Author Archives: Alison Fox

Maren Tribukait’s recent article in History Education Research Journal asks how the topic of contemporary right-wing extremism is approached in German educational media, and how it is linked to the Nazi era. In this post, she explains what she learnt.

There has been a lot of discussion on whether it is possible to learn from history – especially from the abysses of the 20th century. In the current political situation, this question seems to be more relevant than ever as quite a few people seem to have forgotten about the era of National Socialism and fascism. Although there might be a lot of reasons for this, I wondered whether the pedagogical approaches in history education could also be problematic and if there might still be ways to learn from history. Therefore, I investigated the connections that are drawn between the Nazi era and contemporary right-wing extremism in current history education in Germany. In my paper, I looked at history textbooks, but I also discovered a digital game, Hidden Codes, that approaches the topic in an innovative way.

Concerning the structure of textbooks, I found out that only 16 out of 28 history textbook series for the lower secondary level covered the topic of contemporary right-wing extremism; and almost all of these 16 textbooks placed the topic at the end of the chapter about National Socialism, usually presenting it as a lasting legacy. This textbook structure may have two effects: first, when today’s right-wing extremism is locked away as a problem of the Nazi past, it cannot be explained and understood in the context of contemporary history. And, second, it contributes to a ‘polished’ narrative about unified Germany as the topic does not resurface again in the respective chapter.

As to the pedagogical approaches to the topic, I identified predominantly two, the moral response and the analytical approach. The moral response approach tends to simplify today’s right-wing extremism as a phenomenon of the fringes, it also prescribes students how to think and judge about it. The analytic approach, on the other hand, characterizes right-wing extremism in a more nuanced way as an anti-democratic, illiberal and violent political movement with a modern face while giving students more room to explore the phenomenon by themselves. Interestingly, the game Hidden Codes followed an entirely different approach by focusing on problem-solving: as girl or boy at a new school the player has to decide how to react when one girl turns out to be right-wing extremist. The game aims to convey a complex picture of right-wing extremism through its story and offers empowering subject positions to the players.

Teaching about the Nazi era and the Holocaust will remain important. But we have known for some time that it does not work directly as prevention of right-wing extremism. Since the Nazi past is moving further away for the younger generations, we need to pay more attention to the present and the lifeworlds of the students, which are not only shaped by the ‘Age of Extremes’ (Eric Hobsbawm), but also by the immediate, post-1989 past.

This article originally appeared on the History Education Research Journal blog. History education as prevention: the topic of right-wing extremism in German educational media by Maren Tribukait (Leibniz Institute for Educational Media, Georg Eckert Institute, Braunschweig, Germany) is published in History Education Research Journal, volume 21.

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Maren Tribukait joined the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media at the Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig, Germany in 2013 and works in research  and knowledge transfer. She leads the Teaching in a Mediatised World research team and conducts research into the changes occurring in schools as a result of digital networks and increasing political polarisation. She also coordinates the Digital Lab, where researchers, education practitioners and media developers can meet to exchange ideas, analyse digital practices and test innovative didactic approaches.

Florian Reitmann’s recent paper in AMPS explores a participatory process organised to deal with the highly contested former Nazi project Prora on the Baltic island of Rügen, which was carried out on behalf of the German government in 1996. The author explains why the process opened new avenues in dealing with difficult heritage.

How can a difficult heritage site exert a negative influence on a local community and even block the path to a future perceived as positive? How can such a difficult legacy be negotiated in order to transform it from an obstacle into an opportunity for positive development? What are the opportunities – but also the risks – of participatory approaches in dealing with such a difficult heritage site?

These questions characterised a participatory process that in 1996 dealt with a site with multiple burdens: ‘Prora’ on the German island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea.

Prora was planned and built by the Nazi regime. Intended as a gigantic ‘strength-through-joy’ seaside resort, it was meant to hold 20,000 beds, to provide low-cost seaside holidays for workers. However, Prora was the first time put into operation under communist rule. It served the GDR’s ‘National People’s Army’ as an important military base. In this new function, the building not only represented the military power of the communist regime, it also exerted an important influence on the island’s economy and the lives of the local population for many years.

After the fall of the Berlin wall, the military was withdrawn from the site. However, due to its size and former importance, Prora soon turned into a battleground in the conflicts over Rügen’s future. Various stakeholder — including residents of the complex, local communities, heritage activists, government agencies and international investors — attached different historical meanings to Prora and, upon that basis, projected conflicting futures on the site and the island.

When the growing conflicts threatened to block any solution, the federal government decided to cooperate with local actors and initiatives to find a solution for Prora.

The resulting participatory process took the form of a ‘discursive procedure’: Over the course of eight months, joint solutions for dealing with the complex were developed in workshops and discussion rounds. This process is at the centre of my article ‘Turning the project of dictatorship into an example of democracy? Chances and risks of participation at the Nazi relic Prora’.

My article argues that the participatory process in Prora opened a space of opportunity that demonstrates the potential of a transformative and future-oriented approach to difficult heritage. A burden that inhibited development on the island was transformed into a positive and active asset. It became a tool for actively shaping a new and different future. This tool was used to verbalise and manage conflicts that went far beyond the immediate significance of Prora and affected the entire region.

However, the framework in which the participatory process in Prora took place pointed to new risks and problems that can accompany such an approach. Under the conditions of market-liberal politics, the call for the withdrawal of the state, experts and institutional responsibility can easily serve as a vehicle for delegating responsibility for difficult heritage to market forces and profit-oriented local actors. This also became quite clear in the course of the participatory process in Prora and is discussed in more detail at the end of the article.

Turning the project of dictatorship into an example of democracy? Chances and risks of participation at the Nazi relic Prora by Florian Rietmann (Brandenburg University of Technology) is published in Architecture_MPS, volume 29.

This article originally appeared on the AMPS journal blog.

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About the author

Florian Rietmann is an architect, researcher and educator. Currently he is scholarship holder and lecturer at the Berliner Hochschule für Technik (BTH). His working experience include different positions in architecture firms in Germany and Switzerland as well as his work as a researcher in the DFG Research Training Group “Cultural and Technological Significance of Historic Buildings” at Brandenburg University of Technology, where he is currently working on his dissertation “Prora’s Rigid Resilience – The Long Shadow of an Unloved Structure”.

For her new book, Polish Cities of Migration: The migration transition in Kalisz, Piła and Płock, Anne White carried out extensive in-depth interviews with Polish return migrants, Ukrainians and people from other countries living in the Polish cities of Kalisz, Płock and Piła. This extract from Chapter 1 explores how the basis of Poland’s migration identity is changing from emigration to immigration.

‘For me it’s no different whether I live in Nottingham or Płock. I spend most of my time in the recording studio.’

(Jan, Polish return migrant, interviewed by Anne White)

‘At last, after waiting so long, I’ve been able to buy a house … I want my grandchildren to be born here … There’s a lake and a forest. I want to take my grandsons fishing.’

(Sergei, Ukrainian interviewed by Anne White in Piła, mid-February 2022)

Polish Cities of Migration analyses how Poland, with its strong and continuing ‘country of emigration’ identity, is transitioning to a new identity as a ‘country of immigration’. In the past few years, millions of migrants have been arriving to work, study and join family members in Poland. The book explores two interconnected puzzles. The first is whether the nature of Poland’s migration transition is influenced by the fact that it is simultaneously a country of emigration. In Poland, immigrants encounter Polish circular and return migrants, as well as Polish neighbours and workmates who have not migrated, but have family and friends living abroad. The book discusses how these mobile and transnationally connected Poles respond to the newcomers in their midst. What parallels do they perceive, and do they behave in a more welcoming way because of their shared experiences? The second puzzle concerns the decision-making of the non-Polish migrants. Why are they beginning to spread out beyond the metropolises, often settling with their families in smaller cities, such as Kalisz, Piła and Płock, with limited economic opportunities? I argue that their feeling of comfort in such locations links to lifestyle considerations, and is partly connected to their impression that local Poles have a pragmatic and accepting attitude towards migration. The early twenty-first century context is significant for Poland’s migration transition. Polish Cities aims to shed light on some typical aspects of twenty-first century mobility, and it compares the experiences of Polish and other migrants. Drawing on my in-depth interviews with 70 Ukrainians, 37 Poles and 17 people from different countries around the globe, I illustrate some actual – not just perceived – parallels between (ex)migrants, irrespective of their nationality. These include, for example, how parents quite soon after their arrival abroad decide to bring over their partners and children. Parallels between Ukrainian and Polish migration are often particularly striking, as also found, for example, by Brzozowska (2018). The book investigates why.

This chapter begins by introducing the main themes and arguments of the book. It outlines the story of the Polish migration transition and the particular role played by Ukrainians. It also looks at the phenomenon from the Ukrainian perspective. For Ukrainians, this is not a migration transition, but a story of mobility and emigration connected directly and indirectly to Putin’s 2014 invasion. The chapter then discusses central concepts of the book: migration transitions and migration (or mobility) cultures. It relates these to the Polish experience and explains how the concepts shed light on local-level experiences of becoming a country of immigration. Because of space limitations, the chapter does not discuss other concepts used in Polish Cities, such as livelihood strategies, place attachment, intersectionality, integration, anchoring, contact hypothesis, ethnic hierarchies and social networks. These are introduced in later chapters.

Countries are often considered to be either ‘countries of immigration’ or ‘countries of emigration’. For example, Australia is seen as a ‘country of immigration’, unlike Ireland, which until the 1990s was a ‘country of emigration’. These reputations are not just linked to statistics about net migration flows, but are also based in culture and historical tradition. Moreover, ‘emigration’ and ‘immigration’ in English (although not in other languages, such as Polish) imply migration for settlement, suggesting significant, sustained losses or gains of population. Given these connotations of migration for settlement, the phrase ‘country of immigration’ captures the idea of a country which is acquiring a more permanent identity as a place where foreigners come to settle. The book argues that becoming a new receiving country on a major scale is not just a matter of statistics but also implies acquiring a ‘country of immigration’ self-identity. In this connection, one could study the top-down process of adopting legislation, institutions and policies. My focus instead is on grassroots self-identification, the bottom-up process of ordinary people adjusting to the new identity as a receiving society. However, as discussed later, migrants have to become somewhat visible within local society for the majority population to acknowledge that this change has occurred. The book shows that on the eve of the 2022 refugee influx, Ukrainians, whom I label the ‘majority minority’, were already more visible and acknowledged to be part of composition of the local population in the fieldwork cities than were the ‘minority minorities’. These other migrants were individuals or tiny groups, not communities of co-nationals. They hailed from countries across the globe, from Uruguay to Nigeria and Taiwan.

Chapter 2 discusses the book’s intersectional approach. However, it seems important here in Chapter 1 to highlight that ‘migrants’ is a category as diverse as ‘humankind’. Any person could become a migrant. One type of differentiation which is particularly salient for this book is that different migrants have different expectations about whether their migration may result in settlement. Sergei and Jan, quoted at the head of the chapter, were Ukrainian and Polish respectively, but their ages and overall outlooks on life were at least as important as nationality in explaining their different degrees of place attachment and attitudes towards mobility. Sergei, having transplanted himself and his family to Piła, and achieved his life’s ambition of buying a house, dreamed on the eve of war of being settled in idyllic surroundings for the rest of his life. He was one of a group of interviewees for whom migration appeared to represent a ‘happy ending’. Jan, a younger person and a musician, was highly mobile and transnational, and typified another group: people of different nationalities whose occupations meant they could have lived almost anywhere, but nonetheless chose to be based – sometimes part-time and temporarily – in the smaller city or its environs.

About the Author

This is an excerpt from Polish Cities of Migration: The migration transition in Kalisz, Piła and Płock by Anne White.

Anne White is Professor of Polish Studies and Social and Political Science at UCL, author of Polish Cities of Migration: The migration transition in Kalisz, Piła and Płock and co-author of The Impact of Migration on Poland.

UCL Press is delighted to announce the appointment of Prof. Kathryn Batchelor as a series editor of the popular series Literature and Translation. Currently Professor in Translation Studies at UCL, she joins fellow editors Prof. Timothy Mathews and Dr. Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva.

The appointment comes as Prof. Geraldine Brodie steps down as co-series editor. We would like to thank Prof. Brodie for her hard work and dedication in growing the series.

Literature and Translation is a series for books of literary translation as well as about literary translation. Its emphasis is on diversity of genre, culture, period and approach. The series uses the UCL Press open access publishing model widely to disseminate developments in both the theory and practice of translation. Translations into English are welcomed of literature from around the world.

Fine out more about the series, and view published titles by visiting the series page.

In Packaged Plants: Seductive supplements and metabolic precarity, published today by UCL Press, authors Anita Hardon and Michael Lim Tam offer an absorbing ethnography and cultural history of how the production and consumption of plants for food and medicine has gone through ‘metabolic rifts’, increasingly processed into commodities with adverse impact on health and aggravating existing economic and social inequities.

This extract from the book places the authors’ research in a wider context, and reveals how ultra-processed foods (UPF) are relied on for their convenience, their cheapness and their supposed medicinal properties, which are often based on highly questionable evidence.

One early morning when I (Michael) was busy working at home on the final edits for this book, I decided to check our kitchen to see what our housekeeper was preparing for breakfast. I did this with some trepidation because I could guess, from the smell, what she was cooking. Indeed, she was frying several hot dogs and at her feet were three of our dogs – one a dachshund – doing their puppy eyes routine in anticipation of getting their share of the loot.

‘Giatay!’, I exclaimed, the term is from Cebuano, a southern Philippine language, and it roughly means ‘Oh my liver!’ to express surprise, shock, dismay. I reminded her that we had already talked about dietary norms in my household – my being vegetarian, and my wanting my children to grow up healthy even if they are not vegetarian, so the instructions were to minimize ultra-processed foods (UPF) like instant noodles, fast food, ‘forever foods’ (don’t they ever perish?) and of course, hot dogs.

The real dogs were still sitting listening to our conversation, probably hopeful that my lecture would force our cook to throw away the hot dogs.

This time I told her that I’d been so busy working on a book about food and had come across so many studies about the danger of hot dogs and other UPFs. I didn’t want to bandy terms like metabolic syndrome, so I chose something more familiar: cancer.

She was apologetic, but defensive: ‘But the hot dogs were not for you or for your children. It was for me and the driver.’

I quickly retorted, ‘But I don’t want you or the driver to be put at risk for cancer!’

She had the final say, an enthusiastic ‘thank you’ for my concern, but I couldn’t help but feel there was a tinge of cynicism, if not sarcasm, in her thanks.

That incident reminded me I had to finish the preface for this book, where I started by referring to a British Medical Journal (BMJ) article featuring a massive umbrella study previously published meta-analyses that involved, in total, 9.9 million people. I was alerted to the BMJ article by a feature in the British newspaper The Guardian, headlined ‘Ultra-processed food linked to 32 harmful effects to health, review finds’ (Gregory 2024).

The title and tone of the BMJ article was more sedate but still alarming. In a summary of their findings, the authors of the article said that a ‘direct association (was) found between exposure to UPF and 32 health parameters covering mortality, cancer, mental, respiratory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and metabolic health outcomes’. Furthermore, the authors found other studies suggesting more studies that could be made to explore other linkages between UPF and ill health, especially in terms of chronic inflammatory diseases (Lane et al. 2024).

The study made Anita and me pause: should we further delay the book and add more materials on UPF as found in the BMJ article?

Anita and I decided not to delay. UPF did figure prominently in our book, but as part of a spectrum of metabolic rifts or ways through which plant-based food and medicines have, through new forms of production, processing, marketing and consumption, created numerous problems not just around nutrition and health but also in exacerbating social inequities.

But the ‘hot dogs incident’ reminded me of the real world out there and the difficult tasks that lie ahead. How can the BMJ article’s findings be disseminated and spur people to take action? How do we translate terms like ‘danger’ and ‘risk’?

The odds are tremendous given the way science is eclipsed by advertising and promotions, including multi-level marketing that pushes vitamin-minerals and supplements and UPFs. Alternative information and education on healthy eating have few platforms available, given too that even scientists and professionals are often captives of the metabolic rifts we describe in our book, the loss of plant sovereignty or control over our food and medicines.

The poor are put at greatest risks in the way their food sources are now limited to the packaged UPFs, including beverages like soft drinks. Our packaged plants theme took on more urgency as we found a growing body of literature describing how the packaging themselves are problematic, plastics especially endangering the health of people, of non-human animals, and the planet itself. Solutions to malnutrition, a paradox of underweight and stunting on one hand and of overweight on the other, take on the character of UPFs with fortification programs, with an emphasis on micro-nutrient deficiencies that further expand the market for vitamins and minerals.

Going through voluminous research reports reminded us about how we are lagging behind in the race for better nutrition and health and why we need more foresight, anticipating other problems in the horizon. An article by Wickramasinghe et al., published in 2021, warns that even plant-based nutrition is being co-opted, and urges greater regulation of the many plant-based products that have appeared on the market, riding on the search for ‘organic’ and ‘natural’ foods, preferably packaged. Wickramasinghe and his associates note that many of these new plant-based products are in fact UPFs, with the same problems of high salt, sugar and fats found in the meat-based UPFs (Wickramasinghe et al. 2021).

Even nutritionists and health professionals are still unfamiliar with the term “UPF” despite its having been introduced and defined several years ago (Monteiro et al 2019). So much advocacy work will involve translation, and not necessarily from one language to another but in terms of demystifying the jargon. Advocacy will also involve dissemination of Good Practices in the many fields related to nutrition and health.

As we finalized our preface, local newspapers featured still another relevant article, this time about scams in the Philippines involving supplements making unsubstantiated anti-cancer properties for the products. One patient diagnosed with breast cancer said that she spent some $909 US per month for the supplements and agreed to chemotherapy only after her cancer metastasized.

We were touched by the valiant efforts of individuals to counter-act the scams. A Filipino oncologist working in a government hospital said, ‘five out of 10 patients I see ask me about something they have seen or read on the internet – 90 percent of the time the information is incorrect’.

When Adam, a Melbourne-based Australian doctor, began to post YouTube videos countering the misleading claims of supplement manufacturers, he was threatened with lawsuits by the companies. He has since quit his advocacy.

Agence France Presse (AFP) has been conducting investigations of online promotions of supplements and reporting the deceitful promotions to Meta, the parent company of Facebook, which is widely used by the unethical supplements producers. Even when flagged for their false claims, the companies will take down their promotions temporarily and then bring them back.

The Philippines Food and Drug Administration says it is helpless, with one official saying that it still does not have implementing guidelines on online advertising to accompany the law that created (actually, reorganized) the FDA in 2006.

Both of us (Anita and Mike) became grandparents as we finished writing this book, feeling a greater sense of urgency than when we began to write it, realizing that we will face even tougher questions from future generations who will assess what we did, and didn’t do, in these times of metabolic rifts.

About the Authors

This is an excerpt from Packaged Plants: Seductive supplements and metabolic precarity in the Philippines by Anita Hardon and Michael Lim Tam.

Anita Hardon is Chair of the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation group at Wageningen University.

Michael Lim Tan is Professor Emeritus and former chancellor of the University of the Philippines Diliman.

Shared parental leave (SPL), introduced in the UK in 2015, allows a mother to transfer part of her maternity leave to her partner. Despite being available to all new parents in employment throughout the UK, a 2023 evaluation found that only around 5 per cent of fathers are taking SPL.

To mark the publication of Caring is Sharing? Couples navigating parental leave at the transition to parenthood by Katherine Twamley, we are proud to share an extract exploring the competing pressures that prevent couples from taking up shared parental leave, and looking in detail at study participants Rita and Riley, and the impact of ‘greedy work’ on their SPL choices. Here the author reflects on her interview with study participants Rita and Riley, and the impact of ‘greedy work’ on their SPL choices.

Riley and Rita are advertising executives, working in the same company and at the same level at the time of Rita’s pregnancy. On the face of it, they would seem to be in an ideal situation to share leave. However, they pretty quickly decided that Rita would take all her leave, in a ‘gut decision’. When I probed them a bit further on their reasoning, Riley told me the following:

I would love to take some time off but again, it’s a very tough decision to take, not least because Rita will have already taken time off, and as a woman, they [employers] have patience for you to take that time off. But that does impact your career. If we have another child, Rita will probably have to take off a couple of months, so somehow it makes sense that one of us stays more career-focused than the other one, who will be more child-focused. That sounds awful but …

Riley, Interview 1

For Riley, only one person can take leave, because of the expected impact on career earnings and progression. That women’s maternity leave impacts on their careers is well evidenced (Cukrowska-Torzewska & Matysiak, 2020). Since Rita will ‘obviously’ want to take several months’ leave, and moreover to recover from the pregnancy and birth, the impact on her career is taken for granted. From his perspective, it ‘makes sense’ that all career penalties be focused on one career – Rita’s. It is interesting nonetheless that he added ‘That sounds awful but …’, indicating a recognition that traditional divisions of paid and unpaid work go against popular discourses of gender equality within couple relationships (Faircloth, 2021; Jamieson, 2011; Twamley, 2014). Here we see how parental leave decisions are negotiated in dialogue with real and imagined others (Burkitt, 2012; Holmes et al., 2021) and their expected reactions to couples’ leave plans, but in concert with (perceived) structural constraints. Fear of repercussions for men’s careers was one of the most common responses in the survey on the question of why participants were not sharing leave; it has moreover been observed in multiple contexts beyond the UK, which indicates the pervasive nature of such concerns (Samtleben et al., 2019).

This idea that ‘role specialisation’ is necessary was not uncommon; it actually emerged most forcefully in later interviews as participants began to consider how to manage the demands of paid and unpaid work after the leave period (we will return to this in chapter 6). Fundamental to this perspective is a view of paid work as precarious and very demanding (as much as the intensive demands of parenting, which I discuss further in the next section). Participants described working in high-pressure contexts which necessitated long working hours to keep on top of their workloads and especially for career progression. Goldin (2021) argues that such ‘greedy work’ is a key driver in the role specialisation of earner and carer within couples. Greedy work is embedded in cultural ideals which value professional achievements over personal needs; it is most commonly found in white-collar jobs and professions, and it is at its ‘greediest’ in high-stress, high-demand sectors such as finance, law and technology. The glorification of overwork, the pressure to conform to high-performance expectations and the lack of institutional support for work–life balance contribute to the prevalence of this phenomenon (Goldin, 2021; T. A. Sullivan, 2014).

The ‘patience’ that Riley said employers show as regards women’s take-up of leave underlies an understanding of personal and family life as a hindrance to employers, who ‘patiently’ accept limited incursions into the work sphere. In this context, SPL is felt as risky for Riley and other participants, conscious of the potential repercussions on their career. Riley appeared to internalise what Acker calls the ideal worker norm here: a hypothetical worker ‘who exists only for the job’ without allowing any other commitments to intrude on their work (1990:149). Such workers typically perceive long work hours as legitimate (Byun & Won, 2020; Williams et al., 2013) and therefore place indirect limits on fathers’ leave take-up (their own and other’s) (Haas & Hwang, 2019). This was the case with Riley, not only in his avoidance of SPL, but also in his take-up of paternity leave. When Rita went into labour, Riley explained, he was asked to forgo his paternity leave until a later time as his manager didn’t want him to take 10 days off in a row; the manager suggested Riley took annual leave instead – two days a week for three weeks – and delayed his paternity leave until work was more settled:

He [Riley’s manager] didn’t directly say ‘Don’t take paternity leave’, but he did say that it would be better if I took it later. I get on really well with him, so I could have said ‘No, I want to take it now’, but I’m lucky how well we get on and we had this difficult project so I agreed and it was fine. I’ll take the paternity leave maybe later in the year.

Riley, Interview 2

It is striking that Riley describes himself as ‘lucky’ despite the pressure from his manager not to take paternity leave. Such seeming gratitude to employers was observed in other fathers, who also told me that they were ‘lucky’ their employers facilitated time off during their partner’s pregnancy, for example, or in the generally positive reaction to the request for paternity leave, despite the fact that it is a legal right for fathers. The gratitude signals a socio-political narrative of individual responsibility for care and family (rather than a shared societal one).

About the Author

This is an excerpt from Caring Is Sharing? Couples navigating parental leave at the transition to parenthood by Katherine Twamley.

Katherine Twamley is Professor of Sociology at the UCL Social Research Institute.

UCL Press Play is delighted to announce the release of the fourth episode of the podcast series The Greatest Good, which explores the lasting influence of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, whose radical progressivism was the intellectual inspiration for UCL.

In the fourth episode, Philip Schofield sits down with Dr Luciano Rila, from UCL’s Department of Mathematics, to delve into the history of the UK’s first university-affiliated Gaysoc, founded at UCL by Jamie Gardiner in 1972. Dr Rila discovered archival materials in UCL’s Special Collections revealing that though the society was initially met with backlash, UCL’s liberal tradition prevailed, and the movement gained momentum, slowly leading to nationwide improvements in the lives of queer students.

The final episode, a video podcast, will be available next week. Episodes 1 to 3 are also available to download now, and the documentary ‘Bentham’s Defence of Sexual Liberty’ is available to stream now via YouTube.

About The Greatest Good

The inaugural series from UCL Press Play, The Greatest Good, explores the lasting influence of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, whose radical progressivism was the intellectual inspiration for UCL. As the first entirely secular university to admit students regardless of religion, UCL was inspired by Bentham’s principles of equality and intellectual freedom.

About UCL Press Play

UCL Press Play is a new initiative presenting documentary videos and podcasts featuring aspects of UCL’s sector-leading research, and casting light on the contribution UCL makes to society.

Just as UCL Press makes its work accessible through Open Access, UCL Press Play brings the ground-breaking research of London’s global university to audiences worldwide.

As Autumn closes in, we’ve had a busy month publishing 4 new open access books which cover everything from inclusion, diversity and innovation in translation education to the surprising ways that many people use their mobile and smartphones for health purposes.

The month’s first publication was  Inclusion, Diversity and Innovation in Translation Education. Through examples of literary and audio-visual translation teaching practices, this unique book places a novel emphasis on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) synergising the latest research advancements in EDI and translation curricula. It’s a must-read for anyone teaching in these areas.

It was closely followed by Reconnoitring Russia. By focusing on such geographical practices as exploring, observing, describing, mapping and similar activities, the late Denis J.B. Shaw’s final book, Reconnoitring Russia, seeks to explain how Russia’s rulers and its educated public came to know and understand the territory of their expanding state and empire, especially as a result of the modernizing policies of such sovereigns as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. It’s a fantastic read that can be downloaded free.

Next up was Structural Injustice and the Law, which presents theoretical approaches and concrete examples to show how the concept of structural injustice can aid legal analysis, and how legal reform can, in practice, reduce or even eliminate some forms of structural injustice. A group of outstanding law and political philosophy scholars discuss a comprehensive range of interdisciplinary topics, including the notion of domination, equality and human rights law, legal status, sweatshop labour, labour law, criminal justice, domestic homicide reviews, begging, homelessness, regulatory public bodies and the films of Ken Loach. Intrigued? Find out more!

The final book of the month (and final volume in the Ageing with Smartphones series) An Anthropological Approach to mHealth, published on 28th October. Based on ten 16-month ethnographies in settings across Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America, it proposes a radically different anthropological approach to the development and dissemination of mobile health (mHealth), a rapidly growing sector in healthcare. Read more about the surprising ways that many people use their mobile and smartphones for health purposes.

Some fantastic reads there that we’re sure you’ll enjoy!

We’ll be back again next month with a round up of the very best open access books. As always, stay safe!

UCL Press Play is delighted to announce the release of a brand new episode of the podcast series The Greatest Good, which explores the lasting influence of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, whose radical progressivism was the intellectual inspiration for UCL.

In the third episode, Philip Schofield discusses queer aesthetics and the idea of a racialised panoptic gaze with Dr Xine Yao, co-director of qUCL (UCL’s Queer Studies network) and an expert on American literature in the Department of English. They dig into the archive of bestselling, but now forgotten, American novels, and tease out the ways in which the biggest issues of the 19th century still resonate in everyday life today.

The full series will be made available in coming weeks, featuring The UK’s First Gaysoc and exploring Nonbinary Gender in the Middle Age. Episodes 1 and 2 are available to download now, and the documentary ‘Bentham’s Defence of Sexual Liberty’ is available to stream now via YouTube.

About The Greatest Good

The inaugural series from UCL Press Play, The Greatest Good, explores the lasting influence of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, whose radical progressivism was the intellectual inspiration for UCL. As the first entirely secular university to admit students regardless of religion, UCL was inspired by Bentham’s principles of equality and intellectual freedom.

About UCL Press Play

UCL Press Play is a new initiative presenting documentary videos and podcasts featuring aspects of UCL’s sector-leading research, and casting light on the contribution UCL makes to society.

Just as UCL Press makes its work accessible through Open Access, UCL Press Play brings the ground-breaking research of London’s global university to audiences worldwide.

UCL Press Play is delighted to announce the release of a brand new episode of the podcast series The Greatest Good, which explores the lasting influence of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, whose radical progressivism was the intellectual inspiration for UCL.

In the second episode, Professor Philip Schofield hosts Dr Jonathan Galton, a social scientist from UCL IOE’s Thomas Coram Research Unit, to explore his research into the perceived political tension on the progressive left between queerness and Islam. Discussing the historical and cultural context surrounding queerness and Islam, they find surprising affinities between Bentham’s writing on freedom of religion and sexual liberty, and the contemporary theological work reinterpreting Quranic verses on homosexuality today.

The full series will be made available in coming weeks, and will include episodes covering Queerness, Islam and the Left; Queer Aesthetics and the Panoptic Gaze; The UK’s First Gaysoc; and Nonbinary Gender in the Middle Ages. The documentary ‘Bentham’s Defence of Sexual Liberty’ is available to stream now via YouTube.

About The Greatest Good

The inaugural series from UCL Press Play, The Greatest Good, explores the lasting influence of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, whose radical progressivism was the intellectual inspiration for UCL. As the first entirely secular university to admit students regardless of religion, UCL was inspired by Bentham’s principles of equality and intellectual freedom.

About UCL Press Play

UCL Press Play is a new initiative presenting documentary videos and podcasts featuring aspects of UCL’s sector-leading research, and casting light on the contribution UCL makes to society.

Just as UCL Press makes its work accessible through Open Access, UCL Press Play brings the ground-breaking research of London’s global university to audiences worldwide.