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The Bankruptcy
A Novel
Júlia Lopes de Almeida
University College London, 2023
The first novel-length translation of Júlia Lopes de Almeida’s writing into English.

Set in the early years of Brazil’s Old Republic after the abolition of slavery, Júlia Lopes de Almeida's The Bankruptcy depicts the rise and fall of a wealthy coffee exporter against a kaleidoscopic background of glamour, poverty, seduction, and financial speculation. The novel introduces readers to a turbulent period in Brazilian history seething with new ideas about democracy, women’s emancipation, and the role of religion in society. Originally published in 1901, its prescient critiques of financial capitalism and the patriarchal family remain relevant today.

In her lifetime, Júlia Lopes de Almeida was compared to Machado de Assis, the most important Brazilian writer of the nineteenth century. She was also considered for the inaugural list of members of the Brazilian Academy of Letters but was excluded because of her gender. In the decades after her death, her work was largely forgotten. This publication, a winner of the English PEN award, includes an introduction to the novel and a translators' preface and accompanies a general rediscovery of her extraordinary body of work in Brazil.
 
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Beards and Texts
Images of Masculinity in Medieval German Literature
Sebastian Coxon
University College London, 2021
A study of beard motifs in medieval German poetry.
 
Beards make frequent appearances in medieval German poetry—as esteemed markers of majestic wisdom or as hilarious props for undignified manhandling. In Beards and Texts, Sebastian Coxon traces this preeminent symbol of masculinity through four major poetic traditions across the twelfth and sixteenth centuries—Pfaffe Konrad’s Rolandslied, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Willehalm, ‘Sangspruchdichtung’, and Heinrich Wittenwiler’s Ring. By attending to this hairy trope, Beards and Texts sheds new light on the construction of both poetic form and masculinity in the Middle Ages.
 
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Becoming a Scholar
Cross-Cultural Reflections on Identity and Agency in an Education Doctorate
Edited by Maria Savva and Lynn P. Nygaard
University College London, 2021
A window into the lives of nine non-traditional doctoral students and their journeys to become scholars.

This book provides a window into the lives of nine non-traditional doctoral students. As mature, part-time, international students enrolled in a professional doctorate program, the students reflect on the transformation process of becoming scholars, as their narratives provide breadth and depth to themes that represent a diverse cross-section of cultures, identities, and communities. The volume brings the “human face” behind the doctoral journey to the forefront, as the narratives draw much-needed attention to the personal journey that inevitably parallels and intersects with the academic journey. Although the narratives are drawn from a professional doctor-in-education program based in the United Kingdom, the struggles will resonate with a much wider range of doctoral students and academics, sparking lively discussion, debate, and reflection. A must-read for students preparing to embark on the doctoral journey, this book will be essential reading for leaders of doctoral programs who wish to equip students with important knowledge about the challenges ahead.
 
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Being Interdisciplinary
Adventures in Urban Science and Beyond
Alan Wilson
University College London, 2022
An accessible and enjoyable guide to interdisciplinary research from a leading academic in urban science.

In Being Interdisciplinary, Alan Wilson draws on five decades as a leading figure in urban science to set out a systems approach to interdisciplinarity for those conducting research in this and other fields. He argues that most research is interdisciplinary at its base and that a systems perspective is particularly appropriate for collaboration because it fosters an outlook that sees beyond disciplines. A systems approach enables researchers to identify the game-changers of the past as a basis for thinking outside of convention, for learning how to do something new and how to be ambitious.
 
Building on this systems focus, the book first establishes the basics of interdisciplinarity. Then, by drawing on the author’s wide experience in interdisciplinary research—as a researcher in urban science, a university professor and vice-chancellor, a civil servant, and an institute director, it illustrates general principles and a framework from which researchers can build their own interdisciplinary approach. In the last section, the book tackles questions of managing and organizing research from individual to institutional scales.
 
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Being Modern
The Cultural Impact of Science in the Early Twentieth Century
Edited by Robert Bud, Paul Greenhalgh, Frank James, and Morag Shiach
University College London, 2018
In the early decades of the twentieth century, engagement with science was commonly used as an emblem of modernity. This phenomenon is now attracting increased attention in different historical specialties. Being Modern builds on this recent interest to explore engagements with science across culture from the end of the nineteenth century to approximately 1940. Addressing the breadth of cultural forms in Britain and the western world from the architecture of Le Corbusier to working class British science fiction, Being Modern paints a rich picture. Seventeen distinguished contributors from a range of fields, including the history of science and technology, art, architecture, and English culture and literature examine the issues involved. The book will be a valuable resource for further examination of culture as an interconnected web of which science was a critical part.
 
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Being Young, Male and Muslim in Luton
Ashraf Hoque
University College London, 2018
What is it like to be a young Muslim man in the wake of the 2005 London bombings? What impact do political factors have on the multifaceted identities of young Muslim men?

Drawn from the author’s ethnographic research of British-born Muslim men in the English town of Luton, Being Young, Muslim and Male in Luton explores the everyday lives of young men and, focusing on how their identity as Muslims has shaped the way they interact with each other, the local community, and the wider world. Through a study of religious values, the pressures of masculinity, the complexities of family and social life, and attitudes towards work and leisure, Ashraf Hoque argues that young Muslims in Luton are subverting what it means to be “British” by consciously prioritizing and rearticulating their “Muslim identities” in novel and dynamic ways that suit their experiences. Employing rich interviews and extensive participant observation, Hoque paints a detailed picture of young Muslims living in a town consistently associated in the popular media with terrorist activity and as a hotbed for radicalization. He challenges widely held assumptions and gives voice to an emerging generation of Muslims who view Britain as their home and are very much invested in the long-term future of the country and their permanent place within it.
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Bentham and Australia
Convicts, Utility and Empire
Edited by Tim Causer, Margot Finn, and Philip Schofield
University College London, 2022
Distinguished scholars contextualize and critically assess Jeremy Bentham’s writings on Australia.

This volume considers Jeremy Bentham’s Australian writings. In the first part of the volume, Bentham’s works are placed in their historical contexts, while the second part provides a critical assessment of the historical accuracy and plausibility of Bentham’s arguments against transportation from the British Isles. In the third part, attention turns to Bentham’s claim that New South Wales was founded illegally and to the imperial and colonial constitutional ramifications of that claim. The authors also discuss Bentham’s work of 1831 in which he supports the establishment of a free colony on the southern coast of Australia. In the final part, the authors shed light on the history of Bentham’s panopticon penitentiary scheme, his views on the punishment and reform of criminals and what role, if any, religion had to play in that regard, and discuss apparently panopticon-inspired institutions built in the Australian colonies.
 
This collection will appeal to readers interested in Bentham’s life and thought, the history of transportation from the British Isles and of British penal policy more generally, colonial and imperial history, Indigenous history, legal and constitutional history, and religious history.
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Bentham and the Arts
Edited by Anthony Julius, Malcolm Quinn, and Philip Schofield
University College London, 2020
Bentham and the Arts considers the skeptical challenge presented by Bentham’s hedonistic utilitarianism to the existence of the aesthetic, as represented in the oft-quoted statement that, ‘Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either.’ Ranging from poetry and sexual nonconformity to the auto-icon and public sculpture, from Hume, Kant, and de Staël to Freud and Michel Onfray, an excellent crew of contributors brings Jeremy Bentham out from the shadow cast by John Stuart Mill with much new to say on taste and politics.
 
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The Bentham Brothers and Russia
The Imperial Russian Constitution and the St Petersburg Panopticon
Roger Bartlett
University College London, 2022
A full account of the St Petersburg Panopticon, the only panopticon built by the Bentham brothers themselves.

The jurist and philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, and his lesser-known brother, Samuel, a talented naval architect, engineer, and inventor, had a long love affair with Russia. Jeremy hoped to assist Empress Catherine II with her legislative projects. Samuel went to St Petersburg to seek his fortune in 1780 and came back with the rank of Brigadier-General and the idea, famously publicized by Jeremy, of the Panopticon. The Bentham Brothers and Russia chronicles the brothers’ later involvement with the Russian Empire when Jeremy focused his legislative hopes on Catherine’s grandson Emperor Alexander I and Samuel found a unique opportunity to build a Panopticon in St Petersburg—the only one ever built by the Benthams themselves. Setting the Benthams’ projects within an in-depth portrayal of the Russian context, Roger Bartlett illuminates an important facet of their later careers and offers insight into their worldview and thought. He also contributes to the history of legal codification in Russia and the demythologizing of the Panopticon, made notorious by Michel Foucault.
 
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Biosocial Worlds
Anthropology of Health Environments Beyond Determinism
Edited by Jens Seeberg, Andreas Roepstorff, and Lotte Meinert
University College London, 2020
Biosocial Worlds offers state-of-the-art contributions to anthropological reflections on the porous boundaries between human and nonhuman life—the biosocial worlds. Based on changing understandings of the natural and the social, the book explores what it means to be human in these worlds, even as the division between scientific disciplines has, for more than a century, maintained a separation of the natural and the social. Drawing on examples from Botswana, Denmark, Mexico, the Netherlands, Uganda, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the volume argues against the separation of the biological and the social in the study of human and nonhuman life and seeks to unfold the consequences of their discursive separation with the aim of rethinking “the biosocial”.
 
Health topics in the book include diabetes, trauma, cancer, HIV, tuberculosis, prevention of neonatal disease, and wider issues of epigenetics. In addition, the book addresses constructions of health and disease in a wide range of environments and engages with analyses of the concept of environment. Anthropological reflection and ethnographic case studies, meanwhile, explore how health and environment are entangled in ways that moves their relation beyond interdependence to one of inseparability.
 
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Biostratigraphic and Geological Significance of Planktonic Foraminifera
Marcelle K. BouDagher-Fadel
University College London, 2015
The role of fossil planktonic foraminifera as markers for biostratigraphical zonation and correlation underpins most drilling of marine sedimentary sequences and is key to hydrocarbon exploration. The first - and only - book to synthesize the whole biostratigraphic and geological usefulness of planktonic foraminifera, Biostratigraphic and Geological Significance of Planktonic Foraminifera unifies existing biostratigraphic schemes and provides an improved correlation reflecting regional biogeographies. Renowned micropaleontologist Marcelle K. Boudagher-Fadel presents a comprehensive analysis of existing data on fossil planktonic foraminifera genera and their phylogenetic evolution in time and space.
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Bloomsbury Scientists
Science and Art in the Wake of Darwin
Michael Boulter
University College London, 2017
The Bloomsbury group is famous for its contributions to literature and art. What’s less well-known is that the milieu also included scientists. This book tells the story of the network of scientists living amid the writers and artists in that single square mile of London immediately before and after World War I. Michael Boulter weaves together Bloomsbury’s multidisciplinary narratives of genetics, ecology, postimpressionism, and literature, and draws intricate connections through the friendships, grievances, quarrels, and affections of the movement’s key players. Bloomsbury Scientists offers a fresh perspective on this history at a time when the complex relationship between science and art continues to be debated.
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Botticelli Past and Present
Edited by Ana Debenedetti and Caroline Elam
University College London, 2019
Botticelli gave us some of the most stunning Renaissance masterpieces. Paintings like Primavera and The Birth of Venus are as beloved today as at the time of their creation, as evidenced by recent exhibitions around the world. Botticelli’s influence and innovations also continue to inspire interest and passionate debate among art historians and lovers of art.

In four chapters, spanning centuries of Botticelli’s artistic fame and reception, Botticelli Past and Present engages with the significant debates about Botticelli. Each chapter collects several essays and includes a short introduction that positions them within the wider scholarly literature on Botticelli. The chapters are organized chronologically, beginning with discussion of the artist and his work in his own time, moving on to the progressive rediscovery of his work from the late eighteenth to the turn of the twentieth century, through to his enduring impact on contemporary art and design.
 
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Brexit and Beyond
Rethinking the Futures of Europe
Edited by Benjamin Martill and Uta Staiger
University College London, 2018
Brexit bears serious consequences not just for Britain but for Europe and the broader balance of global order. Yet most discussions of Brexit have focused on the causes of the “Leave” vote and its implications for the future of British politics.

Drawing the discussion of Brexit beyond Britain, Benjamin Martill, Uta Staiger, and a team of twenty-eight contributors explore the consequences for Europe and the European Union. Marshaling the perspectives and methodologies of a diverse range of disciplines, the contributors chart the likely effects of Brexit on institutional relations, law, political economy, foreign affairs, democratic governance, and the idea of Europe itself. While the contributors at times offer divergent predictions for the future of Europe after Brexit, they share the conviction that careful analysis is in needed—now more than ever—if we are to understand what lies ahead.

Brexit and Beyond is the first book to focus on the broader consequences of Brexit, and its clear, comprehensive, and trenchant analysis will be invaluable to understanding the complex effects.
 
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Brian Simon and the Struggle for Education
Gary McCulloch, Antonio Canales, and Hsiao-Yuh Ku
University College London, 2023
The first full-length study of the life and career of Brian Simon (1915–2002), a leading Marxist intellectual and historian of education in twentieth-century Britain.

Using documentary sources that have only recently become publicly available, this book reveals the remarkably broad range of Brian Simon’s life as a student, soldier, schoolteacher, Communist Party activist, educational academic, campaigner, and reformer. In a sympathetic biography that retains critical distance, the authors analyze Simon’s contribution to Marxism and the Communist Party, explore the influence of both on his work as a historian of education, and trace the significance of his Marxist beliefs, political associations, and historical approaches to the cause of educational reform.

In so doing, they consider the full nature and limitations of Simon’s achievements in his struggle for education. Unlike many Marxist scholars, he remained loyal to the Communist Party in the 1950s, which damaged his reputation as a public intellectual. Nevertheless, his support for comprehensive education helped to promote egalitarian educational reforms in Britain, although he was later unable to provide sufficient resistance to the 1988 Education Reform Act and to a decline in the position of comprehensive schools.

In all this, the significance of Simon’s family, and especially his relationship with his wife Joan, is brought to the fore. Joan and Brian forged a formidable sixty-year partnership in politics and the Communist Party as well as in life, a partnership that lasted until Brian’s death in January 2002. 
 
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Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa
Future Imperfect?
Edited by Andrew W.M. Smith and Chris Jeppesen
University College London, 2017
Looking at decolonization in the conditional tense, this volume teases out the complex and uncertain ends of British and French empire in Africa during the period of ‘late colonial shift’ after 1945. Rather than view decolonization as an inevitable process, the contributors together explore the crucial historical moments in which change was negotiated, compromises were made, and debates were staged. Three core themes guide the analysis: development, contingency and entanglement. The chapters consider the ways in which decolonization was governed and moderated by concerns about development and profit. A complementary focus on contingency allows deeper consideration of how colonial powers planned for ‘colonial futures’, and how divergent voices greeted the end of empire. Thinking about entanglements likewise stresses both the connections that existed between the British and French empires in Africa, and those that endured beyond the formal transfer of power.
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