Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

  • Social Sciences

Knowledge and teaching in the age of information

The advent of the World Wide Web in the turn of the last century completely transformed the way most people find and absorb information. Rather than a world in which information is stored in books or housed in libraries, we have a world where all of the information in the world is accessible to everyone.

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Why economists should learn machine learning

Economists analyze data. Machine learning (ML) offers a powerful set of tools for doing just that. But while econometrics and ML share a foundation in statistics, their aims and philosophies often diverge.

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Journey into Darkness: The 2025 Eurovision Song Contest Basel, Switzerland

How very different the bridges of the first- and second-place songs, JJ’s “Wasted Love” for Austria and Yuval Raphael’s “New Day Will Rise” for Israel, were at Eurovision 2025. And how uncannily the same. Does love survive when tested by the seas and floods threatening to inundate it? The survival of love is both denied and affirmed, threatened but still buoyed by the precarity of hope.

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Pride isn’t arrogance; it’s love

Shae Washington, a Black queer Christian woman, struggled to reconcile her sexuality and her spirituality. Her church had always taught that you cannot be both Christian and queer.

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Does the media we consume impact our emotions?

There’s a saying in Western philosophy, echoed in some other philosophical traditions globally: “the end of labor is to gain leisure.” It’s a reminder that for all of the toil and turmoil that we engage in our daily lives, the fruits of such labor come in securing a means to pursue our own self interests.

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Gen Z and the future of audit

As Gen Z enters the audit profession, both educators and employers need to take note of their changing expectations around careers and adapt as needed. By aligning academic preparation with the expectations of employers, educators play a critical role in shaping future auditors who are engaged, resilient, and ready to lead.

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Spain 50 years after General Franco

Few countries in the world have changed as dramatically as Spain has since the death of General Franco 50 years ago. Following his victory in a three-year civil war, Franco ruled as dictator for nearly four decades. His successor, King Juan Carlos, whose appointment by Franco in 1969 restored the Bourbon monarchy, abolished in 1931when […]

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Cover image of "Measure Short of War: A Brief History of Great Power Subversion" by Jill Kastner and William C. Wohlforth

Subversion: history’s greatest hits

Subversion—domestic interference to undermine or manipulate a rival—is as old as statecraft itself. But most of what we know about the subject concerns the Cold War and focuses on big powers maliciously manipulating the domestic politics of small ones. To understand how subversion fits into the new epoch of great power rivalry, to know what’s […]

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Cover image of "Discovering Organizations" by Robin Burrow

Organizations are our greatest achievement 

There are many contenders for the award of humanity’s greatest achievement. Some say its writing. Others say its agriculture. Electricity, space travel, and human rights are also possibilities. I disagree with them all.

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Book cover of "The Halted March of the European Left: The Working Class in Britain, France, and Italy, 1968–1989" by Matt Myers

What actually happened during the 1970s?

Working-class politics is back in vogue in the West, but for whom does it speak? An AfD candidate in Germany won over 14% of the vote after claiming the SPD was ‘no longer a workers’ party in the classic sense’ and that his organisation was ‘taking on this role’. The US Vice President, JD Vance, emphasises he is a ‘a working-class boy, born far from the halls of power’ and promises to reshore industrial jobs. Marine Le Pen claims to lead the ‘party of French workers’ and Fratelli d’Italia wins a majority of manual workers after asking if ‘the Left is now no longer in the factories and amongst the workers, where can you find it?’ (its answer: a Pride parade).

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Towards dynamic accountability

Accountability is a fundamental component of governance, whether the governed entity is a country, a company, or indeed any other corporate entity, including charities, cooperatives, the NHS, or universities.

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We the Men

Amidst the flurry of headlines about the Trump administration’s first weeks in power, who will notice that the federal government’s largest agency no longer celebrates Black History Month or Women’s History Month? The Department of Defense’s January 31 guidance declaring “Identity Months Dead at DoD” may have been lost in the news cycle.

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Cover image of "Meaningful Economics: Making the Science of Prosperity More Human" by Bart J. Wilson

Making economics more human

As the “official doctrine of neoclassical economics, enshrined in all respectable textbooks,” the esteemed game theorist Ken Binmore says, revealed preference theory “succeeds in accommodating the infinite variety of the human race within a single theory simply by denying itself the luxury of speculating about what is going on inside someone’s head. Instead, it pays attention only to what people do.”

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