This chapter explores the ways in which stage adaptation, as a form by definition open, volatile, and thus susceptible to both the marvels and the injuries of interpretation, is forever attached to the unresolved debate pertaining to directors’ so-called ‘respect’ and ‘loyalty’ towards the original text. Whether adaptation is seen as an invitation to deepen and expand the source material or (at the opposite extreme) as a gratuitous statement of ultimately uninspired defiance, one needs to address and perhaps attempt to settle the issue of directorial freedom and/or mediation in a process that is inevitably indebted to an inceptive core. Focusing on auteur directors’ adaptations of Greek tragedy, this chapter interrogates such controversial notions as authority and deference to the received primary agent of creativity, namely, the writer of the original text – a text which qua material for adaptation bears the brunt of change, be that appropriation, growth, abuse, or subversion. The problem of directorial freedom is especially pronounced in the case of ‘canonical’ texts, which are customarily regarded as agents of authority and may generate a range of audience expectations and directorial responses, from absolute reverence to the text’s accepted meaning to a radical reinterpretation of the source text.

This chapter’s discussion critically reviews legislative and policy practices in Cyprus, Scotland, Malta and Estonia related to the provision of adult migrant education. The cartography maps several commonalities – such as diverse immigrant cohorts, state expenditure on education, adult education provision by public, private and civil society entities, and language programmes of comparable level; as well as differences – such as the origins and ethnicities of migrant groups, differences in the legal and technocratic jargon. Additionally, the four countries featured diverse policy responses to adult education for migrants, ranging from inclusive visible policy to non-existent – a key finding also because it was not aligned with geographical location. On the other hand, the comparative analysis illuminates the absence of a salient placeholder across the four countries – namely, a concrete policy on adult education for migrants. This chapter also flags the unavailability of data (or of reliable data) in all the four countries on participation rates of migrants in adult education programmes, suggesting the case studies informing the book’s broader discussion unfolded in a relative policy vacuum.

In the first part of my paper and after a snapshot of the history of Cyprus from the fourth to the seventh centuries, I revisit the question of the position of Cyprus in the Levant in Late Antiquity with special attention to the conditions created on the island after the Arab raids. This topic was tackled by two recent monographs, Michael Metcalf’s Byzantine Cyprus 491–1191 (2009) and Luca Zavagno’s Cyprus Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ca. 600–800): An Island in Transition (2017). After looking at the main premises of these studies, the scene for discussion...

Image tagging APIs, offered as Cognitive Services in the movement to democratize AI, have become popular in applications that need to provide a personalized user experience. Developers can easily incorporate these services into their applications; however, little is known concerning their behavior under specific circumstances. We consider how two such services behave when predicting elements of the Big-Five personality traits from users’ profile images. We found that personality traits are not equally represented in the APIs’ output tags, with tags focusing mostly on Extraversion. The inaccurate personality prediction and the lack of vocabulary for the equal representation of all personality traits, could result in unreliable implicit user modeling, resulting in sub-optimal – or even undesirable – user experience in the application.

This chapter presents the findings of the case study conducted in Cyprus designed to investigate educational practices in adult education programmes for migrants to assess the extent to which these are learner-centred. It focuses on the Greek language courses offered by state educational institutions, via the so-called Adult Education Centres. These courses are named ‘Greek language for foreigners’ and are mainly attended by migrants. The chapter critically describes the context of the research, the methodological approach followed, in the collection and analysis of the data, and the analysis of the findings under the four axes identified in the theoretical framework adopted, namely: motivation, epistemology, technique, relationships. The findings of the case study attest to the very limited engagement with learner-centred practices as a tool for empowering migrant adult learners in the Cypriot context. In this respect, the absence of formal, standard policies on adult education for migrants in Cyprus is a crucial factor that precludes organised efforts towards the adoption of such LCE practices.

This chapter presents the findings of the case study conducted in Cyprus designed to investigate educational practices in adult education programmes for migrants to assess the extent to which these are learner-centred. It focuses on the Greek language courses offered by state educational institutions, via the so-called Adult Education Centres. These courses are named ‘Greek language for foreigners’ and are mainly attended by migrants. The chapter critically describes the context of the research, the methodological approach followed, in the collection and analysis of the data, and the analysis of the findings under the four axes identified in the theoretical framework adopted, namely: motivation, epistemology, technique, relationships. The findings of the case study attest to the very limited engagement with learner-centred practices as a tool for empowering migrant adult learners in the Cypriot context. In this respect, the absence of formal, standard policies on adult education for migrants in Cyprus is a crucial factor that precludes organised efforts towards the adoption of such LCE practices.

The first chapter of the book sets the background for the comparative exploration of learner-centred education (LCE) in language learning programmes for adult migrants in four European countries (Cyprus, Scotland, Malta, Estonia). It presents the rationale of the research project, upon which the book is built, its objectives, the research methodology and the comparative approach adopted. The design of the four case studies, the research questions as well as a brief introduction to the concept of learner-centred education, as a policy and practice, and its constituting elements, are discussed. The chapter concludes with a synopsis of the content of the book.