By Elisa Sandri In late August, alarming reports and harrowing images started to surface from Myanmar. It soon became clear that Rohingya people—a Muslim minority living in a remote region of Rakhine State, bordering Bangladesh—were being killed, tortured, and their villages burnt down. Official Myanmar state outlets reported that Rohingyas had attacked local communities and […]
by Evie Browne In the annual International Worker’s Day (Primero de Mayo) march past the Jose Martí statue in the centre of Havana’s Plaza de la Revolucion, the traditional signs and slogans of the Cuban Revolution were present, with added acknowledgements and recognition of Fidel. I took part in this year’s march as I am […]
by Rebecca Prentice There is for me a sad familiarity in the story of the Grenfell Tower fire. I have spent recent years researching garment factory fires and collapses in Bangladesh. Large-scale fires, no matter where they are, have a recursive quality to them. There is always the story of the spark that begins it, […]
by Magnus Marsden **Previously published at Hurst’s blog.** In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Manchester, the term ‘ungoverned spaces’ has returned to the forefront of public debate about the significance of countries ranging from Syria to Afghanistan for so-called ‘Islamist’ terrorist networks. By instigating regime change in Muslim-majority states without making rigorous plans for their […]
by Fawzia Haeri Mazanderani ** Review first published on LSE Review of Books ** Academic Conferences as Neoliberal Commodities. Donald J. Nicolson. Palgrave Pivot. 2017. While rarely interrogated for the role that they play, academic conferences form a significant part in the construction of an academic career. Any aspiring, or indeed expiring, academic has at […]
by Magnus Marsden The brutal killing of up to 140 Afghan Army soldiers on April 22nd at an army base located near the city of Mazar-i Sharif in the north of Afghanistan raises profoundly troubling questions about the state of the country and wider region. The killings in Mazar come shortly after an attack (claimed […]
Festival Culture: the Romanticisation of Informal Settlements?
by Tim Perkin The show ‘Borderline’, a PSYCHEdelight production, recently took part to an arts festival in the UK. The show portrayed a satirical account of the Calais Jungle, the informal refugee camp in France that hosted up to ten-thousand people. What made the political drama particularly poignant was that many of the members of […]