New open access books published in February 2025
Posted on 28th February, 2025
It’s been another grey, dark, wet month, but we’ve almost been too busy to notice. With six more exciting open access books to read, who can blame us?
The final volume of David Scott’s extraordinary On Learning trilogy (v1, v2) , On Learning, Volume 3: Knowledge, curriculum and ethics published at the start of the month. Like the first two volumes, the book is a response to empiricist and positivist conceptions of knowledge. in which the author challenges detheorised and reductionist ideas of learning that have filtered through to the management of our schools, colleges and universities, over-simplified messages about learning, knowledge, curriculum and assessment, and the denial that values are central to understanding how we live and how we should live.
Postcapitalist Countrysides: From commoning to community wealth building explores the tensions that arise from the established conventions of economic production and private accumulation, as they affect life, wealth and work in rural areas. Find out more about the brilliance of the brilliance of the book’s contributors in an interview with one of the editors.
Revisiting Childhood Resilience Through Marginalised and Displaced Voices: Perspectives from the past and present draws on 10 years of Wendy Sims-Schouten’s research with children, young people and adults from marginalised, disadvantaged and displaced communities. These stories draw critical attention to coping strategies in adversity and oppression, and will inform creative research and policymaking. Read our interview with the author to find out more about her fascinating approach to research.
Lahore in Motion: Infrastructure, history and belonging in urban Pakistan provides a vivid portrait of the Pakistani metropolis by tracing the path of the city’s first metro rail corridor. The volume collects stories from a series of walks along the metro’s 27-kilometre path, bringing together a wide variety of authors to reflect on the relationship between urban change and belonging in a historic city. Interested to find out more? We have an excusive excerpt on the blog.
The latest book in the FRINGE series, Anti-Atlas: Critical Area Studies from the East of the West plays with the politics of the conventional atlas, with its assumptions about knowledge and power, its hierarchies of value, and its simplifications. It provides readers with a diverse series of intellectual resources, asking them to think critically about the ways in which we construct the world by dividing it into pieces.
The final book of the month, A Guide to Performing Systematic Reviews of Health and Disease is a fantastic practical guide to performing systematic reviews in a healthcare context provides a step-by-step approach for students and health professionals. Using free, opensource software to extract data and perform the necessary meta-analyses, this open access guide navigates the process of reviews, from study design and randomised controlled trials to interpreting results and reporting your findings. The author explains why this is an important book for health professionals and students alike in a wide-ranging interview.
We’ll be back again next month with a round up of the very best open access books. As always, stay safe!