How was the deindustrialisation of Britain’s economy experienced by industrial working-class communities? What political, social, and personal afterlives do large-scale economic shifts have? And how does gender alter the lived experience of these dynamics?

The Leeds Library & Online | 6pm GMT, 20th November 2025 | Click Here to Register

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In her important new book, Threads of Labour: Tapestry of an Ex-Industrial Community, Lisa Taylor returns to the community in which she was raised, Bailiff Bridge, a former carpet town in West Yorkshire, to explore how deindustrialisation was lived by its residents. Drawing on an ambitious collaborative arts-based project with former mill workers and more recent newcomers, the book stages a positive intervention in the village’s emotional landscape while also creating room for feelings of nostalgia, loss, and anger.

Skilfully exploring industrial loss from the perspective of those who felt it most keenly, Threads of Labour argues that nostalgia for the industrial past resides not just in the emotions but the bodies of former workers. But for Taylor, nostalgia does not mean uncritical stuckness in the past; rather, it’s a political emotion that speaks less to an idealised past than to the inadequacies of the present and that calls for efforts at communal re-making.

Lisa Taylor is Reader in Cultural Studies in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Leeds Beckett University. In 2021 she was awarded an ISRF Mid-Career Fellowship which enabled her to work collaboratively with a former textiles community and the artist Catherine Bertola to create the ‘Landscapes of Loss: Revaluing Labour, Remaking Community’ project.

Lisa will be joined by Mike Makin-Waite, a former ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow and author of On Burnley Road (2021); Tim Strangleman, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, and author of Voices of Guinness: An Oral History of the Park Royal Brewery (2019); and Valerie Walkerdine, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita in the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, and co-author of Rethinking Community Research (2016).

A Q&A will follow, moderated by Lars Cornelissen, ISRF Academic Coordinator.

Join us from 6pm GMT on Thursday 20th November 2025 at The Leeds Library, and also online. Register Now.

Five years on from lockdown, we reflect on how music kept us going. A film screening and Q&A with author Joy White and director Amos Mukombero.

BLOC, Queen Mary University of London | 6:30pm BST, 3rd April 2025 | Click Here to Register

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Joy White's book Like Lockdown Never Happened analyses how Black music and culture framed how we passed the time in the first 18 months of the pandemic. During the COVID-19 pandemic, music listening helped to counter the psychological fallout of lockdown and reduce its effects of isolation, restriction and boredom. At the same time, concerts and other musical events moved online, and even when lockdown eased, social distancing meant that group musical and cultural events took on a different format.

With a focus on contemporary Black music, this book takes a deep dive into a few of the various forms that popular culture took over this period, including Kano’s Newham Talks series; Steve McQueen’s BBC anthology Small Axe; the Verzuz DJ Battle series; TikTok’s Don’t Rush Challenge. The documentary reflects on some of the key themes in the book.

Watch the film, meet the author Joy White and documentary director Amos Mukombero, and take part in a discussion with three contributors to the film: Zak Khalil, Marv Fayose and Julia Toppin. Hosted by ISRF Director of Research, Chris Newfield.

Schedule

6:30pm - Arrival & Refreshments (Halal snacks will be served, plus both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks).

7:00pm Screening of 'Like Lockdown Never Happened'

7:20pm - 8:15pm Panel Discussion & Q&A

Join us from 6:30pm BST on Thursday 3rd April 2025 at BLOC, Queen Mary University of London. Register Now.

Recent launch video…

The Sound of Difference | 20th March 2025

What happens when the elitist space of “Western” classical music seeks to diversify itself? And what are the social effects worked through diversity discourses in classical music institutions?

Barnard’s Inn Hall, London & Online | 6pm GMT, 20th March 2025 | Click Here to Register

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The Sound of Difference addresses these concerns by critically examining how diversity work takes shape in a cultural sector so deeply implicated in hierarchies of class, structures of whiteness, and legacies of imperialism. The book draws from ethnographic and interview data to analyse how diversity discourses are constructed through the organisational and creative processes of music production.

From rehearsal and performance practices to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the sector's commitment to change, Kolbe reveals the institutional constraints and precarious labour relations in diversity work in classical music. She skilfully considers what these processes can tell us about the remaking of class, race, and racism today - and about the future of classical music.

Please join us for Kristina Kolbe’s presentation and the discussion of her book The Sound of Difference.

Kristina Kolbe is Assistant Professor in Sociology of Arts and Culture at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She was an ISRF Early Career Fellow 2023-24, for her project Sounding Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Politics Through Music Production.

Kristina will be joined by Anna Bull, Senior Lecturer in Education and Social Justice at the University of York; Billy Holzberg, Assistant Professor in Social Justice at King’s College London; and Anamik Saha, Professor of Race and Media at the University of Leeds. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

Join us from 6pm GMT on Thursday 20th March 2025 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London, and also online. Register Now.

Recent launches…

The Politics of Unemployment Policy in Britain | 7th March 2025

Spying on Muslims in Colonial Mozambique, 1964-74 | 27th February 2025

Colonial powers use a range of techniques to control their colonial populations. These include mixtures of violence and the exploitation of religious and other social divisions. How did Portugal improvise with these colonial practices to rule Mozambique? What were the effects?

Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa | 5pm WET/GMT | In-Person & Online

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In this in-depth and compelling study, Sandra Araújo uses archival and oral sources to uncover a full-fledged intelligence agency and explore Portugal’s counterinsurgent spying on Muslim communities during Mozambique’s liberation struggle.

She pays particular attention to Portuguese intelligence gathering practices, the social realities this imposed on Muslims residents during the war, and to popular responses to Portuguese efforts to turn them against FRELIMO’s efforts to free Mozambique from colonial rule. Araújo’s book contributes to a new understanding of colonial security strategies in Mozambique during the liberation war, and sheds new light on the history of colonial counterinsurgency more broadly.

Please join us for Sandra Araújo’s presentation and the discussion of her book.

Sandra Araújo is a Junior Researcher at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa. For the duration of her ISRF First Book Fellowship, she was a visiting researcher at the Global History and Culture Centre at the University of Warwick.

Sandra will be joined by Mustafah Dhada, Professor of History at California State University, Bakersfield; and Martin Thomas, Professor of History at the University of Exeter. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

Join us from 5pm WET/GMT on Thursday 27th February 2025 at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, and also online. Register Now.

In the 1970s, British unemployment policy shifted its focus from full employment to activating individual members of the labour force. How was this shift accomplished by policymakers? How has it impacted the nature of work, the power relations between labour and capital, and the logics of capital accumulation? And how was it shaped by, and has in its turn reshaped, class struggle in Britain?

Chrystal Macmillan Building, University of Edinburgh | 1pm GMT | In-Person

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In his searching new study, The Politics of Unemployment Policy in Britain(Policy Press, 2024), Jay Wiggan surveys the last fifty years of labour activation strategies. Adopting a materialist lens, the book positions successive market-friendly welfare reforms as an attempt by capital to curtail the autonomy and bargaining power of labour. This has irrevocably altered the terrain, shape, and logics of class struggle, diminishing the organisational capacity of both the workforce and unemployed people while enshrining the authority of capital.

Please join us as we celebrate and discuss this important new book.

Dr Jay Wiggan is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh. He was an ISRF Early Career Fellow 2016-17. The Politics of Unemployment Policy in Britain is his first book.

Jay will be joined by Professor Chris Grover, Professor of Social Policy at Lancaster University and author of Social Security and Wage Poverty (2016); and Dr Anne Daguerre, Reader at the University of Brighton and author of Obama’s Welfare Legacy (2017). A Q&A will follow, moderated by Dr Lars Cornelissen, ISRF Academic Editor.

Join us from 1pm GMT on Friday 7th March 2025 in the Chrystal Macmillan Building, University of Edinburgh. Register Now.

An in-person & online book launch and conversation with Dr Sandra Araújo, author of Spying on Muslims in Colonial Mozambique, 1964-74.

Register to Attend

Colonial powers use a range of techniques to control their colonial populations. These include mixtures of violence and the exploitation of religious and other social divisions. How did Portugal improvise with these colonial practices to rule Mozambique? What were the effects?

In this in-depth and compelling study, Sandra Araújo uses archival and oral sources to uncover a full-fledged intelligence agency and explore Portugal’s counterinsurgent spying on Muslim communities during Mozambique’s liberation struggle.

She pays particular attention to Portuguese intelligence gathering practices, the social realities this imposed on Muslims residents during the war, and to popular responses to Portuguese efforts to turn them against FRELIMO’s efforts to free Mozambique from colonial rule. Araújo’s book contributes to a new understanding of colonial security strategies in Mozambique during the liberation war, and sheds new light on the history of colonial counterinsurgency more broadly.

Please join us for Sandra Araújo’s presentation and the discussion of her book.

Sandra Araújo is a Junior Researcher at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa. For the duration of her ISRF First Book Fellowship, she was a visiting researcher at the Global History and Culture Centre at the University of Warwick.

Sandra will be joined by Mustafah Dhada, Professor of History at California State University, Bakersfield; and Martin Thomas, Professor of History at the University of Exeter. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Academic Editor.

Join us from 5pm on 27th February 2025, online or at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa. Register Now.

We associate life under COVID-19 with shutdown and shut-in. But we tried to hang on to our creative lives. While much of the world stopped, did our relations to music and other arts take off in new directions?

UD Music, London, E15 2QS | 6pm GMT | In-Person Only

Register to Attend

In Terraformed, sociologist Joy White explored how austerity and gentrification intersected with music in shaping the lives of Black youth in the Forest Gate neighbourhood of London. Now, in her new book, Like Lockdown Never Happened, Dr White shows how Black music and culture reshaped our lives in the first 18 months of the pandemic.

Under COVID-19, music listening increased as people used it to help counter the psychological fallout of lockdown—the isolation, restriction and boredom. At the same time, concerts and other musical events moved online. Even when lockdown eased, social distancing meant that group musical and cultural events took on new formats.

With a focus on contemporary Black music, this book takes a deep dive into the various forms that popular culture took over this period: Kano's Newham Talks series; Steve McQueen's BBC anthology Small Axe; the Verzuz DJ Battle series; TikTok's Don't Rush Challenge; radio station theresnosignal; and many more.

The book seeks to make sense of chronological and kairotic time in the early era of the pandemic. It shows how Black joy and sonic Black geographies were keys to the culture of this period. At this book launch, Dr White and several commentators will discuss how Black music and Black creative expression soundtracked and sustained us through COVID-19, and how this work continues to shape our relations to culture and to each other.

Joy White is Lecturer in Applied Social Studies at the University of Bedfordshire, and the author of Urban Music and Entrepreneurship: Beats, Rhymes and Young People’s Enterprise.

Joy will be joined by Karis Campion, Lecturer in Race, Ethnicity and Social Justice at City, University of London; Jade Levell, Senior Lecturer in Social & Public Policy at the University of Bristol; and Nathaniel Télémaque, Visual Artist, Writer and Lecturer in Geography and Social Justice at King’s College London. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

Join us from 6pm GMT on Thursday 23rd January 2025 at UD Music, London. Register Now.

Colonial powers use a range of techniques to control their colonial populations. These include mixtures of violence and the exploitation of religious and other social divisions. How did Portugal improvise with these colonial practices to rule Mozambique? What were the effects?

Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa | 5pm WET/GMT | In-Person & Online

Register to Attend

In this in-depth and compelling study, Sandra Araújo uses archival and oral sources to uncover a full-fledged intelligence agency and explore Portugal’s counterinsurgent spying on Muslim communities during Mozambique’s liberation struggle.

She pays particular attention to Portuguese intelligence gathering practices, the social realities this imposed on Muslims residents during the war, and to popular responses to Portuguese efforts to turn them against FRELIMO’s efforts to free Mozambique from colonial rule. Araújo’s book contributes to a new understanding of colonial security strategies in Mozambique during the liberation war, and sheds new light on the history of colonial counterinsurgency more broadly.

Please join us for Sandra Araújo’s presentation and the discussion of her book.

Sandra Araújo is a Junior Researcher at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa. For the duration of her ISRF First Book Fellowship, she was a visiting researcher at the Global History and Culture Centre at the University of Warwick.

Sandra will be joined by Mustafah Dhada, Professor of History at California State University, Bakersfield; and Martin Thomas, Professor of History at the University of Exeter. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Academic Editor.

Join us from 5pm WET/GMT on Thursday 27th February 2025 at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, and also online. Register Now.

We associate life under COVID-19 with shutdown and shut-in. But we tried to hang on to our creative lives. While much of the world stopped, did our relations to music and other arts take off in new directions?

Register to Attend

In Terraformed, sociologist Joy White explored how austerity and gentrification intersected with music in shaping the lives of Black youth in the Forest Gate neighbourhood of London. Now, in her new book, Like Lockdown Never Happened, Dr White shows how Black music and culture reshaped our lives in the first 18 months of the pandemic.

Under COVID-19, music listening increased as people used it to help counter the psychological fallout of lockdown—the isolation, restriction and boredom. At the same time, concerts and other musical events moved online. Even when lockdown eased, social distancing meant that group musical and cultural events took on new formats.

With a focus on contemporary Black music, this book takes a deep dive into the various forms that popular culture took over this period: Kano's Newham Talks series; Steve McQueen's BBC anthology Small Axe; the Verzuz DJ Battle series; TikTok's Don't Rush Challenge; radio station theresnosignal; and many more.

The book seeks to make sense of chronological and kairotic time in the early era of the pandemic. It shows how Black joy and sonic Black geographies were keys to the culture of this period. At this book launch, Dr White and several commentators will discuss how Black music and Black creative expression soundtracked and sustained us through COVID-19, and how this work continues to shape our relations to culture and to each other.

Joy White is Lecturer in Applied Social Studies at the University of Bedfordshire, and the author of Urban Music and Entrepreneurship: Beats, Rhymes and Young People’s Enterprise.

Joy will be joined by Karis Campion, Lecturer in Race, Ethnicity and Social Justice at City, University of London; Jade Levell, Senior Lecturer in Social & Public Policy at the University of Bristol; and Nathaniel Télémaque, Visual Artist, Writer and Lecturer in Geography and Social Justice at King’s College London. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

Join us from 6pm on Thursday 23rd January 2025 at UD Music, London. Register Now.

As ever-larger numbers of people find themselves living in refugee camps, what are their lives like? How, for example, do they get the energy to cook, refrigerate, communicate, read at night, and do everything else most people take for granted?

Register to Attend

Humanitarianism is in crisis: refugee numbers increase every year and humanitarian agencies are struggling to meet the needs of displaced people. In refugee camps all over the world, refugees are forced to secure their own access to energy and are provided with limited cooking resources and minimal electricity. Voices in the Dark draws upon a decade of original research to provide evidence on the energy lives of refugees. Focusing on refugee camps in Rwanda and Kenya, the book identifies that urgent change is required within humanitarian responses to forced migration and the climate crisis to ensure that future energy provision in displacement settings is sustainable, reliable and affordable for refugees.

Sarah Rosenberg-Jansen is Research Associate at the University of Oxford, where she is a member of the Refugee Studies Centre and Linacre College. She is an independent consultant and a senior advisor on humanitarian energy and climate issues. Sarah is a CoFounder of the Global Platform for Action for Sustainable Energy in Displacement Situations (the GPA).

Sarah will be joined by Samer Abdelnour, Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management at the University of Edinburgh Business School; and Kirsten McConnachie, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of East Anglia. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Dr Lars Cornelissen, ISRF Academic Editor.

Join us from 6:00pm on Thursday 28th November at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London & Online. Register Now.

If you missed it…

On 13th November, we had the pleasure of hosting a launch for Professor Adam Hanieh’s new book Crude Capitalism, with responses from  Adrienne Buller, Associate Fellow at Common Wealth, and Angus McNelly, Lecturer in International Development at King’s College London.

We’ve known for at least forty years that we need to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Why, then, have we made so little progress? Why does oil’s grip on the world seem more unbreakable than ever?

Register to Attend

In his new book, Crude Capitalism, Adam Hanieh offers some original answers to these questions. He describes our own everyday dependence on a range of oil byproducts like plastic. He tells the story of the “new axis of world oil now emerging around giant-non-Western firms in the Middle East and East Asia.” He details the networks of corporate control that embed oil more deeply than ever into the global system. He shows how capitalism would not have become what it is without oil to fuel it, which may mean that we will need to do without capitalism if we want to do without oil. Synthesising unique empirical detail with a grand historical narrative, Hanieh changes our sense of oil’s centrality while opening new prospects for going beyond it.

Please join us for Adam Hanieh’s presentation and the discussion of a book that makes an essential contribution to debates around oil-dependency and the struggle for climate justice.

Adam Hanieh is Professor of Political Economy and Global Development at the University of Exeter. He will be joined by two panelists: Adrienne Buller, Associate Fellow at Common Wealth and author of The Value of a Whale (2022); and Angus McNelly, Lecturer in International Development at King’s College London and author of Now We Are in Power: The Politics of Passive Revolution in Twenty-First Century Bolivia (2023). A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

Join us from 5:30pm on Wednesday 13th November at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London & Online. Register Now.

Also coming soon…

As ever-larger numbers of people find themselves living in refugee camps, what are their lives like? How, for example, do they get the energy to cook, refrigerate, communicate, read at night, and do everything else most people take for granted?

Register to Attend

Humanitarianism is in crisis: refugee numbers increase every year and humanitarian agencies are struggling to meet the needs of displaced people. In refugee camps all over the world, refugees are forced to secure their own access to energy and are provided with limited cooking resources and minimal electricity. Voices in the Dark draws upon a decade of original research to provide evidence on the energy lives of refugees. Focusing on refugee camps in Rwanda and Kenya, the book identifies that urgent change is required within humanitarian responses to forced migration and the climate crisis to ensure that future energy provision in displacement settings is sustainable, reliable and affordable for refugees.

Sarah Rosenberg-Jansen is Research Associate at the University of Oxford, where she is a member of the Refugee Studies Centre and Linacre College. She is an independent consultant and a senior advisor on humanitarian energy and climate issues. Sarah is a CoFounder of the Global Platform for Action for Sustainable Energy in Displacement Situations (the GPA).

Sarah will be joined by Samer Abdelnour, Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management at the University of Edinburgh Business School; and Kirsten McConnachie, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of East Anglia. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Dr Lars Cornelissen, ISRF Academic Editor.

Join us from 6pm on Thursday 28th November at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London & Online. Register Now.

How and why are representative politics failing disabled people? What can we do about it?

In Disability and Political Representation, Elizabeth Evans and Stefanie Reher show how the representative process works and doesn’t work for disabled people – and also how thinking about disability can help us develop and improve our ideas about political representation in general.

Using a wide range of evidence, Evans and Reher demonstrate that there are significant ableist barriers preventing disabled people from fully participating in the political process, both as voters and as elected representatives. They argue that increasing the number of disabled politicians matters, since their lived experiences can benefit the representation of disabled people. To address these issues, they develop the concept of experiential representation. Disability and Representation not only identifies and analyses the problems of representative politics but, importantly, offers a range of solutions for how to make politics more accessible and more effective for everyone.

Elizabeth Evans is Professor of Politics at University of Southampton. Her research explores the relationships between social movements, political parties, and political representation. Elizabeth held an ISRF Mid-Career Fellowship in 2021.  Stefanie Reher is a Reader in the School of Government & Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Her research focuses on political representation and citizen attitudes and behaviour, and particularly on the role of disability.

Elizabeth and Stefanie were joined by two panelists: Dr Sarabajaya Kumar, Associate Professor in Voluntary Sector Policy and Leadership at UCL; and Dr Alison Wilde, Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Nothumbria University. A Q&A follows, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

Watch the Video...

This event is the thirty-third in the ISRF’s series of Book Launches, covering a wide range of topics including Disability Justice, Colonial Violence, Architecture, Anticapitalism, Eschatology and Jamaican Dancehall!

Check out our Book Launch Archive

How and why are representative politics failing disabled people? What can we do about it?

In Disability and Political Representation, Elizabeth Evans and Stefanie Reher show how the representative process works and doesn’t work for disabled people – and also how thinking about disability can help us develop and improve our ideas about political representation in general.

Book Now

Using a wide range of evidence, Evans and Reher demonstrate that there are significant ableist barriers preventing disabled people from fully participating in the political process, both as voters and as elected representatives. They argue that increasing the number of disabled politicians matters, since their lived experiences can benefit the representation of disabled people. To address these issues, they develop the concept of experiential representation. Disability and Representation not only identifies and analyses the problems of representative politics but, importantly, offers a range of solutions for how to make politics more accessible and more effective for everyone.

Elizabeth Evans is Professor of Politics at University of Southampton. Her research explores the relationships between social movements, political parties, and political representation. Elizabeth held an ISRF Mid-Career Fellowship in 2021.  Stefanie Reher is a Reader in the School of Government & Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Her research focuses on political representation and citizen attitudes and behaviour, and particularly on the role of disability.

Elizabeth and Stefanie will be joined by two panelists: Dr Sarabajaya Kumar, Associate Professor in Voluntary Sector Policy and Leadership at UCL; and Dr Alison Wilde, Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Nothumbria University. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

Join us from 5pm on Thursday 20th June at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London & Online. Register Now.

This event is the thirty-third in the ISRF’s series of Book Launches.

Was the twentieth-century collapse of European colonialism as definitive as it is often portrayed? How can we do justice to the historical complexity of decolonization while maintaining a broad global perspective?

Register Now

In The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization, Professor Martin Thomas brings together perspectives from global history, comparative politics, and international relations to re-evaluate decolonization in all of its historical messiness.

Professor Thomas argues that decolonization was less a transition of sovereignty from colonizer to colonized than a global, often violent process that saw the emergence of new international coalitions, triggered partitions and wars, and reshaped North-South dynamics. It energized different ideas of belonging and transnational connection, of sovereignty and independence, and of the struggles necessary to achieve them. Late colonial conflicts spurred other connections as the colonized ‘weak’ built transnational networks of support to overcome the military and economic advantages of ‘strong’ imperial overseers. The counterinsurgencies that followed left empires shamed and morally disarmed, while, at the same time, decolonization and its violence reshaped globalization just as globalization conditioned decolonization.

Martin will be joined by two panelists: Tarak Barkawi, Professor in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War II (Cambridge, 2017), and Natalya Benkhaled-Vince, Associate Professor in Modern History at the University of Oxford and the author of The Algerian War, the Algerian Revolution (Palgrave, 2020). A Q&A will follow, moderated by Lars Cornelissen, ISRF Academic Editor.

Join us from 5pm on Friday 24th May at Barnard’s Inn Hall (30 Holborn, London, EC1N 2HH). Register Now.

This event is the thirty-second in the ISRF’s series of Book Launches.

What do we learn about climate change from beekeepers and bees in northeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina? What do we learn about the changing relations between species as climate change upends the environment in which both have adapted? How should we respond when, in the words of one of the beekeepers who appears in this book, “The life of the bees and the beekeeper’s know-how are now coming apart”?

Register Now

Beekeeping in the End Times is based on unique fieldwork by a professional  anthropologist who is also a filmmaker and beekeeper with insider access to a region and its apiary practices. From her book’s opening question, “Are the bees still swarming?” through its development of a “near-end ecology,” Dr Larisa Jašarević reveals the interspecies crises and also the practices that beekeepers have evolved to confront them.

This book is paired with a film; both convey Bosnian Muslim apicultures and stories about the world’s imminent ecological collapse. It shows how Islamic apocalyptic lore informs human-apian relations with ecological insights that, surprisingly, inspire hope. With an intimate knowledge of local grounds, and at a whispering distance from the bees, the beekeepers and their anthropologist not only point to strange new developments and trends, but articulate new questions and concerns about climate change futures.

Dr Jašarević is an independent scholar, beekeeper, and filmmaker. She is the author of Health and Wealth in the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), has taught at the University of Chicago and, and has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Knowledge in Berlin. She is a regular commentator on topics ranging from climate change and apiary ecology to Islamic metaphysics and apocalyptic thought.

Larisa will be joined by three panelists: William Gallois, Professor of the History of the Mediterranean Islamicate World at the University of Exeter, and author of Qayrawān: The Amuletic City (2024); Karim Lahham, Senior Research Fellow at the Tabah Foundation, Cairo and author of The Anatomy of Knowledge & The Ontological Necessity of First Principles (2021); and Nur Sobers-Khan, Director of the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT and – from 2015 to 2021 – Lead Curator for South Asia Collections at the British Library. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

Join us from 5pm on Thursday 28th March at BLOC, Queen Mary University of London (ArtsOne, Mile End Road, London, E1 4PA). The first 20 attendees will receive a free copy of the book. Register Now

This event is the thirty-first in the ISRF’s series of Book Launches.

And coming soon…

What do we learn about climate change from beekeepers and bees in northeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina? What do we learn about the changing relations between species as climate change upends the environment in which both have adapted? How should we respond when, in the words of one of the beekeepers who appears in this book, “The life of the bees and the beekeeper’s know-how are now coming apart”?

Register Now

Beekeeping in the End Times is based on unique fieldwork by a professional  anthropologist who is also a filmmaker and beekeeper with insider access to a region and its apiary practices. From her book’s opening question, “Are the bees still swarming?” through its development of a “near-end ecology,” Dr Larisa Jašarević reveals the interspecies crises and also the practices that beekeepers have evolved to confront them.

This book is paired with a film; both convey Bosnian Muslim apicultures and stories about the world’s imminent ecological collapse. It shows how Islamic apocalyptic lore informs human-apian relations with ecological insights that, surprisingly, inspire hope. With an intimate knowledge of local grounds, and at a whispering distance from the bees, the beekeepers and their anthropologist not only point to strange new developments and trends, but articulate new questions and concerns about climate change futures.

Dr Jašarević is an independent scholar, beekeeper, and filmmaker. She is the author of Health and Wealth in the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), has taught at the University of Chicago and, and has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Knowledge in Berlin. She is a regular commentator on topics ranging from climate change and apiary ecology to Islamic metaphysics and apocalyptic thought.

Larisa will be joined by three panelists: William Gallois, Professor of the History of the Mediterranean Islamicate World at the University of Exeter, and author of Qayrawān: The Amuletic City (2024); Karim Lahham, Senior Research Fellow at the Tabah Foundation, Cairo and author of The Anatomy of Knowledge & The Ontological Necessity of First Principles (2021); and Nur Sobers-Khan, Director of the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT and – from 2015 to 2021 – Lead Curator for South Asia Collections at the British Library. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

Join us from 5pm on Thursday 28th March at BLOC, Queen Mary University of London (ArtsOne, Mile End Road, London, E1 4PA). Register Now.

This event is the thirty-first in the ISRF’s series of Book Launches.

And coming soon…

Has liberalism reached its limit in foreign affairs? Can we develop a better alternative to the Western internationalism that seems to spur abuses even as it objects to them?

In Struggles for the Human, Lara Montesinos Coleman blends ethnography, political philosophy, and critical theory to reorient debates on human rights through attention to understandings of legality, ethics, and humanity in anticapitalist and decolonial struggle.

Drawing on her extensive involvement with grassroots social movements in Colombia, Coleman observes that mainstream expressions of human rights have become counterparts to capitalist violence, even as this discourse disavows capitalism’s deadly implications. At the same time, she rejects claims that human rights are inherently tied to capitalism, liberalism, or colonialism, instead showing how human rights can be used to combat these forces. Coleman demonstrates that when social justice struggles are rooted in marginalized communities’ lived experiences, they can reframe human rights and offer a blueprint for constructing alternative political economies. At the book launch, Coleman will discuss the concrete struggles for justice she has witnessed. Coleman’s work reveals the transformative potential of human rights and invites readers to question and reshape dominant legal and ethical narratives.

Lara was joined by two panelists: Ayça Çubukçu, Associate Professor in Human Rights at the London School of Economics and author of For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal On Iraq (2018); and David Whyte, Professor of Climate Justice at Queen Mary University of London and author of Ecocide: Kill the Corporation Before it Kills Us (2020). A Q&A followed, moderated by Lars Cornelissen, ISRF Academic Editor.

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Next up, on 28th March…

What do we learn about climate change from beekeepers and bees in northeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina? What do we learn about the changing relations between species as climate change upends the environment in which both have adapted? How should we respond when, in the words of one of the beekeepers who appears in this book, “The life of the bees and the beekeeper’s know-how are now coming apart”?

Beekeeping in the End Times is based on unique fieldwork by a professional  anthropologist who is also a filmmaker and beekeeper with insider access to a region and its apiary practices. From her book’s opening question, “Are the bees still swarming?” through its development of a “near-end ecology,” Dr Larisa Jašarević reveals the interspecies crises and also the practices that beekeepers have evolved to confront them.

This book is paired with a film; both convey Bosnian Muslim apicultures and stories about the world’s imminent ecological collapse. It shows how Islamic apocalyptic lore informs human-apian relations with ecological insights that, surprisingly, inspire hope. With an intimate knowledge of local grounds, and at a whispering distance from the bees, the beekeepers and their anthropologist not only point to strange new developments and trends, but articulate new questions and concerns about climate change futures.

Dr Jašarević is an independent scholar, beekeeper, and filmmaker. She is the author of Health and Wealth in the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), has taught at the University of Chicago and, and has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Knowledge in Berlin. She is a regular commentator on topics ranging from climate change and apiary ecology to Islamic metaphysics and apocalyptic thought.

Larisa will be joined by three panelists: William Gallois, Professor of the History of the Mediterranean Islamicate World at the University of Exeter, and author of Qayrawān: The Amuletic City (2024); Karim Lahham, Senior Research Fellow at the Tabah Foundation, Cairo and author of The Anatomy of Knowledge & The Ontological Necessity of First Principles (2021); and Nur Sobers-Khan, Director of the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT and – from 2015 to 2021 – Lead Curator for South Asia Collections at the British Library. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

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And finally…

This book focuses on how in/security works in and through Jamaican dancehall, and on the insights that Jamaican dancehall offers for the global study of in/security.

This collection draws together a multi-disciplinary range of key scholars in in/security and dancehall. World-leading academic experts on Dancehall Studies offer their differently situated perspectives on dancehall, its histories, spatial patterning, professional status and aesthetics.

The study brings together critical security studies (the study of how security is negotiated in our everyday lives) with dancehall studies and will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners in theatre, dance and performance studies, sociology, cultural geography, anthropology, postcolonial studies, diaspora studies, musicology and gender studies.

Two of the editors – Patricia Noxolo (Professor in Human Geography, University of Birmingham) & ‘H’ Patten (ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow 2021-22) – are joined by discussant Kate Dossett, Professor of American History at the University of Leeds, whose two main areas of interest are Black Cultural History and Gender history.

This event is the twenty-ninth in the ISRF’s series of Book Launches.

View Previous ISRF Book Launches

Has liberalism reached its limit in foreign affairs? Can we develop a better alternative to the Western internationalism that seems to spur abuses even as it objects to them?

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In ‘Struggles for the Human’, Lara Montesinos Coleman blends ethnography, political philosophy, and critical theory to reorient debates on human rights through attention to understandings of legality, ethics, and humanity in anticapitalist and decolonial struggle. Drawing on her extensive involvement with grassroots social movements in Colombia, Coleman observes that mainstream expressions of human rights have become counterparts to capitalist violence, even as this discourse disavows capitalism’s deadly implications. At the same time, she rejects claims that human rights are inherently tied to capitalism, liberalism, or colonialism, instead showing how human rights can be used to combat these forces. Coleman demonstrates that when social justice struggles are rooted in marginalized communities’ lived experiences, they can reframe human rights and offer a blueprint for constructing alternative political economies. At the book launch, Coleman will discuss the concrete struggles for justice she has witnessed. Coleman’s work reveals the transformative potential of human rights and invites readers to question and reshape dominant legal and ethical narratives.

Lara will be joined by two panelists: Ayça Çubukçu, Associate Professor in Human Rights at the London School of Economics and author of For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal On Iraq (2018); and David Whyte, Professor of Climate Justice at Queen Mary University of London and author of Ecocide: Kill the Corporation Before it Kills Us (2020). A Q&A will follow, moderated by Lars Cornelissen, ISRF Academic Editor.

Join us from 6:30pm on Thursday 15th February at BLOC, Queen Mary University of London (ArtsOne, Mile End Road, London, E1 4PA). Register Now.

This event is the thirtieth in the ISRF’s series of Book Launches.

And coming soon…

What do we learn about climate change from beekeepers and bees in northeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina? What do we learn about the changing relations between species as climate change upends the environment in which both have adapted? How should we respond when, in the words of one of the beekeepers who appears in this book, “The life of the bees and the beekeeper’s know-how are now coming apart”?

Dr Larisa Jašarević will be joined by three panelists: William Gallois, Professor of the History of the Mediterranean Islamicate World at the University of Exeter, and author of Qayrawān: The Amuletic City (2024); Karim Lahham, Senior Research Fellow at the Tabah Foundation, Cairo and author of The Anatomy of Knowledge & The Ontological Necessity of First Principles (2021); and Nur Sobers-Khan, Director of the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT and - from 2015 to 2021 - Lead Curator for South Asia Collections at the British Library. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

More Information

This book focuses on how in/security works in and through Jamaican dancehall, and on the insights that Jamaican dancehall offers for the global study of in/security.

Register Now

This collection draws together a multi-disciplinary range of key scholars in in/security and dancehall. World-leading academic experts on Dancehall Studies, from the University of the West Indies’ Institute of Caribbean Studies and Reggae Studies Unit, as well as independent dancehall and dance practitioners from Kingston, and writers from the UK, US and continental Europe offer their differently situated perspectives on dancehall, its histories, spatial patterning, professional status and aesthetics.

The study brings together critical security studies (the study of how security is negotiated in our everyday lives) with dancehall studies and will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners in theatre, dance and performance studies, sociology, cultural geography, anthropology, postcolonial studies, diaspora studies, musicology and gender studies.

Two of the editors – Patricia Noxolo (Professor in Human Geography, University of Birmingham) & ‘H’ Patten (ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow 2021-22) – will be joined by Kate Dossett, Professor of American History at the University of Leeds, whose two main areas of interest are Black Cultural History and Gender history. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

Join us from 5pm on Thursday 18th January at Barnard’s Inn Hall (30 Holborn, London, EC1N 2HH). Register Now.

This event is the twenty-ninth in the ISRF’s series of Book Launches.

In this three-part series on migration, Nishat Awan will discuss The Visual Politics of Refugeehood (Monday 5th February); Sarah Rosenberg-Jansen will cover Sustainable Energy in Refugee Camps (Monday 19th February); and Greg Constantine will look at The Human Cost of Immigration Detention (Monday 18th March).

We would like to thank Gresham College for their partnership in developing and hosting this series.

DR NISHAT AWAN ON THE VISUAL POLITICS OF REFUGEEHOOD

MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2024

Most of the world’s 102 million forcibly displaced people – refugees – lack access to reliable, affordable , sustainable energy. Attempts to provide such energy in refugee camps have been marred by governance challenges, and a lack of technical expertise within humanitarian organisations. But new research discussed in this lecture on the lived experience of refugees is helping cast a light on ways to address it. However, developing inclusive approaches and supporting refugee-led action on energy is no easy task.

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DR SARAH ROSENBERG-JANSEN ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY IN REFUGEE CAMPS

MONDAY 19 FEBRUARY 2024

Most of the world’s 102 million forcibly displaced people – refugees – lack access to reliable, affordable , sustainable energy. Attempts to provide such energy in refugee camps have been marred by governance challenges, and a lack of technical expertise within humanitarian organisations. But new research discussed in this lecture on the lived experience of refugees is helping cast a light on ways to address it. However, developing inclusive approaches and supporting refugee-led action on energy is no easy task.

More Information & Registration

DR GREG CONSTANTINE ON THE HUMAN COST OF IMMIGRATION DETENTION

MONDAY 18 MARCH 2024

Governments increasingly use detention as a central component of immigration and asylum policy. The lecture addresses several important questions. What does immigration detention look like? How is it a reflection of those societies that tolerate its use and the policies that support and endorse its expansion? What place does it have in the journeys of those migrating across borders today? Using photography and testimony, this lecture visually translates several immigration detention systems and shares first-hand stories.

More Information & Registration

Has liberalism reached its limit in foreign affairs? Can we develop a better alternative to the Western internationalism that seems to spur abuses even as it objects to them?

Register Now

In ‘Struggles for the Human’, Lara Montesinos Coleman blends ethnography, political philosophy, and critical theory to reorient debates on human rights through attention to understandings of legality, ethics, and humanity in anticapitalist and decolonial struggle. Drawing on her extensive involvement with grassroots social movements in Colombia, Coleman observes that mainstream expressions of human rights have become counterparts to capitalist violence, even as this discourse disavows capitalism’s deadly implications. At the same time, she rejects claims that human rights are inherently tied to capitalism, liberalism, or colonialism, instead showing how human rights can be used to combat these forces. Coleman demonstrates that when social justice struggles are rooted in marginalized communities’ lived experiences, they can reframe human rights and offer a blueprint for constructing alternative political economies. At the book launch, Coleman will discuss the concrete struggles for justice she has witnessed. Coleman’s work reveals the transformative potential of human rights and invites readers to question and reshape dominant legal and ethical narratives.

Lara will be joined by two panelists: Ayça Çubukçu, Associate Professor in Human Rights at the London School of Economics and author of For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal On Iraq (2018); and David Whyte, Professor of Climate Justice at Queen Mary University of London and author of Ecocide: Kill the Corporation Before it Kills Us (2020). A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

Join us from 6:30pm on Thursday 15th February at BLOC, Queen Mary University of London (ArtsOne, Mile End Road, London, E1 4PA). Register Now.

This event is the thirtieth in the ISRF’s series of Book Launches.