Happy New Year! We’re really proud to kick off 2020 with an exhibition of some of our recent, and most popular, publications in the UCL main library – you’ll find us in the large display cabinet, halfway up the main staircase! Do take the time to look at our wide range of publications, all of which are available to download directly from this site, just use our search function to locate the book you’re interested in.

In January we also publish another new book in our Fringe series, Re-centring the City.  And we continue to publish into our Europe and the World and the International Journal of Social Pedagogy journal special issues. For more information on all of these publications, and links to their content, please keep reading.

Re-Centring the City
Global Mutations of Socialist Modernity

Edited by Jonathan Bach and Michał Murawski

What is the role of monumentality, verticality and centrality in the twenty-first century? Are palaces, skyscrapers and grand urban ensembles obsolete relics of twentieth-century modernity, inexorably giving way to a more humble and sustainable de-centred urban age? Or do the aesthetics and politics of pomp and grandiosity rather linger and even prosper in the cities of today and tomorrow?

Re-Centring the City zooms in on these questions, taking as its point of departure the experience of Eurasian socialist cities, where twentieth-century high modernity arguably saw its most radical and furthest-reaching realisation. It frames the experience of global high modernity (and its unravelling) through the eyes of the socialist city, rather than the other way around: instead of explaining Warsaw or Moscow through the prism of Paris or New York, it refracts London, Mexico City and Chennai through the lens of Kyiv, Simferopol and the former Polish shtetls. This transdisciplinary volume re-centres the experiences of the ‘Global East’, and thereby our understanding of world urbanism, by shedding light on some of the still-extant (and often disavowed) forms of ‘zombie’ centrality, hierarchy and violence that pervade and shape our contemporary urban experience.

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Europe and the World

“Considering EU External Relations after Brexit”, is a Special Issue that considers the questions around what the future of EU external relations will look like without the UK.

Read more and access the first articles here.

International Journal of Social Pedagogy

This new Special Issue is entitled "Creativity and Social Pedagogy".  Articles published draw on a wide range of topics from across the social professions to discuss forms of creative activity, including theatre and drama, film, poetry, music, and symbols.

Read more and access the first articles here.

To find out more about the 8 Open Access journals we publish, and to download any of their content, take a look here.

January 21^st 2020

In December we published New Islamic Urbanism. In addition, we published three new Journal Special Issues, one in the London Journal of Canadian Studies, and the other ones starting in Europe and the World and the International Journal of Social Pedagogy. For more information on all of these publications, and links to their content, please keep reading.

New Islamic Urbanism
The Architecture of Public and Private Space in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Stefan Maneval
Tracing the emergence of ‘New Islamic Urbanism’, this book sheds light on the changing conceptions of public and private space, in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, in the Saudi city of Jeddah. It challenges the widespread assumption that the public sphere is exclusively male in Muslim contexts such as Saudi Arabia, where women’s public visibility is limited by the veil and strict rules of gender segregation. Showing that the rigid segregation regime for which the country is known serves to constrain the movements of men and women alike, Stefan Maneval provides a nuanced account of the negotiation of public and private spaces in Saudi Arabia.
Download for free 

Europe and the World
“Considering EU External Relations after Brexit”, is a Special issue that considers the questions around what the future of EU external relations will look like without the UK.

The articles are neatly divided into considering the different dimensions of Brexit, future UK-EU relations and the impact on both parties. Although not all the potential aspects of external relations are covered, the papers cover examples of the main points, including bilateral relations, trade and security. The ‘knock-on’ effects of Brexit with regard to the European Economic Area (EEA) and other international organisations are also considered. There is also a contribution which considers how we might study EU external relations in the light of the themes and issues highlighted throughout the special issue.
Read more and access the first articles here.

International Journal of Social Pedagogy
This new special issue is entitled "Creativity and Social Pedagogy". A key element of social pedagogy is creativity and the co-production of solutions, recognising that the problems faced by people are complex and have unique aspects. They require an equal partnership between professionals and the people with whom they work to understand their lived experience and jointly develop meaningful responses. Creativity plays a crucial part in this dialogical process.

Articles published draw on a wide range of topics from across the social professions to discuss  forms of creative activity, including theatre and drama, film, poetry, music, and symbols. 
Read more and access the first articles here.

London Journal of Canadian Studies
Consisting of nine articles, this 2019 special issue of the London Journal of Canadian Studies considers how the Canadian experience engages with questions of inclusivity and exclusivity.
You can read all of the articles for this latest issue on Science Open or through Discovery.

To find out more about the 8 Open Access journals we publish, and to download any of their content, take a look here.

December 16^th 2019

November sees us publish 3 new titles, including a novel; and to add to the excitement we have gone over the 2.5 million downloads mark across our book content. See here for information on how our books are reaching a global audience.

New titles

Eva - A Novel by Carry van Bruggen

Translated and with a commentary by Jane Fenoulhet

Eva is a coming-of-age story set in an early twentieth-century small harbour town in the Netherlands that takes readers through the eponymous main character’s orthodox Jewish girlhood to marriage, divorce, and, finally, to independence and sexual freedom. Originally published in 1927, Dutch writer Carry van Bruggen (1881–1932) expresses Eva’s dawning sense of self and expanding subjectivity through fluid, stream-of-consciousness prose.  For the first time, Jane Fenoulhet has made this important, modernist novel accessible to English-language readers, her deft translation capturing the rich expressiveness of van Bruggen’s original Dutch. In insightful accompanying commentary, Fenoulhet describes the challenges of translating van Bruggen’s dynamic, intense narrative, which necessitated deep personal engagement with the novel.

Download this free novel

The North American Arctic

Themes in Regional Security

Edited by Dwayne Ryan Menezes and Heather N. Nicol

The North American Arctic addresses the emergence of a new security relationship within the North American North. It focuses on current and emerging security issues that confront the North American Arctic and that shape relationships between and with neighbouring states (Alaska in the US; Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada; Greenland and Russia). The book provides a framework or lens through which many new developments are assessed in order to understand their impact on a changing circumpolar region at different scales – from the level of community to the broader national and regional scale.

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Ancient Knowledge Networks

A Social Geography of Cuneiform Scholarship in First-Millennium Assyria and Babylonia

Eleanor Robson

'Eleanor Robson’s Ancient Knowledge Networks offers a fascinating portrait of the social and geographical life of cuneiform scholarship, scribal learning, or ṭupšarrūtu. It examines high cuneiform culture in the terms of the texts' own taxonomies of knowledge, while taking full account of relevant archaeological evidence and employing micro- and macro-geographical analysis. A lucid presentation of new ideas concerning the Assyrian and Babylonian first-millennium intelligentsia and their patrons, Ancient Knowledge Networks is a book for cuneiformists as well as non-specialist readers outside the ancient Middle Eastern fields.' - Francesca Rochberg, University of California, Berkeley

Download for free

October sees the publication of 4 titles, all of which are available to download open access from our website.

Outrage

The Rise of Religious Offence in Contemporary South Asia

Edited by Paul Rollier, Kathinka Frøystad, and Arild Engelsen Ruud

Whether spurred by religious images or academic history books, hardly a day goes by in South Asia without an incident or court case occurring as a result of hurt religious feelings. The sharp rise in blasphemy accusations over the past few decades calls for an investigation into why offence politics has become so pronounced, and why it is observable across religious and political differences. This book does just that. Bringing together researchers in Anthropology, Religious Studies, Languages, South Asia Studies and History, each chapter focuses on a recent case or context of alleged blasphemy or desecration in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Find out more and download it for free here.

The Contemporary Medieval in Practice

Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing

Contemporary arts, both practice and methods, offer medieval scholars innovative ways to examine, explore, and reframe the past. This book ‘does’ Medieval Studies differently by bringing it into relation with the field of contemporary arts and by making ‘practice’, in the sense used by contemporary arts and by creative-critical writing, central to it. Intersecting with a number of urgent critical discourses and cultural practices, such as the study of the environment and the ethics of understanding bodies, identities, and histories, this short, accessible book offers medievalists a distinctive voice in multi-disciplinary, trans-chronological, collaborative conversations about the Humanities.

Find out more and download it for free here.
 

Georges Perec’s Geographies

Material, Performative and Textual Spaces

Edited by Charles Forsdick, Andrew Leak, and Richard Phillips

Georges Perec, novelist, filmmaker and essayist, was one of the most inventive and original writers of the twentieth century. Georges Perec’s Geographies is the first book to offer a rounded picture of Perec’s geographical interests. Divided into two parts, Part I, Perec’s Geographies, explores the geographies within his work in film, literature and radio, from descriptions of streets to the spaces of his texts, while Part II, Perecquian Geographies, explores geographies in a range of material and metaphorical forms, including photographic essays, soundscapes, theatre, dance and writing, created by those directly inspired by Perec.

Find out more and download it for free here.

Socialism, Capitalism and Alternatives

Area Studies and Global Theories

Edited by Peter J. S. Duncan and Elisabeth Schimpfössl

Through analysis of post-socialist Russia and Central and Eastern Europe, as well as of the United Kingdom, China and the United States, Socialism, Capitalism and Alternatives confronts the difficulty we face in articulating alternatives to capitalism, socialism and threatening populist regimes. Beginning with accounts of the impact of capitalism on countries left behind by the planned economies, the volume moves on to consider how China has become a beacon of dynamic economic growth, aggressively expanding its global influence. The final section of the volume poses alternatives to the ideological dominance of neoliberalism in the West.

Find out more and download it for free here.

An overview of some of our new Summer highlights.

Worlds in Miniature

Contemplating Miniaturisation in Global Material Culture

Edited by Jack Davy and Charlotte Dixon

Miniaturisation is the creation of small objects that resemble larger ones, usually, but not always, for purposes different to those of the larger original object. Worlds in Miniature brings together researchers working across various regions, time periods and disciplines to explore the subject of miniaturisation as a material culture technique. It offers original contribution to the field of miniaturisation through its broad geographical scope, interdisciplinary approach, and deep understanding of miniatures and their diverse contexts.

For more information and to download for free.

Published July 8^th

Happiness and Utility

Essays Presented to Frederick Rosen

Edited by Georgios Varouxakis and Mark Philp

Happiness and Utility brings together experts on utilitarianism to explore the concept of happiness within the utilitarian tradition, situating it in earlier eighteenth-century thinkers and working through some of its developments at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Drawing on a range of philosophical and historical approaches to the study of the central idea of utilitarianism, the chapters provide a rich set of insights into a founding component of ethics and modern political and economic thought, as well as political and economic practice.

For more information and to download for free.

Published July 29th

The Wild East

Criminal Political Economies in South Asia

Edited by Barbara Harriss-White and Lucia Michelutti

The Wild East bridges political economy and anthropology to examine a variety of il/legal economic sectors and businesses. The 11 case studies, based across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, explore how state regulative law is often ignored and/or selectively manipulated. The emerging collective narrative shows the workings of regulated criminal economic systems where criminal formations, politicians, police, judges and bureaucrats are deeply intertwined.

For more information and to download for free.

Published September 23rd

UCL Press is the UK’s first fully open access publishing house, follow us on Twitter for more information on our titles as they publish, @UCLPress .