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      • Optima Communications

        Lisa Bjerke is the owner and director of Optima Communications. Optima Communications provides customized assessments, coaching, training, and workshops to meet the unique communication needs of each individual, group or organization. Training is facilitated onsite in the workplace or virtually. Lisa has a Master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology. She is a corporate communication coach working with clients to enhance communication skills. These skills include: active listening, clear verbal expression, emotional intelligence, cultural diversity and communication, and managing difficult conversations.  Lisa is a communication and professionalism coach with the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine and Post Graduate Medical Education Program. Lisa is a recognized expert in accent assessment and training. She is the author of Accent on Canadian English: a pronunciation program for speakers of English as a second language™, Accent on Canadian English™ e-book, Accent on Clear English™ International e-book and the Accent on Canadian English Pronunciation Assessment Kit™. She is also the creator of the Accent on Clear English™ eCourse  https://acetraining.online

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      • Vogel Communications Group

        We accompany our end customers (engineers and / or technicians) as knowledge partners in their professional challenges, show the current state of knowledge and open up new perspectives for them

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      • 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.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Britain in China

        by Robert Bickers

        This is a study of Britain's presence in China both at its peak, and during its inter-war dissolution in the face of assertive Chinese nationalism and declining British diplomatic support. Using archival materials from China and records in Britain and the United States, the author paints a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging our understanding of British imperialism there. Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design, but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into conflict not only with the Chinese population, but with the British imperial government. The book also analyzes the formation and maintenance of settler identities, and then investigates how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2026

        Make cheese not war

        Transnational resistance and the Larzac in modern France

        by Andrew W. M. Smith

        In 1971, the French government announced a massive extension of its military base on the Larzac plateau in southern France. Land was to be expropriated from 107 farms around the small town of La Cavalerie. Limited resistance was expected, but what happened next exceeded all expectations. Local sheep farmers set up protest camps and occupied the land. They soon attracted an astonishing level of support, pioneering a form of regional radicalism with global implications. Drawing out the international dimensions of the protest, Make cheese not war explores a transnational resistance movement in the 1970s that challenged dominant visions of modernity and became a wellspring of radical alternatives. Exploring previously unconsulted archives in France and elsewhere, the book offers an in-depth analysis of the decade-long peasant movement and its aftermath. Repositioning the Larzac struggle within a wider network of French and international solidarities, from the US to the UK, Germany, Burkina Faso, New Caledonia and Japan, the book retraces political networks of pacifist activism, as well as environmental movements and anti-nuclear protest. It shows how this French peasant campaign became both a platform and a model for popular engagement.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        The secret life of romantic comedy

        by Celestino Deleyto

        The secret life of romantic comedy offers a new approach to one of the most popular and resilient genres in the history of Hollywood. Steering away from the rigidity and ideological determinism of traditional accounts of the genre, this book advocates a more flexible theory, which allows the student to explore the presence of the genre in unexpected places, extending the concept to encompass films that are not usually considered romantic comedies. Combining theory with detailed analyses of a selection of films, including To Be or Not to Be (1942), Rear Window (1954), Kiss Me Stupid (1964), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Before Sunset (2004), the book aims to provide a practical framework for the exploration of a key area of contemporary experience - intimate matters - through one of its most powerful filmic representations: the genre of romantic comedy. Original and entertaining, The secret life of romantic comedy is perfect for students and academics of film and film genre.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        July 2023

        You’re nicked

        Investigating British television police series

        by Ben Lamb

        You're nicked is the first comprehensive study of television police series in the UK. It reveals how British television's most popular genre has developed stylistically, politically and philosophically from 1955 to the present. Each chapter focuses on a particular decade, investigating how the most-watched series represent the inner workings of the police station, the civilian life of criminals and the private lives of police officers. This new approach unearths the complex ideology underpinning each series and discerns the key insights the genre can provide into the breakdown of the post-war settlement. Offering insightful readings of police series from Dixon of Dock Green to Happy Valley via The Sweeney, The Bill and Cracker, the book is a must-read for crime-drama enthusiasts worldwide. This new paperback edition features an extensive epilogue on Line of Duty and other Jed Mercurio creations.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        May 2010

        A loss of innocence?

        Television and Irish society, 1960–72

        by Robert Savage

        This book explores the evolution of Ireland's national television service during its first tumultuous decade, addressing how the medium helped undermine the conservative political, cultural and social consensus that dominated Ireland into the 1960s. It also traces the development of the BBC and ITA in Northern Ireland, considering how television helped undermine a state that had long governed without consensus. Using a wide array of new archival sources and extensive interviews Savage illustrates how an increasingly confident television service upset political, religious and cultural elites who were profoundly uncomfortable with the changes taking place around them. Savage argues that during this period television was not a passive actor, but an active agent often times aggressively testing the limits of the medium and the patience of governments. Television helped facilitate a process of modernisation that slowly transformed Irish society during the 1960s. This book will be essential for those interested in contemporary Irish political and cultural history and readers interested in media history, and cultural studies. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Biography & True Stories
        February 2024

        Revolutionary lives of the Red and Black Atlantic since 1917

        by David Featherstone, Christian Høgsbjerg, Alan Rice

        Revolutionary lives of the Red and Black Atlantic brings to light the life histories of a wide range of radical figures whose political activity in relation to the black liberation struggle was profoundly shaped by the global impact and legacy of the Russian Revolution of October 1917. The volume introduces new perspectives on the intellectual trajectories of well-known figures and critical activists including C. L. R. James, Paul Robeson, Walter Rodney and Grace P. Campbell. This biographical approach brings a vivid and distinctive lens to bear on how racialised social and political worlds were negotiated and experienced by these revolutionary figures, and on historic black radical engagements with left political movements, in the wake of the Russian Revolution.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2025

        Revolution in China and Russia

        Reorganizing empires into nation states

        by Luyang Zhou

        Most scholars believe that China's nationality policy, like that of other socialist states, imitated the Soviet nationality model, a system which has been termed an "affirmative action empire." This book offers two contributions to the literature which run counter to this convention. First, it argues that the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Soviet Union (USSR) were different; while the PRC was aimed to build an ideal-typical nation-state, the USSR was an open union of nation-states that was only temporarily confined to a physical territory. Second, while scholars who have noted this difference attribute it to contextual factors, such as ethnic structure, geopolitical status, and Russia's intervention into the Chinese Revolution, this book contends that context shaped the Sino-Soviet difference, yet it did not determine it. Rather, there was significant leeway between the implications of the contextual factors, and what the policy-designers ultimately established. This book probes who held agency, and how these individuals bridged this gap.

      • Trusted Partner
        Science & Mathematics
        August 2025

        Negotiating in/visibility

        Women, science, engineering and medicine in the twentieth century

        by Amelia Bonea, Irina Nastasa-Matei

        This volume brings together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to discuss how women contributed to the making, pedagogy, institutionalisation and communication of scientific knowledge in the twentieth century, and to reflect on the theoretical and methodological challenges of documenting such hidden contributions. Featuring examples from China, former Czechoslovakia, Greece, Hungary, India, Japan, Romania, the United Kingdom and the United States, the contributors discuss women's engagement with science across different institutional and non-institutional sites, ranging from the laboratory and the school to the clinic, the home and the media. The volume moves beyond the professional scientist model to enlarge our understanding of women's participation in twentieth-century science and document the complex combination of factors that rendered such contributions (in)visible to contemporaries and future generations.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2009

        Governance as social and political communication

        by Henrik Bang, Martin Hargreaves

        Governance is among the most used of new ideas in the social sciences, most notably in the fields of political science, public administration, sociology, social and political theory. As ever, debates within disciplines rarely transcend disciplinary boundaries. This volume, newly available in paperback, brings together authors from these fields to elaborate on the development of governance analysis in new conceptions of political and democratic communication. It not only seeks to identify, describe and evaluate the contribution of each discipline to a theory of communicative governance, but also lays the foundation of a multidisciplinary framework for studying the mediation in communicative governance of societal concerns for effectiveness, order and participation. The book is theoretical and comparative, drawing on authors and research in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the US. It adopts an anti-foundational approach to deconstruct the essentialist discourses endemic in each discipline and the disciplinary traditions of each country. Notions such as steering and control in public administration, identities and domination in sociology, and the community and self in social and political theory are analysed in depth. The book will demonstrate clearly how the distinctive traditions of each discipline lead them to construct overlapping, loosely coupled, and sometimes incommensurable ideas about the institutions, politics and policies of governance. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        February 2025

        101 Monster rechnen wie wild!

        Wort + Zahl = genial! Level 1

        by Ruby van der Bogen, Alexandra Helm

        Monstermäßig einfach Rechnen und Lesen lernen Jeder weiß, dass Monster natürlich ganz klein und niedlich sind. Aber wer weiß, dass sie am liebsten Dinge essen, die mit M anfangen, und dass sie ganz schön laut schnarchen? Und dann stibitzen Monsterkinder auch unheimlich gern Kindern ihr Spielzeug, weil sie selbst keins haben... Ob Lieblingsessen oder Anti-Albtraum-Zauber – auf jeder Seite gibt es fantastische Fakten über die magischen Monster und lustige Rechenaufgaben zu entdecken. Gemeinsam mit ihnen wird das Rechnen- und Lesenlernen zum Kinderspiel! Mit witzigen Texten und vielen bunten Illustrationen. 101 Monster rechnen wie wild! Wort + Zahl = genial! Level 1: So macht Lesen und Rechnen üben Spaß Alles über Monster: Erstlesebuch mit lustigen Geschichten und Lese- und Rechenaufgaben für Kinder ab 6 Jahren. Rechnen und Lesen leicht gemacht: Lustige Fakten und spannende Rechenrätsel sorgen für Erfolgserlebnisse und jede Menge Spaß. Ideal für Lesemuffel: In der wimmeligen Monsterwelt lernen Kinder spielerisch, einfache Rechenaufgaben zu lösen. Starke Kombination: Die witzigen Monster-Geschichten von Ruby van der Bogen und die bunten Bilder von Alexandra Helm machen das erste Lernen zu einem Kinderspiel. Lustige Fakten, bunte Illustrationen und einfache Texte: In der Reihe „Wort + Zahl = genial!“ steht der Spaß am Rechnen- und Lesenlernen im Vordergrund. Die Bücher enthalten eine durchgehende Geschichte mit integrierten Rechenaufgaben, Rätseln und Mini-Spielen nach jedem Kapitel. Mit kurzen Texten, großer Schrift, vielen Bildern und einem lockeren Layout eignen sie sich perfekt für Rechen- und Leseanfänger*innen ab 6 Jahren.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2023

        Towards a just Europe

        A theory of distributive justice for the European Union

        by João Labareda

        This highly original book constitutes one of the first attempts to examine the problem of distributive justice in the European Union in a systematic manner. João Labareda argues that the set of shared political institutions at EU level, including the European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the EU, generate democratic duties of redistribution among EU citizens. Furthermore, the economic structure of the EU, comprising a common market, a common currency and a free-movement area, triggers duties of reciprocity among member states. The responsibilities to fulfil these duties, Labareda argues, should be shared by the local, national and supranational levels of government. Not only should the EU act as a safety net to the national welfare systems, applying the principle of subsidiarity, but common market and Eurozone regulations should balance their efficiency targets with fair cooperation terms. The concrete policy proposals presented in this book include a threshold of basic goods for all EU citizens, an EU labour code, a minimum EU corporate tax rate and an EU fund for competitiveness. Labarada argues that his proposals match the political culture of the member states, are economically feasible, can be translated into functioning institutions and policies and are consistent with the limited degree of social solidarity in Europe. This book is a major contribution to the understanding of what a just Europe would look like and what it might take to get us there. This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10, Reduced inequalities

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2023

        Vulnerability

        by Charlotte Heath-Kelly, Barbara Gruber

      • Trusted Partner
        April 2013

        Oscar Wilde für Boshafte

        by Oscar Wilde, Denis Scheck, Denis Scheck, Christina Schenk, Christina Schenk

        »Bosheit ist ein Mythos, den gute Menschen erfunden haben, um die seltsame Anziehungskraft der anderen zu erklären.« Oscar Wilde

      • Trusted Partner
        December 2007

        Oscar Wilde für Boshafte

        by Oscar Wilde, Denis Scheck, Christina Schenk, Denis Scheck, Christina Schenk

        »Bosheit ist ein Mythos, den gute Menschen erfunden haben, um die seltsame Anziehungskraft der anderen zu erklären.« Oscar Wilde

      • Trusted Partner
        April 2023

        The Battle for Water

        In the century of drought

        by Jürgen Rahmig

        — Water as a reason for war and a political instrument of power — Unique overview of global water conflicts — Foreword by Wolfgang Ischinger Every year, droughts in African countries cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and much suffering. Europe also experienced drought in 2022's summer of record temperatures. Without water, there can be no life. More and more people are suffering from water shortages. Climate change is fuelling the distribution battles for water; violent conflicts over this precious resource are the order of the day. Whether the protests in Iraq, the war in Syria, in the Himalayas, the Nile conflict and in many other places, water is already a reason for war and is being misused as a political instrument of power. The construction of huge dams, the targeted closure of locks, river diversions, water and land grabbing bring wars over the "blue gold" with them. In a unique overview, journalist Jürgen Rahmig describes the struggle for water in the 21st century. Where do dangers lurk today; where will they be tomorrow, and how can we prevent wars over precious water?

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        May 2025

        »Ich kann allem widerstehen außer der Versuchung«

        Kleine Bosheiten vom Meister der Bonmots

        by Oscar Wilde, Christina Schenk, Denis Scheck, Denis Scheck, Christina Schenk

        »Bosheit ist ein Mythos, den gute Menschen erfunden haben, um die seltsame Anziehungskraft der anderen zu erklären.« Bis heute, 125 Jahre nach seinem Tod, gehört Oscar Wilde zu den beliebtesten und meist zitierten Autoren – nicht zuletzt wegen seiner Spitzzüngigkeit und dem Scharfsinn seiner Beobachtungen. Ob sich seine Polemik gegen überflüssige Zeitungen oder schlechte Literatur richtet, gegen geistlose Frauen oder langweilige Männer, gegen scheinheilige Moralvorstellungen oder die Ignoranz der Unkultivierten – immer ist sie treffsicher, brillant formuliert und äußerst unterhaltsam. Mehr als pure Gehässigkeit, ist sie Ausdruck des künstlerischen Selbstverständnisses Wildes, seine Extravaganz gegen die Meinung der anderen zu leben und seine Kunst, die elegante Schönheit und kritischen Geist verbindet, über die gesellschaftlichen Konventionen stellen zu dürfen.

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