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The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how individual choice, and the facilitation of individual choices, can be of benefit to society. To do this it selects evidence from a much broader research project that set out to study the student experience of a group of 33 women training to work in childcare (selected from a cohort of 150).

The project employed an emergent methodology, as the researcher sought to draw out the student voice. Psychosocial interviews created detailed narratives that were analysed individually, thematically and holistically to support original theorization that was later linked to Sen's Capability Approach.

In terms of this paper, the significant finding was that the pursuit of individual goals can create public good. Individual actions can lead to unplanned social payback.

In revealing some of the mechanisms that promote social cohesion and social capital development the research supports people‐centred policy‐making. By adopting the capability approach as a policy framework and granting people the freedom to choose, governments can create social good by enabling rather than determining individual choice.

In evidencing the way that individual choice can promote social good, the research findings create confidence that society can evolve positively without an overarching masterplan. The research is linked to contemporary problems within society and suggests that, sometimes, indirect approaches offer solutions.

Owing to the specialist nature of biological experimentation, scientific research staff have been largely neglected from the pro‐environmental initiatives which have inundated other areas of higher education. This dearth of studies is surprising given that scientific research is recognised as a substantial contributor to the environmental impact of tertiary institutes. The present study seeks to utilise the current sustainability literature to identify barriers to sustainability in scientific fieldwork and determines which methods or procedures might increase pro‐environmental behaviours in this technical environment. The resultant information serves to provide a comparison with previously identified barriers to sustainability in the laboratory environment and identifies which environmental initiatives might be successful in both the field and laboratory.

This study gathers qualitative data from a sample of scientific researchers presently conducting field experimentation in the agricultural sciences. A “sustainability in science” questionnaire was developed and distributed to all staff undertaking research at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research.

Despite favourable sustainability beliefs and perceptions, almost three‐quarters (71 per cent) of researchers at this institute agreed that they were not conducting their current research activities in the most sustainable way possible. Barriers to sustainability included lack of support, lack of information, lack of training and lack of time. The provision of awards for pro‐environmental behaviours and the application of costs for unsustainable behaviours were the initiatives most likely to encourage research staff to be sustainable in the work environment.

Many agricultural field based research projects manipulate the environment in order to cultivate and develop commercial foodstuffs. Identifying the potential to reduce such waste was an inherent part of the present study. However, identifying the ways in which such environmental manipulation modifies the landscape – whether sustainably or unsustainably – was outwith the scope of the present study and presents an interesting area for future sustainability research.

The information presented in this paper has immediate practical implication for tertiary bodies and agricultural institutes wishing to adopt more sustainable fieldwork practises.

This is the first study to design a sustainability questionnaire specifically targeting field active research scientists in a tertiary institute.

This study aims to identify the current barriers to sustainability in the bioscience laboratory setting and to determine which mechanisms are likely to increase sustainable behaviours in this specialised environment.

The study gathers qualitative data from a sample of laboratory researchers presently conducting experimentation in the biological sciences. A questionnaire, regarding sustainability in the laboratory, was developed and distributed to all bioscience researchers at Aberystwyth University.

Although the majority of respondents had favourable attitudes to sustainability, almost three‐quarters (71 per cent) stated that they were not conducting their research in the most sustainable way possible. The factors most likely to hinder sustainable behaviour were lack of support, lack of information and time constraints. However, monetary costs and benefits, closely followed by “other” costs and benefits, were most likely to encourage sustainable behaviour in the laboratory.

There is a need to extend the present research to other types of biological research, such as field‐based studies. Different biological disciplines may have different consumable requirements and waste streams, thereby changing the barriers to sustainability observed.

The findings have immediate practical implication for higher education institutions wishing to adopt researcher‐approved mechanisms to reduce the environmental impact of biological laboratory research.

This is the first study to design a sustainability questionnaire which is specific to research scientists and laboratory users. The paper is therefore of immense value to the numerous global higher education institutions with working laboratories which seek to minimise the environmental impact of research.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a study set up to investigate and map the landscape of digital writing today. A holistic perspective has been adopted involving writers, readers and publishers alike.

The research uses a qualitative approach and combines interviews and direct observations. In in‐depth interviews 13 participants (four writers, four publishers, three readers and two on‐line readers) were questioned for their opinions on issues related to writing, publishing and reading digital fiction. The three readers were also observed while interacting, for the first time, with three digital stories.

Results show that the area is still unsettled though much excitement surrounds experimentations and freedom of publishing online. Readers seem uneasy with the role of co‐creators that writers want to assign them and prefer linear stories to more deconstructed ones. Writers like to experiment and combine multiple media and readers like to interact with multimedia stories; this seems to open interesting perspectives over interactive narrative. Publishers are not yet involved in digital writing and this is seen simultaneously as a blessing (unfiltering of innovative ideas) and a curse (lack of economical support, lack of quality selection). Despite disagreement and ambiguity all interviewees agree that digital fiction will come, likely prompted by new reading technology.

This paper is the first attempt to understand the phenomena of digital writing taking into consideration the perspectives of writers, readers and publishers simultaneously and comparing their different views.

This paper aims to endeavour to sketch out a blueprint for effective collaborative working in resettlement.

The paper is based on a review of the relevant research and interviews with professionals concerned with the resettlement of young people from custody in organisations and agencies that were partners in the Beyond Youth Custody programme.

Practitioners working on the youth resettlement pathway between custody and community report collaborative practices to be more beneficial both to the young people involved as well as the practitioners themselves, in the conduct of their efforts.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the originality of this paper consists in its investigation of resettlement practice by consulting those actually engaged in the resettlement process.

In recent years, the topic of maternal imprisonment has experienced a significantly raised profile, generating new knowledge and understanding surrounding the impact of maternal imprisonment on mothers and their children (Baldwin, 2015, 2017, 2018; Baldwin & Epstein, 2017; Booth, 2017; Lockwood, 2017, 2018; Masson, 2019). However, the long-term impact of maternal imprisonment and subsequent resettlement, particularly in relation to maternal identity and emotion, is less well-researched or understood. This chapter, drawing on the authors research from across two projects with 46 post imprisoned mothers, highlights the significant impact, as described by the mothers, on their reintegration into their families and the persistent pains of maternal imprisonment. Mothers sometimes, decades post release, describe their ongoing trauma at being separated from their children, sometimes permanently. Those who remain in their children's lives describe how they feel ‘tainted’, ‘watched’, ‘judged’ and ‘permanently changed by their imprisonment’. For the mothers in the study who were also grandmothers, the effects appeared magnified, producing what grandmothers described as ‘layers of shame’. The chapter describes how this change, often negative perception of themselves as mothers, can interplay with mothers' ability to engage in rehabilitative processes and ultimately their desistance.

The chapter concludes with recommendations to avoid, wherever possible, the criminalisation of mothers, resulting in fewer imprisonments. In the event of imprisonment, greater consideration must be afforded to maternal experience and emotions. To maximise success, early resettlement work, starting within and continuing through the prison gates is essential. Failure to do so may impact negatively on mothers' themselves and their ability to engage in rehabilitative planning/supervision and therefore desistance, which will ultimately broaden the impact to their children and wider society.

The aim of this paper is to present the second in an annual series of selected papers from the 2012 Conference of the Universities Association for Lifelong Learning (UALL). The Conference, at Clare College, Cambridge, took as its theme Higher education for the social good? The place of lifelong learning.

This paper is an editorial.

The editorial explores the conference theme and introduces the papers in this issue.

The five papers are indicative of the theme of the conference and, more generally of all those involved in lifelong learning.

The purpose of this paper is to set out the role Communities of Practice (CoPs) can play in empowering and enabling practitioners and managers to lead on improvements to the delivery of interventions to children and young people leaving custody.

This paper is based on a review of the relevant theories in the field and how these may be practically applied to the field of youth resettlement.

CoPs are a helpful way to engage, enable and, most importantly, empower, practitioners and managers, thus unlocking the wealth of knowledge and experience that exists across the workforce.

The originality of the piece is in its exploration of the theory and its application to the practice of youth resettlement and associated practices.

Hazel Kyrk’s contribution is the most advanced formulation of the economics of consumption as a social phenomenon, an approach to the analysis of consumption that, originated from Veblen’s theory, was developed in the US in the early 20th century. This approach was part of a wider stream of empirical analyses of consumption expenditure that had begun more than a century earlier.

Along with elements that can be traced back to the neoclassical tradition, in Keynes’ analysis of consumption, we find original elements. The dependence of consumption expenditure on the level of income, which is essential for asserting the principle of effective demand, can also be found in a long tradition of empirical studies. In qualifying this relationship, Keynes uses theoretical elements echoing key insights of the economics of consumption as a social phenomenon. There is no documentary evidence that Kyrk or the economics of the social relevance of consumption came to Keynes’ attention. It is possible, however, to develop reasonable speculative considerations to argue a link between Keynes’ elaboration and both the empirical literature on the determinants of consumption and the economics of consumption as a social phenomenon.

In the years following the publication of A Theory of Consumption (1923), Hazel Kyrk’s book became the flagship of the field that would later be known as the economics of consumption. It stimulated theoretical and empirical work on consumption. Some of the existing literature on Kyrk (e.g., Kiss & Beller, 2000; Le Tollec, 2020; Tadajewski, 2013) depicted her theory as the starting point of the economics of consumption. Nevertheless, how and why it emerged the way it did remain largely unexplored. This chapter examines Kyrk’s intellectual background, which, we argue, can be traced back to two main movements in the United States: the home economics and the institutionalist. Both movements conveyed specific endeavors as responses to the US material and social transformations that occurred at the turn of the 20th century, notably the perceived changing role of consumption and that of women in US society. On the one hand, Kyrk pursued first-generation home economists’ efforts to make sense of and put into action the shifting of women’s role from domestic producer to consumer. On the other hand, she reinterpreted Veblen’s (1899) account of consumption in order to reveal its operational value for a normative agenda focused on “wise” and “rational” consumption. This chapter studies how Kyrk carried on first-generation home economists’ progressive agenda and how she adapted Veblen’s fin-de-siècle critical account of consumption to the context of the household goods developed in 1900–1920. Our account of Kyrk’s intellectual roots offers a novel narrative to better understand the role of gender and epistemological questions in her theory.