ISRF Newsletter – May 2026
Featured in this edition of the newsletter is a Director's Note on academics at the frontlines of universities in crisis. Also included: upcoming ISRF book launches, blogs and news from our Fellows.
Contents
Director’s Note
Dispatches from British Academics
Christopher Newfield
ISRF has formed a research group called “Reconstructing British Universities”: I discussed its context and approach in my December Note. I’m very happy to share that we are launching a series of dispatches from the front lines of the UK higher education crisis.
Featured in this month’s Dispatches are reflections from two members of our group. Glen O’Hara gives an overview of the problem of the absence of academics from the discussion of their own sector. Lorna Finlayson discusses the ways in which academics weaken their own forms of resistance to harmful interventions.
Over time, the Dispatches are heading towards the development of an alternative funding model for British universities. Whatever the particular topic, each individual essay emerges from a faculty member’s personal experience within their destabilised sector, while guided by their professional expertise. Each comes from the frontline experience of an academic who has devoted their adult life to universities. It may seem obvious that academics would already be powerful voices in analysing and steering academia. But in Britain they are not.
Book Launch: The Matter of Architecture: Geology, Buildings and Us
3rd June 2026, 6:15 pm - 8:00 pm (BST). In person.
Architectural Association Bookshop, London
In his important new book, The Matter of Architecture (Reaktion, 2026), Paul Dobraszczyk approaches geology as the architecture of our planet, arguing that what we build has always been dependent on what Earth has already made. Yet, what we produce now will also become the geology of the future: billions of tonnes of concrete, plastic, brick, metals and other fabricated materials that are quickly piling up to eventually become new geological strata.
Book Launch: Taming Egg Donors: The Egg Donation Reproductive Market in Spain
17th June 2026, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm (CEST). In person & online.
Sala de la Caritat, Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona & Online
How do those involved in Spain’s egg donation industry—donors, clinicians, and clinic staff—experience its pressures, medical interventions, and moral codes? In her new book, Dr Anna Molas offers a fresh perspective on Europe’s largest egg donation industry. Drawing on rich ethnographic work and adopting a feminist lens, Molas shifts attention away from donors’ intentions towards the lived experiences of donors and practitioners alike.
Scabology
Lorna Finlayson
What happens when academics decide to go on strike? In this contribution to our Dispatches series, Lorna Finlayson explores the politics of negotiation and the role of the ‘scaboteur’, someone who aims to prevent a strike before it starts.
What’s the future for our universities?
Glen O’Hara
The UK’s current higher education environment is in turmoil as courses close, resources are cut and staff face the constant threat of redundancy. When the dust settles, how will the higher education landscape change? Glen O’Hara explores further in his contribution to the ISRF’s Dispatches series.
New publication: ‘State Histories: The Politics of Teaching the Past in Iran’ by Yasamin Alkhansa
There is a growing global trend of governments attempting to impose historical narratives that serve national interests. Yasamin Alkhansa's latest book explores such efforts through school textbooks in Iran under the Pahlavi and Islamic Republic. Alkhansa conceptualises history textbooks as the state’s autobiography, central to the legitimacy and production of political myths.
New publication: ‘From foreclosure to potentiality’ by Santiago del Río, Sarah Marie Hall, Elizabeth Ackerley and Laura Fenton
This article advances the concept of ‘foreclosed futures’ to argue that protracted periods of austerity are not just a phase of precarity which delays adulthood but rather an enduring denial of ontological security which is embodied and emotionally navigated by young adults. Engaging further, the authors explore the geographical, political and social dimensions of ‘foreclosed futures’.
New publication: ‘Dirty Green Money: The Systemic Fraud of the ESG Investing Industry’ by Thomas Raymen
This article presents the first criminological holdings level analysis of the financed emissions, carbon intensity and capital flows of “green” investment funds. It illustrates how the EU’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing industry is systemically fraudulent, channeling capital towards the most carbon-intensive companies and sectors. It is a phenomenon that goes beyond 'greenwashing’; creating a regulatory regime that supports and legally sanctions misleading sustainability claims.
Podcast episode: ‘Péter Magyar “behaves like a tank”’ Gábor Scheiring in conversation with Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen
What does the post-Orbán transition tells us about Europe’s far-right landscape? Gábor Scheiring joins the Twenty-Four Two podcast for a discussion on Hungary’s most recent elections, incoming prime minister Péter Magyar and the possibilities of restoring liberal democracy and pluralism in the country.