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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the implementation and evaluation of interventions for women firesetters in high secure mental healthcare at the UK’s National Women’s Service.

Two types of Arson treatment programmes for women, one delivered to individuals, the other within a group context, were developed, delivered and evaluated. The evaluation incorporated qualitative and quantitative data, including psychometric measures. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis.

The evaluation evidenced very high engagement with and attendance at treatment programmes, and several post-treatment gains. Participants’ ratings of programmes and qualitative feedback were similarly very positive. The study demonstrated that engaging women firesetters in their treatment is paramount and can be facilitated by consistent boundaries around therapy provision balanced with sensitivity, empathy and flexibility; providing interactive and varied teaching methods; ongoing service user involvement and recognising participants’ achievements; employing a mixed cognitive analytic therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy therapeutic approach; having input from fire service staff; and maintaining organisational support for firesetting interventions.

In all, 12 key recommendations are made for clinicians considering offering treatment programmes for women firesetters.

Amid few published papers on treating women firesetters this paper guides forensic clinicians in establishing and delivering interventions for women firesetters.

This paper aims to consider the visual literacy mobilized by consumers in their use of brand aesthetics to construct and communicate a curated self.

The research surveyed a range of visual material from Instagram. Specifically, the goal was to use “compositional interpretation”, an approach to visual analysis that is not methodologically explicit but which, in itself, draws upon the visual literacy of the researcher to provide a descriptive analysis of the formal visual quality of images as distinct from their symbolic resonances. The research also incorporates 10 phenomenological-type interviews with consumers. Consistent with a phenomenological approach, informants were selected because they have “lived” the experience under investigation, in this case requiring them to be keen consumers of the Orla Kiely brand.

Findings indicate that consumers deploy their visual literacy in strategic visualization (imaginatively planning and coordinating artifacts with other objects in their collection, positioning and using them as part of an overall visual repertoire), composition (becoming active producers of images) and emergent design (turning design objects into display pieces, repurposing design objects or simply borrowing brand aesthetics to create designed objects of their own).

This research has implications for the understanding of visual literacy within consumer culture. Engaging comprehensively with the visual compositions of consumers, this research moves beyond brand symbolism, semiotics or concepts of social status to examine the self-conscious creation of a curated self. The achievement of such a curated self depends on visual literacy and the deployment of abstract design language by consumers in the pursuit of both aesthetic satisfaction and social communication.

This research has implications for brand designers and managers in terms of how they might control or manage the use of brand aesthetics by consumers.

To date, there has been very little consumer research that explores the nature of visual literacy and even less that offers an empirical investigation of this concept within the context of brand aesthetics. The research moves beyond brand symbolism, semiotics and social status to consider the deployment of abstract visual language in communicating the curated self.

AS J. L. Hobbs shows so clearly in his recent book, the interest in local history is growing enormously at present. The universities, training colleges and schools, as well as the institutions of further education, are all making more use of local studies—geographical, economic, social and historical—in their regular courses, in their advanced work, and in their publications.

Online education enables location-independent learning, potentially providing university students with more flexible study programs and reducing traffic-related CO₂ emissions. This paper aims to examine whether online education can contribute to university-related sustainable everyday mobility, with particular consideration given to aspects of social sustainability and potential rebound effects. Specifically, it explores sustainability dilemmas that arise from conflicting social and ecological effects.

Drawing on qualitative data from mobility diaries and extensive semistructured interviews (n = 26) collected at Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences in Germany, this study deploys thematic analysis and a typification approach to analyze and classify students’ daily practices related to studying, mobility and dwelling, which may be impacted by online education.

The study identifies six distinct student types with diverse practices in studying, mobility and dwelling. Comparisons between student types reveal stark differences regarding professional and social goals that students associate with their studies, influencing university-related mobility and residential choices. This leads to varying assessments of online education, with some students expecting benefits and others anticipating severe drawbacks.

The typology developed in this paper can assist Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in comparable contexts in understanding the distinct needs and motivations of students, thereby proactively identifying sustainability dilemmas associated with online education. By leveraging these findings, HEIs can effectively balance diverse interests and contribute meaningfully to sustainability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to systematically investigate conflicts and rebound effects of online education in the context of sustainable mobility within HEIs.

Societal problems have impacted the northeast of the USA for various generations. This paper aims to analyse various sustainability aspects in the Hudson River watershed of New York by highlighting a temporal progression from environmental sustainability at the watershed level in the 1970s to growing concerns with more localized cross-border social and cultural sustainability in recent decades. We discuss an engagement with the Rapp Road Historic District and a documentary screening series as potential ways to eliminate racism and embrace diversity.

The research was based on fieldwork and classroom teaching conducted mostly since summer 2014. It included mixed methods combining document analysis and reviews with the examination of case studies, and the assessment of public policy priorities.

Formal training has to be combined with a substantial dose of realism, humility and motivation to recognize that what the authors teach and research in the community matters. Future learning experiences within a place-based education paradigm could include: Having students help devise urban rehabilitation strategies whilst suggesting integrative measures with the surrounding built and natural environments; students could also help improve public spaces in the neighbourhood; and finally, they could also help to strengthen the cultural identity of the district by augmenting urban design features endogenous to the African American community.

Opportunities could be further augmented with service-learning projects and programmes, internships and even full-time jobs for recent graduates in local community development organizations.

The study served to raise the community’s awareness of its own natural, ecological and human assets, and to create place-based real-world opportunities for students and faculty in environmental and cultural sustainability studies.

Environmental sustainability is discussed with the creation of the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, whilst the public engagement with the Rapp Road Historic Association in the Capital Region of upstate New York, the identification of an emerging creative cluster in the Berkshires-Hudson region, and a documentary and discussion series on striving for diverse cities serve to demonstrate current concerns with social and cultural sustainability.