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This Introduction and interview discusses the poetical and empathic insights that are a key to the effectiveness of contemporary artist Christine Borland's practice and its relevance to the medical humanities, visual art research and medical students’ training. It takes place in a context of intensive interest in reciprocity and conversation as well as expert exchange between the fields of Medicine and Contemporary Arts. The interview develops an understanding of medical research and the application of its historical resources and contemporary practice-based research in contemporary art gallery exhibitions. Artists tend not to follow prescriptive programmes towards new historical knowledge, however, a desire to form productive relationships between history and contemporary art practice does reveal practical advantages. Borland's research also includes investigations in anatomy, medical practices and conservation.

Recent and future political decisions regarding the inter-regional and international partnerships which constitute Great Britain, including Scottish Independence, EVEL (English Votes for English Laws) and proposed legislation on an 'in/out' referendum on British membership of the European Union, have contributed to, and intensified, the examination of British institutions, as well as its national emblems and archetypes. In light of such dynamism we solicited contributions from representatives of the British Universities, Museum sector and Research Centres to respond to the idea of a changing Britain through the prism of British art and visual culture, using cogent examples wherever possible, and bringing to the fore their observations, understandings and positions within this rapidly developing context. Craig Richardson Ysanne Holt From the BorderlandsIn the round table discussion that launched the very first issue of Visual Culture in Britain in 2000, Jonathan Harris observed that accounts of the impact of globalization on academics and their disciplines necessarily called into question the formation of our sense of self, the extent to which some of us feel ourselves to be ''British', as opposed to 'English', or 'Welsh' or 'Scottish'' and the historical contexts for such affiliations. The implication was that future contributors to the journal might consider their attachments, or otherwise, to these notions, and Jonathan pointed to 'Welsh European' Raymond Williams' assertion that the term 'Britishness' was a way of 'containing the protests and resentments of neglected and marginalized regions and minorities within an imposed general 'patriotism''.

Neil Mulholland, The Cultural Devolution: Art in Britain in the Late Twentieth Century. Ashgate, 2003. 240 pp. ISBN 0 7546 0392 X journal of visual culture 3(3)

Africa is often referred to as if it were a country. This perspective flattens the understanding of a complex and highly varied set of 54 countries with widely different GDP growth rates and underlying economic complexities. More economically complex countries are able to sustain external commodity price shocks, a factor Ricardo did not consider in his famous law. A method is developed in this paper to better assess a country's economic complexity, modeled after the Herfindahl Index which is widely used in measures of market structure. Data from the MIT/Harvard Atlas of Economic Complexity is used to construct a new economic complexity index that can better track a country's move towards improved business environments. This paper argues that high GDP growth, particularly in African countries, may mask exports of a single crude commodity which is subject to volatile price changes, and hence rocky macroeconomic output.