The fashion industry has long relied on innovation as a driving force for cultural and economic growth. This research examines whether current intellectual property laws are sufficient to protect emerging designers and support their creative contributions. It also investigates whether established brands have historically interacted with aesthetics, trends, and innovations originating within marginalized communities and independent creative spaces.Through a review of scholarly literature, case study analysis, and potential interviews with designers, this study seeks to identify recurring patterns related to design ownership, recognition, attribution, and compensation within the fashion industry. The study will draw upon legal scholarship and fashion industry research to examine how intellectual property protections are applied in practice. Interview data may further provide insight into designers’ experiences with ownership, attribution, recognition, and compensation throughout their professional development. The research will evaluate the effectiveness of existing intellectual property protections and how independent designers navigate legal and professional challenges associated with protecting their work. This has generated ongoing debate among scholars and industry professionals regarding the extent to which existing legal protections effectively support innovation while balancing creativity, competition, and market accessibility. As a result, questions remain regarding how emerging designers understand, access, and utilize these protections within professional practice. Findings may provide insight into the relationship between intellectual property law, fashion innovation, and designer recognition. Ultimately, this research advocates for greater recognition, transparency, and equity within the fashion industry. By examining the intersection of creativity, intellectual property, this study aims to contribute to ongoing discussions regarding to creative ownership, professional acknowledgement, and compensation in the fashion industry.

With the rise of coffee conglomerates like Starbucks in recent years and its pushout of coffee as a more standardized "product", many consumers have begun to make the effort in supporting local and community coffee shops. With a framework set by Ray Oldenburg and his conceptualization of the "third place", being a social environment outside of home (first place) and work (second) that one can go to for socialization, food, and drink, as a neutral ground outside of the world. With the discussion of physical third place characteristics within these third places, this paper will add to that growing conversation of third space social construction while considering two local and community coffeeshops, in Galesburg IL and how the individuals involved with them like owners, patrons and social media marketers add to the construction of these coffeeshops as third places with a focus into supporting aspects such as being community hubs and aesthetic spaces. This data was achieved by considering the daily characteristic motions of each coffee shop's customers, workers, and owners, and how these may differ between coffee shops; at the same time, conducting extensive, on-site ethnographic observations between both local coffee shops on an alternating weekly basis, focusing on regular patrons' behavior and social culture, and highlighting third-place physical characteristics and qualities. My analysis pairs these ethnographic observations with interview data from willing owners, patrons, and social media marketers.

Research examining custodial populations has focused on the physical impacts of this work, while research on the psychosocial experiences by custodial workers is missing from academic literature. Even though psychosocial work stressors have been recognized as a potential workplace hazard for workers in general. Thus, this current research seeks to fill a gap by surveying the custodial workforce at St. Edward's University, a small, Catholic liberal arts university in Austin, Texas. Specifically, this study employs a mixed methods approach and uses open-ended survey questions to gain insight into perceptions of respect, degradation, and fair compensation, as well as closed-ended questions examining workplace features of effort-reward imbalance, peer support, and high job demands. Through this research, we hope to bring awareness about potential psychosocial hazards that may be experienced in the custodial work environment.

A number of researchers have investigated the workplace—from elite institutions to entry-level service jobs—and much of their research has pointed to systemic inequality. Surprisingly, research has yet to empirically investigate how workers themselves understand economic mobility and how that understanding makes them vulnerable not only to injury but also to the socio-economic stakes that lead up to and follow an injury. To better understand this dynamic, the researcher will analyze existing scholarship of nearly fifty journals and/or books to create a literature review. Upon completion, the literature review will serve as a foundation to ultimately suggest that work-related injuries affect socio-economically disadvantaged individuals to a much greater extent; moreover, their risk of injury is further increased by their understanding of what constitutes merit, and how their own ideas of merit connect to their understandings of economic mobility.