Gwerddon Fach publishes short academic articles to give a wide audience a taste of the latest research by leading academics from Wales and beyond As well as publishing popular versions of longer articles that are published in Gwerddon's own e-journal, people are welcome to contribute short articles of around 600 - 1,000 words about any research that interests a wider audience - whether it's a report on their own and their colleagues' latest research, a response to major discoveries, public policy and current affairs or discussions, a report on the proceedings of an academic conference, or a simple introduction to complex research topics. If you are interested in contributing an article, please download the guide (see below) and contact Dr Hywel Griffiths, Assistant Editor Gwerddon: hmg@aber.ac.uk. Website: https://golwg.360.cymru/gwerddon

Gwerddon is a Welsh-medium academic e-journal which publishes research in the Arts, the Humanities and the Sciences twice a year and which conforms to the academic guidelines of the Research Excellence Framework 2014.  The journal has two main aims, which are to stimulate and encourage first-class academic discussion across as wide a range of subjects as possible through the medium of Welsh and thereby to create a store of scholarly material for the use of research students and academics. Gwerddon is funded by the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol. Website: http://gwerddon.cymru

John Rawls’s just war doctrine is primarily interpreted as an elaboration of Walzer’s theory. However, when considered in light of Rawls’s Kantian commitments and the utopian nature of his reflections on international relations in The Law of Peoples, his perspective on just war is distinctive and challenging. This Kantian influence leads to a nuanced doctrine with a commitment to peace as the regulative principle of war, characterised as principles of transitional justice that are never fully just. A sceptical perspective emerges that rejects extending the just war doctrine to humanitarian warfare. The Rawlsian statesman would be a dove, rather than a hawk, committed to the belief that war is an evil to be avoided and overcome, and that universal peace should be aspired to. 

Winner of the Welsh-medium resource award in the Coleg Cymraeg's annual Associate Lecturers Awards. Gwerddon Fach publishes short academic articles to give a wide audience a taste of the latest research by leading academics from Wales and beyond As well as publishing popular versions of longer articles that are published in Gwerddon's own e-journal, people are welcome to contribute short articles of around 600 - 1,000 words about any research that interests a wider audience - whether it's a report on their own and their colleagues' latest research, a response to major discoveries, public policy and current affairs or discussions, a report on the proceedings of an academic conference, or a simple introduction to complex research topics. If you are interested in contributing an article, please contact Dr Hywel Griffiths, Assistant Editor Gwerddon: hmg@aber.ac.uk.

In a report in 2013, the Welsh Government suggested that raising the status of Physical Education (PE) to become a core subject, similar to Welsh and Mathematics, is an essential element in tackling the current obesity epidemic. However, PE lessons must be of a high quality in order to have a positive effect on pupils. PE teachers play a crucial role in delivering high-quality PE lessons; therefore, gaining an understanding of their perceptions about high-quality PE is essential. Interviews were held with ten PE teachers (seven males and three females) from Welsh-medium schools across south Wales. Similarities between the theory and teachers’ perceptions were evident, for example the importance of creating a positive learning environment. However, there were differences between the theory and practice, including lack of clarity about the term physical literacy. One implication of the study is the need to consult with PE teachers to design policies for high-quality PE. In the future, action research should be undertaken to promote the term physical literacy.

Rhododendron ponticum L. is an evergreen, woody shrub, belonging to the Ericaceae family. Native to parts of Spain, the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea coast, it was introduced to Britain in the eighteenth century. It has since developed into one of Britain’s most problematic invasive species, causing ecological and economic damage. This article discusses the history of R. ponticumin Wales, considering the environmental and social factors which have contributed towards its success here. The current situation in Wales is explained, including the damage it causes and the efforts undertaken to manage its spread. To conclude, the paper will evaluate how future environmental challenges will affect R. ponticum’s spread in Wales.

The relaxation spectrum of a viscoelastic material holds the key to describing its relaxation mechanisms at a molecular level. It also plays a fundamental role in accessing the molecular weight distribution, and in modelling the dynamics of complex uids. The relaxation spectrum cannot be measured directly, but it may be locally determined from experimental measurements of viscoelastic response at a macroscopic level. In particular, the relaxation spectrum is a continuous distribution of relaxation times which may be recovered, at least locally, from measurements of the complex modulus of the material. Although mathematical expressions for the continuous spectrum have been known for over a century, these were inaccessible to numerical implementation for decades, since they involve inverse operators which are not continuous, resulting in severe instability. Progress was made when regularization methods for approximating discrete line spectra were introduced some two decades ago. It was not until 2012, however, that Davies and Goulding proposed a method of wavelet regularization for recovering continuous spectra in a mathematically rigorous framework. This work was further rened in 2016 by introducing a mathematical form of high-order derivative spectroscopy involving sequences of derivatives of dynamic moduli, termed Maclaurin sequences. In this article, a rigorous justication for the use of Maclaurin sequences is presented. Furthermore, a new sequence is presented, which is termed a wavelet correction sequence, achieving the same accuracy as Maclaurin sequences, but with a reduced order of differentiation.

The article considers the history of Gwerddon, a multi-disciplinary research e-journal launched in April 2007, which has to date (January 2019) published more than one hundred original articles. Its origins lie in the growth of Welsh-language teaching in Welsh universities in the 1970s and 1980s, the campaign to establish a Welsh-language federal college at a time when the federal University of Wales was in crisis, and the urgent need for Welsh-language scholarship to be equally represented in the research assessment exercises of the RAE/REF. The study considers the journal’s impact factors and its role in the development of a Welsh presence on the burgeoning web of the early twenty-first century, and argues that its continuation rests both on Welsh Government educational policy in general, and the financial resilience of the Higher Education sector at a time of severe challenges. 

Drawing on a rich seam of archival material on Welsh missionary activity in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Bengal, the article addresses ways in which care of the sick became a central, if problematic, part of Christian Mission. While the building of dispensaries, clinics and hospitals provided both a platform and a social visibility to the evangelisation process, they also exposed deeper tensions around the politics of gender and the implantation of Western medical practices in a colonised society.

In many places, devolution has created new regional arenas within which minority nationalist parties have been highly successful in mobilising support for their national projects. However, scholars have paid scant attention to how minority nationalist parties have adapted as they have become major players in regional politics. This article examines such process of adaptation in the cases of two minority nationalist parties: Plaid Cymru in Wales and the Bloque Nacionalista Galego in Galicia. It is argued that the experiences of these parties in adapting to passing the thresholds of representation, relevance and government in their respective regions are far from unique. Rather, they reflect the challenges that any political party faces when it makes the transition from protest to power.

This article is a study of the relationship between nationality and national theatre in Wales from the nineteenth century up to the present day. Welsh nationality is considered in the context of contemporary discussion by the pioneering critics Umut Özkirimli and Hans Kohn on concepts of the nation. The article aims to look into the crucial questions which arise from the historical and current relationships between national theatre, as an arts exercise, and a political expression of national identity in Wales. The significance of national theatre as a tool for expressing national identity is assessed and it is questioned whether the new national theatres of the twenty first century refer back to traditional concepts of the nation and nationality or do they instead exercise a new kind of modern nationality which is defined as ‘an interaction of cultural coalescence and specific political intervention’?

This article seeks to interrogate the ways in which the citizens of Wales use the theatrical resources at their disposal to investigate and articulate their national identities and experiences. The discussion will take a recent co-production, entitled Sisters, between National Theatre Wales and Junoon Theatre Mumbai as its starting point. Sisters stimulates discussion of new ways of creating and participating in theatre that respond creatively to the challenges of a twenty-first century global, digital and post-consumerist society. In discussion, this article will use Johannes Birringer’s uncompromising vision of theatre as a transformative activity that focuses on patterns of collaboration between unfamiliar and unrooted individuals, as a measuring yard for the success and significance of Sisters. I will also argue that the social conditions that inspired Birringer’s vision also give fresh importance to Amelia Jones’s argument about the value of responding to a production or performance by means of secondary evidence, or ‘detritus’, as described by Mathew Reason.