Philology haunts the humanities, through both its defendants and its detractors. This article examines the construction of philology as the premier science of the long nineteenth century in Europe. It aims to bring the history of philology up to date by taking it seriously as a science and giving it the kind of treatment that has dominated the…[Read more]

For centuries, continental Europeans have come to Wales for numerous reasons. During the Romantic period some came seeking a rural idyll, whilst others in the Victorian era travelled as industrial spies, and during times of war many refugees escaped to Wales to find shelter from persecution. Not only have continental Europeans left their traces…[Read more]

This article explores the nature of remembering as a lake, with a lake, or through a lake; the differential relationships, knowledge, and perspectives contained within; and the potentially troubling implications found at the intersection of scientific and humanistic perspectives on lake being. It also reflects on the totalizing nature of assuming…[Read more]

This article reflects on how our own technological developments can help us see Herodotus’ archetype of historical inquiry in a new light. It explores various aspects of place in the Histories—as spaces that are lived, constructed, and relational—to show how and why the idea of place can be such a powerful means for linking information and under…[Read more]

La valía militar y guerrera de Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, universalmente conocido por su apodo de Gran Capitán, comenzó a difundirse casi de inmediato en la literatura de los tiempos que le tocaron vivir, hasta el punto de que se podría considerar al héroe cordobés como “la primera figura contemporánea a cuyo alrededor se agolpa esa intensa ac…[Read more]

An overall view of the use of personal and adverbial pronouns in a 15-c. long text in verse witten in Catalan, “Espill” by Jaume Roig. Personal and adverbial pronouns are studied by themselves as well as in combination.

Academic freedom is under attack, both in authoritarian democracies, such as Hungary and Turkey, and in liberal Western democracies, such as the United States, the UK, France and Germany. For example, Gender Studies are being targeted by right-wing governments in Eastern Europe, and in France President Emmanuel Macron has attacked post-colonial…[Read more]

The challenge of developing humane migration and refugee politics in Western states is far from resolved. This ongoing failure is typically attributed to the increased influence of right-wing populism and neo-fascism in Western migration politics. In this article I discuss a more radical explanation: Christoph Menke argues that political…[Read more]

The Plague of Justinian began in 541 and quickly spread over the area of the late antique Mediterranean. There it continued in more than a dozen plague waves until the middle of the 8th century, causing much suffering and a great number of deaths. Academia traditionally debates it as the end of Antiquity. Isochronal, the effect of climate change…[Read more]

In ‘Postdigital Politics’ I examine our contemporary postdigital political conjuncture. This conjuncture, I argue, springs from the crisis of representative democracy we are currently experiencing and involves a shift to more direct forms of democracy via postdigital communications. The latter is evident in the decentralised manner in which mov…[Read more]

Review of said book.

Kingship has been a political mainstay in human history, even when peoples have lacked monarchic rulers. This essay examines the book of Samuel as a source for the cultural history of ancient Judah, focusing on the question of how Samuel’s representations of monarchy would function for its readers in the early Second Temple era. In this era, w…[Read more]

Public talk for International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University (February 24, 2021) https://youtu.be/77oz4tb8r0Y How did Hindu devotees come to worship an Indian goddess in the ‘Chinese Way?’ What was allegedly Chinese about these rituals and how is this related to the goddess’s Buddhist origins? When did Hindus start to think of Ch…[Read more]

Community history projects across Britain have collected and created images, indexes and transcriptions of historical documents ranging from newspaper articles and photographs, to wills and biographical records. Based on analysis of community- and institutionally-led participatory history sites, and interviews with family and local historians,…[Read more]

Finally published 34 years after his death, Foucault’s book Confessions of the Flesh sheds new light on the debate about freedom and power that shaped the reception of his works. Many contributors to this debate argue that Foucault’s theory of power did not allow for freedom in the ‘genealogical phase,’ but that he corrected himself and presented…[Read more]

The traditional configuration of content on top and comments on the bottom on most websites often dismiss comments as of secondary importance to content. This article looks at how comment culture(s) in China operate outside of the top-bottom dichotomy where comments are increasingly supplanting content as the main form of consumable media. Through…[Read more]

This project explores the recent censorship of two Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots on Tencent’s popular WeChat messaging platform. Specifically, I am advancing a technographic approach in ways that give agency to bots as not just computing units but as interlocutors and informants. I seek to understand these chatbots through their i…[Read more]

Peter Shoeffer’s book-list is usually dated to the year 1470. The author challenges this dating, however, supplying a detailed analysis of the content of the list and suggested when it was printed and under what circumstances.

The publication of my book, Sublime Truth and the Senses: Titian’s Poesie for King Philip II of Spain, ( Harvey Miller: 2019), with a new reading of the heightened meaning of ecstatic imagery for the Hapsburg court, coincides with the exhibition of Titian’s magnificent mythological paintings that are reassembled for the first time since 1704 a…[Read more]