Paul Clist & Ying-yi Hong, Do international students learn foreign preferences? The interplay of language, identity and assimilation, Journal of Economic Psychology, Volume 98, August 2023. Open Access. Every year millions of students study at foreign universities, swapping one set of cultural surroundings for another. This may reveal whether measured preferences are fixed or flexible, whether they can be altered in the short run by moving country, or learning a new language. In this journal article, the authors disentangle these influences by measuring international students’ preferences.

Ben D’Exelle & Liz Ignowski, Friends in the village: do they matter for women’s involvement in household decisions?, Journal of Population Economics, August 2023. Open Access. It is often assumed that social connections are good for female empowerment in developing countries. However, growing evidence suggests that empowered women may face backlash from their spouse. In this paper, the authors analyse how the number of friends that wives have in their village affects the wives’ involvement in household decisions about their own health and their children’s health.

Catherine M. Jere, Esther Priyadharshini, Anna Robinson-Pant, Christopher Millora & Burcu Evren, Cooperation, collaboration and compromise: learning through difference and diversity, Educational Action Research, 31:3, 540-555, August 2023. Open Access. Multi-institutional and multi-professional research projects are valued for the impact and learning they generate, but their successful completion is crucially dependent on the various actors recognising their differences and working through/with them as a team. This paper is a critical reflection on one such participatory action research project, which involved new migrants and asylum seekers, an NGO, university researchers, and independent trainers in offering intercultural sexual health and gender relations workshops.

Adrian Martin, et al., Diverse values of nature for sustainability, Nature, August 2023. Open Access. Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being, addressing the global biodiversity crisis still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature’s diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever.