Journals

Listening to the Queer Archive — a conversation with Marion Wasserbauer

By Marion Wasserbauer

The current issue of the OHR invites diverse authors to share their experiences listening to and learning from LGBTQ lives. This week, we bring you a short interview with one of the contributors, Marion Wasserbauer, whose article “‘That’s What Music Is About—It Strikes a Chord’: Proposing a Queer Method of Listening to the Lives and Music of LGBTQs” suggests that music is an integral tool for listening to a narrator’s voice.

Should old-age social insurance be means-tested?

By Anton Braun, Karen A. Kopecky, and Tatyana Koreshkova

Almost everyone faces some risk of ending up old, sick, alone, and poor. The lengths of our lives are uncertain. Aging comes with increased chances of needing costly medical care. The loss of a spouse, often preceded by large medical bills, may leave one alone late in life. Absent a spouse or other family member to provide informal care, an expensive protracted stay in a nursing home may be needed due to dementia or disability

How the euro divides the union: economic adjustment and support for democracy in Europe

By Klaus Armingeon, Kai Guthmann, and David Weisstanner

When the heads of European governments signed the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, they laid the ground for Europe’s economic and monetary union (EMU) and, eventually, the introduction of the euro. Far from being merely an economic project, the common currency, so they hoped, would help pave the way towards a shared European identity. Today—almost a quarter century after Maastricht—that goal remains a distant prospect. On the contrary, during the economic crisis, European citizens in many respects seemed to have drifted apart.

Counterterrorism – Episode 34 – The Oxford Comment

What is counterterrorism? Although many studies have focused on terrorism and its causes, research on counterterrorism is less prevalent. This may be because the definition of terrorism itself has been heavily disputed, thus blurring the lines of what and who the targets of counterterrorism efforts should be.

Unraveling how obesity fuels cancer

By Anna Azvolinsky

“We are getting more and more precise about the different risk factors for the various subtypes of cancer,” said Stephen Hursting, PhD, MPH, professor in the department of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. One established factor is obesity, now well linked to at least ten cancers, including pancreatic, colorectal, endometrial, and hormone receptor–positive, postmenopausal breast cancer.

The Friendly Viruses, and how they can help with the looming antimicrobial resistance crisis

By Peter Speck and Anthony Smithyman

In these days of Zika, Chikungunya, Dengue, and Ebola pandemics, and with the devastating smallpox, influenza, and polio epidemics of the 20th century still fresh in our collective memories, it seems counterintuitive to consider the possibility that viruses will ever be regarded other than with fear and loathing. However, if trials currently underway in Europe, Australia, and the US prove successful, then we may eventually reach a point where certain viruses are viewed with approval and even a degree of affection.

Why whine about wining and dining?

By Benjamin E. Hermalin

Annual US expenditures on business entertainment likely exceed $40 billion. Such “wining and dining” is often viewed with suspicion, as a way for one entity to influence another’s decision makers improperly. Indeed, such concerns often lead governments and other organizations to limit what kinds of meals and other gifts employees can receive.

Between research and activism: The role of ‘organic intellectuals’

By Huma Saeed

Once an activist, always an activist. This maxim seems to prevail even when one enters the world of research and academia, marked by its ostensible “objectivity” and “neutrality”. I started as an activist and ended up – for now at least – in academia.

Bookselling and the feminist past

By Lucy Delap

The ‘disappearance’ of booksellers from Hong Kong in recent months reminds us that the free circulation of print can be very directly challenging to the powerful. Within social movements ranging across civil rights, disability, anti-apartheid, socialism, and anti-colonial nationalisms, books, print presses, and bookshops have been central to the movements’ intellectual development and comradeship. The women’s movement has had a similarly close relationship to print; bookshops, periodicals, and presses were a thriving presence within Edwardian women’s suffrage circles.

Queer history happens everywhere

By Nichole Barnes and Scott Seyforth

With the summer issue of the Oral History Review just around the corner, we are bringing you a sneak peak of what’s to come. Issue 43.1 is our LGBTQ special issue, featuring oral history projects and stories from around the country.

Happiness can break your heart too

By Anna Sarcon and Jelena Ghadri

You may have heard of people suffering from a broken heart, but Takotsubo syndrome (TTS) or “Broken heart syndrome” is a very real condition. However, new research shows that happiness can break your heart too. TTS is characterised by a sudden temporary weakening of the heart muscles that cause the left ventricle of the heart to balloon out at the bottom while the neck remains narrow

Bioinformatics: Breaking the bottleneck for cancer research

By Nicholas McGranahan

In recent years, biological sciences have witnessed a surge in the generation of data. This trend is set to continue, heralding an increased need for bioinformatics research. By 2018, sequencing of patient genomes will likely produce one quintillion bytes of data annually – that is a million times a million times a million bytes of data. Much of this data will derive from studies of patients with cancer.

Austerity and the slow recovery of European city-regions

By Riccardo Crescenzi, Davide Luca, and Simona Milio

The 2008 global economic crisis has been the most severe recession since the Great Depression. Notwithstanding its dramatic effects, cross-country analyses on its heterogeneous impacts and its potential causes are still scarce. By analysing the geography of the 2008 crisis, policy-relevant lessons can be learned on how cities and regions react to economic shocks in order to design adequate responses.

Why hasn’t the rise of new media transformed refugee status determination?

By Rosemary Byrne

Information now moves at a much greater speed than migrants. In earlier eras, the arrival of refugees in flight was often the first indication that grave human rights abuses were underway in distant parts of the world.

MOOCs and higher education: evolution or revolution?

By John Daniel

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) burst into the public consciousness in 2012 after feverish press reports about elite US universities offering free courses, through the Internet, to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) course on Circuits and Electronics that had attracted 155,000 registrations was a typical example. Pundits proclaimed a revolution in higher education and numerous universities, fearful of being left behind, joined a rush to offer MOOCs.

The quest for a malaria vaccine continues

By James Beeson

The 2016 World Malaria Report estimates that there were approximately 215 million cases of malaria and 438,000 deaths in 2015. The majority of deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and among young children, and malaria remains endemic in around 100 countries with over three billion people at risk. Over the past 15 years there have been major gains in reducing the global burden of malaria