Category Archives: Author Interview

In this blog post, author Bill Manley reflects on the origins of Sahidic Coptic and how its influence can still be felt today.

The end of ancient Egypt; the fall of the Roman Empire; early books; the early Bible; Orthodox Christianity; the Byzantine Empire; the history of religious persecution; Europe’s mediaeval monasteries; the rise of Islam; Egyptian society today; even the decipherment of hieroglyphs—these are a handful of the ‘big’ stories that cannot be told properly without some awareness of the tens of thousands of Sahidic Coptic texts from Late Antique Egypt. Often, they are among our most detailed sources for any of these subjects.

‘Copt’ comes via Arabic al-Qibṭiy from Greek Aiguptioi ‘Egyptians’, and evokes three centuries of Roman rule in Egypt; when a Greek-speaking ruling class treated native Egyptian speakers as social and political inferiors. The land had been brought under Roman rule in 30 BC, at the death of the notorious Queen Cleopatra VII. Subsequently, the indigenous language was excluded from public life, and Egypt’s institutions came to be viewed as collaborators. Resistance to Rome became identified with the systematic executions of Egyptian Christians; especially during the reign of Diocletian (284–305). Following an imperial about-face and edicts of religious toleration in the early 300s, Egypt was revealed to be a majority Christian nation where the ancient temples were repurposed as churches, and the spread of monasteries would be the most dynamic, transformative socio-economic phenomenon of the new age.

As the temples’ authority had dwindled among the people, so had that of the ancient hieroglyphic script: identified since the dawn of history with the kingship and priesthood. As with their rejection of traditional education and governance, the ‘Copts’ also devised an alphabet as an alternative for writing their language and promoting Christian scripture in translation. Sahidic Coptic is the normative literary dialect, whose influence is apparent in almost all Egyptian texts from Late Antiquity. Consequently, the usual definition of the word Copt today is ‘Egyptian Christian’. Even though Coptic is no longer spoken, most of the millions of modern Copts are Arabic-speakers, and the Coptic Orthodox churches have a global presence.

The relevance of Sahidic Coptic writing stretches far beyond Egypt. A single case in point would be the monk Pahom (St Pachomius), who first wrote down the rules for living in a monastery. His aptitude for organising large numbers in close proximity stemmed from his first career in the Roman Army. Pahom was baptised upon his discharge from the army, when Diocletian’s murders had barely ended, and was leading four ‘communities’ within a few years. In keeping with the meandering River Nile, a monastery was a scattered agricultural collective whose members came together to eat, pray, sing, and tend the poor, sick and elderly. Routines were organised along traditional patterns of life, but Pahom’s rules gave mettle to the collective. For instance, he advocated social distancing to limit the spread of contraband or disease: ‘No-one shall hold his companion’s hand nor any part of him. Instead leave a cubit between you and them whether you are sitting, standing or walking.’

By adopting his principles, tens of thousands of men and women, Egyptian and immigrant, organised themselves to live a ‘life in common’ – instead of the solitary practices of St Antony and the hermits – among them writers who were influential in Europe, such as Evagrius Ponticus, Palladius of Galatia and the Romanian, John Cassian.

Pahom died in 346 because he was neither the first nor the last in charge of infection control to ignore his own rules. He took ‘a great fever’ but ‘did not tell any of the brothers that he was ill nor confide about his illness, as was his way. Instead, gathering all his strength, he went with them to the harvest … However, while harvesting he fell flat on his face’. On his last night, he asked his friend Theodore not to leave his body in its grave ‘in case people stole his body and built a martyr’s shrine round it’ because he ‘did not approve of those who acted so’.

Despite his humbling demise, Pahom’s legacy was greater than he might have envisioned: John Cassian transplanted the monastic life to Marseilles, where he settled in 415 and founded several new communities. In turn, Pahom’s rules became the basis of the mediaeval monastic code of Benedict. So, the next time you pass Westminster Abbey, Durham Cathedral, Paisley Abbey, Mont-St-Michel, or any of western Europe’s magnificent abbey churches; take a moment to consider how these towering bastions of civilisation are just two steps removed from Pahom, and a single page from the story of the early ‘Copts’.

Bill Manley is the author of Sahidic Coptic. This concise textbook teaches beginner students the grammar of documents written in Sahidic Coptic, and provides the historical and cultural context required for reading primary sources through informal as well as more formal and religious texts.

Professor Wendy Sims-Schouten’s new book Revisiting Childhood Resilience Through Marginalised and Displaced Voices uses an interdisciplinary approach to challenge current childhood resilience research and practice. The culmination of ten years of research and publications around childhood resilience, the book draws upon data collected from and co-produced with children, young people and adults from marginalised, disadvantaged and displaced communities.

We caught up with Wendy to talk about her work on childhood resilience, her interdisciplinary approach to research, and the shortfalls and her desire to change the world for the better.

Tell us more about your background and experience.

I am Professor of Interdisciplinary Psychology and Head of UCL Arts and Sciences, which is the home of new wave liberal arts and sciences degrees, one of the first of its kind in the world. As Head I oversee the running of the department, which is the fastest growing department in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and is based across Bloomsbury and UCL East. In addition to this, I undertake research with a focus on wellbeing, eclectic resilience (including resistance and defiance) and coproduction, working collaboratively with members from a range of disadvantaged, displaced and marginalised communities (such as young care leavers, refugees/migrants, as well as members from minority ethnic communities).

How and why did you get into this subject area?

The short answer is because I want to change the world and to do that we should listen to children from diverse backgrounds.

What motivated you to write and publish this book?

After researching childhood wellbeing for 15 years, I felt that we keep missing the boat when it comes to making sense of childhood resilience in light of displacement and marginalisation. This book tries to remedy some of this by presenting stories, memories and experiences of childhood resilience, resistance and compliance, centralising voices of children and young people from a range of marginalised and displaced communities (e.g. care experienced young people, child migrants, children from minority ethnic communities, to name a few),

What do you think sets your approach apart from others in your field, and how do you stay innovative?

I adopt an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on knowledge from the arts, humanities and social sciences, whilst most research around resilience is largely located within health and psychology disciplines. Within my research I include voices, stories and memories, both from the past and present, and keep going back to children and young people to ask what they think, if my approach works and what could be improved.

Surprise us with something unexpected you encountered in your research for this book.

For me the key thing is that I was able to represent individual voices around wellbeing and resilience, something that is often dismissed when it comes to how impact in an academic context is measured. For example, when I completed my impact case study for REF2021 I realised that one particularly impactful event stood out for me. Yet, it was also something that I could not include in my case study, because it only affected one person and one school. Let me explain this. As part of REF impact cases studies, researchers are required to provide evidence of the impact of their research. In my case, this was my research centred on coproducing new understandings and interventions around mental health and wellbeing working collaboratively with care-experienced young people, new mothers with mental health issues and members from minority ethnic communities and related charities and organisations. I was able to show that the research had significant impact, for instance by changing uptake of mental health support among young care leavers in Hampshire from 16% to 60%, as well as young people living in supported accommodation in Scotland. Yet, what I was most proud of was the EDI work that I collaborated on with the lead of the Race Equality Council in the South-West of England, working with a girl with mixed heritage who had been suspended from school due to ‘aggressive behaviour’. Working extensively with the girl in question and the school that had suspended her, we were able to show that what was described by the school as ‘aggressive behaviour’ was in fact a child (she was only 12) who resisted the racist bullying that she had been on the receiving end of since primary school. The school lacked EDI training and understanding, and we were able to support the girl. educate the school and get her education back on track. REF impact is centred on ‘big numbers’ of impact and as such this was not included in my REF case study, yet I could include this in my book.

Why did you choose to publish your work Open Access?

Because Open Access allows for increased visibility and wider dissemination.

How do you see your research contributing to a better understanding of the world, and what potential benefits might it offer in the future?

This book urges us to keep a more open mind when it comes to how we talk about ‘resilience’. Too often children and young people are just told to ‘be more resilient’ and new resilience tools and measures are coming out all the time, as if resilience can just be taught and measured. Yet, within this children and young people are rarely consulted and children who adopt resistant and defiant behaviours in light of adversity are frowned upon.

What do you see as the most exciting future directions for research in your field, and what breakthroughs do you hope to see in the coming years?

I hope we take coproduction with children and young people more seriously and not use this as a ‘tick box’ exercise.

What advice would you give to students who are interested in pursuing a career in your field, and what skills or qualities do you think are most important for success?

For me personally, the mix between research and practice was very beneficial. I first qualified as a psychiatric nurse and worked in various clinics, whilst specialising further in child psychology. Having this practical background and experience was invaluable when I eventually embarked on a PhD and an academic career.

What do you do to stay motivated and inspired in your work, and how do you maintain a positive attitude even in challenging situations?

What inspires and motivates me most is working with the community, whether charities, schools or museums. Since becoming a Head of Department I have had less time for research and I am very keen to pick up the collaborative projects and community work again as soon as I can..

What is something you are never asked, but wish you were?

I am not sure… I think there is still a lack of clarity around and engagement with the arts and humanities when it comes to making sense of concepts, such as mental health, wellbeing and resilience. I would love to have further discussions with people about that.

About the Author

Wendy Sims-Schouten is Professor of Interdisciplinary Psychology and Head of UCL Arts & Sciences.

Earlier this month, Jovana Diković’s fascinating open access book The Laissez-Faire Peasant was published.  We caught up with her to talk about her fascinating research in Serbia and Kosovo, why peasants are misunderstood and just why ‘Kill your darlings’ was a useful piece of advice she received when completing her PhD.

Tell us about yourself.

I am an economic anthropologist. At the University of Belgrade, I obtained my Bachelor diploma in social anthropology and Masters diploma in political sciences. In 2012, I moved to Zurich to complete a doctoral degree in economic anthropology.

Since then, my main research interests have centred around agriculture and food systems, peasantry, cooperation, rural economies and sustainability. As an avid rural explorer, I conducted more than two years of fieldwork research in villages in Serbia and Kosovo.

During longer research stays at the University of Ottawa and University of Pittsburgh, I furthered my studies in cooperation, self-governance, and property rights. Since 2022 I have headed a research unit on sustainable development and inclusive growth at the Centre for Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, at the School of Management in Fribourg. In the past eleven years, I have taught several courses on rural economy, development, environment and sustainability at the University of St. Gallen, University of Fribourg, and University of Zurich.

What motivated you to write and publish The Laissez-Faire Peasant?

Serbian peasants were my main motivation. In the book I attempt to show that peasants are not the victims of state politics or market economy which is a prevailing image of them but are rather autonomous and competent actors. Peasants are the architects of their own and local wellbeing, and their conceptions of development are often opposed to state plans for agriculture and rural development. Moreover, state plans for rural development in Serbian villages have been continuously distorted and interrupted by autonomous actions and values of peasants because the state programs do not provide what peasants seek. It is less known that peasants’ values determine the level of their cooperation with the state and are the main drivers of individual and local wellbeing.

Contrary to this explanation, the rural scholarship predominantly focuses on the diverse forms of peasants’ marginalization, completely neglecting that even when that is being true, such a marginalization is often intentionally sustained in order to protect peasant’s autonomy, their ownership of land, way of doing things, and safe distance from the state. In other words, peasants know how to deal with their marginalization. Such an insight questions mainstream interpretations of power relations between the peasants and the state in the literature and public discussions, and urges rethinking theoretical conceptions of the peasantry, and generally paternalistic agricultural policies.

In a nutshell, the book  questions the broader implications of the purposefulness of state programs for rural development (which are doomed to fail in the local context), and whether peasants need state rural development at all.

How and why did you get into this subject area?

In my mid-twenties, I got an opportunity to accompany an older colleague and conduct research on vernacular architecture in several rural municipalities in Serbia. This allowed me to became familiar with the vernacular building techniques and the ways local people preserve their built heritage.

During that time, I discovered a fascinating world I did not know much about. It was the experience of being and living in villages among villagers – not the results of research – that hooked me. I discovered the world of our co-citizens about which we usually believe we know much, and eventually we either misinterpret or romanticize their realities. I wanted to pick up a village life in its entirety and to explain what matters in rural communities, particularly in regard to local rural development. And so, in my thirties, I undertook research on rural development in three villages in Vojvodina province in Serbia.  

Why did you choose to publish your work Open Access?

Typical university publisher books are often expensive and out of reach for the interested and non-academic audience. I always have hard time deciding to purchase a book that costs more than €50. In some parts of the world people live on a less than a $3a day-  buying books investing in education is often  sacrificed first in those societies.

My intention was to publish a book which is accessible, downloadable, and easily available for anyone with an interest in the topic. Open access has allowed me to do this.

Open access has a noble intention of making the books available for everyone and disrupting the monopolies of publishers who established the system for generating enormous profits at the expense of authors.

How do you see your research contributing to a better understanding of the world, and what potential benefits might it offer in the future?

My contribution is in bridging the gap towards understanding peasants’ motivations and realities; these are generally not understood by outsiders or are subjected to severe criticism.

When peasants are not perceived as victims, they are often accused of being severe polluters and free riders. By getting to know them and their farming practices we can understand their attitudes beter. This has the potential to lead toward sound and effective agricultural and rural policies. If we extend the ideas of my book to agri-environmental context and fixing bad practices in agricultural production, they contain an important moral: subtle and direct coercion of peasants will not force them to work toward environmental goals.

Finding a cooperation threshold for sustainable agriculture will not be possible without a dialogue between peasants, consumers, legislators and policymakers. Without this dialogue, the incentives and agendas of sustainable agricultural policies will be failing, one after another. Policymakers, legislators, and consumers need to have an understanding of those whose practices they intend to change – in this case those of the peasants – and to understand what is realistic on that path.

Surprise us with something unexpected you encountered in your research for this book.

‘Land never stays uncultivated, no matter the political and economic conditions’, was one of the most revealing statements by a peasant. It means that peasants will cultivate their land even when they are facing high costs, bankruptcy, or when it is a complete loss for them. In another words, peasants are not only utility maximisers. That was a turning point which changed my perspective and made me rethink my research questions. It forced me to examine the issue of the relationships between the peasants and land, and peasants and the state from an unorthodox angle and understand their viewpoint freed from layers of scientific knowledge installed by post-socialist and rural studies about peasants. It also inspired me to explain why existing scientific conceptions about peasants are wrong, which occupies a special place in my book.

What do you see as the most exciting future directions for research in your field, and what breakthroughs do you hope to see in the coming years?

I am eager to see how the understanding of land property will develop in the era of vertical farming, GMO production, and speed technological advancements that at least hypothetically might enable satisfactory production on smaller and smaller plots of land, or in a laboratory. That will be indeed an exciting time, both for anthropologists and societies. I wonder how agriculture, practices of farming and farming knowledge will change, when practically anyone given meeting certain conditions such as vertical space, agri- or lab-tech, can become a farmer. So, this will change an image of farmers, who can be an everyman without agricultural knowledge and skills on how to use agricultural mechanisation, without which today’s agriculture cannot be imagined. If development of agriculture follows such a path, it will be a structural transformation urging reconsideration of the modern view of land property, concept of farmers, production, and production ethics.    

What advice would you give to students who are interested in pursuing a career in your field, and what skills or qualities do you think are most important for success?

The worst thing one can do is to become a niche expert. This is important, to the  limited extent which requires technical knowledge of the field and literature but it will not make you a good scholar. ‘Kill your darlings’, was one of the best pieces of advice when I was doing my PhD, and which I still find very useful in my career.  It makes you step down from your ivory tower, challenge the niche knowledge and explore the world outside the domain of your expertise.

About the author

Jovana Diković is an economic anthropologist, publicist, and Head of Sustainable Development and Inclusive Growth at the Center for Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, School of Management, Fribourg.

Today we are excited to publish Palaeontology in Public, edited by Dr Chris Manias. This exciting new book considers the connections between palaeontology and public culture across the past two centuries. In so doing, it explores how these public dimensions have been crucial to the development of palaeontology, and indeed how they conditioned wider views of science, nature, the environment, time and the world. 

We are grateful to Chris for taking the time to answer a few questions about his work, making the book as accessible as possible, and what he’s learnt from editing this new collection.

Tell us more about your background and experience in this field

I’m a historian of science specialising in the history and cultural role of palaeontology and related fields. As well as working on Palaeontology in Public, I’ve recently written another book about the history of mammal palaeontology in the nineteenth century, looking at why scientists and public audiences in this period were so interested in fossil mammals, and what this tells us about global connections and understandings of nature and the environment in this period. I’m currently working on a new project, looking at how palaeontologists and geologists engaged with the crises of the 1920s and 1930s, and have recently been awarded a Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust to work on this (detailed here, p. 9).

What do you enjoy most about your work?

As an academic employed by a university, my work is very varied, which makes it both fun and unexpected, but does also mean juggling a large number of different things! I particularly like talking to people from differing backgrounds about the cultural role of nature, deep time and evolution. People can approach these issues from very different perspectives, and so it can be a really useful meeting ground to think about different ways seeing the world, its history, and its current condition.

How did you work with the contributors to this book to ensure their voices were heard and their work is presented in the best possible light?

As this project grew out of a pre-existing network, we had a lot of activity to develop the book, making sure that everyone got their work presented well, and that they could all contribute to making the book as coherent as possible. All the contributors knew each other already, or were introduced to each other early in the process, so they could keep up to date with how the other chapters were developing. We also had a number of ways that authors could get feedback on their chapters. Each author led a session on their chapter at the Popularizing Palaeontology online meetings, which meant they could showcase their work and get feedback. I also made sure that each chapter was read over in depth by myself and at least one other book contributor (ideally one from a different field) so they had another perspective on it. And we had a small in-person workshop once the whole draft manuscript was ready, where we could talk about the book and all the comments in the round. I hope this was successful in making sure that all authors got heard, and that the book became a coherent collection of related case studies.

How did you balance the need for academic rigour with the aim to make this book accessible and engaging to a broader audience?

We are lucky with this book, in that we are dealing with topics which have a great deal of public appeal and an audience already: the role of dinosaurs, human ancestors, and prehistoric mammals in popular culture. The structure of the book, looking at particular case studies, like changing views of Spinosaurus, the animated ‘Gertie the Dinosaur’ from the 1910s, and the place of human evolution in museum and media culture, provides a series of engaging episodes which fit together into a single arc.

The book also deals with an area where there is a lot of sophisticated and complex academic work, especially around science popularization, the reconstruction of prehistoric animals, and building new perspectives on the history of palaeontology (especially as connected to changes in understanding the world and nature, and processes like scientific change, the history of the media, and colonialism). So the subject of palaeontology in public culture can act as a bridge between the wide public audience interested in palaeontology, and these more specialist academic fields.

The fact that the book is interdisciplinary, and the chapters were written by authors from different fields (and in some cases written co-written by scientists and humanities scholars), also helped make the book accessible. Given that palaeontologists are not trained in history of science, and historians of science are not trained in palaeontology, authors needed to make sure that what they were saying was absolutely clear to non-specialists when drafting and presenting their works. So this also, I think, helped with making it accessible and engaging, while still keeping things on a high intellectual level.

What advice would you give to aspiring editors, and what do you think are the key skills and attributes required?

Edited collections take a long time to put together, especially as you will be working with a large number of authors, all of whom have other commitments and projects. Some will invariably be able to devote more time to their chapters than others, and contributors will also be working at different rates and rhythms. So you do need to be able to work with people’s schedules, while making sure that things move forward at a rate that works for everyone. A combination of flexibility, alongside awareness of when things need to be pushed along (and an ability to work out how best to do that) is particularly important.

Surprise us with something unexpected you encountered in your work on this book

I especially liked the chapters which took the case studies beyond the traditional European and North American framework that a lot of the history of palaeontology has been written around. This included Irina Podgorny’s chapter on the relation between glyptodons, art and literature in twentieth-century Argentina, Zichuan Qin and Lukas Rieppel’s discussion of the role of dinosaurs in China, and the highlighting of the role of African and Asian research in palaeontology and human evolutionary studies in several chapters. These are things that the academic literature is starting to focus on, and tells the history of palaeontology in a new light.

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing academic book publishing today, and how do you see the industry evolving in the future?

The move to open access is a really important one. Incidentally, a major reason I wanted this book to be published by UCL Press is that I really like the model of open access publishing that you support, where the digital download is freely available, but it is still possible to buy the book as a well-produced printed edition. Open access presents big opportunities in terms of reaching new and expanded audiences, but also of course comes with challenges. It doesn’t fit with the for-profit model of academic publishing that has developed (very unhealthily in my view), and so there is the potential for conflict there, or for quite exploitative models of authors paying large sums of money to have articles published in open access. Also my field – History – is one where large single-authored books are the gold standard, which is a format that doesn’t fit very well with open access formats as currently envisioned. So this is going to require negotiation and new ways of working all round, which might hopefully dismantle some of the more problematic structures that have developed around for-profit academic publishing.

About the author

Chris Manias is Senior Lecturer in the History of Science & Technology at King’s College London.

Today marks the publication of a new book from UCL Press: Contemporary Art and the Display of Ancient Egypt by Professor Alice Stevenson. We are delighted to celebrate this new open-access publication by sharing an interview with Alice, exploring her background in the Museum Studies and Archaeology, her reflections on her research, and how the value of mundane tasks is underestimated in understanding how museums really work.

What motivated you to write and publish this book?

Some 25 years ago during my undergraduate degree in Archaeology, one of our course convenors – Professor Colin Renfrew – experimented with a new module on ‘Contemporary Art and Architecture’. At the time I was a bit bemused by it, thinking it well outside the scope of my training to study the past, but those first engagements with contemporary art have stayed with me as a means of thinking about how we interpret the tangible remains of the past, giving me confidence to enter into spaces and query artworks in ways I don’t think I would have done independently. Having had a career in museums since my undergraduate days, I was very aware of the popularity of combining archaeological displays with artists’ interventions but I was always a little dubious about the claims that these put the past and present ‘into dialogue’. It was such a ubiquitous refrain in interviews with artists and curators that I increasingly wanted to delve into the specifics about what these juxtapositions were really doing or achieving.

Tell us more about your background and experience.

I’m an archaeologist by training, but after my undergraduate degree, I sought more vocational training in Museum Studies before undertaking a PhD where I specialised in prehistoric (Predynastic) Egypt (4000-3000 BC roughly). Throughout my doctoral studies I spent a lot of time in museums studying material from old excavations and volunteering at several institutions on documentation projects. The latter meant that my first post-doctoral studies were nothing to do with Egypt, but were instead more general Museum Studies or Information Studies research projects. I also spent some time as the archivist and librarian of the Egypt Exploration Society before moving to Oxford to be a researcher in World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum. The latter was an influential couple of years in terms of understanding museums as complex institutions, about collecting histories and the implications for modern communities of historical collecting and representation. From there, I became Curator of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology which further deepened my experience of all aspects of museum work, but now within my area of expertise. All the pieces came together! I’ve been teaching Museum Studies since 2017, and putting my collections-based experience in conversation with academic literature has be helpful in developing new projects.  

How and why did you get into this subject area?

When I was trying to choose a university subject at the age of 16 I kept going back to the prospectus pages about Archaeology and was drawn to it, although I never had much interest in the excavating and surveying aspect of the field. My grandfather was an archaeologist and museum curator, and although he passed away when I was 11, I guess there was always a personal framework of love and value for museums work. From the outset of my interest in archaeology it was the material recovered and the narratives we could construct on the basis of excavated assemblages that really interested me. Having also trudged through many wet fields during my archaeological training I also figured museums were dryer and warmer (neither necessarily true, I found). I spent much of my undergraduate days volunteering in museums rather than doing more traditional fieldwork, and have been researching and working in them ever since.

Why did you choose to publish your work open access?

For this project I was a recipient of public funds through a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship and it is only right that the outputs should be fully publicly accessible. Moreover, open access increases, to some extent, the equity of engagement with academic work globally. The intellectual capital of keeping up to date with current research should not be limited to richest countries. Since my research is primarily on Egypt’s heritage that research should be available there too. 

How do you see your research contributing to a better understanding of the world, and what potential benefits might it offer in the future?

Exploring the histories and legacies of past museum practice allows curators, artists and scholars to see what worked (or didn’t) previously, together with the contexts that constrained and enabled particular interventions. This helps us bring to the fore taken-for-granted assertions to see how they become established in the first place. Often there are agendas, biases and assumptions baked into such received wisdom that need to be actively revealed to help understand how we are making knowledge claims so we can forge a fresh path forward. It allows us to see more clearly how meanings are made and why certain ideas take hold (or don’t) at particular moments.

I hope the book can refresh a dialogue – not necessarily between past and present, but between artists, curators and archaeologists – that encourages experimentation and honesty about what can or cannot be achieved, and which is sensitive to the different sorts of values and experiences that art and archaeology can foster.

What do you think sets your approach apart from others in your field, and how do you stay innovative?

Understanding how museums work and thinking through intellectual questions as critical practice makes a difference. In other words, it is easy to critique work and representation from outside an institution with critical theory, but understanding the practical constraints and institutional structures through which knowledge is produced and reproduced is vital. I’m always looking to see what might be the wider contexts that are shaping the why’s and the how’s, so I try not to look at museum developments in isolation from the bigger socio-political forces or individual idiosyncrasies that influence them.

In terms of staying innovative, I think teaching really helps, as does writing synthesis pieces, as all of that gives you the opportunity to have a birds’-eye view of whole fields and you can see trends, gaps and challenges.

Surprise us with something unexpected you encountered in your research for this book.

I’m not sure it is unexpected but perhaps it goes against received wisdom that more recent archival records of work done in the 1990s or early 2000s will be comprehensive. I found them instead to be very sparse and harder to access than records of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that I’m more used to working with. The move to computers and online working has left much data trapped on outmoded forms of data storage (DVDs/1990s spreadsheets on floppy disks etc.), while the paper record is much thinner in terms of correspondence, etc.

In terms of research content, the biggest surprise for me was the dynamics of artists’ interventions at the British Museum which were much more radical than I think is generally known. Yet the fact that these interventions have not had as much of a legacy and impact in that institution is telling. Looking at the factors for why that may be is the subject of Chapter 3 of the book.

What do you see as the most exciting future directions for research in your field, and what breakthroughs do you hope to see in the coming years?

It’s refreshing to see more practitioner views and voices from outside the Eurocentric canons. Those ‘behind the scenes’ aspects of museums – collections management and storage – are also being shown to be anything but ‘background’ or ‘incidental’, and it is there that we are seeing transformations in practice that can shift the field. There’s also a heartening wider acceptance of the role that legacy collections play in archaeology and that innovative, dynamic and significant archaeological research can and does happen in museum spaces and not just through excavating more stuff in the field. The museum is not just about managing and exhibiting. Some of the old claims that the archaeological record is ‘finite’ (i.e. in danger/are limited) are really challenged by the many ways people can work with collections and the fresh perspectives different voices and backgrounds can bring. 

What advice would you give to students who are interested in pursuing a career in your field, and what skills or qualities do you think are most important for success?

Don’t under-estimate the value of mundane or routinised work such as database entry, archival sorting, or administrative tasks. Understanding how museums or institutions work from the collections outwards, rather than critiquing it from the outside in, is really important for grounded, realistic and meaningful studies.

What do you do to stay motivated and inspired in your work, and how do you maintain a positive attitude even in challenging situations?

I take inspiration for getting time to immerse myself in museums, collections or archives. Too much sitting in front of a laptop and working through academic papers is draining. My research has to be grounded in working with things and engaging with people.

In terms of motivation I’m generally an optimist and am pretty stubborn by nature, meaning I tend to plough through things to get them done. Being from Edinburgh, with a long Scottish family heritage, I picked up the ‘Scottish Presbyterian work ethic’ early, which helps – although I somewhat dispense with the frugality and ensure I do treat myself. I have clear boundaries of never working after 9pm, always closing the laptop at 5pm on Friday to make way for wine and a nice dinner, making sure the weekend is for family. Regular catch ups with friends and colleagues keep me positive, as do regular gym workouts – I can never be bothered with yoga or Pilates, it has to fast and energetic like a HIIT or Circuits class to some upbeat tunes. 

About the author

Alice Stevenson is Professor of Museum Archaeology at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology. She has previously held posts as the Curator of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and as Researcher in World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Her academic specialization is Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egyptian archaeology, but she has a written on a broad range of topics including the history of archaeology, anthropology and museums.

Alice’s previous UCL Press publications include Scattered Finds (2019), Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice (as co-editor, 2023) and The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology: Characters and Collections (as editor, 2015)

To celebrate the publication of Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic: An Introductory Text, we are delighted to publish an interview with the author, Dr Assaf Bar-Moshe.

Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic was the native tongue spoken by the Jews of Baghdad and other towns of Southern Iraq, historically one of the oldest and biggest Jewish communities. This textbook is dedicated to spoken Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic and is designed to guide beginners to an advanced level, with the goal of enabling basic conversations. It focuses on common expressions of this unique dialect and opens a window to Baghdad’s historic Jewish culture. The 10 lessons guide readers through topics such as greetings, family, shopping or cuisine, and consist of sample texts, key vocabulary, grammar points and exercises.

In this interview, Dr Bar-Moshe explains his connection to Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic, gives insights into his approach to language research and describes how the academic study of rare languages is evolving.

What motivated you to write and publish this book?

The textbook focuses on teaching my mother tongue, Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic, a distinct dialect of Arabic once spoken by the Jewish community in Baghdad, which differed significantly from the dialect spoken by Muslims in the city. With the dialect on the verge of extinction, documenting it and compiling a grammar became one of my top priorities as a linguist. When I began teaching at the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages (OSRJL), I discovered a strong interest in learning this dialect. Given the lack of available learning materials, I developed my own. As they grew, I realised they could form the foundation of a textbook.

Tell us more about your background and experience.

I am a linguist who initially focused on researching Mandarin Chinese. However, when my MA supervisor learned that my family speaks the Jewish dialect of Baghdad, he encouraged me to pursue my PhD on the subject – and I did. I earned my PhD from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, while also spending two years at Heidelberg University, where I honed my skills in Arabic dialectology. Since completing my PhD, I have expanded my research to other Judeo-Arabic dialects across Mesopotamia, such as the Jewish dialect of ˁĀna. My current research project at Freie Universität in Berlin is dedicated to documenting as many Jewish dialects of Arabic in Mesopotamia as possible before they disappear, and to writing a comparative grammar of these dialects. This work aims to help reconstruct the history of some of these Jewish communities through their linguistic remnants.

How and why did you get into this subject area?

I have always been fascinated by languages, which led me to pursue academic degrees in Linguistics. As mentioned earlier, I initially focused on researching Mandarin Chinese. I never considered that Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic, the language I grew up hearing and speaking, was a subject worthy of research. Fortunately, my PhD supervisor, Eran Cohen, opened my eyes to this incredible field of study.

Why did you choose to publish your work Open Access?

I believe that knowledge should not be limited to academic circles, especially when so many people are eager to learn about their mother tongue and heritage. OSRJL has done an excellent job of making this knowledge accessible online, free of charge, and available globally through teaching. I want to contribute by offering this open-access textbook, ensuring that anyone, anywhere, can freely access this valuable information.

What do you see as the most exciting future directions and potential breakthroughs in your field, and how do you envision your research contributing to a deeper understanding of the world?

My research is focused on documenting and analysing the Jewish Arabic dialects of Mesopotamia before they disappear, with the goal of creating a comprehensive comparative grammar that can help trace a common linguistic ancestor, or ancestors, for these dialects. By preserving and studying these linguistic remnants, I hope to contribute valuable insights into the history of Jewish communities in Mesopotamia, offering historians linguistic evidence as a kind of archaeological relics to better understand the cultural and historical journey of these communities.

What do you think sets your approach apart from others in your field, and how do you stay innovative?

I follow the methodology established by German dialectologists decades ago in the field of Arabic dialectology. While the field has evolved, the core principle remains: any statement or conclusion must be based on real data, and real data is gathered through fieldwork with native speakers of the dialect. However, when it comes to Jewish Arabic dialects, the work becomes more complex. Few native speakers remain, and those who do have often been separated from their Judeo-Arabic mother tongue for decades. As a result, my work focuses not just on documenting these dialects but on attempting to reconstruct them. This approach is more challenging but also far more fascinating – much like detective work.

Surprise us with something unexpected you encountered in your research for this book.

As a textbook, it’s fairly straightforward academically, and the content didn’t present any major surprises. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming positive feedback and support I received from students, colleagues and staff at OSRJL, UCL Press and other organisations dedicated to Jewish languages and heritage worldwide. It’s truly heartwarming to know that this dialect holds such importance for so many people across the globe.

What advice would you give to students who are interested in pursuing a career in your field, and what skills or qualities do you think are most important for success?

The field is evolving, as in a few decades there will no longer be any informants available for interviews. Therefore, students in the coming decade must prioritise field research before time runs out. This work demands patience and strong interpersonal skills. In two decades, however, students will need to shift their focus to other research resources, primarily written ones. Reconstructing dialects through written sources is an area that has only been marginally explored, yet it holds significant potential.

What do you do to stay motivated and inspired in your work, and how do you maintain a positive attitude even in challenging situations?

I am deeply inspired by my students and their passion for learning and speaking this language, even though it may not be particularly useful in a practical sense. Hearing them speak this dialect is truly a pleasure. For those learning it for heritage reasons, I admire their determination to embrace a language that was marginalised in their childhood. It helps them heal from that experience and take pride in their heritage. In my research, I am driven by the knowledge that I am preserving the Jewish dialects of Mesopotamia for future generations, who will not have the opportunity to hear it from native speakers. On a personal level, every small discovery in the reconstruction of these dialects brings me immense happiness.

What is something you are never asked, but wish you were?

I don’t have a clear answer to this question, but it reminds me of something I’m often asked, especially by those close to me: why is this research important? I think when people imagine academic work, they picture breakthroughs in medicine or astrophysics, where the benefits seem more obvious (although, if they saw the level of detail these fields delve into, they might ask the same question). I wish people would place more value on their own history, culture and language. Without textbooks like this, a vital piece of our identity could disappear within a few decades.

About the author

Dr Assaf Bar-Moshe gained his PhD from the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at the Hebrew University. His main area of interest is Jewish Arabic dialects in Mesopotamia. Having dedicated years to the research of the Jewish dialects of Baghdad and ˁĀna, Dr Bar-Moshe is currently working in Freie Universität, Berlin on documenting additional dialects towards a comparative analysis of Jewish Arabic dialects in the region. Dr Bar-Moshe is also teaching courses in Iraqi Judeo-Arabic at the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages. 

To mark the publication of An Anthropological Approach to mHealth, which is available to readers all over the world as an open access download, we are delighted to publish an interview with one of the book’s editors, Professor Daniel Miller.

This book proposes a radically different anthropological approach to the development and dissemination of mobile health (mHealth), a rapidly growing sector in healthcare. The studies carried out by the book’s contributors found that many people use their mobile and smartphones for health purposes to a surprising extent. But instead of using bespoke apps created by health and other professionals, they take the communicative apps they have become comfortable with, such as LINE, WeChat and WhatsApp, and are highly creative in turning them into their own health apps.

This body of research also provided many additional insights, and shows how an anthropological approach situated in the observation of everyday life can be the foundation for an alternative but highly promising perspective on the future of mHealth.

Tell us more about your background and experience in this field.

I have worked at the department of anthropology at UCL for 43 years. I have also had a very productive relationship with UCL Press. My book series Why We Post published with UCL Press has now reached 1,800,000 downloads. This book is the eighth in our new series, Ageing with Smartphones.

UCL is surely the leading centre for the study of digital anthropology. We have the first and so far only master’s programme in these studies. We published the first textbook and have a centre for Digital Anthropology, we have the most staff dedicated to such studies etc. This book series arose from a five-year programme of research funded by the European Research Council, with fieldsites all around the world, including Africa, China, Europe and Latin America. What is new about it is that it is our first book in either of these series to focus on how our work can be used to enhance the welfare of populations through a better understanding of smartphone apps used for health purposes.

What do you enjoy most about your work?

I passionately believe in anthropology as an increasingly important discipline. We cannot educate on the basis of ignorance and as life has become more private we need to have the commitment and patience to get to know people and become part of their everyday life such that we really do have direct knowledge of what their lives are like and in our case the actual consequences of digital technologies. All our work involves spending 16 months in fieldwork. Basically, this is the kind of work you do if you really like people and find them endlessly fascinating. Also if you are sociable and enjoy friendship and companionship. My own fieldwork was in a small town in Ireland. I got to spend evenings in pubs listening to Irish trad music, and joining many community activities such as trying (and failing) to play the ukelele or helping the local theatre or men’s shed. Every day consisted of meeting and learning from the people I was living amongst. Of course I enjoy this work immensely, as also the subsequent process of analysis, making sense of what I have observed and trying to convey it to others through writing, making films and other forms of dissemination.

How do you work with authors and contributors to ensure their voices are heard and their work is presented in the best possible light?

This book, as all the others in our series, is a product of teamwork. A group of people who constantly met or discussed each other’s research and then writing. Just as fieldwork is essentially a sociable activity, so is the work that produced this book. Everyone in the team is equally represented in this volume. Anthropology is no longer an ‘us’ studying a ‘them’: the researchers who author this book are themselves from Africa, Palestine, China and Latin America, representing also the range of places where we studied. The style of anthropological writing is to provide empathetic portraits of the people we lived amongst so one has a sense of their individual voice. Often we discuss with them our findings and writings. Thanks to our books being open access and translated into the languages of our fieldsites the people we worked with are able to read them and comment on them. There has been considerable interest in my own writing about this town in Ireland and extracts from my work have been published in the town’s own bi-weekly magazine.

How do you balance the need for academic rigour with the need to make your publications accessible and engaging to a broader audience?

Anthropology has perhaps a special place in balancing scholarship and accessibility, since the foundation of our publications is trying to empathetically convey the lives and feelings of the people we lived amongst. So all our publications include stories of the lives and struggles of individuals, so that we show our humanist acknowledgement that every individual is unique at the same time as presenting analytical and theoretical generalisations that we use to try and explain why people do what they do and think what they think. The nearly two million downloads of our publications with UCL Press suggest that this does lead to the kind of engagement with audiences we hope for. As well as our books our UCL website includes short videos, cartoons, brief descriptions of our findings and other multimodal forms that complement our work. What was unique to much of the recent series, though not included in this particular book, is the inclusion of short videos within the UCL books.

What advice would you give to aspiring editors, and what do you think are the key skills and attributes required?

Editing is hard and responsible work. Often our books include authors who are just starting out on their career and welcome detailed commentary on how best to improve their work. Often papers will go back and forth between authors and editors many times before we are jointly satisfied with the result. Editors also have to balance the desire by some authors to continue working on their papers with the need to publish quickly in order not to let down those who sent in their papers early and need the publications for their career. Often I find myself writing passages to authors that try to exemplify what we are aiming for and provide concrete examples, rather than just criticising a submission.

Surprise us with something unexpected you encountered in your work on this book.

Before we started this work hardly any of the authors had experience in trying to shift from purely academic work to actually getting engaged in activities designed to directly improve people’s welfare. So it was really great that everyone managed to make that transition and provide so many interesting insights as a result. For example I had never imagined prior to this that I would actually jointly produce a game that can be downloaded on your smartphones (Trini Food Quiz) to help people in Trinidad and Tobago learn about hypertension and diet. But others found themselves involved in chemotherapy clinics or the work of nutritionists and a broad range of other medical activities which again was entirely new to us.

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing academic book publishing today, and how do you see the industry evolving in the future?

I feel passionately committed to UCL Press in particular. Thanks to open access, ethnographic monographs that used to sell around 600 copies might now be downloaded to 200,000 people. As well as the agreement to publish our books in translation that ensures we reach people in the places where we do our fieldwork. For an anthropologist, the global reach of the Press aligns closely with our own ethical commitments. So my main concern is that universities in general should combine together to take back publishing from commercial concerns and as an aggregate provide the business model that ensures that universities will actually save money, by no longer paying exorbitant fees to other publishers but as with UCL Press undertake the publishing ourselves. In a way I am just surprised that this is taking so long to achieve.

About the author

Daniel Miller is Professor of Anthropology at UCL. He has specialised in the anthropology of material culture, consumption and now digital anthropology. He recently directed the Why We Post project about the use and consequences of social media. He is author/editor of 47 books including The Comfort of Things, Stuff, The Global Smartphone, Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland (with Pauline Garvey) and his most recent book The Good Enough Life.

Charlotte Hawkins is Postdoctoral Researcher in Social Anthropology and author of Ageing with Smartphones in Uganda. Her work focuses on social economies of mental health and wellbeing.

Patrick Awondo is a lecturer at the University of Yaoundé 1, Cameroon. He is the author of Le sexe et ses doubles. (Homo)sexualités en postcolonie.

To mark World Food Day, we’re re-publishing a chat we had in 2017 with Professor Robert Biel, author of Sustainable Food Systems. 

UCL Press: We’re intrigued about your pathway into this topic.

Well it converged from two directions. I’ve been an allotment holder for 15 years, experimenting with a low-input, high-productivity method where you work alongside natural systems, not against them.  That was a hobby, something I loved doing.  Professionally, I was teaching international relations theory, which is a lot about how order can emerge from within a system itself.

In the debate following my first book, The New Imperialism, I discovered general systems theory, which tries to identify what’s common to all systems: they have a capacity to self-regulate, but they can also go haywire.  So I began to understand that the ecological problem and the threats to human society are not two separate challenges which just happen to face us simultaneously; rather, we can study them – and look for answers – in an integrated way.

I addressed this in my 2012 book The Entropy of Capitalism, but at that more general level it was easier to write convincingly about all the bad stuff that was happening, than about solutions! The only way to get to grips with positive solutions was to take a very concrete topic and run with it.  With Sustainable Food Systems, this all came together.

UCL Press: Please tell us a bit about the process, from initial conception, to publication

Together with my colleague Yves Cabannes (editor of Integrating Food into Urban Planning) I started teaching a Masters module on Urban Agriculture, and there were also a few small community food-related action research projects.  This suggested a lot of ideas which I felt somehow needed to be written down.

But the project implies an unusual form of knowledge, drawing on both natural and social sciences.  While general systems theory was a help, I had to be respectful to the integrity of each specific discipline – soil science, anthropology etc. – even where I don’t have specialist training.  To ensure the research was solid, I embraced the peer-review process at several levels.  I started with a conference paper, delivered in Paris in 2012, and then split it into five journal articles and book chapters, all exploring different aspects of food-systems issues.  While I received much important feedback from the reviews on these papers, I was also myself doing quite a lot of peer-reviewing for journals.  And I could trust the peer-review system for the quality of research in the leading scientific journals which I was citing.

At the same time, the ‘new paradigm’, also implies deeper issues of fundamental world view.  In this sense, knowledge (or maybe we should say wisdom) should not be reduced to academic research.  The traditional/indigenous spirituality doesn’t see a distinction between nature and society anyway, it understands that our minds are part of nature, and correctly sees farming as intrinsically rooted in the wider ecosystemic context.  In this sense, visioning sustainable futuresis also a return, to a more authentic way of apprehending the world and our place in it.

Finally, the project implied a different publishing model.  Though there were enquiries from conventional publishing, I quickly rejected this when I realised that the form of publication must reflect the content: the book is about emergent order, self-organisation, commons regimes, peer-to-peer, grassroots research … therefore it had to be open-access.  I was delighted that UCL Press was thinking the same way.

UCL Press: What’s your take on organic food? Are you advocating for it?

There are two issues here.  First, from a consumer angle, of course there are dangers from pesticides or loss of nutrients, which are rightly emphasised, but at the end of the day you might just say mainstream agriculture successfully feeds the world and the risk of changing it is too great.  So I would rather approach the question from the production angle: the main thing wrong with conventional farming is that it destroys the complex soil ecosystem and ultimately the soil itself, and therefore the risk of not changing it is too great.  We have a window of opportunity while there’s still enough food around.  That’s why the issue is urgent.

Secondly, ‘organic’ can often seem a negative definition, i.e. we limit ourselves by renouncing chemicals, which makes it seem like we’re farming with one hand tied behind our back.  I’d rather emphasise what we are opting into: a whole new world of biomimicry and self-organisation … that’s why I sometimes prefer a term like Natural Systems Agriculture.  Besides, the problem isn’t just chemicals, but a lot of other stuff: excessive ploughing, monocropping … Much of this is about how we face risk, because natural systems spontaneously evolve in response to shocks, and become stronger in doing so.

UCL Press: Surprise me with something unexpected you encountered in researching this book.

A couple of paradoxes, which are in fact closely linked:

[1] When looking for cutting-edge examples of the new paradigm in action – learning from nature, self-assembly and self-healing, not trying to control systems too much – I found them in areas like industrial design and materials science; farming in contrast, which you might expect to be our interface with nature, is still horribly conservative and stuck in the old ways. Wonderful research is being done, about soil systems for example, but translating this into an innovative, high-productivity, totally biomimicked farming practice: that’s not yet the mainstream, it’s still very peripheral.

[2] The countryside is so heavily depleted by herbicides, pesticides and monocropping, that cities are potentially havens for nature to regenerate itself: this has been beautifully demonstrated by green roofs, for example, and is potentially very encouraging for a programme of greening the city.  We might even pioneer the new paradigm here!

UCL Press: The book has an optimistic vibe, because it’s about solutions, and as you’ve said, some elements of ‘paradigm shift’ already underway.  So what’s blocking it?  And in particular, how do you interpret the recent Right-wing nationalist backlash.

In the book, I paraphrase a quote from Lenin, about the ruling system being dragged against its will into a new social order.  The shift in world politics towards the nationalist Right shows the system digging its heels in, frantically resisting the implications which its very own development has unleashed.  That’s the aspect internal to society.  But then there’s the environmental context: climate – plus soil-degradation and species-loss – forms the backdrop to everything.

So why is the nationalist Right addicted to climate denial? Because if we take climate seriously, we’d have to face up to the social conditions demanded by resilience: decentralised capacity, peer-to-peer networks, modularity, non-monetary exchange, commons regimes.  These are all evident in today’s food-related social movements – seed-sharing for example.  The issue is inevitably political: a new ‘order’ is a self-organised, emergent order.  That’s what scares the ruling interests.

UCL Press: So what about this term ‘food sovereignty’? That sounds nationalistic in a way…

I think it was always more about community autonomy.  But in a deeper sense, I take your point: we must dare to be normative, not just describe a movement like food sovereignty, but discover what it should be.  A lot about the ‘old’ food sovereignty was resisting the extreme neo-liberal agenda of ‘free’ trade and its disastrous implications for food, and that was all very necessary, but it was only a phase.  In the book I try to place this in a much broader historical context. You have millennia of resistance against exploitative agrarian systems, then against colonialism and imperialism, then against the ‘Green Revolution’ of the Cold War; at an English level, there is an unbroken legacy: the peasants’ revolt, the Diggers of 1649, early 19^th century Chartists, the Land and Freedom movement of the 1970s, and some inspiring contemporary stuff. If the ruling agenda is today shifting away from ‘free’ trade, the enduring issues of commons and land rights haven’t changed.

At the same time, today’s food sovereignty must also face up to new challenges.  What has gone haywire (in society and its relations with nature) has been a narrowing, homogenisation, simplification.  Physically, this is seen in the shrinking variety of crops being cultivated, in the strains of each crop etc.; socio-politically this is seen in intolerance, xenophopia, the narrowing of discourses.  If that is permitted, we will have a system (in food, in society) which fractures and disintegrates in the face of shocks.

So if we are to respond to this threat, I would say – prolonging the book’s argument – that if political liberalism has in a sense destroyed itself by hitching itself to economic neo-liberalism, then the good things which used to be (very imperfectly) identified with liberalism must be regenerated on a new basis: tolerance, pluralism, what I’d call a ‘new cosmopolitanism’ … in essence a diverse system which can produce innovation from anywhere and which – when it faces shocks – will get stronger.

The movement over land and food can be a flagship for this.  Today, the academic and science community is trying to resist the attacks of obscurantism, but can’t do this alone: it needs mass allies.  This is precisely what the land/food-related struggles – of peasants, indigenous peoples, the urban masses – can supply; the academic world has important knowledge to offer, but it will also be itself transformed by discovering a new social relevance.

In these ways, researching the book, I got some kind of glimpse of a new world coming into being.  It’s exciting to feel part of this.

About the Author

Robert Biel is Professor of the Political Ecology of Sustainable Food at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL.

Today we are proud to publish Structural Injustice and the Law, edited by Professor Virginia Mantouvalou and Professor Jonathan Wolff. This interdisciplinary collection presents theoretical approaches and concrete examples to show how the concept of structural injustice can aid legal analysis, and how legal reform can reduce or even eliminate some forms of structural injustice.

We are grateful to Virginia and Jonathan for taking the time to answer a few questions about their research, their experiences compiling this volume and their techniques for communicating academic topics to a broad audience.

Tell us more about your background and experience in this field.

Virginia: I have researched and taught on issues affecting precarious workers for many years now. I have also worked with civil society organisations that focus on workplace exploitation. In doing so, I try to understand the role of the law in protecting precarious workers or in increasing their vulnerability to exploitation. I have realised that the exploitation of precarious workers is not only due to some bad employers, ‘a few bad apples’, but that legal rules may have a role to play in increasing their vulnerability: an idea that I describe as ‘state-mediated structural injustice’. Legal change can also strengthen the position of these workers. On the basis of these ideas, I wrote a monograph on Structural Injustice and Workers’ Rights (OUP 2023). While working on that book, I felt strongly that I wanted to understand more broadly the role of the law in relation to structural injustice. Do legal rules, perhaps inadvertently, contribute to structural injustice? Can the law help address injustices that appear to be structural, namely when it may seem that no one is to blame? I discussed this broader idea on structural injustice and the law with Jonathan Wolff, a leading political philosopher, who was immediately positive and enthusiastic about co-organising a workshop at UCL. That’s how it all started!

Jonathan: I have, for a long time, been interested in the topic that is now known as ‘structural injustice’: essentially the idea that there are injustices that cannot be attributed to particular agents, but are instead a result of combined social forces. One can find such a view in the Marxist tradition, for example, but in recent years it is the American philosopher Iris Marion Young who has brought the issue to wide attention. I wrote a paper on the topic, taught it in graduate classes, and have discussed it widely. My co-editor Virginia Mantouvalou has been a pioneer in applying the idea of structural injustice to the law. She proposed that we put on a conference together on the topic, and it was so successful that we decided to co-edit this book.

What do you enjoy most about your work?

Virginia: There’s so much I love about academic work: that I can focus on social and legal problems I find pressing; read widely and across disciplines on these issues and develop my own arguments; discuss with colleagues and be challenged by them; teach students and learn from them; learn from people who have practical experience and share any insights from my work with them; and much more.

Jonathan: As a political philosopher who has been in academia for 40 years, it’s wonderful to see people being stimulated by the writings of people of my generation and to develop it their own way. It’s the idea, I think, of learning from the previous generations and hoping to build on that and pass on a little more that motivates many of us in academia, and it certainly does for me. I greatly enjoy seeing younger scholars developing their ideas and projects for themselves. At the same time, as a teacher, it’s wonderful to see people falling in love with the subject, whether or not they want to make it the centre of the rest of their lives.

How do you work with authors and contributors to ensure their voices are heard and their work is presented in the best possible light?

Jonathan: I can’t say that this is something I would especially claim to do. For this volume we chose excellent, highly respected figures, and gave them the space and forum to develop their own ideas under our gentle guidance, which most of them don’t really need.

Virginia: I think that it always helps if an edited book is based on a workshop or conference, as we did with Structural Injustice and the Law where we hosted a workshop at the Faculty of Laws at UCL. This helped us understand better some key ideas and terms, hear and consider objections to our arguments, and improve our papers. My co-editor and I also read draft papers of all authors and gave them feedback, but their work was of such quality that this was very straightforward.

How do you balance the need for academic rigour with the need to make your publications accessible and engaging to a broader audience?

Jonathan: I don’t see a trade-off between rigour and accessibility, though there is often a conflict between the use of jargon and understandability. It’s easy as academics to fall into the mistake of assuming that everyone knows the same vocabulary as you do, but this can be problematic, especially in inter-disciplinary fields where the same term can mean different things. As a writer you have to ask yourself who your hoped-for audience is, and what you need to do to make your ideas available to them. For myself I tend to use examples and anecdotes to illustrate ideas and distinctions, but everyone has their own ways.

Virginia: I don’t think that academic rigour is in conflict with accessibility. Writing clearly and avoiding jargon is important so that our work is read widely and across disciplines. I personally also like using stories to illustrate my points. In law, these stories can come from cases, but also from empirical research about the effects of the law on people’s lives. One other way in which I try to make my work more accessible is by writing blog posts with the main ideas and problems that I identify in my academic research. These blog posts are even less technical and more easily accessible to a wide range of audiences.

What advice would you give to aspiring editors, and what do you think are the key skills and attributes required?

Virginia: Editing a book is a lot of work, so I’ve only done it when I was passionate about a topic and felt that there is a real need for this work to be done. Having a co-editor is always great because you can exchange ideas and deal with challenges together. An important skill is to be well organised, as you will need to remind authors about deadlines, which can be a challenge when editing a book.

Jonathan: Editing a volume can be a huge amount of work. It’s better, in my experience, to work with a co-editor, so you can bounce ideas around. It can also be dispiriting – when papers are late, and not exactly what you expected – but with two editors you can share the load and keep cheerful. I’d also say that if someone is unsure whether they can deliver a paper for a collection, don’t put them under pressure, but find others who want to do it. If someone feels under enormous pressure it’s unlikely they will deliver their best work, and you will all be frustrated. The key skills needed as an editor are patience and the ability to encourage, motivate, and give constructive feedback. Most academics are perfectly capable of this if they put their minds to it.

Surprise us with something unexpected you encountered in your work on this book.

Jonathan: It was a great surprise to me to find myself reading a paper on the films of Ken Loach, in a volume on structural injustice and the law. But Guy Mundlak’s is not only a superb paper in itself; it is a wonderful illustration of the themes of the book. Hugely illuminating and enjoyable.

Virginia: I don’t know if it was unexpected, but I was delighted by the enthusiasm that all our authors in the book showed from the minute we invited them to contribute. It was really rewarding.

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing academic book publishing today, and how do you see the industry evolving in the future?

Jonathan: I only have the most obvious things to say. People are getting used to the idea of not paying to read books or articles. That’s not a shocking idea – it’s the way public libraries have always functioned. Nevertheless, money is needed to produce books and articles, to publish them to a high standard and to market them. Public and school libraries were, in effect, paid for by the taxpayer, so the publishing industry had a huge, hidden, public subsidy. Now, with open access we are moving to a new world, and I don’t think we’ve figured out the business model on a large scale. I’m sure there will still be physical books and public libraries, but the balance will continue to shift as it is developing.

Virginia: Publishing open access is a challenge and an opportunity in the field, I think, as academic books can be very expensive and hence inaccessible to most people. I am delighted that our book Structural Injustice and the Law is published open access by UCL Press. Thank you so much for your support on that!

About the editors

Virginia Mantouvalou is Professor of Human Rights and Labour Law at UCL Faculty of Laws.

Jonathan Wolff is Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford and Governing Body Fellow, Wolfson College Oxford.

Today marks the publication of a new book from UCL Press: Inclusion, Diversity and Innovation in Translation Education, edited by Dr Alejandro Bolaños García-Escribano and Dr Mazal Oaknín. We are delighted to celebrate this new publication by sharing an interview with Alejandro and Mazal, exploring their backgrounds in the field of translation education, their reflections on the process of editing an academic volume, and their thoughts about the future of academic publishing.

Tell us more about your background and experience in this field.

Alejandro: I have been involved in translation education since 2016 when I started training subtitlers at UCL Centre for Translation Studies. Since 2022, I have served as Associate Editor for The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, a leading scholarly journal on translation and interpreting education.

Mazal: Although I have been teaching Spanish language and literature since I graduated, my BA was in Translation. Pedagogical translation plays a key part in my teaching and research interests. I am also on the Editorial Board of Hikma: Translation Studies Journal

What do you enjoy most about your work?

Alejandro & Mazal: We have found many opportunities to collaborate and build a network within and beyond UCL. Our seminars and publications have opened up new research possibilities that have materialised in this book. Our activities have also nurtured a healthy work atmosphere, allowing us to exchange expertise and build a community of like-minded translation educators.

How do you work with authors and contributors to ensure their voices are heard and their work is presented in the best possible light?

Alejandro & Mazal: From the inception of this writing project, we have strived to include a diversity of voices from an array of backgrounds and areas of knowledge. We have worked closely with our contributors to ensure that the book aligns with our ethos on EDI approaches in education. Our work ethics enhances the human factor behind the production of an edited volume of this calibre. This is our trademark and something that we are extremely proud of.

How do you balance the need for academic rigour with the need to make your publications accessible and engaging to a broader audience?

Alejandro & Mazal: Since 2018, we have made efforts to disseminate our research through a series of free, hybrid seminars featuring renowned speakers and cutting-edge education-focused projects and proposals. Albeit scholarly rigorous and therefore appealing to lecturers and researchers alike, these seminars have also attracted much attention from students, language instructors and professionals. This is a testament to the accessible nature of our seminar series, on which this book has been based. In our book, we as editors as well as our contributors have followed this principle, ensuring that content is adequate for a wide readership.

What advice would you give to aspiring editors, and what do you think are the key skills and attributes required?

Alejandro & Mazal: Editors must never lose sight of the overarching themes and rationale of the book. At the same time, a good degree of flexibility is needed to accommodate new circumstances that might arise and thereby affect the workflow, structure or timeline of the writing process. In this respect, communication is always key, and editors need to be in regular touch with contributors and series editors, ensuring that there are no misunderstandings – everyone needs to always be on the same page at all times. For instance, we created ad-hoc documents including components such as rationale, structure, writing style guide, etc. Last but not least, it is easy to get dragged down by the possible challenges but remember to always enjoy the process and the promising opportunities it presents.

Surprise us with something unexpected you encountered in your work on this book.

Alejandro & Mazal: We are extremely pleased to have received the support of many colleagues from the outset. Among our long-term collaborators are UCL’s Centre for Humanities Education (CHE) and the Institute of Advances Studies (IAS), which have duly supported this initiative from its inception. We look forward to our book launch, generously sponsored by both CHE and IAS, on 11 November 2024. Looking back at our initial meeting with the series editors, we could not possibly imagine that so many renowned scholars and specialists would have endorsed the publication of this book. This has been a welcome confirmation of its relevance and timeliness.

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing academic book publishing today, and how do you see the industry evolving in the future?

Alejandro & Mazal: There is a lot to unpack here! Despite its endless opportunities, artificial intelligence is undoubtedly disrupting the ways in which researchers obtain, analyse and discuss data as well as the writing process itself. In the face of ‘Publish or Perish’, scholars are under constant pressure to have their work published, which could potentially lead to malpractice in some cases.

In a more general sense, as Lecturers who work closely with students, we see the impact that social media has on our understanding of knowledge – for instance, the expectation of immediacy, the lack of nuance and the sweeping power of buzzwords appear to have replaced the need for in-depth research, reflection and discussion.

We believe that reflection and critical thinking cannot be rushed in academic publications, and to lead by example we have done our best to find the time and space that this volume has required in the past few years.

About the editors

Alejandro Bolaños García-Escribano (SFHEA, MCIL, CL) is Associate Professor in Audiovisual Translation at University College London.

Mazal Oaknín (FHEA) is Associate Professor (Teaching) and Language Coordinator of Spanish at University College London.