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Category: Series

Series are sequences of essays on common questions that are addressed from personal standpoints and particular positions. Written in an accessible way, they contextualize and open up the consideration beyond the boundaries of disciplines and areas of expertise.
Series are curated by individual scholars or editorial groups. They are reviewed or peer-reviewed by the editors and/or participants of the series. They can be employed in writing workshops or accompany the work of collective projects. For more information on form see Contributions.

Navigating Inequalities: Locating Agency in the Margins and International Aid – 5in10 with Fabrizio Leonardo Cuccu

Fabrizio Leonardo Cuccu is a Alumni Research Fellow at the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM), Tunisia and a Research Assistant at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Ireland. His research focuses on security, development and migration policies in postcolonial settings. He has published articles in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, L’Année du Maghreb and Surveillance & Society.

‘Fight your Emotions’: Affective Injustice in Wartime

By Olena Komar. Although research on affective injustice is gaining ground, no attention has yet been paid to wartime experiences. War has many destructive and devastating consequences, but against the backdrop of the physical damage it causes, other detrimental effects are muted, shadowed, and hardly noticeable. What is perceived as aggression and anger, a manifestation of temperament or trauma, is a legitimate assertion by Ukrainians of their right to identity, which is a condition for survival in a genocidal war, as well as to cultural identity instead of the imperial dissolution of colonized peoples. It is the right to have their voices understood, not just “heard.”

The Porous and the Pure: An Artifactual History of Ties Between Asia, Europe, and Latin America

By Ajay Gandhi. This essay uses three kinds of artifacts to frame connections between Asia, Europe, and Latin America, between the 1500s and the present. These items – simultaneously tangible things and symbolic projections – plot a method and chronology of entanglement. The first are precious-metal decorations made in Goa, on India’s western coast, for Portuguese patrons. A second is a 17th-century painting of a young slave from India taken to the Netherlands. The third artifact is the spider’s web, and the Caribbean folk figure of the Anansi spider. Such artifacts can be read through purity and silence, as well as porosity and convergence. In this itinerary of artifacts, we begin with a social imaginary that is determined and untainted, and move to conditions that are fluid and open-ended.

Rethinking Slow Science from the Perspective of Warzone Academics

By Anastasiya Leukhina et al. With its “publish or perish” imperative, stiff competition for grants and positions, and focus on quantifiable output, neoliberal academia breeds fast science. Many academics have pointed to the need to slow down, emphasizing that good quality academic work takes time. This text attempts to expand the contextual boundaries of understanding slow science. It was born out of a conversation among eight female Ukrainian scholars, each of whom has been affected in their own way by the full-scale Russian invasion. While discussing the speed and quality of academic output, we arrived at the conclusion that the fast vs slow science debate acquires additional nuances in a war zone. The work on this text reflects the practices of slow science we are advocating for: collaborative work, sensitivity to contexts—collective and personal—and experimentation with formats. 

The Political Activities of Dual Citizens in the Western Mediterranean, with a Focus on Tunisia, Algeria and France – 5in10 with Thomas Serres

Dr. Thomas Serres’ research spans the field of Middle Eastern studies, critical security studies, and comparative politics, combining an ethnographic approach with a conceptual apparatus inspired by critical theory. He is particularly interested in the effects of protracted and entangled crises (popular uprisings, “war on terror,” refugee crisis, neoliberalization) in North Africa and beyond. His first book, The Suspended Disaster: Governance by Catastrophization in Bouteflika’s Algeria, was published in 2023 with Columbia University Press, expanding on a French edition initially released in 2019. He also co-edited the volume North Africa and the Making of Europe with Bloomsbury Publishing (2018).

The Making of Modern Austerity: Insights from Clara Mattei’s “The Capital Order” and its Contributions to Global History

By Julie Birke. Clara Mattei’s book “The Capital Order. How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism” offers an important contribution to our understanding of austerity policies and the debate on the origins of neoliberalism by putting class challenges at the heart of her argumentation and linking it to monetary and financial policies of the 1920s. By comparatively analysing the economic policies of interwar liberal Britain and fascist Italy, the book shows how austerity worked as a set of fiscal, monetary and industrial mechanisms, with the common goal for economists in those countries to reimpose capitalist relations of production where they were gravely endangered. This essay will demonstrate how Mattei revives and updates the class interpretation of neoliberalism and to what extent it makes a compelling contribution to the field of global history.

The State’s Friendly Face? Post-2013 Egyptian Exiles and Turkey’s Exceptional Legal Tools

By Elsayed E. Abdelhamid. Turkey’s selective approach to regularizing displaced Egyptians, initially as diplomatic leverage and later as a gesture of goodwill, fundamentally shaped their everyday lives and future prospects. The use of exceptional legal measures, such as presidential decrees and discretionary citizenship policies, not only reflected Turkey’s shifting foreign policy interests but also created spaces for forced migrants to negotiate their legal status through community mobilization and “everyday diplomacy.”

Finding Home in Exile: How Ukrainian Refugees Remember Their Time in Polish Households

By Kamil Łuczaj. What is it like to flee your home overnight and rebuild life in a stranger’s house? For many Ukrainian refugees who arrived in Poland after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the answer is woven with fear, resilience, and unexpected acts of kindness. But how do they remember those first chaotic weeks – and what stories do they choose to tell? This post dives into the narratives of 30 Ukrainian war refugees who found temporary refuge in Polish households. Through interviews conducted in 2023, it explores how they recount their journeys – from the moment the invasion began to their experiences settling into a new, unfamiliar space. While every story is unique, common threads emerge: the shock of displacement, the challenges of adapting to a new culture, and the fragile hope of rebuilding life from scratch.

The Potentialities for Globality in the Tradition of Critical Theory

By Johan Bolding Rasmussen. In this article, Rasmussen examines how Critical Theory can engage with global intellectual history. He suggests that by moving beyond Eurocentric perspectives, Critical Theory can address global challenges more effectively. Rasmussen proposes integrating diverse intellectual traditions to enrich critical discourse and enhance its relevance in a global context. According to him, “global intellectual history is the emergence of a promising and strong research field that combines intellectual history with the recent increase in attentiveness towards the global”. Similarly, “recent years have seen a significant number of research monographs” on the Frankfurt School emerge. Inherently universal, the literature does, however, raise crucial questions on its globality.

La rente et le changement institutionnel en Algérie – 5in10 avec Samir Bellal

Diplômé de l’Institut National de la Planification et de la Statistique (INPS) d’Alger et de l’université Lyon 2, Samir Bellal a enseigné dans de nombreuses universités en Algérie. Actuellement, il exerce en qualité de professeur d’économie à l’université Mouloud Mammeri de Tizi-Ouzou. Il a publié, fin 2017, « La crise du régime rentier – essai sur une Algérie qui stagne », paru aux éditions Frantz-Fanon, et en 2022, aux éditions El-Amel, « Rente, populisme et question économique en Algérie – réflexions sur un système en crise ».