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      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        April 2026

        The art of decolonisation

        Dakar-Paris, 1950-70

        by Maureen Murphy

        The art of decolonisation examines how artists challenged colonial legacies and reconfigured power through transnational networks of art and diplomacy. Adopting a global and transhistorical perspective, it explores artistic, political, and institutional relations between France and Senegal during decolonisation and the Cold War. From the emergence of a national modern art in Senegal to contested cultural policies and high-profile exhibitions-such as those featuring Picasso and Soulages in Dakar, or contemporary Senegalese art in Paris-this book traces the circulation of artworks, ideas, and influence across borders. It reveals how visual artists and filmmakers shaped a new artistic geopolitics between 1950 and 1970. Reconsidering the accepted chronology of the 'global turn', The art of decolonisation shows that the roots of global art discourse run deeper than the 1990s, and were already forming during the era of independence struggles.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2026

        Arctic state identity

        by Ingrid A. Medby

      • Trusted Partner
        April 2021

        Ukraine's fateful years 2013–2019

        Vol. 1: The Maidan uprising in 2013/2014 Vol. 2: The annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass

        by Winfried Schneider-Deters

        — Comprehensive and detailled analysis of the Euromaidan and the ongoing war in Ukraine — Brussels versus Moscow, Russian aggression and geopolitical interests — China's role in a new East-West conflict The years between 2013 and 2019 were almost as significant for Ukraine as the attainment of independence in 1991, as this very independence was in danger of being lost again after the Euromaidan. The nationwide popular uprising against the regime of President Yanukovych had led to a change of power: the former parliamentary opposition formed a new government, resulting in a loss of influence for Russia. Russian agents therefore tried to bring about a "Crimea scenario", another secession in the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine. The resulting "Ukraine conflict", often called a civil war, is in fact a Russian war of attrition against Ukraine. President Putin intends to resolve it on his terms in the Minsk process: through a de facto "autonomous" part of the Donbass in the Ukrainian state, independent of Kiev, as a lever for Russian political influence. Winfried Schneider- Deters, a renowned expert on Ukraine, analyses narratively and in detail the events from 2013 to 2019 and places the Russian- Ukrainian conflict in the context of the dawning "Chinese century".

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        February 2025

        Passage works

        Ruth Beckermann’s art

        by Patricia Allmer, John Sears

        Passage Works is the first book-length English language critical analysis of the transdisciplinary work of the Austrian film-maker, writer, and artist Ruth Beckermann (b. 1952, Vienna). Beckermann's works interrogate identity and geography as formations of the intersections between the past and the contemporary. Taking as her central topics Austria and its history and politics, her own identity as a Jewish woman, and the contemporary global geopolitics of migration and displacement, Beckermann develops wider meditations in film, art, and writing on the persistence of European memory, and the meanings of Europe itself; on borders, migrations, and identities; on memories, traumas, and traditions; on the image as marker of presence and absence, repository of the traces of historical violence; and on the passage as metaphor for a range of physical, psychological, and ideological movements defining the complexities of contemporary cosmopolitan identities.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2009

        Air empire

        British imperial civil aviation, 1919–39

        by Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie

        Air empire is a fresh study of civil aviation as a tool of late British imperialism. The first pioneering flights across the British empire in 1919-20 were flag-waving adventures that recreated an era of plucky British maritime exploration and conquest. Britain's development of international air routes and services was approved, organised and celebrated largely in London; there was some resistance in and beyond the subordinate colonies and dominions. Negotiating the financing and geopolitics of regular commercial air service delayed its inception until the 1930s. Technological, managerial and logistical problems also meant that Britain was slow into the air and slow in the air. Propaganda concealed underperformance and criticism. The study uses archival sources, biographies, industry magazines and newspapers to chronicle the disputed progress toward air empire. The rhetoric behind imperial air service offers a glimpse of late imperial hopes, fears, attitudes and style. Empire air service had emotional appeal and symbolic value, but disappointed in practice. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Air empire

        British imperial civil aviation, 1919–39

        by Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie

        Air empire is a fresh study of civil aviation as a tool of late British imperialism. The first pioneering flights across the British empire in 1919-20 were flag-waving adventures that recreated an era of plucky British maritime exploration and conquest. Britain's development of international air routes and services was approved, organised and celebrated largely in London; there was some resistance in and beyond the subordinate colonies and dominions. Negotiating the financing and geopolitics of regular commercial air service delayed its inception until the 1930s. Technological, managerial and logistical problems also meant that Britain was slow into the air and slow in the air. Propaganda concealed underperformance and criticism. The study uses archival sources, biographies, industry magazines and newspapers to chronicle the disputed progress toward air empire. The rhetoric behind imperial air service offers a glimpse of late imperial hopes, fears, attitudes and style. Empire air service had emotional appeal and symbolic value, but disappointed in practice.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2022

        Borderland

        by Phil Hubbard

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2024

        Coup in Damascus

        Husni al-Za'im and the birth of Syrian military rule

        by Carl Rihan

        Coup in Damascus is a history of Syria's first military regime. It plots the the fall of Syria's democracy and the rise of its military rulers, particularly Husni al-Zaim, whose brief rule in 1949 represented a profoundly transformative moment for the Syrian nation. It is a history of the thoughts, intentions and motives of political actors underpinning the events that have marked Syria's history after the first Arab-Israeli war, and focuses mainly on the interaction between local, regional and international actors. Unlike most histories of the modern Middle East that tackle broad intervals and that focus on the sequences of events, this history seeks to reconstruct the thought processes behind the events, and anchor them within the epoch's existing political and socioeconomic conditions. It draws on several methodological influences, particularly R.G. Collingwood's 'history as re-enactment of the past'.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2026

        Diplomatic training

        Histories, geographies, politics

        by Ruth Craggs, Jonathan Harris, Fiona McConnell

        Despite the essential role diplomatic training plays in the everyday workings of international relations, international law and in the various multilateral organisations, this practice has received little critical attention in the humanities, social and political sciences. Bringing together detailed accounts of the histories, development and contemporary practices of diplomatic training with insights from key practitioners, this edited collection places training centrally within our understanding of international relations. It argues that diplomatic training both reflects and reproduces hegemonic power relations, whilst at the same time offering opportunities to contest them, and imagine alternative futures. The book includes a substantive introduction, nine full-length chapters from a range of disciplinary and regional perspectives drawing on archival research, oral history, interviews, and ethnographic methods, and four 'interventions': reflection pieces from trainers and directors of training programmes. It offers a globe-spanning, interdisciplinary account of the politics of diplomatic training and appeals to both scholarly and practitioner audiences.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2026

        United States and Chinese foreign assistance and diplomacy

        Aid for dominance

        by Salvador Santino Regilme, Obert Hodzi

        Aid for Dominance addresses the analytic weaknesses of mainstream analysis of foreign aid, which often focuses on its material dimensions. The book underscores the constitutive relationship between foreign aid as a material resource and the diplomatic discourses and practices that constitute complex bilateral relations between donor and recipient states. Written by two leading scholars of contemporary United States and Chinese foreign policies in the Global South, Aid for Dominance offers a pioneering, theoretically conscious, and empirically rich account of the two great powers' grand strategies in the global development sector. By deploying a multidisciplinary and comparative analysis, this book draws from a wide range of evidentiary materials from primary sources, including data from fieldwork interviews, government documents, local and international newspapers, speeches by high-ranking government officials and diplomats, and secondary data from scholarly publications and policy papers.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2021

        Indo-Pacific Empire

        by Rory Medcalf

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2026

        Heritage and healing in Syria and Iraq

        by Zena Kamash

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2022

        Saudi Arabia and Iran

        by Simon Mabon, Edward Wastnidge

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2026

        Prussians, Nazis and Peaceniks

        by Jens Steffek, Leonie Holthaus

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2018

        Race and the Yugoslav region

        Postsocialist, post-conflict, postcolonial?

        by Catherine Baker, Gurminder Bhambra

        This is the first book to situate the territories and collective identities of former Yugoslavia within the politics of race - not just ethnicity - and the history of how ideas of racialised difference have been translated globally. The book connects critical race scholarship, global historical sociologies of 'race in translation' and south-east European cultural critique to show that the Yugoslav region is deeply embedded in global formations of race. In doing this, it considers the everyday geopolitical imagination of popular culture; the history of ethnicity, nationhood and migration; transnational formations of race before and during state socialism, including the Non-Aligned Movement; and post-Yugoslav discourses of security, migration, terrorism and international intervention, including the War on Terror and the present refugee crisis.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2018

        Cultures of decolonisation

        Transnational productions and practices, 1945–70

        by Ruth Craggs, Andrew Thompson, Claire Wintle, John M. MacKenzie

        Cultures of decolonisation combines studies of visual, literary and material cultures in order to explore the complexities of the 'end of empire' as a process. Where other accounts focus on high politics and constitutional reform, this volume reveals the diverse ways in which cultures contributed to wider political, economic and social change. The book demonstrates the transnational character of decolonisation, thereby illustrating the value of comparison - between different cultural forms and diverse places - in understanding the nature of this wide-reaching geopolitical change. Individual chapters focus on architecture, theatre, museums, heritage sites, fine art and interior design, alongside institutions such as artists' groups, language agencies and the Royal Mint, across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Europe.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2023

        Intimacy and mobility in an era of hardening borders

        Gender, reproduction, regulation

        by Haldis Haukanes, Frances Pine

        This book is a collection of articles by anthropologists and social scientists concerned with gendered labour, care, intimacy and sexuality, in relation to mobility and the hardening of borders in Europe. Interrogating the relation between physical, geopolitical borders and ideological, conceptual boundaries, it offers a range of vivid and original ethnographic case studies that will capture the imagination of anyone interested in gendered migration, policies of inclusion and exclusion, and regulation of reproduction and intimacy. The book presents ethnographic and phenomenological discussions of people's changing lives as they cross borders, how people transgress and reshape moral boundaries of proper gender and kinship behaviour, and moral economies of intimacy and sexuality. It also focuses on migrants' navigation of social and financial services in their destination countries, putting questions about rights and limitations on citizenship at the core.

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