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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the emergence of a “researcher” dimension in the academic professional identities of lecturers operating in the teaching‐focused Institute of Technology (IoT) sector of Irish higher education.

Using Margaret S. Archer's social realist conceptualisation of the reflexive formation of personal and social identities as a theoretical lens, life history data from ten research‐active lecturers working in one of Ireland's 13 IoTs were analysed. The research aimed to understand both the factors that influence the development of “researcher” identities in this context and the nature of the identities that develop.

The analysis suggests that sectoral location acts as an obstacle to researcher development but that the restrictions at sectoral level can be counteracted by positive intervention at institutional level. Challenges created by lecturers' involuntary placement in schools and departments that may be home to a range of disparate disciplines can be resolved. This generally occurs through voluntary alignment with alternative collectivities that provide individuals with coherent conceptual homes. Lecturers can and do develop researcher identities in this context but what it means to be a researcher can vary from one individual to the next.

The study provides a valuable insight into the process by which individuals operating in teaching‐focused higher education institutions develop the researcher dimension of their academic professional identities. It should be of benefit to individuals striving to become researchers in similar contexts. Its conclusions may also be of value to institutions striving to develop research cultures and to encourage staff to become research‐active.

WE are pleased to devote this Special Number of THE LIBRARY WORLD to a discussion of Irish libraries and librarianship. Our contributors are all distinguished members of the profession in Ireland, none more so than Dermot Foley, to whom we are greatly indebted for having convened this issue.

This paper aims to provide an introductory overview and selected annotated bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy across all library types.

It introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2014.

It provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence was adopted by the Council of Europe and opened for signature in Istanbul in 2011 (the Istanbul Convention). The Istanbul Convention offers a treaty-level protection against domestic violence to all people, including LGBTQs, that is, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer persons. Intimate partner violence (IPV) occurs in same-sex relationships as well as different-sex relationships. In addition, LGBTQ persons face the risk of violence in homophobic and transphobic family environments. The Istanbul Convention has faced significant backlash, a process driven by the global anti-feminist movement that also calls for the protection of traditional family values. In the Convention, “gender” is described as “the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men” (Article 3(c)). The opponents of the Convention suggest that gender roles are not “given” by the society but inherent in different natures of women and men. The dissatisfaction of many States, such as Bulgaria, Armenia, Ukraine, and so on, is related to the perceived excessiveness of rights given to LGBTQ persons in the Istanbul Convention. This research paper sets aside the issue of political campaigning against the Convention in Eastern Europe, which has already been well reported. Instead, it aims to reveal how the protection against domestic violence under the Convention raises normative, conceptual, and substantive challenges in States entrenching the ideology of traditional family values in law.

Purpose – This chapter explores how discourses of obesity as addiction are taken up by weight loss surgery patients and medical and scientific professionals.

Methodology/approach – Based on 14 semistructured interviews, I discuss the ways in which bariatric patients partially account for their presurgical bodies and contemporary struggles with weight loss and regain by referencing food addiction. This work is part of a larger project involving 35 interviews and participant-observation work and therefore these results should thus be considered preliminary.

Findings – I argue that bariatric patients and bariatric professionals portray weight loss surgery as an extraordinary tool that allows the “out of control” to become controllable. However, bariatric patients also emphasize the hard work that is entailed in both losing weight and maintaining a weight loss even after surgery.

Social implications – I suggest that this portrayal, in addition to being an accurate assessment of the potential for regain following weight loss surgery, is a technology of stigma management.

Originality/value – This work contributes to the sociology of the body and medical sociology literatures by illustrating that, within a neoliberal and anti-fat social context, highlighting the hard work involved in weight loss and weight maintenance allows bariatric patients to demonstrate proper subjectivity and thereby reclaim “proper selves” as they work toward a “proper bodies.”

THE New Year should be one of much progress in the organization of Librarianship. We wish our readers all the pleasure and prosperity that may come from increasing activity and growing public esteem. Every year we are able to record some progress in the general estimate in which the work of libraries is held; we have not reached, and do not even approximate, to the efficiency and perfect service that we desire to attain and to render; but we believe that the library movement is on the right road.

LOCAL history achieved academic respectability in 1947 with the establishment of the Department of Local History at the University of Leicester. No longer need the local historian feel ashamed of his craft or regard himself as a writer of footnotes to another's history.