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.

Download for free

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

UCL Press is delighted to announce that it will host the next University Press Redux conference, to be held in Spring 2018. 

Following the success of the founding conference, organised by Liverpool University Press (LUP) and held in March 2016, The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) will now be partnering with presses to deliver the event every two years. The first partnership will be with UCL Press. 

The inaugural University Press Redux conference was arranged by LUP in association with the Academic Book of the Future project. More than 150 delegates gathered to discuss the past, present and future of institutional presses. A collection of papers arising from the event was subsequently published in a special open access issue of ALPSP's journal, Learned Publishing.

Anthony Cond, Director of Liverpool University Press said: ‘There was such strong support for the conference that we immediately saw the potential to continue the conversation.’

Lara Speicher, Publishing Manager at UCL Press added: ‘The Redux conference demonstrates the vitality and potential of university press publishing. We are inspired by what LUP has achieved!’

Audrey McCulloch, Chief Executive of ALPSP continued: ‘The university press sector has undergone a transformation and revitalisation worldwide. Many of our members were involved in the Redux conference and it was an obvious next step to offer administrative support. We are delighted to be involved.’

The 2018 University Press Redux Conference will be curated and hosted by UCL Press with administrative and promotional support provided by ALPSP. Dates will be announced soon. 

About the University Press Redux Conference

The first University Press Redux Conference (#UPRedux) was hosted by Liverpool University Press in association with the Academic Book of the Future project in March 2016. With 150 delegates, representing nearly 40 university presses, the conference benefited from some inspiring presentations exploring the role of presses new and old in the future of scholarly communication. Slides from all the talks are available on the Liverpool University Press site.

About ALPSP

ALPSP is the international membership trade body that supports and represents not-for-profit organizations and institutions that publish scholarly and professional content. With 330 members in 40 countries, membership also includes university presses, as well as those that work with publishers.  ALPSP’s mission is to connect, inform, develop and represent the international scholarly and professional publishing community. Founded in 1972 by 24 societies, ALPSP has grown to become the largest trade association helping scholarly and professional publishers around the world. www.alpsp.org

About Liverpool University Press

Liverpool University Press is the UK’s third oldest university press, with a distinguished history of publishing exceptional research since 1899, including the work of Nobel Prize winners. LUP has rapidly expanded in recent years to become an award-winning academic publisher that produces approximately 100 books a year and 28 journals, specialising in literature, modern languages, history and visual culture. http://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/

About UCL Press

UCL Press is the first fully open access university press in the UK. Founded in 2015, it seeks to use modern technologies and 21st century means of publishing and dissemination radically to change the prevailing models for the publication of scholarly research. Grounded in the open science/open scholarship agenda, UCL Press makes its scholarly books and journals available online to a global audience, irrespective of their ability to pay, because UCL believes that this is the best way to tackle grand challenges such as poverty, disease and hunger. www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press