Author Archives: stuartelden

Interview – Shirin M. Rai at E-IR Shirin M. Rai is Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS, University of London. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. Rai’s research interests lie in feminist international political … Continue reading →

Omer Aijazi, Atmospheric Violence: Disaster and Repair in Kashmir – University of Pennsylvania Press, June 2024 Atmospheric Violence grapples with the afterlife of environmental disasters and armed conflict and examines how people attempt to flourish despite and alongside continuing violence. Departing … Continue reading →

Matthew Perkins-McVey, Intoxicated Ways of Knowing: The Untold Story of Intoxicants and the Biological Subject in Nineteenth-Century Germany – University of Chicago Press, February 2026 Argues that intoxication was fundamental to German physiological, psychological, and psychiatric research during the nineteenth century. Intoxicating … Continue reading →

Nick Srnicek, Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI – Polity, October 2025 Since the emergence of ChatGPT, generative AI has been heralded as a technology poised to revolutionize our world. But beyond the hype and hyperbole, who … Continue reading →

Sara B. Pritchard, Transforming Night: The History and Science of Light Pollution – University of Washington Press, July 2026 Darkness has become legible—and contested. Blending archival narrative with on-the-ground ethnography, Sara B. Pritchard traces how four fields—astronomy, remote sensing, conservation science, … Continue reading →

Cambridge Graduate Conference in Political Thought and Intellectual History – 24 June 2026 Download the Call for Papers (PDF) When in danger, humans search for places of refuge — whether in states, homes, or religions. Political communities have their origins … Continue reading →

Roger Luckhurst, Graveyards: A History of Living with the Dead – Princeton University Press, October 2025 Why, how, and where do we inter our dead? How have people throughout history responded to the problem of laying their dead to rest? … Continue reading →

Peter Garnsey, Rethinking Capital Punishment: The Pre-History of the Abolition of the Death Penalty – Cambridge University Press, April 2026 The death penalty was accepted almost universally until the eighteenth century, when Giuseppe Pelli of Florence and Cesare Beccaria of Milan produced … Continue reading →

Paul Langley and Andrew Leyshon, Fintech Capital: The Digital Transformation of Everyday Money and Finance – Zone, July 2026 How people pay, make savings and investments, buy insurance, and take on debt is undergoing digital transformation across the globe. This book argues … Continue reading →