In this article, I contextualise the emergence and describe the political processes of a grassroots mobilisation against the structural violence of neoliberalism in Mexico in order to suggest the necessity of re-thinking conjunctural analysis in a posthegemonic direction. The National Assembly of the Environmentally Affected (ANAA) is a nationwide…[Read more]

As Kashmir faces new challenges, our forms of allyship must also evolve. Perhaps we can learn some lessons from its kitchens.

The abstract of my doctoral dissertation, which I defended on December 2018 at the University of Washington, with distinction.

For more than four hundred years, up to the accession of the present king Carl XVI Gustaf in 1973, did the Swedish monarchs hold the title “King of the Wends“. The first evidence of this claim dates from the reign of Gustav I Vasa (1523-1560), who adopted the title Sveriges, Göthes och Wendes Konung in official sources around the year 1540. In L…[Read more]

Disrupting Maize undertakes a critical interrogation of the symbol and the staple food of the Mexican nation. As the centre of origin and genetic diversification of maize, the Mexican territory is regarded today as being under threat of irreversible ‘contamination’ by genetically engineered maize, an imported biotechnological product. When the fir…[Read more]

Repair has visibly come to the fore in recent academic and policy debates, to the point that ‘repair studies’ is now emerging as a novel focus of research. Through the lens of repair, scholars with diverse backgrounds are coming together to rethink our relationships with the human-made matters, tools and objects that are the material mesh in whi…[Read more]

Distributed ledger technology and the development of digital smart contracts have the potential for a new disruptive technology. Applications based on them could find their way into the management of many areas of every day life. However, they also carry certain risks for sustainable development of our society. This paper is intended as a…[Read more]

A report published by the Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission this week, ‘Elitist Britain’, found that two fifths (39%) of Britain’s ‘leading people’ were educated privately, more than five times as many as in the population as a whole, with almost one quarter (24%) graduating from Oxbridge. I therefore thought it would be timely to publis…[Read more]

A literary and historical introduction to the printed and manuscript materials composing the Great Peace (Taiping 太平) textual corpus, with a critical assessment of several modern Chinese editions thereof, followed by a revised review of THE SCRIPTURE ON GREAT PEACE: THE TAIPING JING AND THE BEGINNINGS OF DAOISM, translated by Barbara Hen…[Read more]

Review of “L’itinéraire de Marco Polo dans sa traversée de la Chine”, by Philippe Ménard (MEDIOEVO ROMANZO, vol. 26 [3rd Series, vol. 7], fasc. 3 [2002]: 321–360).

Historiography, morphological analysis, textual study and full translation into French of Chinese manuscript Stein no. 4226 from Dunhuang in the British Library (Or.8210/S.4226/R.1).

A state-of-the-art study of popular movements and religiosity in Late Antiquity China (1st–2nd cent. CE), focused on issues of theology, practice, sources and terminology, and including a critical assessment of received scholarship.

Review of MAKING TRANSCENDENTS: ASCETICS AND SOCIAL MEMORY IN EARLY MEDIEVAL CHINA. By Robert Ford Campany. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009. Pp. xviii + 300.

Review of THE CHENWEI RIDDLE: TIME, STARS, AND HEROES IN THE APOCRYPHA. By Licia Di Giacinto. (Deutsche Ostasienstudien, vol. 13). Gossenberg: Ostasien Verlag, 2013. Pp. xi + 332. 25 Figures, 40 Tables, 4 Appendices, List of Illustrations, Bibliography.

Review of AFFILIATION AND TRANSMISSION IN DAOISM: A BERLIN SYMPOSIUM. Edited by Florian C. Reiter. (Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 78). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012. Pp. viii + 300 pages.

Review of THE EMERGENCE OF DAOISM: CREATION OF TRADITION. By Gil Raz. (Routledge Studies in Taoism). Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2012. Pp. 292.

Review of CELESTIAL MASTERS: HISTORY AND RITUAL IN EARLY DAOIST COMMUNITIES. By Terry F. Kleeman. (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 102). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016. Pp. xiii + 425. Maps, illustrations.

A review of THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF WORLD RELIGIONS: DAOISM. Edited by James Robson. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015. Pp. xxxii + 754 + A29. Map, illustrations.

In ancient China, portentology was a “science” in its own right, a specialised field of knowledge developed by rational individuals who endeavoured to fathom the concealed mechanisms at work beneath the spectacles of history and the world at large. This paper focuses on the nomenclature of portents (observed phenomena interpreted as auspicious or…[Read more]

Official Chinese historiography is a treasure trove of information on local resistance to the centralised empire in early medieval China (third to sixth century). Sinologists specialised in the study of Chinese religions commonly reconstruct the religious history of the era by interpreting some of these data. In the process, however, the primary…[Read more]