Artificial Intelligence (AI) has reached memory studies in earnest. This partly reflects the hype around recent developments in generative AI (genAI), machine learning, and large language models (LLMs). But how can memory studies scholars handle this hype? Focusing on genAI applications, in particular so-called ‘chatbots’ (transformer-based instruction-tuned text generators), this commentary highlights five areas of critique that can help memory scholars to critically interrogate AI’s implications for their field. These are: (1) historical critiques that complicate AI’s common historical narrative and historicize genAI; (2) technical critiques that highlight how genAI applications are designed and function; (3) praxis critiques that centre on how people use genAI; (4) geopolitical critiques that recognize how international power dynamics shape the uneven global distribution of genAI and its consequences; and (5) environmental critiques that foreground genAI’s ecological impact. For each area, we highlight debates and themes that we argue should be central to the ongoing study of genAI and memory. We do this from an interdisciplinary perspective that combines our knowledge of digital sociology, media studies, literary and cultural studies, cognitive psychology, and communication and computer science. We conclude with a methodological provocation and by reflecting on our own role in the hype we are seeking to dispel.

Umbrella reviews (URs) synthesize findings from multiple systematic reviews on a specific topic. Methodological approaches for analyzing and presenting UR results vary, and reviewers often adapt methods to align with research objectives. This study examined the characteristics of analysis and presentation methods used in healthcare-related URs. A systematic PubMed search identified URs published between 2023 and 2024. Inclusion criteria focused on healthcare URs using systematic reviews as the unit of analysis. A random sample of 100 eligible URs was included. A customized, piloted data extraction form was used to collect bibliographic, conduct, and reporting data independently. Descriptive analysis and narrative synthesis summarized findings. The most common terminology for eligible studies was “umbrella reviews” (65%) or “overviews” (30%). Question frameworks included PICO (43%) and PICOS (14%), with quantitative systematic reviews included in most URs (98%), and 68% including randomized controlled trials. The most frequent methodological guidance source was Cochrane (32%). Data analysis commonly used narrative synthesis and meta-analysis, with Stata, RevMan, and GRADEPro GDT employed for presentation. Information about study overlap and certainty assessment was rarely reported.Variation exists in how data are analyzed and presented in URs, with key elements often omitted. These findings highlight the need for clearer methodological guidance to enhance consistency and reporting in future URs.

Critical interpretive synthesis was introduced in 2006 to address various shortcomings of systematic reviews such as their limitations in synthesizing heterogeneous data, integrating diverse study types, and generating theoretical insights. This review sought to outline the methodological process of conducting critical interpretive syntheses by identifying the methods currently in use, mapping the processes that have been used to date, and highlighting directions for further research. To achieve this, a scoping review of critical interpretive syntheses published between 2006 and 2023 was conducted. Initial searches identified 1628 publications and after removal of duplicates and exclusions, 212 reviews were included in the study. Most reviews focused on health-related subjects. Authors chose to utilize the method due to its iterative, inductive, and recursive nature. Both question-based and topic-based reviews were conducted. Literature searches relied on electronic databases and reference chaining. Mapping to the original six-phase model showed most variability in use of sampling and quality assessment phases, which were each done in 50.7% of reviews. Data extraction utilized a data extraction table. Synthesis involved constant comparison, critique, and consolidation of themes into constructs, and a synthesizing argument. Refining critical interpretive synthesis methodology and its best practices are important for optimizing the utility and impact and ensuring findings are relevant and actionable for informing policy, practice, and future research.

The question to what extent EU law is constitutive of European society as articulated in Article 2 TEU is, at its core, a question about the nature, scope and limits of EU law. This article suggests certain clear limits to EU law’s ability to make the European society visible in law, or legible for law – let alone composable through law. The article is entitled ‘Is this Europe?’ as a direct challenge to the widely held belief that EU law is somehow constitute of European integration; that EU law contains all that European integration is, can and will be. Sure, the Europe that we see when analysing cases, treaties and legislation matters. But the ‘real’ Europe – the one that is felt, experienced, lived – resides in what happens due to, in spite, or irrespective of those cases, treaties and legislation. For EU law to remain sensitive to its society, then, EU law needs to reformulate the expectations it has of itself and create an analytical framework that allows it to transcend its immanent nature. This requires three changes to the way we ‘do’ EU law. First, more sensitivity to the material and relational context in which EU law operates. Second, creating space for forms of lay knowledge that are rooted in social praxis. Third, more ambition and playfulness in the way we – as scholars – ‘speak’ EU law.

This article presents an innovative workflow for the acquisition and storage of archaeological data. The system is based on open-source software to enhance method replication and media accessibility. QGIS software is used as the central platform, connected to a spatial database developed in PostgreSQL and managed with the SQL and Python programming languages. The aim is to achieve an efficient, flexible, and reproducible digital method for data collection and management that can be applied to surface archaeological surveys. During the implementation and development of the method, we have recorded over 4,600 archaeological remains in two different structures with traces of Upper Paleolithic activity in the Lower Gallery of La Garma (Cantabria, Spain). After 18 months of continuous work, the results obtained demonstrate the usefulness and versatility of this procedure, which can be adapted to each context and to the specific needs of each researcher. Our goal is not simply to systematize archaeological documentation, as traditionally proposed, but to establish a simple and robust method for data collection and preservation, accessible to any user. Its fully open-source approach aims to promote a model that is nurtured by the use and contributions of the research community.

In recent years, ontological security studies (OSS) have developed an impressive breadth of empirical applications and depth of theoretical advancements. However, despite increasing disciplinary diversity, methodological differences in OSS and the resulting implications have not yet been discussed. Drawing on Jackson’s taxonomy of scientific methodologies, this article outlines that OSS is characterized by considerable methodological diversity cutting across existing distinctions in the field. Greater focus on this diversity is important, as (tacit) underlying methodological assumptions have significant implications concerning the types of knowledge claims that can be advanced. Providing the first systematic discussion of methodological questions in OSS, this article outlines the contours of grounding OSS in neopositivist, critical realist, reflexivist, and analyticist methodologies and provides examples thereof. It then discusses the implications emerging from different methodologies in terms of (1) the production and evaluation of valid knowledge claims about ontological (in)security, (2) the perception of and dealing with ontological and epistemological challenges in the concept of ontological (in)security, and (3) the critical potential of OSS. While highlighting the potential of OSS grounded in analyticism, this article ultimately emphasizes the inherent value of methodological pluralism structured around a common vocabulary enabling meaningful conversations – both within OSS and with International Relations more broadly.

I raise two concerns about Bergmann’s philosophical methodology: the first is a parity problem for his intuition-based “autodidactic” approach; the second is a tension between that approach and the commonsense tradition in which he situates it. I then use his approach to reflect on the limits of rational argument and set it alongside an alternative that likewise emphasizes the personal nature of philosophical inquiry while remaining more neutral about the rational standing of competing intuitions.

UK Biobank (UKB) is a large-scale, prospective resource offering significant opportunities for mental health research. Data include genetic and biological data, healthcare linkage, and mental health enhancements. Challenges arise from incomplete linkage of some sources and the incomplete coverage for enhancements, which also occur at different times post-baseline. We searched for publications using UKB for mental health research from 2016 to 2023 to describe and inspire future use. Papers were classified by mental health topic, ‘additional’ aspects, and the data used to define the mental health topic. We identified 480 papers, with 338 focusing on mental health disorder topics (affective, anxiety, psychotic, multiple, and transdiagnostic). The most commonly studied disorder was depression (41%). The most common single method of ascertaining mental disorder status was the Mental Health Questionnaire (26%), with genetic risk, for example, using polygenic risk scores, also frequent (21%). Common additional aspects included brain imaging, gene–environment interaction, and the relationship with physical health. The review demonstrates the value of UKB to mental health research. We explore the strengths and weaknesses, producing resources informed by the review. A strength is the flexibility: conventional epidemiological studies are present, but also genomics, imaging, and other tools for understanding mental health. A major weakness is selection effects. UKB continues to hold potential, especially with additional data continuing to become available.

The last decades have seen important progress in the economic analysis of institutions, with increasing concern about the need to ‘unbundle’ this concept and the diversity of situations it covers. It is so because of the complexity of the systems the concept intends to capture and the ambiguity of definitions often perceived as catch-all ideas without a clear connection to a research strategy. This essay contributes to the literature emphasising that overcoming these difficulties requires a theoretical framework identifying and characterising distinct institutional layers. The content of this framework is substantiated through the analysis of the nature and role of the long-ignored intermediate layer of ‘meso-institutions’. Meso-institutions designate devices and transmission mechanisms linking general rules, norms and beliefs established at the macro-institutional level with their perception, adaptation, and implementation (or challenge) by the actors populating the micro-level. Operationalising this framework relies on a research strategy that proceeds from a ‘substantive theory’ of institutions to the collection and processing of ‘empirical evidences’ through the development of ‘auxiliary theories’ designed to capture specific institutional objects. References to several empirical studies support the relevance of this approach.