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Academic Insights for the Thinking World

  • Social Sciences

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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Cover image of "The Prosthetic Arts of Moby-Dick" by David Haven Blake

Moby-Dick and the United States of Aggrievement

Like the white whale itself, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) seems ubiquitous across time. For nearly a century, readers have turned to Captain Ahab’s search for the whale that took his leg to understand American crises. Donald Trump’s return to the presidency offers a different question about Melville, domination, and US political life: How do Americans gain power by claiming that they have been wronged?

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Cover of "My Fellow Americans: Presidents and Their Inaugural Addresses," edited by Yuvraj Singh, with an introduction by Ted Widmer

“My fellow Americans” [timeline]

Every four years, the incoming president of the United States delivers an inaugural address in a tradition that dates back to 1789, with the first inauguration of George Washington. The address reiterates to Americans—and peoples around the world—what the country has been and what it has the potential to become.

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Cover image of "The Politics of Unpaid Labour" by Valeria Pulignano and Markieta Domecka

Beyond the paycheck

In the age of gig economy, remote work, and juggling multiple jobs, unpaid labour is no longer confined only to the domestic sphere or volunteerism. It is now an insidious undercurrent in paid employment, eroding worker rights and deepening inequality.

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cover image of "Introduction to International and Global Politics"

Theories of Global Politics meet International Relations theories

The study of world politics developed via a series of famous encounters, sometimes called the ‘great debates’. The first major encounter, dating to the early twentieth-century, was between utopian liberalism and realism; the second between traditional approaches and behaviouralism; the third between neorealism/neoliberalism and neo-Marxism.

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

Meaningful economics

Human beings mean. We just do. Human beings contemplate the importance or significance of everything, be it a person or a place, an action or a consequence, a possession or an idea, a relationship or our well-being, an experience or our connection to something greater than ourselves.

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