The Pasifika (Pacific Island) research methodology talanoa (conversation) has contemporary resonance beyond its local context. At the recent Bonn Climate Change Conference, for example, talanoa was adopted to spark international dialogue about our collective futures. But this and other recent instances raise the question as to whether and how talanoa can and should be applied in a non-Indigenous context -or, indeed, online. As a culturally diverse research team, we undertook a talanoa about our experience of researching historical literacy with Māori and Pasifika students through talanoa. Here we introduce what we learned from the literature about the nature of talanoa, its use as a methodology and its application in higher education, and reproduce our own recent online talanoa on the experience of learning to do talanoa together. Three key lessons emerged from our research conversation. Firstly, we learned that time is of the essence: researchers must carefully balance the need for the talanoa to run its natural course with the need not to overburden the participants. Secondly, we learned that where the researchers undertake the talanoa is less important than attending to the relationships (the vā) between the researchers and participants, and the researchers and participants themselves. And, finally, in keeping with what some Māori researchers and their allies have argued of Kaupapa Māori research methodology, we learned that indigenous methodologies like talanoa, when employed with care and in recognition of their emergence out of decolonial struggles for indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, can foster a fruitful intercultural research conversation.

As two lecturers from quite different disciplines-Population Health and Musicology-we faced a common instructional challenge: how to improve the standard of student writing in our first-year courses for nonmajors, and thus to invite our students into the discourses of our disciplines. We collaborated in the design of a sequence of online writing assignments for our separate courses, which would address this question. We were inspired by the high-level digital literacy skills of our students, which we sought to use in similar ways to improve the students' other literacy skills, especially disciplinespecific writing skills. Drawing on educational design research methodology, we took into account our own experiences with e-learning in our previous courses and the latest literature on e-learning and literacy development. The outcomes of our research are guidelines for teachers of writing across undergraduate disciplines, and reflections on how best to mobilize students' digital literacy skills to educational ends. AbstractAs two lecturers from quite different disciplines-Population Health and Musicology-we faced a common instructional challenge: how to improve the standard of student writing in our first-year courses for non-majors, and thus to invite our students into the discourses of our disciplines. We collaborated in the design of a sequence of online writing assignments for our separate courses, which would address this question. We were inspired by the high-level digital literacy skills of our students, which we sought to use in similar ways to improve the students' other literacy skills, especially disciplinespecific writing skills. Drawing on educational design research methodology, we took into account our own experiences with e-learning in our previous courses and the latest literature on e-learning and literacy development. The outcomes of our research are guidelines for teachers of writing across undergraduate disciplines, and reflections on how best to mobilize students' digital literacy skills to educational ends.

A discographical study of Beethoven's string quartets gives rise to numerous counter examples to the normalizing trends that scholars of recording history have emphasized in the past. Innovation and variability of interpretation are central to the practice of performing these works in the recording age. Recordings of Beethoven's early, middle, and late quartets offer qualitative and quantitative evidence that spans an eighty-year history. Perhaps surprisingly, homogeneity and restraint are often found in historically informed Beethoven performance. In general, though, the various "voices" of mainstream string quartets have increasingly opened, rather than closed, these works' hermeneutic windows.

This study argues that register – a neglected subject of music analysis – assumes the status of a primary parameter in Haydn's string quartets. The claim is substantiated with four case studies. The first movement of Op. 9 No. 4 exemplifies registral techniques that Haydn deployed and developed throughout his career as a quartet composer. Op. 20 No. 2 uses register as a main topic of compositional discourse, and as a means of establishing large‐scale connections both within and between movements. The first movement of Op. 76 No. 5 employs register to create stability as well as instability, while the finale of Op. 74 No. 2 epitomises the paradox that registral destabilisation may help to create large‐scale coherence.

Beethoven's middle-period quartets, Opp. 59, 74 and 95, are pieces that engage deeply with the aesthetic ideas of their time. In the first full contextual study of these works, Nancy November celebrates their uniqueness, exploring their reception history and early performance. In detailed analyses, she explores ways in which the quartets have both reflected and shaped the very idea of chamber music and offers a new historical understanding of the works' physical, visual, social and ideological aspects. In the process, November provides a fresh critique of three key paradigms in current Beethoven studies: the focus on his late period; the emphasis on 'heroic' style in discussions of the middle period; and the idea of string quartets as 'pure', 'autonomous' artworks, cut off from social moorings. Importantly, this study shows that the quartets encompass a new lyric and theatrical impetus, which is an essential part of their unique, explorative character.