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Technological systems increasingly shape how people live, love, and relate—often revealing hidden social pressures and vulnerabilities. This Spotlight traces how digital and cultural infrastructures reorganize everyday life: a hyper-competitive housing market that pushes students toward self-marketing and extreme compromises; growing “app fatigue” that drives singles back toward face-to-face dating; and the continued appeal of biography as a distinctly human form that resists algorithmic speed and simplification. The collection also confronts technology’s darker edges, including evidence that addictive patterns of digital use (more than screen time alone) correlate with youth mental health risks, and the severe harms enabled by online coercion networks targeting children. Curated in JOSHA’s interdisciplinary spirit, these pieces invite readers to see technology not as a neutral backdrop, but as a force reshaping intimacy, opportunity, attention, and safety.

This collection highlights textile crafts that have faded from contemporary design. Once central to clothing production, labour-intensive techniques like embroidery, pleating and smocking are now rarely used in modern wearables. I value these methods for their craftsmanship, durability and tactile richness. Through research into traditional Eastern European garments, I explored the cultural and historical context in which these techniques once thrived. My aim was to reintroduce them beyond the realm of fashion. The result is a series of light objects that use textile construction as a design tool demonstrating how these overlooked crafts can shape functional, atmospheric pieces and find new relevance in everyday spaces.

This case describes a 24-year-old primigravida woman from a rural area in Santander, Colombia, who began prenatal care late at 28.3 weeks. At 29.3 weeks, obstetric ultrasound showed hypoplasia of the cerebellar vermis and an enlarged cisterna magna, later confirmed by neurosonography and fetal magnetic resonance as a Dandy-Walker spectrum variant. Congenital infections were ruled out, and the mother declined invasive genetic testing. At 39 weeks, a cesarean section was performed, and the male newborn had adequate neonatal adaptation. Postnatal cranial ultrasound revealed a cystic dilation suggestive of a Dandy-Walker variant or Blake’s pouch cyst. Outpatient follow-up was not possible. This case highlights how limited access to healthcare in rural areas can delay prenatal diagnosis and restrict a comprehensive approach, although some variants may have a benign neonatal course. Strengthening prenatal care access is essential for timely and adequate management.

Writing, a highly specialised motor activity integrally linked to language, is an intrinsic activity of our species and has played a huge part in the progression of civilisation. Being unable to read and write in today’s world is a huge liability. In this review, we look at issues related to writing including handedness, agraphia, hypergraphia, mirror writing, the role of pathology, psychiatric illness and artistic talent. Case studies include the prophet Ezekiel, Arthur Inman, Leonardo da Vinci and Vincent van Gogh. The study of writing is important and deserves further attention.

The rapid ascent of artificial intelligence reveals a fragmented map of ambition, risk, and hidden labour. While Switzerland cultivates a thriving ecosystem through strategic state–industry partnership, the costs surface elsewhere: chatbots that over-validate vulnerable users can deepen delusional spirals, with real consequences for mental health. At the same time, the race for AI supremacy carries a material footprint. From Mexico to Ireland, communities push back against data centers powering AI that strain electricity and water supplies. Yet within this tension lies promise: personalized AI “experts,” shaped through careful system instructions, can assist with editing, translation, finance, and creative work. Curated by JOSHA through a cross-disciplinary editorial lens, this Spotlight places these accounts in dialogue, so readers can see both what AI enables and what it exacts.

A hardest truth that has characterized human existence is the reality that conflict is inevitable in every social relation. Put differently, conflict occurs whenever disagreements exist in a social situation over material conditions thereby creating antagonisms or frictions between individuals or groups. Disagreement over the use of essential resources such as farmland, grazing areas and water between herders and local farmers remains the major source of the conflicts in those communities. In Nigeria, clashes between nomadic Fulani herdsmen and farmers used to be confined to the Northern-most region of the country but have spread to the North Central zone such that these disputes pose a grave threat to life and livelihood. Succinctly, the crux of this study was interrogating the Great Green Wall Initiative as Environmental Peacebuilding Approach to farmer/herder Conflict in North-central Nigeria.

Dear josha-journal readers, We welcome all readers to the new year 2026 and wish you a good start!

This case study aims to trace urbicide in Kosovo, specifically in the historical core of Prishtina during and after Yugoslavia. During this span, Prishtina goes through an era of transition not only in governance but also in architecture. The creation of a socialist, modern city based on Yugoslav principles also meant the demolition of the past through the destruction of Albanian architectural heritage and, during the war, the destruction of roots. Through a multidisciplinary approach, this research aims to illuminate the complications of urbicide in the heart of Prishtina and its implications for the present and future of the city. But was urbicide achieved? How did Prishtina go through different stages of urban planning to form what it is today, and why was the historical zone used for modernisation? Strategies were used not only as a tool of fear but also to establish Serbian control over the territory, by not adhering to urban plans and creating a half-baked Prishtina.

I explore how young people from West Africa decide to undertake irregular migration to Europe, with a particular focus on those who reach Germany. Using a qualitative research design and grounded in Karen O'Reilly’s practice stories framework, I conducted semi-structured interviews with youth migrants to better understand their lived experiences, motivations, and constraints. I complemented their views with those of one key informant, a migration practitioner. Rather than viewing migration as a single decision or event, I conceptualise it as an ongoing social practice shaped by both internal and external structures, ranging from personal motivation and family pressure to governance drivers and restricted legal pathways (O’Reilly, 2022). I moreover use contemporary sociological framework to examine the complexity of youth migrants decision making and provide a more grounded, empathetic understanding of irregular migration.

This JOSHA Spotlight curates five advances that illuminate cancer as a problem of both cellular engineering and clinical decision-making. Mechanistic work in colorectal cancer shows how loss of ATRX disrupts colonic identity, unleashing multilineage plasticity and highly metastatic behaviour. A microfluidic–machine learning platform in breast cancer quantifies how metronomic drug schedules can outperform conventional combinations. A landmark trial in node-positive breast cancer refines care by safely omitting regional nodal irradiation after excellent chemotherapy response. In pancreatic cancer, paired articles reveal “cryptic” antigens from noncoding regions as shared, tumour-restricted targets that can be recognised and attacked by engineered T cells, yet remain constrained by an immunosuppressive microenvironment.