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Gabriel Harvey and the History of Reading
Essays by Lisa Jardine and others
Edited by Anthony Grafton, Nicholas Popper, and William H. Sherman
University College London, 2024
An accessible exploration of the methodology of the history of reading.

Few articles in the humanities have had the impact of Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton’s seminal “Studied for Action,” a study of the reading practices of Elizabethan polymath and prolific annotator Gabriel Harvey. Their excavation of the setting, methods, and ambitions of Harvey’s encounters with his books ignited a new interdisciplinary field, the history of reading, which quickly became one of the most exciting corners of the scholarly cosmos. A generation inspired by the model of Harvey fanned out across the world’s libraries and archives, seeking to reveal the many creative, unexpected, and curious ways that individuals throughout history responded to texts, and how these interpretations, in turn, illuminate past worlds.

Three decades on, Harvey’s example and Jardine’s work remain central to cutting-edge scholarship in the history of reading. By uniting “Studied for Action” with new studies on Gabriel Harvey, some of which are published here for the first time, by Jardine, Grafton, and the scholars they have influenced, this collection provides a unique lens on the place of marginalia in textual, intellectual, and cultural history. The chapters capture subsequent work on Harvey and map the fields opened by Jardine and Grafton’s original article, collectively offering a posthumous tribute to Lisa Jardine and an authoritative overview of the History of Reading.
 
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Geographic Citizen Science Design
No One Left Behind
Edited by Artemis Skarlatidou and Muki Haklay
University College London, 2020
A selection of case studies in the field of geographic citizen science casting insight on future research.

Unbeknownst to them as they made their scientific discoveries, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and other “gentlemen scientists” would later inspire a field of scientific practice and innovation known as citizen science. Today, the growth and availability of citizen science projects have been substantial, as anyone can now contribute to a scientific discipline without professional qualifications. As a subset of this movement, geographic citizen science presents a unique approach towards supporting the participation of everyday citizens in the collection, analysis, and dissemination of scientific data. This book presents a selection of wide-ranging case studies that provide insights into the design, interaction barriers, and lessons learned from a diverse set of participants. The volume captures the current status of research and development of geographic citizen science, providing critical insight to inform technological innovation and future research in this area.
 
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Georges Perec's Geographies
Material, Performative and Textual Spaces
Edited by Charles Forsdick, Andrew Leak, and Richard Phillips
University College London, 2019
Georges Perec (1936–82) was one of the most inventive and original writers of the twentieth century. A fascinating aspect of his work as a novelist, filmmaker, and essayist is its intrinsically geographical nature. With many major projects on space and place, Perec’s writing speaks to a variety of geographical, urban, and architectural concerns—both in a substantive way, including a focus on cities, streets, and homes, and in a methodological way, as in his experiments with urban observation and exploration.

Georges Perec’s Geographies explores Perec’s geographical interests. The book is divided into two parts: Part I, “Perec’s Geographies,” explores space and place within Perec’s films, radio plays, and literature, from descriptions of actual streets to the fictional places within his work. Part II, “Perecquian Geographies,” explores geography in works directly inspired by Perec, including writing, photographs and photo essays, soundscapes, theater, and dance. Extending Perecquian criticism beyond literary and French studies to disciplines including geography, urban studies, and architecture, Georges Perec’s Geographies offers a complete and systematic examination that will be of interest not only to Perec scholars but also to students and researchers across these subjects.
 
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Georgette Heyer, History, and Historical Fiction
Edited by Samantha J. Rayner and Kim Wilkins
University College London, 2021
A collection of essays on the career of historical novelist Georgette Heyer.

The historical works of Georgette Heyer inspire a fiercely loyal, international readership, including literary figures such as A. S. Byatt and Stephen Fry. This book brings together an eclectic range of scholars to explore the contexts of Heyer’s career. Drawing upon scholarship on Heyer and her contemporaries, the volume illustrates the ways in which her work sits in a chain of influence and why it remains pertinent to current conversations on books and publishing in the twenty-first century. From the gothic to data science, there is something for everyone in this volume, which celebrates Heyer’s esteemed status amongst historical novelists. 
 
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Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3
A Hitchhiker's Guide to Informal Problem-Solving in human life
Edited by Alena Ledeneva
University College London, 2024
A journey through the informal and taken-for-granted ways of getting things done across the world.

For a post-human hitchhiker, human life–with its anxiety, aging, illness, and constant need for problem-solving–may look unviable. Yet, for humans, the life struggle is softened by human touch, human emotion, and human cooperation.

The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3 continues the journey of the two previous volumes into the world’s open secrets, unwritten rules, and hidden practices. It focuses on issues of emotional ambivalence and pressures of the digital age. The informal practices presented in this volume demonstrate the urgency of alleviating tensions between continuity and all-too-rapid change and the need to tackle the central problem of modern societies—uncertainty.

The volume takes the reader on a biographical journey through elusive, taken-for-granted, or banal ways of getting things done from over seventy countries and world regions. It offers an innovative understanding of the significance of fringes and challenges the assumption that informality is associated exclusively with poverty, underdevelopment, the Global South, oppressive regimes, or the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It also maps the patterns of informality around the globe, identifies specific informal practices in a context-sensitive way, and documents their ambivalent impact on people engaged in problem-solving, on societies in which these problems arise, and on humanity overall.
 
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The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume I
Towards Understanding of Social and Cultural Complexity
Edited by Alena Ledeneva
University College London, 2018
Broadly defined as “ways of getting things done,” the invisible yet powerful concepts of “informal practices” tend to escape articulation in official discourse. These practices include emotion-driven exchanges of gifts or favours and tributes for services, interest-driven know-how (from informal welfare to informal employment), identity-driven practices of solidarity, and power-driven forms of co-optation and control. Yet, the possible paradox of the indiscernibility of these informal practices is their ubiquity. Alena Ledeneva’s wholly unique two-volume work collaborates with over two hundred scholars across five continents, illustrating how informal practices are deeply embedded across the globe yet still remain underestimated in policy-making procedures.      
 
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front cover of The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume II
The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume II
Understanding Social and Cultural Complexity
Edited by Alena Ledeneva
University College London, 2018
Broadly defined as “ways of getting things done,” the invisible yet powerful concepts of “informal practices” tend to escape articulation in official discourse. These practices include emotion-driven exchanges of gifts or favours and tributes for services, interest-driven know-how (from informal welfare to informal employment), identity-driven practices of solidarity, and power-driven forms of co-optation and control. Yet, the possible paradox of the indiscernibility of these informal practices is their ubiquity. Alena Ledeneva’s wholly unique two-volume work collaborates with over two hundred scholars across five continents, illustrating how informal practices are deeply embedded across the globe yet still remain underestimated in policy-making procedures.      
 
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Global Goods and the Country House
Comparative Perspectives, 1650–1800
Edited by Jon Stobart
University College London, 2023
Fresh insights into the multi-directional flow of goods and cultures that enmeshed the eighteenth century.

Global goods were central to the material culture of eighteenth-century country houses. Across Europe, mahogany furniture, Chinese wallpapers, and Indian textiles formed the backdrop to genteel practices of drinking sweetened coffee, tea, and chocolate from Chinese porcelain. They tied these houses and their wealthy owners into global systems of supply and the processes of colonialism and empire.

Global Goods and the Country House builds on these narratives and then challenges them by decentering our perspective. It offers a comparative framework that explores the definition, ownership, and meaning of global goods outside the usual context of European imperial powers. What were global goods and what did they do for and mean to wealthy landowners in places at the “periphery” of Europe (Sweden and Wallachia), in the British colonies of North America and the Caribbean, or in the extra-colonial context (Japan or Rajasthan)? By placing these goods in their specific material context—from the English country house to the princely palaces of Rajasthan—we gain a better understanding of their use and meaning and of their role in linking the global and the local.
 
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Global Sceptical Publics
From Nonreligious Print Media to ‘Digital Atheism'
Edited by Jacob Copeman and Mascha Schulz
University College London, 2022
A collection of essays examining secular discourse in contemporary media spheres.

Diverse media ranging from print publications and TV series to social media platforms are crucial for producing and participating in the secular public sphere, setting the stage for debates, controversies, and activism related both specifically and non-specifically to atheistic discourse. Global Sceptical Publics brings together contributions that analyze the diverse ways in which a variety of religious skeptics, doubters, and atheists engage with different forms of media as the framework for understanding contemporary communication and the formation of nonreligious publics. With authors from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, the book contributes new insights to the growing field of nonreligion studies, in particular, by demonstrating how skeptical groups can unsettle preconceived expectations of the public sphere.
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A Grammar of Akajeru
Fragments of a Traditional North Andamanese Dialect
Raoul Zamponi and Bernard Comrie
University College London, 2021
A definitive guide to an almost extinct North Andamanese language.
 
Originally spoken across the northern Andamanese Islands in the Bay of Bengal, the Akajeru language is spoken today by only three people. A Grammar of Akajeru describes this unique grammatical system as it was reported at the turn of the twentieth century. Based primarily on research conducted by Victorian anthropologists Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown and Edward Horace Man, this book offers a linguistic analysis of all extant Akajeru material as well as the scant documentation of adjacent dialects Akabo and Akakhora. This volume includes a grammatical sketch of Akajeru, an English-Akajeru lexicon, and a comparison between Akajeru and present-day Andamanese.
 
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A Grammar of Paraguayan Guarani,
Bruno Estigarribia
University College London, 2020
The history of Guarani is a history of resilience. Paraguayan Guarani is a vibrant, modern language, mother tongue to millions of people in South America. It is the only indigenous language in the Americas spoken by a non-ethnically-indigenous majority, and since 1992, it is also an official language of Paraguay alongside Spanish. This book provides the first comprehensive reference grammar of Modern Paraguayan Guarani written for an English-language audience. It is an accessible yet thorough and carefully substantiated description of the language’s phonology, morphosyntax, and semantics. It also includes information about its centuries of documented history and its current sociolinguistic situation.
 
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Grey Area
Regulating Amsterdam's Coffeeshops
Scott Jacques
University College London, 2019
Amsterdam’s Coffeeshops, which are local legal dispensaries for marijuana, are often given  as examples of Dutch tolerance. In fact, these dispensaries are highly regulated. On the premises, there cannot be minors, hard drugs, or more than 500 grams of marijuana. A coffeeshop cannot advertise, cause a nuisance, or sell more than 5 grams to a person in a day. These rules are enforced by surprise police checks, with violations punishable by closure.

In Grey Area, Scott Jacques examines the policy surrounding coffeeshops with a huge stash of data, which he collected during two years of fieldwork in Amsterdam. How do coffeeshop owners and staff obey the rules? How are the rules broken, and why? The stories and statistics show that order in the midst of smoke is key to Dutch drug policy, vaporizing the idea that prohibition is better than regulation. Grey Area is a timely contribution in light of the recent reforms to cannabis policy worldwide.
 
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Gurus and Media
Sound, Image, Machine, Text and the Digital
Edited by Jacob Copeman, Arkotong Longkumer, and Koonal Duggal
University College London, 2023
The first book dedicated to media and mediation in domains of public guruship and devotion.

Illuminating the mediatization of guruship and the guruization of media, this book bridges the gap between scholarship on gurus and the disciplines of media and visual culture studies. It investigates guru iconographies in and across various time periods and also the distinctive ways in which diverse gurus engage with and inhabit different forms of media: statuary, games, print publications, photographs, portraiture, films, machines, social media, bodies, words, graffiti, dolls, sound, verse, tombs, and more.

The book’s interdisciplinary chapters advance, both conceptually and ethnographically, our understanding of the function of media in the dramatic production of guruship and reflect on the corporate branding of gurus and on mediated guruship as a series of aesthetic traps for the captivation of devotees and others. They show how different media can further enliven the complex plurality of guruship, for instance in instantiating notions of “absent-present” guruship and demonstrating the mutual mediation of gurus, caste, and Hindutva.

Gurus and Media foregrounds contested visions of the guru in the development of devotional publics and pluriform guruship across time and space. Thinking through the guru’s many media entanglements in a single place, this book contributes new insights to the study of South Asian religions and to the study of mediation more broadly.
 
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