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      • Trusted Partner
        Teaching, Language & Reference
        May 2025

        US diplomacy and the Good Friday Agreement in post-conflict Northern Ireland

        by Richard Hargy

        Richard Haass and Mitchell Reiss, as autonomous diplomats in the George W. Bush State Department, were able to alter US intervention in Northern Ireland and play critical roles in the post-1998 peace process. Their contributions have not been fully appreciated or understood. The restoration of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government in 2007 was made possible by State Department-led intervention in the peace process. There are few references to Northern Ireland in work examining the foreign policy legacy of the George W. Bush presidency. Moreover, the ability to control US foreign policy towards the region brought one of George W. Bush's Northern Ireland special envoys into direct diplomatic conflict with the most senior actors inside the British government. This book will uncover the extent of this fall-out and provide original accounts on how diplomatic relations between these old allies became so fraught.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Borders and conflict in South Asia

        The Radcliffe Boundary Commission and the partition of Punjab

        by Lucy Chester

        Borders and conflict in South Asia is the first full-length study of the 1947 drawing of the Indo-Pakistani boundary in Punjab. Using the Radcliffe commission as a window onto the decolonization and independence of India and Pakistan, and examining the competing interests, both internal and international, that influenced the actions of the various major players, it highlights British efforts to maintain a grip on India even as the decolonization process spun out of control. Drawing on extensive archival research in India, Pakistan, and Britain, combined with innovative use of cartographic sources, the book paints a vivid picture of both the partition process and the Radcliffe line's impact on Punjab. This book will be vital reading for scholars and students of colonialism, decolonization, partition, and borderlands studies, while providing anyone interested in South Asia's independence with a highly readable account of one of its most controversial episodes.

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        June 2025

        Proxy war in Afghanistan

        The politics of state-wrecking

        by Abbas Farasoo

        This book provides a compelling analysis of proxy warfare and its far-reaching implications for statehood, focusing on the conflict in Afghanistan. Introducing the innovative concept of "state-wrecking," it bridges theory and practice to unravel how external support for insurgent actors fuels violence, undermines territorial control and sovereignty, intensifies violence, and dismantles political legitimacy. The work shifts the discourse on proxy wars from the strategies of global powers to the procedural and structural impacts within target states. Grounded in rigorous empirical research, including interviews, archival data, and conflict analysis, the book critically examines the Pakistan-Taliban nexus and the limitations of US-led interventions. By blending a robust theoretical framework with in-depth case studies, it reveals how proxy dynamics shape conflicts, disrupt governance, and challenge international security. This is an essential resource for those seeking to understand the entanglements of modern warfare and the fragility of states under external influence.

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        The Arts
        March 2026

        Contemporary art and ecological transformation in East and Southeast Asia

        by Meiqin Wang

        This anthology, presenting new research from fourteen scholars, delves into the interplay between contemporary art and ecological concerns in East and Southeast Asia. Focused on the concept of artistic remediation, the book unravels the diverse capacities of art to combat systemic anthropogenic destruction to the environment and ecology. At its core, the book articulates the ongoing ecological transformation in art and art history that embraces a paradigm shift in human-nature relationships, emphasizing interconnectedness of all life forms of the Earth. Bridging art studies, activism, and environmental studies, the book examines how artistic practices in the region have engaged with ecocritical reflection, biodiversity advocacy, sustainable practices, and environmental justice, among others. Providing a platform for critical and timely analysis of artistic interventions in the face of existential crises, the book acknowledges diverse voices of scholars who have situated their scholarship in the cultural and artistic specificities of various societies, locales, and communities in the region.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2025

        Humanitarian mobilisation in Central and Eastern Europe

        Local, national, and international perspectives

        by Doina Anca Cretu, Michal Frankl

        By focusing on aid Central and Eastern Europe, the volume adds to the existent scholarly explorations of modern humanitarianism, its actors and practices. In the twentieth century, aid workers assisted victims of war and earthquakes, delivered food, supported health care, provided childcare, or sheltered refugees. The contributors not only reconstruct these diverse histories and their protagonists, but also bring international, national, and local actors together: from grassroots activists to private associations to state-driven "socialist humanitarians" to large Western aid organizations. In doing so, they challenge the often unidirectional, from West-to-East, and asymmetrical perspective on donor-recipient relationships in humanitarian processes.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2024

        Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States

        Power, identity and strategy in the Persian Gulf triangle

        by Luíza Cerioli

        This book offers a nuanced snapshot of the complex geopolitical dynamics in the Persian Gulf, underlining the interaction between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the US. Examining their interwoven relations since the 1970s, Luíza Cerioli's framework reveals how changes in US-Saudi ties have ripple effects on Iran-US and Iran-Saudi relations and vice versa. Using a historical lens, she explores how enduring US-Saudi connections hinge on order expectations, delves into the cognitive factors shaping US-Iran enmity and traces the source of oscillation in the Saudi-Iran ties. Employing Neoclassical Realism, the book investigates status-seeking, national identities and leadership preferences, offering a deeper understanding of the region's multipolar system. By combining International Relations and Middle East Studies, Cerioli's work contributes to both fields, unravelling the intricate interplay between international structures, regional nuances and agency in shaping Persian Gulf geopolitics.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2025

        Conquest and resistance in West Africa

        The Jeandet Affair and the illusion of colonial justice

        by Ruth Ginio

        This book is an enthralling account of a legal scandal, which erupted in colonial Senegal in 1890 and reached the French metropolitan press and the parliament. The murder of a colonial administrator, Abel Jeandet, by one of his soldiers led to the brutal and illegal executions without trial of the killer and two local dignitaries. The volume follows the fascinating story of Ndiereby Ba, the widow of one of the dignitaries, who with the help of powerful métis men in the capital Saint Louis sued the French administrators who had supervised the executions for the murder of her husband. Through this captivating tale the book articulates the French expansion into West Africa, the resistance to colonial rule both violent and non-violent, and the lack of interest on the part of French politicians in the brutal conquest of a territory they know nothing about.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2025

        China as context

        Anthropology, post-globalisation and the neglect of China

        by Di Wu, Andrea E. Pia, Ed Pulford

        Decades-old calls to promote the significance of China for anthropological theory and the social sciences more generally ring more urgently today given China's importance to social, political and economic life globally. Yet Chinese-grounded ideas remain marginal to the discipline, and scholarly discussions retain a sense of China as an 'Other' apart from the 'real' world, and thus unsuitable or generating widely applicable theoretical ideas. Inspired by East Asian postcolonial scholarship, this volume tackles this unsettling situation head-on, arguing that without taking China seriously as a powerful agent, a locus of knowledge production, and a new discursive topos of an emerging post-global imaginary, anthropologists and other social scientists may fail to adequately analyse the global present and make sense of both the material and immaterial forces that animate it, wherever and however they work. Amid the end of Western globalisation and shifting anthropological understandings of relations between ethnography and theory, we show how 'China' must be understood as the ordinary 'context' for anthropological research practices worldwide.

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        The Arts
        March 2017

        Images of the army

        The military in British art, 1815-1914

        by J. W. M. Hichberger

        In an age when engraving and photography were making artistic images available to a much wider public, artists were able to influence public attitudes more powerfully than ever before. This book examines works of art on military themes in relation to ruling-class ideologies about the army, war and the empire. The first part of the book is devoted to a chronological survey of battle painting, integrated with a study of contemporary military and political history. The chapters link the debate over the status and importance of battle painting to contemporary debates over the role of the army and its function at home and abroad. The second part discusses the intersection of ideologies about the army and military art, but is concerned with an examination of genre representations of soldiers. Another important theme which runs through the book is the relation of English to French military art. During the first eighty years of the period under review France was the cynosure of military artists, the school against which British critics measured their own, and the place from which innovations were imported and modified. In every generation after Waterloo battle painters visited France and often trained there. The book shows that military art, or the 'absence' of it, was one of the ways in which nationalist commentators articulated Britain's moral superiority. The final theme which underlies much of the book is the shifts which took place in the perception of heroes and hero-worship.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2025

        Criminality, political power and conflict

        Critical perspectives

        by José Antonio Gutiérrez Danton, Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín

        In the aftermath of the greed vs. grievance debate and the new wars paradigm, the focus of conflict studies shifted decisively to understanding "predatory" behaviours as the raison d'etre of contemporary conflict. Conflict was viewed as a continuum in which the more you engage in criminal behaviour, the less political you are.This approach has been robustly criticised over the past 15 years; however, in the process, we have been left with unsuitable concepts to handle the complex interactions between civil war, political power and criminality. The departure point here is the understanding of politics and criminality as two historically differentiated domains of human activity. Different, but interrelated, often co-constitutive and overlapping. Here, we empirically and theoretically explore their interactions, connections, and convergences, not focusing solely on irregular actors, thus bringing back the State and elites into this debate.

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        The Arts
        October 2025

        Art and citizenship in conflict

        British women war artists, 1939–45

        by Lucy Curzon

        Art and Citizenship in Conflict examines the work of women war artists in order to highlight the complexity of citizenship and gender in Britain during the Second World War. Evelyn Dunbar, Mary Kessell, Ethel Gabain, Stella Schmolle, and Laura Knight, among others, were commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC) to document the millions of women who took up sometimes unconventional roles-in agriculture, the auxiliary services, and manufacturing, among others-to support the British war effort. Indeed, their prints, drawings, and paintings were part of a broader scheme to uphold morale and promote much-needed citizen involvement on the home front. While there is growing interest, the importance of their remit in the history of the Second World War and the quality of their artistry have nonetheless not yet secured them a significant place in scholarship. Art and Citizenship in Conflict seeks to amend this gap while also broadening approaches to the study of war itself.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2022

        A new naval history

        by Quintin Colville, James Davey, Katherine Parker, Elaine Chalus, Evan Wilson, Barbara Korte, Cicely Robinson, Cindy McCreery, Ellie Miles, Mary A. Conley, Jonathan Rayner, Daniel Spence, Emma Hanna, Ulrike Zimmerman, Max Jones, Jan Rüger

        A New Naval History brings together the most significant and interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary naval history. The last few decades have witnessed a transformation in how this field is researched and understood and this volume captures the state of a field that continues to develop apace. It examines - through the prism of naval affairs - issues of nationhood and imperialism; the legacy of Nelson; the socio-cultural realities of life in ships and naval bases; and the processes of commemoration, journalism and stage-managed pageantry that plotted the interrelationship of ship and shore. This bold and original publication will be essential for undergraduate and postgraduate students of naval and maritime history. Beyond that, though, it marks an important intervention into wider historiographies that will be read by scholars from across the spectrum of social history, cultural studies and the analysis of national identity.

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        Business, Economics & Law
        May 2005

        The UN, human rights and post-conflict situations

        by Nigel White, Dirk Klaasen

        The United Nations is one of the largest providers of assistance in post-conflict situations in the world. This book considers the human rights standards applicable to the United Nations and applied by the United Nations in post-conflict situations, including East Timor, Kosovo and Afghanistan. It looks at legal principles, peace agreements, support of democracy, human rights protection, development and other forms of reconstruction with which the UN has become involved, including the grandly-named task of "state-building". It deals both with the obligation upon the UN to respect human rights in post-conflict situations, and the obligation upon the UN to ensure that human rights are respected by those in positions of power in post-conflict situations. Written by an internationally renowned list of contributors, this book will be of vital use to anyone studying conflict analysis, international relations, international law and the role of the United Nations on the world stage. ;

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        Medicine

        The Psychologist’s Role in Disaster Risk Reduction

        Theory and Practice

        by Olavo Sant’Anna Filho / Daniela da Cunha Lopes (Eds.)

        The book introduces the psychology of disaster scenarios, taking into account national and international research. The title outlines different concepts, like anguish, stress, and resilience, and highlights the importance of psychosocial attention to minimize the consequences of disastrous situations and maintaining good mental health.   The book consists of a foreword and four chapters, which include a technical note from the Federal Counsel of Psychology, the main concepts of risk and disaster management, and information on the official agencies and nonprofit organizations that work with disaster risks reduction.   Target Group: clinical psychologists, mental health professionals, psychiatrists, students, and teachers

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