Author Marissa A. Harrison, a long-time research psychologist, describes her journey to writing Just as Deadly: The Psychology of Female Serial Killers. She recounts her pathway to conducting research on female serial killers (FSKs) and broadly introduces the concepts, content, and approach to writing this book. She describes her work with fellow researchers in various explorations of the psychology of serial murder and introduces her published work in scientific journals such as Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology, and Current Psychology. Harrison describes her team’s work on morbid curiosity and protective vigilance, thought to motivate the great interest in serial murder. Included is a case study of Amy Archer-Gilligan to illustrate how FSKs can be just as deadly as male serial killers (MSKs). The author underscores the mandate for proper attribution of others’ work in scientific writing and her endeavors to provide extensive documentation for all factual information in this book to ensure a science-based presentation.

Our food systems have performed well in the past, but they are failing us in the face of climate change and other challenges. There is a broad consensus that transformation of food systems is required to make them sustainable and equitable for all. Transformation occurs via agents of change: individual behaviour, policies and institutions, research and innovation, and partnerships and alliances. Outcome-oriented agricultural research for development can help bring about directed transformation that maximises benefits and minimises trade-offs.

Transforming our food systems will require changing our innovation systems, in which organisations on agricultural research and innovation can play a crucial role. Key success factors for change can be organised into three dimensions: designing and managing transformative innovations, culture and structures of innovation organisations, and their engagement with the wider innovation ecosystem. Failures are crucial elements of innovation processes. Rapidly testing, sharing, building on, and learning from successful, and failed, innovations are key. This connects to the paradigm ‘Open Innovation 2.0’, which is widely applied in the private sector but not yet applied and evaluated for research and innovation organisations in the public sector or tertiary education. Four key principles emerge, namely big-picture action-oriented thinking, entrepreneurial organisational culture, close attention to partnerships and contexts, and diverse investment portfolios, with different levels of risk. These also imply—and require—the upstream transformation of funding and incentive systems.

Transformation is required in complex food systems to bring about global food security for a well-nourished world population while meeting climate-related challenges. The key is to identify the best levers to achieve change. To this end, food-system transformation has four major interlocking elements: (1) rerouting systems and livelihoods into new trajectories; (2) addressing climate impacts, thereby reducing risks; (3) tackling new environmental issues, for example by reimagining diets and value chains, to lessen emissions; and (4) realigning the ’enablers of change’, such as policies, regulation, finance, and innovation. Eleven specific, concrete actions are proposed to attain these four objectives, with explanations of the goal of each action, the mechanisms to accomplish it, targeted geographic areas, and key stakeholders. Achieving food-system transformation will require annual investments of US$850 billion from now until 2050, with private-sector finance helping to fill current gaps.

The agricultural research for development (AR4D) domain is becoming increasingly complex, and theory of change (ToC) approaches can provide critical guidance through the maze of transformation concerning engagement, partnership, and research. Most of the major benefits that accrue through the use of ToCs relate to internal learning within project teams. Finding the balance between applying a ToC that is both useful and time- and resource-smart is challenging and may need iteration to get right. Quantitative impact assessment methods must be blended with qualitative methods in ToC-based AR4D, so that evaluation becomes about both the process and numbers, while new methods require developing for blended evaluation. The evidence base concerning the efficiency, efficacy, and failings of ToC-based AR4D urgently requires further development and synthesis, and the lessons must be applied broadly.

There have been several calls for transformation in food systems to address the challenges of climate change, hunger, continuing population pressure, and to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although complicated, working across scales and actors is critical for food-system transformation, alongside understanding the entry points. As agricultural research for development (AR4D) is ultimately about farming practices and farmer livelihoods, a focus on the local scale is essential, as in most cases, farms and districts are where the most action is required. Through effective cross-scale work, lessons from local levels can shape the thinking of regional and national governments, as well as the private sector. Involving multiple and ideally nested scales, designing sets of solutions, and developing actionable, fundable, and implementable solutions is likely to provide rich food-system outcomes. Partners need to provide the tools, signals, and resources so that local people, communities, and policy planners are empowered to drive transformation.

Multiple social, systemic, and structural factors threaten our current food systems. Climate change is pushing us to transform these systems, not only to mitigate its impact but also to ensure food and nutrition security and pursue other ecological, social, political, and economic benefits. Research and innovation have a unique value proposition in the context of food-system transformation. By creating, reorienting, and phasing out aspects of our current research systems, we can realise their potential. We can phase out research institutions, mental models, and incentives that are siloed and that promote top-down silver-bullet thinking. Agricultural research for development can also be reorientated to food system research wherein performance is measured based on benefits to users and the ability to scale rapidly. We can also create spaces and matching incentives to catalyse action, imagine shared futures among stakeholders, and support intergenerational allyship and learning.

In this chapter, the focus turns to practical matters as we outline the various ways in which pragmatics can be researched. To answer a pragmatics-focused research question or to investigate the pragmatics of an issue or practice we need two things. We need a theory of pragmatics, and we need data. We take a closer look at theoretical frameworks and the role they play in shaping a piece of research. We then move on to look at the different sorts of data that might be collected as part of a pragmatics research project. We discuss how intuition plays a role in research and how constructed examples can be used to test predictions and to fine-tune our understanding. We discuss free production tasks and judgement tasks, and we look at some examples of pragmatics research that has used transcripts, texts, or corpora for analysis. Finally, we discuss some of the practicalities of research in pragmatics. We think about how to find a topic to investigate, the ethical considerations that must be part of any project plan, and the issue of diversity and bias in research.

Research on society and environment has a rich history that is challenging to access. We define socio-environmental research as structured inquiry about the reciprocal relationships between society and environment. It has evolved from early observational expeditions to today’s data-intensive, interdisciplinary work. We assemble readings from the late 1700s to the mid-1990s to showcase this legacy and organize readings into chapters. Each chapter is introduced by a prominent scholar, who discusses the context key insights. Considered over time, readings suggest certain research themes have endured, forming lineages: a focus on populations and their resource bases, sustainable management of common-pool resources, society and land, technology, and systems. As a guide, this anthology can help new researchers gain a basic vocabulary and overview of different research traditions. Current researchers can learn different ways to conceptualize society–environment relationships, supporting interdisciplinary teams. For specialists in socio-environmental research, the readings can stimulate new questions and illuminate the historic nature of contemporary ideas and concerns.

The chapter casts light on the emerging body of law applicable to military experiments on animals. It first shows that these experiments are a large-scale phenomenon, not only because of the number of animals affected by them but also due to harm and suffering inflicted on these animals. It proceeds by providing an overview of two main sets of legal rules that are of relevance in this field: national legal acts and international treaties or other rules of international law. Whereas these rules are primarily designed for civil research, they apply – or could apply – to military experiments as well. Based on the analysis of these two sets of rules, the chapter identifies the main parameters of the gradually emerging legal rules on military experiments on animals, focusing on their scope of application, their content and on the legal consequences of violations.

The chapter begins by describing the content of the micro and meso levels that make up the ecosystem necessary to promote learning. In the past decades, knowledge generated on quality education has led to “discrete and disruptive” interventions with manageable and disaggregated components that fit into the worldview of the mostly distant donor (a “hawk’s eye” approach). An organically integrated approach is constructively worked out, which provides a framework for analyzing micro and meso levels (a “turtle’s feet” approach). The conceptual framework that structures this knowledge generation includes three areas that define micro and meso institutions: composite history, tangled milieus, and embedded mindsets. This research framework allows for the design and implementation of interventions that fit the ecosystem in a country that drives how things work on the ground. The chapter argues that such a shift in knowledge generation will help to design interventions that enable meso institutions to intervene for consistent and effective teaching and learning to take place in schools in developing countries.

Safe and effective health care underpinned by a sound evidence base is considered the gold standard of quality and compassionate care. Evidence-based practice remains a broad term that is frequently used but not always understood. This chapter explores what evidence-based practice is, why it matters, and the barriers that can hinder its implementation in practice. It is vital that operating department practice is informed, supported, and guided by evidence-based practice.