Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Syria is Oxford University Press’s Place of the Year, and to call attention to the sociopolitical turmoil in the country, we present a brief excerpt from Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla by David Kilcullen. This is a powerful study of the important role technology, particularly social media, plays in the war zone in Syria.
December sees the annual update of Who’s Who, the essential directory of the noteworthy and influential in all walks of life, in the United Kingdom and worldwide. This year, over 1,000 new lives have been added to the resource. Who’s made it in in 2014? From actors to authors, and presenters to politicians, discover the entries of a vast selection of past and present influential figures, written by the individual themselves.
By Jeannette D. Jones
There’s a legendary world in Deaf culture lore. It’s like Earth but it’s for people of the eye, so they call it Eyeth (get it? EARth, EYEth). In this world, people listen with their eyes with the comfort of being typical, just the way life is, unlike the existence of a Deaf person on Earth, heavily mediated through hearing devices, pads of paper, interpreters, lip reading, and gestures.
Twenty-five years ago today, Benazir Bhutto became the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan and the first female head of government in a Muslim country. T.V. Paul, author of The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World, joins us to discuss her legacy, the role of women in Pakistani politics today, and the changing shape of political parties in Pakistan.
By Edward Zelinsky
Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Mardel, Inc. are owned by the Green family. The Greens oppose on religious grounds “morning after” forms of contraception.
Despite a strong field of contenders for the Oxford Atlas Place of the Year 2013, Syria emerged as the clear winner, owing to its central role in global events this year.
By Frédéric G. Sourgens
On Monday, 2 December 2013, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a significant appeal for investor-state arbitration conducted in the United States. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit set aside an award rendered by a UNCITRAL tribunal seated in Washington DC and constituted pursuant to the United Kingdom-Argentina BIT in BG Group PLC v Republic of Argentina.
By Irena Giorgou
For over five decades, enforced disappearance has been the symbol of state terror and the absence of justice. Pursuant to this heinous practice, people are arrested or kidnapped, detained in secret, and subsequently ‘disappear’. All traces of the victims are deliberately wiped out: no record, no information, no body.
By Zaira Cattaneo and Marcos Nadal
Humans are apparently the only species to aesthetically enjoy the world around them. What is it that allows us to admire the elegance of a ballet dancer, or to enjoy the beauty of the sun’s reflection on the sea as it sets under the horizon?
By Alex Mamouria
The entire structure of the Radiology professional board exam, the last but crucial hurtle after eight years of post-graduate training, changed this year. The old exam, that in place for decades, had two discrete elements. First, a written exam that included imaging physics followed by an oral exam that reviewed only diagnostic imaging that was taken at the end of training.
By Philip H. Pfatteicher
The Christian Church, at its best, is remarkably honest. That characteristic is especially clear in the season of Advent, which calls Christians to look ahead toward the second coming of Christ the Lord of glory (what the New Testament calls his Appearing). In this expectation, the Church identifies with John the Baptist, who prepared the way for the first coming.
By Dorothy H. Crawford
It is over 100 years since HIV, the AIDS virus, began spreading in humans. It all started in West Central Africa where, scientists calculate, HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans around 1900. Then in 1964 the virus made its first trans-continental flight. In one move it leaped from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Here it established a foot-hold in Haiti before travelling on to the US in 1969. So began a journey that took HIV to virtually every country in the world, eventually infecting 65 million people, a figure that is rising by around three million annually.