OUPblog

Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch’s fight for affordable housing [timeline]

By Betty Boyd Caroli
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Labor and luck in etymology

By Anatoly Liberman
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Centuries strong: Black history told through 10 essential Oxford Reads

By Calla Veazie and Sarah Butcher
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Essential considerations for leadership in policing (and beyond)

By Bryan Boon

There are problems with defining the term ‘leadership’. Leadership often gets confused with the management function because, generally, managers are expected to exhibit some leadership qualities. In essence, leaders are instruments of change, responsible for laying plans both for the moment and for the medium and long-term futures. Managers are more concerned with executing plans on a daily basis, achieving objectives and producing results.

Judicial resistance? War crime trials after World War I

By Mark Lewis

There was a great change in peace settlements after World War I. Not only were the Central Powers supposed to pay reparations, cede territory, and submit to new rules concerning the citizenship of their former subjects, they were also required to deliver nationals accused of legal violations to the Allies.

Fluorescent proteins and medicine

By Marc Zimmer

Fluorescent proteins are changing the world. Page through any modern scientific journal and it’s impossible to miss the vibrant images of fluorescent proteins. Bright, colorful photographs not only liven-up scholarly journals, but they also serve as invaluable tools to track HIV, to design chickens that are resistant to bird flu and to confirm the existence of cancerous stem cells.

Rotten fish and Belfast confetti

By Guy Woodward

Winston Churchill’s Victory broadcast of 13 May 1945, in which he claimed that but for Northern Ireland’s “loyalty and friendship” the British people “should have been confronted with slavery or death”, is perhaps the most emphatic assertion that the Second World War entrenched partition from the southern state and strengthened the political bond between Britain and Northern Ireland.

The 11 explorers you need to know

By Stewart A. Weaver

The list of explorers that changed the way we see the world is vast, so we asked Stewart A. Weaver, author of Exploration: A Very Short Introduction to highlight some of the most interesting explorers everyone should know more about.

Kin selection, group selection and altruism: a controversy without end?

By Samir Okasha

I recall a dinner conversation at a symposium in Paris that I organized in 2010, at which a number of eminent evolutionary biologists, economists and philosophers were present. Whenever the topic of “group selection” was brought up, a ferocious argument always seemed to ensue.

Sospiri’s Jenny Forsyth on voice and song

By Helena Palmer and Jenny Forsyth

Throughout the month, we’ve examining the myriad aspects of the human voice. But who better to discuss it than a singer herself? We asked Jenny Forsyth, member of the Sospiri choir in Oxford, what it takes to be part of a successful choir.

Are the mysterious cycles of sunspots dangerous for us?

By Arnab Rai Choudhuri

Galileo and some of his contemporaries left careful records of their telescopic observations of sunspots – dark patches on the surface of the sun, the largest of which can be larger than the whole earth. Then in 1844 a German apothecary reported the unexpected discovery that the number of sunspots seen on the sun waxes and wanes with a period of about 11 years. Initially nobody considered sunspots as anything more than an odd curiosity.

Monthly gleanings for January 2015

By Anatoly Liberman

I am pleased to report that A Happy New Year is moving along its warlike path at the predicted speed of one day in twenty-four hours and that it is already the end of January. Spring will come before you can say Jack Robinson, as Kipling’s bicolored python would put it, and soon there will be snowdrops to glean. Etymology and spelling are the topics today. Some other questions will be answered in February.

The influence of economists on public policy

By Daniel Hirschman and Elizabeth Popp Berman

There’s a puzzle around economics. On the one hand, economists have the most policy influence of any group of social scientists. In the United States, for example, economics is the only social science that controls a major branch of government policy (through the Federal Reserve), or has an office in the White House (the Council of Economic Advisers). And though they don’t rank up there with lawyers, economists make a fairly strong showing among prime ministers and presidents, as well.

Their blood cries out to God

By George Faithful

Not long after the beginning, Genesis tells us that there were two brothers. One killed the other. “And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground’” (Gen. 4:10).

Holocaust consciousness must not blind us

By Arlene Stein

While nascent talk of the Holocaust was in the air when I was growing up in New York City, we did not learn about it in school, even in lessons about World War II or the waves of immigration to America’s shores. There were no public memorials or museums to the murdered millions, and the genocide of European Jewry was subsumed under talk of “the war.”

The lost stories of Muslims in the Holocaust

By Mehnaz M. Afridi

On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and death camp at Auschwitz, I hope we can keep telling the stories of survival and miracles that the victims experienced. But never shall we forget the six million Jews that were murdered. There are many stories of the Shoah (Holocaust) that are told over and over again by survivors, witnesses, and children of survivors.

The inspiration of Alice in Wonderland: 150 years on

By Laura Jones

This Christmas, London’s Royal Opera House played host to Christopher Wheeldon’s critically acclaimed Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, performed by the Royal Ballet and with a score by Joby Talbot. Indeed, Lewis Carroll’s seminal work Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) has long inspired classical compositions, in forms as diverse as ballet, opera, chamber music, song, as well as, of course, film scores.

A brief history of Data Privacy Law in Asia

By Graham Greenleaf

This timeline shows the development of data privacy laws across numerous different Asian territories over the past 35 years. In each case it maps the year a data privacy law or equivalent was created, as well as providing some further information about each. It also maps the major guidelines and pieces of legislation from various global bodies, including those mentioned above.

Is London the world’s legal capital?

By Richard Fentiman

2015 may be a watershed year for one part of the UK economy—the market for legal services. Much is made of London’s status as the world’s legal capital. This has nothing to do with the legal issues that most people encounter, involving crime, or wills, or houses, or divorce.