AKTEA network: perils and prospects

Twenty years of organising by women in Europe’s fisheries have led to important gains, challenges and opportunities

Coastal and maritime cultural heritage:from the European Union to East Asia and Latin America

Introducing the Special Collection on Coastal and Maritime Cultural Heritage, this article focuses on the cultural heritage of coastal regions and maritime cultures and presents a summary of threats and topics found in recent cultural heritage research, especially around the themes of governance, resilience, transformation, and power (including gender and marginalization). Cultural heritage (CH) is a super-concept: it connects a wide diversity of heritage types (tangible and intangible), and cuts across a variety of public policies. Yet coastal and maritime cultural heritage (CMCH) faces risks from conflicts, environmental hazards, and from a neglect arising from lack of understanding and consideration of its value. Additional risks from governmental Blue Growth policies and economic factors put CH at even greater risk. As cultural heritage is increasingly being tapped for its economic importance in development and tourism– and neglected in maritime policy– greater scholarly understandings and conceptualization of CMCH are needed. This special collection is one step in the direction towards further understandings, protections, and utilization of CH for coastal societies and culture. As economic valuations increase, however, we should not forget that cultural heritage in and of itself holds intrinsic value. Looking across Europe and the world, coastal peoples’ cultural heritage tells us a story of generations of linkages and bonds with coastal environments. Such CH imparts a sense of place and belonging to people, and connects people to one another, their pasts, and their futures. We hope this Special Collection provides a sense of the beauty of CMCH and inspires further exploration and research around this super-concept.</p

Towards Engaging Intangible Holographic Public Displays

Public displays are some of the most challenging interfaces to design because of two key characteristics. First, the experience should be engaging, to attract and maintain users’ attention. Second, the interaction with the display should be natural, meaning that users should be able to receive the desired output with little or no training. Holographic displays are increasingly popular in public spaces such as museums and concert halls but there is little published research on users’ experiences with such displays. Previous research has suggested both tangible and intangible inputs as engaging and natural options for holographic displays, but there is no conclusive evidence on their relative merits. Hence, we run a study to investigate the user experience with a holographic display comparing the level of engagement and feeling of natural experience in the interacting process. We used a mix of surveys, interviews, video recordings, and task-based metrics to measure users’ performance on a specific task, the perceived usability, and levels of engagement and satisfaction. Our findings suggest that a tangible input was reported as more natural than the intangible one, however, both tangible and intangible inputs were found to be equally engaging. The latter findings contribute to the efforts of designing intangible public holographic displays and other interactive systems that take into consideration health safety issues, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic era in which contamination can be established with tangible and physical interaction between users and public displays, yet without affecting the level of engagement compared to the tangible experience

Towards Engaging Intangible Holographic Public Displays

Public displays are some of the most challenging interfaces to design because of two key characteristics. First, the experience should be engaging, to attract and maintain users’ attention. Second, the interaction with the display should be natural, meaning that users should be able to receive the desired output with little or no training. Holographic displays are increasingly popular in public spaces such as museums and concert halls but there is little published research on users’ experiences with such displays. Previous research has suggested both tangible and intangible inputs as engaging and natural options for holographic displays, but there is no conclusive evidence on their relative merits. Hence, we run a study to investigate the user experience with a holographic display comparing the level of engagement and feeling of natural experience in the interacting process. We used a mix of surveys, interviews, video recordings, and task-based metrics to measure users’ performance on a specific task, the perceived usability, and levels of engagement and satisfaction. Our findings suggest that a tangible input was reported as more natural than the intangible one, however, both tangible and intangible inputs were found to be equally engaging. The latter findings contribute to the efforts of designing intangible public holographic displays and other interactive systems that take into consideration health safety issues, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic era in which contamination can be established with tangible and physical interaction between users and public displays, yet without affecting the level of engagement compared to the tangible experience

Innovative diversification of fishing units through women initiatives

Traditionally, European fisherwomen were often involved in fisheries sector by selling fish. Today, their contribution is more diversified with very limited legal recognition: management of fishing enterprise, maintenance of gears. Fisherwomen continue to sell fish because it is often a good way to get a better price. Confronted with economic difficulty, fishing households are faced with the alternative of re-conversion in another activity or the search for complementary source of incomes. One way of generating new income lies in the diversification of activities while remaining centred on fishing. Valorising the product and the image of fishing by processing or by providing catering/accommodation services is a route that many of them are exploring. Women occupy a centre position within this concept of fishing based diversification. They appear to have been very innovate in Europe by developing new activities such as accommodation for tourists, processing units, collective fish markets. By setting, under their responsibility, new activities, these women have gained more recognition as income providers in the households. It has also contributed to take many of them in the arena of public voicing. This presentation will be illustrated by empirical material collected under the EU funded FEMMES programme, a network launched by researchers in social and humans sciences and fisherwomen associations.Keywords: Europe, fisherwomen, innovation, Gender Issues in Fisheries and Aquaculture, Fisheries Economics, diversificatio

FWO: Revive, renew and re-launch!

AKTEA is the European network of women in fisheries and its main objective is to lobby at European Union level for women rights in fisheries. It was established in 2006 by fisherwomen organisations from different European countries who collectively volunteered to take this movement forward. For several years AKTEA was unable to organise its annual meeting due to lack of financial resources, amongst other reasons. In February 2020, however, the network was able to meet thanks to the partnership collaboration established with Low Impact Fishers in Europe (LIFE) and the financial support provided by the MAVA foundation