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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Oxford’s Place of the Year campaign pulls together the most significant places and events of the year. The 2018 shortlist of nominees brings to light impactful moments in global history, influencing the environment, international relations, humanitarian crises, and space exploration. Explore each of our locations and vote for who think should be recognized as Oxford’s […]
Bearden’s collages, which burst onto the art world scene in the fall of 1964, made a compelling aesthetic argument for multiple cultural inheritances. He called his vision “the Prevalence of Ritual,” and it was first manifest in Projections, black and white photographic blow ups of collages.
Russia may seem to be on the march globally, but at home Russia is running in place. This inertia is the flip side of Putin’s domestic image as stability tsar, bringing an end to the “wild 90s” that followed the Soviet collapse. Back in 2010, Putin credited his policies with Russia’s successful bid to host […]
Ten years ago Brazil was beginning to enjoy the financial boom from China’s growing appetite for commodities and raw materials. The two countries were a natural fit. Brazil had what Beijing needed – iron ore, beef, soybeans, etc. and China had what Brasilia desperately wanted – foreign exchange to address budget deficits and cost overruns on major infrastructure projects. It was a marriage made in heaven – for four or five years.
The eve of the opening ceremonies of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics is a good time to reflect not only on Brazil’s role as the organizer the games, but whether the experience of the host country tells us anything about the status of the BRICS–one of the most important economic groupings in the world, and one which you may never have heard of. As nations much showcased since 2001 as big, dynamic, rising countries, much of their global projection has focused as much on spectacle as on substantive achievements.
As every four years, we are now quickly approaching to the Games of the XXXI Olympiad, which will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016. The Olympics are the biggest sports event in the world, followed by the FIFA World Cup in football and the Tour de France of cycling, with as many as two billion people tuning in at some point during the event.
When you book an airline ticket, you trust that the pilot assigned to this flight is sufficiently knowledgeable and competent to fly the aircraft. In fact, you expect the pilot to be a professional that has gone through many hours of flight training and theoretical study.
The newest knockout competition on British television is The Great Pottery Throw Down (GPTD), in which an initial ten potters produce a variety of ceramic work each week, the most successful being declared Top Potter, and the least successful being ‘asked to leave’. The last four then compete in a final […]
US soccer player Brandi Chastain became a household name through her outstanding play in the 1999 Women’s World Cup. She scored the championship-winning goal in the unforgettable final shoot-out in front of the world and 90,000 fans at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
The 2014 Men’s World Cup finals pitted Germany against Argentina. Bets were made and various observations were cited about the teams. Who had the better defense? Would Germany and Argentina’s star players step up to meet the challenge? And, surprisingly, why did Argentina lack black players? Across the globe blogs and articles found it ironic that Germany fielded a more diverse team while Argentina with a history of slavery did not have a solitary black player.
There is no one more acutely aware of the damage done to his reputation in recent years than Gérard Depardieu himself. “When I travel the world” he admitted to Léa Salamé in a recent interview for France Inter radio “what people remember above all else is that I pissed in a plane, I’m Russian, and that I wrote a letter of protest to the Prime Minister.”
The factual backdrop to this affair is well-known. FIFA, world football’s governing body has, for a number of years, been the subject of allegations of corruption. Then, after a series of dawn raids on 27 May 2015, seven FIFA officials, of various nationalities, the most famous being Jack Warner, the Trinidadian former vice president of FIFA, were arrested in a luxury hotel in Zurich where they were staying prior to the FIFA Congress.
International law has faced profound challenges in 2014 and the coming year promises further complex changes. For better or worse, it’s an exciting time to be working in international law at Oxford University Press. Before 2014 comes to a close, we thought we’d take a moment to reflect on the highlights of another year gone by.
With the recent announcement of our Place of the Year 2014 shortlist, we are spotlighting each of the contenders. First up is Brazil.Brazil brought the world’s soccer fans together this year, as it hosted the 2014 FIFA World Cup in 12 different cities across the country. Learn more about this lively country in this infographic.
Thanks for all of your input over the last month as we considered our 2014 Place of the Year longlist in conjunction with the publication of the twenty-first Atlas of the World. Now that the votes are in, we’ve narrowed the nominees down to a shortlist of five, and we’d love your thoughts on those as well.
Voting for the 2014 Atlas Place of the Year is now underway. However, you still be curious about the nominees. What makes them so special? Each year, we put the spotlight on the top locations in the world that make us go, “wow”. For good or for bad, this year’s longlist is quite the round-up. Just hover over the place-markers on the map to learn a bit more about this year’s nominations.