If we look at the past three decades in the history of Eastern Europe, Ukraine may safely be placed at the top of the chart of “unstable” states. First was the student-led Revolution on Granite in the 1990s. The outcome of that revolution was a resignation of entrenched high-ranked Soviet officials under the pressure of public opinion. Then, if…[Read more]

This article draws on the scene history of HC/punk in Bandung, specifically SXE, traced through collectives, spaces, political communities, music, gigs, zines, and merchandise. I’m trying to weave this into the history of urban youth culture in the city, reflecting both the Indonesian and the global context.

The story of Lough Derg in Ireland’s County Donegal is arranged around clusters of sectarian narratives in juxtaposition, synthesis and conflict. The Sanctuary of Saint Patrick sits on Station Island, a small rocky islet set within the waters of the lake. The site became well known in the early Middle Ages as the place of Saint Patrick’s del…[Read more]

Book review. Marcin Moskalewicz and Wojciech Przybylski “Understanding Central Europe,” Routledge, 2017.

Book review. Abel Polese. “Limits of a Post-Soviet State,” Ibidem-Verlag, 2016. ISBN 978-3-8382-0845-9

In the post-Versailles era, Polish leader Józef Piłsudski proposed to the authorities of Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus to forge an Intermarium union for the survival of their states. Piłsudski risked and pushed forward an intellectual speculation on how to strengthen subjectivity and sovereignty of the “young” states in games between major po…[Read more]

Yuriy Lypa stated in the mid-1930s: “The Ukrainian race is an island among its neighbours, an island with its own life, its own holy things and all-human values. Foreign and imposed spiritual values are worthless, and even non-imposed values are adopted in time, only if they pass the nation’s test… The Ukrainian race is an island, and this is its…[Read more]

The research: (1) embraces peculiarities of the current EU foreign policy towards Ukraine; (2) enumerates and analyzes documents, agreements and treaties which establish the frameworks for this policy; (3) discovers the impact of human rights issues on shaping and conducting this policy. Based on the criminal trials against opposition leaders, the…[Read more]

The article addresses current trends in European transformation and compares the structure which is being built to ancient and medieval empires. The imperial order appears to be productive for the EU due to it easily embraces the heterogeneity existing within the Union, as well as contributes to the strengthening of the EU institutional legitimacy…[Read more]

The article outlines the geopolitical rationale behind contemporary Russian expansionism, as well as presents the asymmetric and “hybrid” mechanisms utilized by the Kremlin to solidify its authority in the post-communist space. To do this, the article refers to the findings of American, British, Polish and Ukrainian intellectuals on the nature of…[Read more]

Through The Making of Early Kashmir, Shonaleeka Kaul, who teaches in the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, deftly presents a new discourse on Kashmir’s culture and history and successfully argues not only that a traditional Sanskrit text can indeed function as a historical text, but that the very fact that s…[Read more]

In the cultural and religious history of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory—a centuries-old Catholic pilgrim site situated on Station Island within the waters of Donegal’s Lough Derg—the mass drowning of 1795 stands out. The aftermath was devastating, stamping a lasting mark on the memory of place. The disaster continues to be complicated by its entangl…[Read more]

The article aims to uncover the nature and distinctive features of the contemporary messianic narrations in the Russian public discourse, as well as estimate their impact on the actual policy-making. For this reason, the article scrutinizes the political philosophy of Aleksandr Dugin, Nataliia Narochnitskaia, Egor Kholmogorov, and Vadim…[Read more]

This paper explores the extent to which the ideals of ‘openness’ are being applied to physical knowledge resources and research spaces. The study investigates the relationship between academic library access policies and institutional positions on open access/open science publishing. Analysis of library access policies from twenty academic ins…[Read more]

This essay explores the ecoGothic resonances of Tales of the Black Freighter, a dark
pirate tale embedded within Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1986-87
postmodern DC graphic novel. By providing a grim prism for themes such as nuclear
paranoia, the monstrous transformation of the self, and the horrifying possibilities of
scientific…[Read more]

Seung-Hui Cho, the mass murderer who called himself Question Mark, left a lot of questions behind him. One of them obviously speaks for itself: what motivated him to kill thirty-three strangers at Virginia Tech? Another question almost goes without saying: why do we seek refuge behind moral explanations? Like ‘the question mark kid’ the adult…[Read more]

This paper is a long version of my English paper from 2012, “Body of the Whore, Body of the Story and Metaphor of the Body,” Introduction to Seder Qodashim. A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud V. , Tal Ilan, Monika Brockhaus and Tanja Hidde (eds.), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 305-319 . Some discussions where omitted, though some new find…[Read more]

This article dealing with the rabbinic concepts of nature and natural order in early rabbinic literature

Research “excellence” is a central target of policy, researchers and institutions. Increasingly it is a target of criticism for the way in which it reinforces systemic biases in power, reduces diversity, and excludes many participants from the processes of scholarship. In this chapter I argue that in the context of post- colonial and tra…[Read more]