertations

Leadership development is increasingly recognized as an essential component of healthcare education, particularly as medical laboratory professionals assume expanded responsibilities involving collaboration, decision-making, systems thinking, and organizational leadership. Despite this need, limited research has explored how leadership develops within graduate medical laboratory science (MLS) programs. This qualitative case study examined leadership development through the lens of Experiential Learning Theory (ELT). Two research questions explored how the program fostered leadership development through students’ professional biographies, leadership questionnaires, final reflection papers, and leadership credos and how leadership reflections demonstrated growth over time. Secondary data from five student cases were analyzed using deductive …

Praise That Empowers: Training Preschool Teachers To Linguistically Adapt Behavior-Specific Praise For Hispanic Students, Claudia Abril Ochoa

Dissertations

Children’s engagement in early ages is critical for promoting behavioral, academic, and social-emotional outcomes. However, engagement in classroom activities may be difficult for young children who have not mastered the primary language used in early childhood education settings (i.e., English). Research regarding engagement in English Language Learners (ELLs) in preschool settings, as well as cultural and/or linguistic adaptations of classroom interventions to serve this population is limited. Behavior-specific praise (BSP) has been an effective strategy to improve behavior in preschool classrooms. The current study used a multiple-baseline design across three Head-Start teachers to test the efficacy of in situ training …

A Trombone Studio Teacher's Guide To Non-Injury-Related Embouchure Changes, Austin A. Handley

Dissertations

This dissertation is a pedagogical guide for trombone studio teachers who will lead students through embouchure changes. These changes and adjustments are normal in brass pedagogy, but there is limited literature that addresses how teachers should identify the need for change, initiate the process, and support students through it. There are a growing number of resources available about embouchure injury and dysfunction, rehabilitation, and long-term prevention. This leaves a gap for teachers who are trying to help students using an inefficient embouchure setup.

The purpose of this study is to provide a practical resource for teachers by examining the experiences …

The Mediating Role Of Hope In The Relationship Between Everyday Discrimination And Depression Among College Students, Busra Vurkun

Counseling & Human Services Theses & Dissertations

Research shows that marginalized populations experience disproportionately higher psychological distress (Budhwani et al., 2015; Bailey et al., 2019). Everyday discrimination, defined as chronic interpersonal mistreatment such as microaggressions and disrespect, is associated with greater depression and lower psychological well-being (Essed, 1991; Calabrese et al., 2015). Although the negative effects of discrimination are well established, less is known about protective factors that may reduce these outcomes. One such factor is hope, conceptualized by Snyder et al. (1991) as agency thinking and pathways thinking and linked to lower depression and greater resilience (Arnau et al., 2007; Banks et al., 2008). This study …

Empirical Rhetorical Modeling: New Analytical Tools To Evaluate The Intensity Of Rhetoric, August Immel

English Theses & Dissertations

Since 2020, the United States has experienced a surge of incendiary rhetoric in contemporary political discourse, which exacerbates societal polarization and incites violence as evidenced by heightened politically motivated attacks. Numerous actors characterize the impetus of such violence as “extreme rhetoric.” No standard definition exists for such a term, and this gap necessitates the central research question of this dissertation, which interrogates how rhetoric can be systematically evaluated for “extremeness.” I propose that the issue of extreme rhetoric can be fruitfully examined from within the context of rhetorical theory, but instead of attempting to create a new definition of “extreme …