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This chapter intends to provoke thought around assumptions about young people providing care, what influences how young carers are perceived and how stigma and judgement associated with caring are discussed. We conclude by emphasising the significance of the role as an educator in creating discussion about the breadth and diversity of care experiences. This role includes both educating young people about young caring and being mindful that your students may currently be or previously been a young carer.

Any topic can be sensitive, and every subject area will have sensitive issues and topics that academics in higher education and further education settings will be expected to negotiate. Your ability to negotiate sensitive topics is important because the ways in which you engage and teach about sensitive topics will affect your ability to provide a positive learning experience and teaching alliance with students. In practice, you will face enormous pressure to ‘deliver’ on teaching, which will only be mirrored by similar freedoms in deciding on how and what needs to be done to get students to where they need to be. Negotiating, identifying, preparing for and delivering teaching on sensitive subjects and topics can be difficult in individual academics. This chapter, seeks to prepare you for developing a deeper understanding of some of the philosophical, theoretical, and practical-based concerns and issues related to teaching sensitive topics and subjects. This chapter begins with providing a rationale for what follows, and it explores some of the key themes, positionality, identity, transformational learning and lived experience, that are explored in greater depth in the collection. This chapter also contains a detailed breakdown of the structure and the content of this edited collection, and it concludes with some reflective comments about the implications of the collection for you as an individual and your career.

Technologies are ubiquitous in modern Britain, gradually infiltrating many areas of our working and personal lives. But what role can technology play in the current COVID-19 pandemic? At a time when our usual face to face social interactions are temporarily suspended, many of us have reached out to technology (e.g. Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook, Zoom) to help maintain a sense of closeness and connection to friends, family and vital services.

One largely unsung technology is the virtual assistant (VA), a cost-efficient technology enabling users to access the Internet of Things using little more than voice. Deploying an ecological framework, in the context of smart age-friendly cities, this paper explores how VA technology can function as an emergency response system, providing citizens with systems to connect with friends, family, vital services and offering assistance in the diagnosis of COVID-19.

We provide an illustration of the potentials and challenges VAs present, concluding stricter regulation and controls should be implemented before VAs can be safely integrated into smart age-friendly cities across the globe.

This paper explores the application of blockchain technology in the public cultural sector, where adoption remains limited despite its potential. The study identifies major use case scenarios and empirical examples of blockchain adoption in public sector cultural services through a scoping literature review.

A scoping literature review was conducted to map research and conceptual approaches to blockchain technology in the public cultural sector, focusing on key use cases emerging and empirical examples.

The review reveals that while blockchain has the potential to enhance public cultural services, its adoption is still in its early stages. Identified use cases include tokenization of cultural assets, digital rights management and decentralized funding models. Empirical examples in the public cultural sector are sparse, and the impact of the technology remains largely theoretical.

The study is limited by the scarcity of empirical data on blockchain adoption in public cultural services. Future research should focus on in-depth case studies and empirical analyses to understand the practical implications of blockchain in this sector.

Public sector organizations offering cultural services may use these insights to guide blockchain adoption and implementation decisions.

Blockchain adoption in public cultural services has the potential to democratize access, enhance transparency and foster community engagement, contributing to a more inclusive and participatory cultural ecosystem.

This paper contributes to the emerging discourse on blockchain in the public sector, focusing on the often-overlooked cultural services. It highlights the benefits and challenges of blockchain adoption in this sector, providing insights for future research and policy decisions.

The rising volume of open government data (OGD) contrasts with the limited acceptance and utilization of OGD among citizens. This study investigates the reasons for citizens’ not using available OGD by comparing citizens’ attitudes towards OGD with the development of OGD portals. The comparison includes four OGD utilization processes derived from the literature, namely OGD awareness, needs, access and consumption.

A case study in China has been carried out. A sociological questionnaire was designed to collect data from Chinese citizens (demand), and personal visits were carried out to collect data from OGD portals (supply).

Results show that Chinese citizens have low awareness of OGD and OGD portals. Significant differences were recognized between citizens’ expectations and OGD portals development in OGD categories and features, data access services and support functions. Correlations were found between citizens’ OGD awareness, needs, access and consumption.

By linking the supply of OGD from the governments with each process of citizens’ OGD utilization, this paper proposes a framework for citizens’ OGD utilization lifecycle and provides a new tool to investigate reasons for citizens’ not making use of OGD.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can be used in the commission of financial crime, including money laundering and crypto-fraud schemes, using the framework of the Space Transition Theory.

A literature review relating the Space Transition Theory to crime vulnerabilities related to NFTs is conducted and practical examples illustrating NFT schemes are provided.

The authors find that the Space Transition Theory explains the evolution of financial crimes into the NFT space. The transformation of the art industry from the physical to the virtual space through NFTs underlies the criminal activity surrounding them. NFTs enable crime because of the flexibility, dissociative anonymity, lack of deterrence and anonymity.

Criminals can easily take advantage of the users’ limited knowledge of blockchain to defraud them of their money or tokens. These risks accentuate the need to adopt appropriate measures to augment the accountability of NFT transactions. Until such interventions are implemented, the NFT market remains a highly viable space for the perpetration of financial crimes.

The dynamic nature of the cyberspace and fast-past underlying technology provide a greater chance to escape than crimes committed in the physical space. The state of security on NFT platforms has elicited concerns from diverse quotas. NFTs pose significant money laundering risks because of the lack of appropriate regulatory mechanisms, generating a need for enhanced oversight and enforcement of sectors of the economy in physical space vulnerable to abuse in the NFT space, including entities such as art galleries, museums, sports teams and luxury brands.

The Space Transition Theory is also supported in that norms and values regarding ethics and criminal actions in the physical space do not transfer to cyber space.

The novelty aspect of this research is in applying the Space Transition Theory to financial crime schemes based on NFTs.

Two essential components, a robust information technology (IT) infrastructure and faculty training in student-centred pedagogies and technology usage, are necessary for effective blended learning designs. Many universities invest in IT infrastructure such as bandwidth, high-end subscriptions, servers, SMART boards, projectors, Wi-Fi enhancement, learning management systems, IT support, and other tools. Faculty training is crucial and includes instruction on using the new infrastructure and adopting pedagogical methods associated with blended learning. This study’s primary objective is to explore the challenges and pedagogical transformation towards blended learning designs in India. The research also investigates the impact of social context and emotional support on blended learning. It examines the mediating role of technostress among teachers between hybrid mode transformation and blended learning. The study’s results will provide critical insights for academic institutions’ higher management to encourage the adoption of learning designs and blended techniques by their employees during unforeseen events in the future, utilizing effective leadership and management skills. The study aims to assist academic institutions in meeting the demand for experiential learning in the classroom by incorporating blended learning. It acts as a bridge between industry expectations and academic outcomes. The study uniquely addresses the need for increased student engagement in the classroom.

Multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) networks are basically packet-based networks. There are various advantages of MPLS, such as better utilization of the network, reduction in the network latency, and the ability to adhere to the strict and stringent quality of service (QoS) criteria of incoming traffic. Since most of the applications are moving towards the packet-based networks, this move is mounting a pressure on the network providers for changing and upgrading their existing systems. There are various innovations and upgrades which are under progress and being improvised. These innovations and improvements will ensure that the networks can provide the ever-growing and rising demand of bandwidth. This research study captures the review of the concepts of MPLS networks and innovative technologies like traffic engineering, differentiated services, protection, and restoration. This research study also captures MPLS transport profile and its applications. As per the recent literature review, new protocols and designs of MPLS should be handled with care, and designers should exercise caution while recommending and proposing new designs and protocols. Most of the universities need to converge their networks to a single infrastructure in order to reduce operational costs and provide better network with improvised QoS to the students and faculties. Most of the universities and colleges are migrating to internet protocol (IP)/MPLS-based infrastructure. This will help in providing better networks to students studying and staying in universities. IP/MPLS is highly scalable and can be deployed end to end to accommodate the needs of any network size.