New open access books published in March 2025
Posted on 7th April, 2025
After a dark, wet Winter, Spring has finally sprung. We’ve had a very busy month on the book front, with a bumper crop of seven new open access titles.
The first title to publish in March, Reading Randomised Controlled Trials investigates the complexities of conducting randomised controlled trials in the field of education. The Flexible Phonics trial is not only an important experiment in improving children’s literacy, but a case study in which the methodology of single randomised controlled trials in education can be considered.
The intriguing William Lawrence and the Organ of Mind explores the historical origins and ideological valence of the conceptualisation of thought and mind as functions of the brain in early nineteenth-century Britain.
Precarious Motherhood is an important ethnography that explores the experiences of racially minoritised mothers who have insecure immigration status and are living with financial hardship in London. It goes beyond the mother-child relationship to consider the impact on mothers’ couple relationships, friendships, adult kin relationships and faith-based networks.
Moving between economic history and the history of medicine, Between Feast and Famine is a comparative history of nutrition across the diverse spaces that make up modern Ghana. At the heart of this story is an analysis of how colonisation and capitalism variously affected the lives of women and children since the end of the nineteenth century.
Ethnographic museums have come under increasing scrutiny. Now is a good time to explore whether new developments in display and cultural politics provide a viable future for ethnographic museums. Authors in Reframing the Ethnographic Museum grapple with the new complexities facing them as curators in the contemporary world.
An Anthropology of Architectural Transformation is a fascinating ethnographic investigation of everyday life in a Romanian apartment block. It provides a unique window into how inhabitants, through everyday creative engagements with their apartments, come to terms with the uncertainties of a rapidly changing society. If you’re interested in an early ‘Easter egg’ from the author, there’s an absorbing on the ‘Resources’ tab of the book’s product page.
A companion to 2019’s Fundamentals of Galaxy Dynamics, Formation and Evolution, Fundamentals of Dark Matter, this open access textbook focuses on pedagogy that guides students through the facts regarding dark matter. The material can be used as the main textbook for a dedicated module on dark matter and to support a general course on extragalactic astrophysics and cosmology.
We’ll be back again next month with a round up of the very best open access books. As always, stay safe!