Bristol University Press

Anti-racist movements have continued to grow worldwide after the death of George Floyd in 2020. Following the BLM protests, many promises were made to deal with the impact of structural discrimination. While this led to more talk than action, there has also been meaningful change, some of which has gone under the radar. The US media focused primarily on the backlash that resulted in book bans and laws against having DEI offices in universities.

In contrast, this book, a follow-up to Terri E. Givens’s bestselling book Radical Empathy: Finding a Path to Bridging Racial Divides, highlights the promises that were delivered. It focuses on hope and taking action and creating a positive environment including the use of the radical empathy approach to empower ongoing change.

Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing will transform all sectors of the economy, including the legal profession. But technology has dramatically impacted lawyers before. In this book, author Ray Brescia shows how the new technologies of the late 19th century spurred the emergence of a new “version” of the profession, but one that was largely inaccessible to too many consumers.

Today, new technologies are creating an even newer version of the profession—Lawyer 3.0—that could be more affordable and effective than the one that currently exists. This work not only describes this phenomenon but shows how lawyers cannot just survive but thrive in this new reality.

When the utility of masks or vaccinations became politicized during the COVID-19 pandemic and lost its mooring in scientific evidence, an already-developing crisis of expertise was exacerbated. Those who believe in consensus science wondered: “How can ‘those people’ not see the truth?”

With a foreword by Harry Collins, this book shows that the crisis is not a "scientific" controversy, but an ideological dispute with "believers" on both sides. If the advocates for consensus science acknowledge the uncertainties involved, rather than insisting on cold, hard facts, it is possible to open a pathway towards interaction and communication, even persuasion, between world views.

As the crisis of expertise continues to be a global issue, this will be an invaluable resource for readers concerned about polarized societies and the distrust of consensus science.

At a time when the collective redress landscape is undergoing a period of transformative change, this important and timely research focuses on class actions in England and Wales.

The author provides an objective analysis of the costs and benefits of these proceedings from an access to justice perspective.

Aiming to promote accessibility, this pioneering work separates fact from fiction in an easily digestible way, offering progressive solutions for reform.

Addressing colonial legacies that dislodged Indigenous cultural values, identities and linguistic connections, this book presents groundbreaking solutions for contemporary African education challenges.

Bringing together contributors across Africa, including researchers, practitioners and policy makers, this collection develops balanced approaches combining Eurocentric and Afrocentric leadership models. Aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union Education Strategy, the book tackles pressing issues including poverty, inequality and restricted access to quality education.

It is essential reading for those seeking culturally responsive, sustainable solutions to transform African education systems while honouring Indigenous knowledge and values in challenging socio-economic contexts.

The modern globalised world is composed of two universal structures, the capitalist world-market and the international states-system. The fundamental question for understanding this globalised condition is why these two structures, capital and the international, exist together, forming a single system that encompasses the entire world.

This book answers that question by drawing on dialectical theory to explore the relation between economic value and political sovereignty. Combining economics, politics, international relations and philosophy, it transcends disciplinary boundaries to offer the first theoretical account of the modern world-system as a whole.

This ethnography of an English adult male prison explores a polycrisis of violence, self-harm, overcrowding and the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Bourdieu’s field theory, it uniquely highlights the complex interplay of policy, people and practices to reveal how prisons exacerbate social inequality.

The book uncovers paradoxes between prison’s stated aims of safety, security and (re)habilitation and their adverse realities, including the harms to prisoners’ reintegration upon release. The prison operates as a “perfect storm” of mutually reinforcing conditions that reproduce harmful outcomes. The book contends that the real crisis isn't that prisons fail, it’s that we continue to believe they're meant to succeed.

Academics have long been calling for better ethics of care and more inclusive working environments, yet situational and structural barriers within academia are complex and often hidden. Advocating the need for diverse voices in discussions on systemic inequality, this edited volume provides a vital platform for sharing lived experiences of intersectional identities navigating systemic barriers alongside academic pressures.

These personal essays offer powerful narratives of resistance, perseverance and hope from within the ‘ivory tower’ of academia, addressing religion, disability, geography, race, gender identity and language. They illuminate frequently invisible obstacles, examining issues such as tokenism, performativity and imposter syndrome.

Despite decades of education reform, UK children from disadvantaged backgrounds continue to fall behind their more well-off peers. This ever-widening divide remains one of the most persistent challenges in British education.

Grounded in rich empirical evidence from the National Pupil Database, alongside in-depth analysis of case studies, interviews and surveys, this book reveals what successful schools are doing to close the achievement gap. It identifies the leadership strategies, data-driven practices and targeted interventions that make a measurable difference, and offers clear recommendations for policy makers and practitioners seeking lasting solutions to educational disadvantage.

An invaluable resource for academics, policy makers and school leaders, Tackling Education Inequality demonstrates how evidence-based policy and practice can work together to build a more equitable education system.

What does it really mean to “decolonize” migration studies? Often the term is used as a slogan, without asking whether it genuinely changes research or simply replaces one dominant framework with another.

This book explores when decolonial approaches create new openings and when they risk shutting down debate. Drawing on vivid case studies from partnerships between North and South, to fieldwork, reciprocity and participatory methods, the book offers fresh insights into how ideas of decolonization play out in practice.

This is essential reading for anyone rethinking migration research today.

This timely book examines education in Young Offenders Institutions and adult prisons in England and Wales, addressing concerns raised in recent inspection reports about quality and inclusivity. It explores barriers to learning, with a unique focus on reading development and the implications of the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Code of Practice for children and young adults in secure settings.

Combining the voices of lived experience with evidence-based recommendations, the book highlights the knowledge and training prison educators need to improve outcomes. It offers essential insights for policymakers, practitioners and researchers seeking to transform education in secure environments.

Across the globe, patients are no longer passive recipients of care — they are active participants, decision-makers and collaborators.

This timely volume explores the evolving landscape of patient and public involvement (PPI) in healthcare, focusing on its intersection with the healthcare professions. Drawing on international perspectives, the book examines how patients and professionals navigate changing roles, peer support networks and complex healthcare systems. It considers the sociological and practical implications of patient-centric care and its impact on clinical outcomes and resources.

This book brings fresh insight to a fast-developing field.

What if the future of humanity wasn’t driven by Silicon Valley’s vision?

At the edge of its dissolution, European humanism faces profound challenges as AI, biotechnology and posthuman theory reshape what it means to be human. The classical ideals of truth, goodness and beauty — once the moral and aesthetic compass of the European tradition — are being twisted.

This book introduces the reader to Euro-Transhumanism—a distinctive, philosophically rich alternative to the individualistic, technocratic focus of classic transhumanism. It draws upon Europe’s continental cultural tradition, rejects Eurocentrism, utopian fantasies and dualistic thinking, and explores pragmatic ways of increasing the diversity of personal flourishing.

This is a thought-provoking guide to critically reimagining our future.

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

What does it mean to live in a world where our most essential systems are digital—and vulnerable?

This book takes readers beyond the technical aspects of cybersecurity to explore how the management of digital risk shapes politics, policy and everyday life. Drawing on case studies from corporate boardrooms to international affairs, it reveals the social and political logics driving the fast-growing cyber risk industry.

From insurance markets to resilience planning, the book unpacks how these practices order people, places and possibilities—and why understanding them is vital for navigating the promises and perils of our digital future.

This book traces the colonial foundations of modernity as it emerged in non-Western contexts, offering new theories and challenging Eurocentric accounts.

Focusing on Muslim societies, the book maps the entanglements of empire, secularism, capitalism and the nation-state within global power structures. The chapters reveal how modern political, economic, and social orders have been shaped—and often distorted—by imperial legacies.

From legal renewal to postcolonial governance and global finance, this is a unique study that explores the ways in which states and societies in the Global South continue to grapple with, adapt to and resist the pressures of a hegemonic modernity.

How can sociological thinking help us make sense of today’s biggest global challenges?

In what is understood as ‘an age of crisis’, headlines are dominated by topic such as climate change, migration, radicalisation and inequality. These topics are core to sociology, yet sociological insights are drowned out in public debate frequently dominated by technological optimism, economic rhetoric or polarising politics.

This accessibly written textbook centres the sociological voice. It demonstrates how evidence-based, critical perspectives can illuminate the causes, interconnections and possible solutions to some of the most urgent issues of our time.

Each chapter is crafted to support students new to sociology, guiding them to think critically and make connections between complex global problems. Key pedagogical features include:

• Clear statements of key messages at the start of each chapter;

• Bold-highlighted definitions of sociological terms with minimal jargon;

• ‘Focus point’ boxes with data, case studies or visual insights;

• Suggested sources for further exploration, including videos and online media.

Essential reading for undergraduate students and anyone working in policy, advocacy or social change—offering the tools to think critically, act thoughtfully and engage with today’s most pressing global challenges.

What is life really like for LGBTQIA+ people behind bars?

This book offers the most up-to-date global research on the experiences of LGBTQIA+ individuals in prison, cutting through layers of secrecy and stigma to reveal the harsh realities of incarceration. Drawing on evidence from the UK, US, Brazil and beyond, it highlights how protective segregation, institutionalised homophobia and identity-based violence compound trauma and social harm. Through a compelling conversational narrative, the authors explore institutionalised homophobia and offer evidence-based recommendations for policy makers.

This essential resource challenges punitive prison norms and advocates for trauma-informed, inclusive approaches to justice and rehabilitation worldwide.

Centred on creative writing workshops in UK women’s prisons, this book explores what happens when imprisoned women begin to tell their own stories which are shaped by disempowerment and social exclusion.

Blending creative practice with critical analysis, it positions prison writing as both a mode of resistance and a means of reimagining the self. It brings long-overdue attention to the voices of incarcerated women, so often marginalised within the wider prison estate and overlooked in criminological research. This is an urgent, compelling contribution to prison studies, creative criminology and feminist approaches to writing and pedagogy.

An investigation into the policy choices that led to the UK housing crisis.

What is the true cost of Britain’s housing emergency?

This is the shocking story of Britain’s appalling housing crisis as it has never been told before – through the people stuck in its grip, living in barely believable and totally unliveable conditions, including children brought up in hostels, bedsits and even shipping containers.

Delving into the investigative work that began in a council tower block in Croydon and ended in the Houses of Parliament with changes to the law, Left to Rot exposes who is heard and who is ignored, where money is spent, where it is cut and what it tells us about Britain today.

This book exposes the long-term damage of short-term political thinking at the heart of British government, and lays bare the human cost of the catastrophic and ultimately counterproductive policy of rolling back the state in crucial areas of public life that matter most to people.

This book provides fresh insight into multilateral diplomacy, revealing how informal cooperation—not just formal mechanisms —drives EU foreign policy success. Drawing on interviews with diplomats and analysis of critical cases, including sanctions against Russia and Ukraine response coordination, this groundbreaking study exposes the essential role of behind-the-scenes negotiations and informal coalitions.

From defence cooperation mechanisms like Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) to the naval Operation Irini, the book demonstrates how informality compensates for institutional rigidity, enabling swift decision-making in crisis situations. It directly speaks to international relations scholars, diplomats and policymakers seeking to understand how global governance functions in practice.

Once almost universally prohibited, assisted dying is now legal in a growing number of countries across Europe, North America, Australasia and South America. In the UK, as elsewhere, the question remains deeply contested, raising profound legal, moral and practical challenges.

This book draws on extensive original research into Westminster Parliamentary debates, as well as international evidence from jurisdictions where assisted dying is legal, in order to clarify the key arguments for and against reform.

Examining principles, stakeholder perspectives and judicial rulings, it offers the knowledge, context and sensitivity to enable readers to critically engage with one of the most complex and pressing challenges in contemporary practice and policy.

Sexual violence is a widespread, yet poorly addressed, issue in UK universities, affecting a significant proportion of students—especially women and non-binary people. Grounded in feminist theory and student voices, this book explores how universities can better respond through prevention and education.

Drawing on a rich dataset of research in elite universities, it examines the everyday realities of sexual violence—from banter and groping to troubling attitudes toward consent—and critiques dominant behaviors like lad culture. Instead, it proposes a new model rooted in sexual ethics, citizenship and hybrid masculinities, offering practical, policy-relevant insights for creating safer university communities.

The global industrial food system contributes not only to environmental degradation but also to various forms of social inequality. Despite the abundance of reasons for fundamental transformation, there is an intense conflict over the future of food production.

Focusing on Germany, Schoppek explores the transformative potential of strategic agency for social-ecological alternatives to industrialised capitalism within the agricultural sector. Comparing three initiatives who practice reform, innovation and resistance offers compelling insights into how and why change happens - or does not happen - and what it takes to build powerful alliances for a more just and resilient food future.

This book is one of the first to systematically examine the debate about global order in International Relations from an ecological perspective.

Bringing together an international team of expert contributors, chapters offer a well-rounded exploration of the ecological view on world order from a diverse mix of cultural and theoretical backgrounds. The book provides a nuanced understanding of the social structures underlying specific world political challenges and offers valuable insights into the complex interplay of various global orders and their implications for international affairs.

Social Work in Mental Health Settings brings together leading academics and practitioners to explore how mental health social work is shaped and practised around the world. In so doing, it responds to a striking lack of comparative literature in the field and offers a timely, global lens on the discipline.

Combining macro-level analyses with in-depth country case studies – from Brazil and Bosnia and Herzegovina to China and Trinidad and Tobago – the book interrogates how mental health policy, law, political conflict and social movements influence practice.

Essential reading for scholars and professionals working in social work and mental health, this book engages with urgent contemporary themes – from feminist care ethics and community care to self-harm and mindfulness – offering invaluable guidance for those seeking a deeper understanding of mental health social work in the global context.

This innovative volume applies cutting-edge critical theories—including feminist, queer and human security perspectives—to analyse NATO's evolving role as a security and defence institution.

Moving beyond traditional problem-solving approaches, it features diverse international contributors and employs a comprehensive methodological toolkit from discourse analysis to creative research methods. It also reveals how social, political and geopolitical forces shape NATO whilst examining its transformative impact on global affairs.

Essential reading for scholars and practitioners of international relations, security studies and critical theory, this collection offers fresh insights into one of the world's most influential political-military alliances through an inclusive, multi-perspective lens.

What if utopia wasn't a distant dream, but already unfolding around us?

Focusing on South Africa, this compelling book rethinks utopia not as a fictional un-reachable future, but as a lived practice—emerging in social movements and intentional communities.

Rejecting capitalism, it explores how people create alternative ways of living social orders or economies, imagining and organising the world. Blending decolonial sociology, political sociology, utopian studies and real-world experiences, the book offers a fresh and original approach to understanding social transformation in times of crisis.

A powerful read for scholars, students and activists interested in resistance and hope for alternative futures.

Can we truly address poverty without centring the voices of those who live it? Bringing together voices from academia, grassroots activism, NGOs and the UK voluntary sector, this timely and accessible book explores how participatory approaches to activism can drive genuine, inclusive change.

Through short, focused chapters, the authors critically unpack the contested definitions of ‘co-production’, ‘participation’ and ‘lived experience’ while showcasing practice models from across the globe. Their practical reflections highlight what ethical, impactful collaboration looks like in action.

Led by an established voice in lived-experience anti-poverty activism, this book offers practical insight and principled guidance for anyone seeking to build fairer, more inclusive systems – where those most affected are not only heard, but leading the way.

What does it mean to grieve a child lost to an act of terrorism?

This book offers a powerful and deeply human exploration of traumatic bereavement, grounded in parents’ first-hand accounts of losing a child to political violence. Drawing on research in France, the book explores how such loss disrupts meaning, time and self. Through a phenomenological lens, it challenges clinical views of grief and trauma, revealing how parents resist closure and seek enduring bonds with the deceased.

This is a compelling interdisciplinary study of love, memory and making meaning in the wake of unthinkable tragedy.

Is food porn a vibrant and democratic new expression of modern food culture or a superficial addition to an image-saturated world? Tracing its origins from the 1970s to today, this timely book examines the evolution of food porn as a desire-inducing aesthetic practice and a visually extravagant food spectacle.

Through discussions on class, gender, sexuality and national identities, it questions whether food porn reinforces social hierarchies or empowers individuals. Also exploring anti-food porn aesthetics, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the deeper social implications of food’s digital allure.

Drawing on the European Network for Clinical Legal Education’s expertise, this collection examines clinical legal education in Europe.

Challenging traditional legal education, the book shows how clinical legal education methodologies can enhance student engagement, promote diversity and advance social justice goals. Chapters make use of rich case studies and provide readers with a critical analysis of a range of clinical legal education practices across Europe. It is essential reading for legal educators, policy makers and practitioners seeking to modernize legal education and prepare future lawyers for contemporary challenges.

Qualitative interviews offer rich opportunities to explore people's lived experiences, emotions and perspectives with depth and nuance.

This accessible and practical guide equips researchers with innovative techniques to enhance interview-based research. From incorporating objects, documents and sensory prompts to choosing the optimal interview format – plus drawing inspiration from fields like therapy and journalism – the book introduces creative strategies for generating more meaningful, credible data that centres the participant in every interaction.

Key features include:

• Support for researchers to deepen dialogue, connection and participant empowerment;

• Emphasis on the co-production of meaning, emotional and reflective engagement and authentic research encounters; and

• Insights and case studies from contemporary methods and lessons across diverse disciplines.

Ideal for postgraduate students, early career researchers and practitioners, this book demonstrates how to design interviews that are not only ethically grounded but also genuinely engaging, facilitating richer, multimodal and culturally sensitive qualitative research.

As racial boundaries are constantly negotiated in Europe and across the globe, this book explores how Russian migrant workers navigate racial capitalism in the Nordic region.

Challenging the idea of a ‘race-neutral’ Eastern Europe, the book reveals how Russian migrants actively claim whiteness, often finding themselves on the margins of acceptability. Uniquely combining postsocialist and postcolonial perspectives, the author examines how these migrants, seeking recognition as European, reinforce economic and racial divides shaped by global capitalism.

This timely work offers fresh insights into race, migration and the boundaries of whiteness across Europe’s borders.

Beginning with the forced deportation of refugee women from Rome to Lagos in 2015, this book builds a compelling case for an intersectional rethinking of migration and refugee law. Grounded in women’s lived experiences of borders, it exposes the deep interconnections between mobility, labour and social reproduction. Drawing on feminist theory, Rigo challenges binary legal categories—forced versus economic migration, free versus paid labour—while making a radical claim for freedom of movement.

By foregrounding gender as a critical lens, this book offers fresh insights into global migration regimes and reimagines hospitality as a space of resistance and decolonial praxis.

How do legal institutions shape the legitimacy of gender-affirming care for young people?

Through an analysis of 98 Australian Family Court cases over 20 years, this book provides a comprehensive scholarly investigation into this fiercely contested issue. The book reveals how courts deploy ontological, epistemological and teleological arguments to control gender affirmation practices. It demonstrates that legal regulations are not primarily concerned with individual welfare, but with controlling what gender itself can become.

Offering timely insights for scholars, policy makers and practitioners navigating the contemporary debates around transgender rights, the book exposes the gender-normative assumptions underlying legal interventions while advocating for a more expansive approach to legitimising gender-affirming care.

Since Sweden launched the world’s first Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP), the concept has become ubiquitous in foreign policy studies and practice. This book examines its rapid global diffusion, the challenges it faces and the fierce resistance it has provoked.

Featuring contributions from academics, activists and practitioners, the book interrogates FFP’s intersections with militarism, colonialism and patriarchy, while tracing its spread beyond the Global North. Amid democratic decline and surging far-right forces, it not only explores the rollback of feminist gains but also the resilience and creativity of civil society advocacy. Enriched with creative entries like poetry, this collection offers a bold multidisciplinary exploration of FFP’s transformative possibilities, and contested, uncertain future in global politics.

This pioneering collection breaks new ground by examining how post-atrocity justice affects and is informed by familial relationships, particularly between parents and children.

Moving beyond traditional discussions of victims and perpetrators, this volume centres the dynamics of care, responsibility, and identity in the aftermath of mass atrocity. It explores how attempts at addressing legacies of mass atrocity can undermine or strengthen families. Drawing on global case studies and innovative interdisciplinary insights, chapters reveal how socially constructed ideas about parenthood and childhood inform notions of responsibility with and for children within transitional justice frameworks.

This book brings fresh insights into how social spaces shape the way we experience and understand security. Chapters unite voices from critical security studies, urban geography, criminology and political science to rethink the link between security and space, from neighbourhood crime to global conflict.

By viewing security through a spatial lens, the book uncovers the social, economic and political forces that shape security issues in everyday life offering vital insights for current debates on power, space and security.

Conventional research methods often marginalise the voices of those most affected by the issues being studied, limiting the potential for meaningful, transformative change. In education, health, social care, community development and many other fields, there is a growing need for research that is inclusive, accessible and responsive to real-world complexity.

This textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to co-operative inquiry: a participatory research methodology grounded in collaboration, reflection and shared knowledge creation. Acting as a how-to guide and companion text, it supports readers in designing and conducting ethical, practice-based research that draws on lived experience as much as professional expertise. The authors demonstrate how co-operative inquiry can integrate action research and mixed methods to produce both nuanced and authentic insights.

With guidance from leading experts and emerging voices in the field, this book is an essential resource for ethical researchers at every career stage. It equips readers with the confidence, tools and inspiration to generate impactful, equity-driven knowledge.

This book offers a thoughtful, original critique of how contemporary development practices govern life under global capitalism.

Drawing on Heideggerian historical ontology and decolonial thought, it rethinks the foundations of biopolitical critique and explores how development discourse operates in both international policy and resistance movements. It is essential reading for scholars and students of international relations, critical development studies and European political thought seeking new ways to understand, and challenge, the politics of life in the global order.

Urgent crises such as climate change, biodiversity loss and global pandemics demand new ways of communicating knowledge.

This book reimagines science communication, not just as a way to communicate about sustainability, but as a sustainable practice. Challenging traditional communication models rooted in neutrality and control, it explores a transformative approach that is participatory, performative, and ethically engaged. Through arts-based methods, the chapters cultivate a mindset focused on deep relationality and radical imagination.

Blending critique and imagination, this is an invitation to scientists, communicators, and artists seeking to collaborate across disciplines to reshape science communication and transform our collective futures.

This innovative book examines how videogames engage with crime and its control. It treats games as ideological representations, in which ideas about policing, justice, and criminality are formed and reproduced. Covering over fifty videogames and blending insights from criminology, game studies, affect and social theory, the book explores how games reproduce injustice and inequality.

Central to the book is the idea of the ‘ludic unconscious’—the notion that in videogames the convergence of gameplay mechanics and narrative sensibilities are affectively and politically meaningful. It is an essential read for students and academics interested in the intersections of crime, ideology, and play.

This powerful and reflective book explores the losses encountered during social research—of people, communities and environments—collectively referred to as The Lost. Drawing on the contributors’ varied research experiences, it gives voice to lives marked by marginalisation, trauma or quiet disappearance. Stories emerge from women who didn’t survive domestic abuse to those displaced by ‘natural’ disasters, or affected by homelessness. Through deeply personal and ethical reflections, each chapter considers how these losses shape both research and researcher.

Offering new insights into harm, reflexivity and the emotional toll of fieldwork, this is an essential contribution to critical criminology and social research methodology.

What if we reimagined ageing, illness and disability not as barriers to sexuality—but as starting points for new forms of desire, intimacy and pleasure?

This groundbreaking book challenges the silence and stigma surrounding the sexuality of older, ill and disabled people. Drawing from sociology, health studies, cultural theory and lived experience, the authors explore diverse expressions of sexuality that defy long-established views.

From queer ageing to sex work and legal rights, this collection offers bold, inclusive perspectives and policy ideas that centre pleasure, agency and dignity. A vital resource for academics, practitioners and anyone invested in social inclusion and justice.

This groundbreaking edited collection brings together diverse global perspectives to examine struggles against liberalisms through decolonial, postcolonial, Indigenous, feminist, queer, and intersectional lenses.

Prioritising grassroots experiences and subaltern voices, contributors from around the world explore three critical dimensions: resistance to liberal violence, the agency of those engaged in struggle and the complex challenges of transcending colonial legacies. Through rich case studies spanning continents, the volume reveals both commonalities and differences in experiences of contestation and resistance. It offers fresh insights into identity, recognition and difference in contemporary world politics while amplifying voices often marginalised in academic discourse.

Alcohol is everywhere—in our everyday lives, in public debates and, increasingly, at the centre of public health policy.

This book critically examines alcohol as a contemporary research and policy object. It argues that drinking is governed through heavily freighted concepts such as risk, wellbeing, gender and race. The authors interrogate dominant disciplinary sobriety and moderation frameworks, highlighting the overlooked aspects of sociability, pleasure and self-transformation.

In scrutinizing the intensifying public health spotlight on alcohol, the authors issue a call to rethink what it means to live “well” in an era when health is both a personal imperative and a regulatory discourse.

How can the international development community better support inclusive education for children with disabilities in low and lower-middle income countries? This timely book critically examines current approaches to disability and education in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, offering a roadmap for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4.

Grounded in social justice theory, Le Fanu provides an essential analysis of educational needs, development strategies and implementation challenges. Written in an accessible style, this comprehensive resource identifies practical ways forward for creating sustainable, high-quality inclusive education systems that truly serve children with disabilities and their diverse, evolving needs.

This book offers a vivid, critical exploration of young adults’ experiences of the contemporary night-time economy, drawing on rich ethnographic research from Stoke-on-Trent. Adopting recent conceptual advancements in ultra-realism, critical criminology and psychoanalytic theory, it examines how young people navigate relationships, substance use, violence and consumer culture through their night-time leisure rituals.

Advancing our understanding of social harm, the book also exposes the deeper political-economic forces that shape youth behaviours, identity and the many corrosive subjectivities that have flourished under late neoliberal capitalism. Engaging with timely concerns around mental health, individualism, and the nature of desire, the book provides a powerful theoretical and empirical contribution to contemporary criminology and sociology.

From parks and libraries to pubs and schools, social infrastructures are the everyday places that bring people together, support community life and foster connection. As interest in the concept grows, this timely and accessible edited collection offers a comprehensive overview of social infrastructure—its origins, development and practical impact.

Packed with innovative case studies from the UK, Europe, Australia and the US, it highlights how these shared spaces can shape urban life and wellbeing. Featuring contributions from leading scholars, the book provides a vital framework for understanding and researching places that support social connection in an increasingly fragmented world.

Since the late 1970s, student, mortgage, and medical debt have continued to rise in line with lowered public spending and the privatization of key services by Western governments. Gouzoulis shows how working households beholden to these economic burdens are prevented from demanding better working conditions and pay.

By tracing the link between household financialization and workers’ ability to unionise and take action, Gouzoulis reveals how today’s financialized capitalism is sustained, and offers a radical plan on how unions can push back through collaboration and collective action to defend workplace democracy.

What does it mean for social work to truly uphold human rights in an era marked by economic austerity, political polarisation and global crises?

Human Rights in Social Work offers a powerful and timely response, calling for a fundamental rethinking of practice rooted in relational, dignity-driven approaches. Grounded in critical theory, education and real-world issues, this book interrogates the limitations of current approaches while offering a compelling vision for a more just, relational and accountable social work on which intersectionality and cultures of peace play a key role.

Bringing together leading voices in theory, practice and research, the book examines how social workers can move beyond rhetoric – confronting the profession’s own historic and ongoing failings – to embed a deeper, more intersectional understanding of human rights into social work’s core.

This accessible introduction to planning law covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in equal depth. Linking legal principles to real-world planning practice, it shows how planning law shapes our built environment.

Fully updated to reflect the latest legislative changes, this second edition explores key topics such as governance, environmental assessment and major infrastructure projects. It features:

- recommended reading lists;

- illustrative photographs;

- case study text boxes.

Designed for students of planning, law and property-related fields, this textbook provides the essential knowledge of the legal and regulatory framework you’ll need in practice. Whether you're studying planning law for the first time or looking for a concise reference, this is your go-to guide.

How might vulnerability be rethought beyond its traditional associations with weakness and reimagined as the basis of solidarity?

Across the world, there are unprecedented numbers of dispossessed people; rights and resources are increasingly inaccessible to those who need them most, and the responsibilities we have to one another are continually undermined and exploited.

Referencing three sets of social relations – breathing, grieving and appearing, this book examines how recognition of our shared but always socially situated vulnerability could be the basis for organizing our lives in ways that better support relationality, solidarity and care, now and for the future.

This powerful volume brings together scholars, activists, artists and experts-by-experience offering a radical critique of immigration detention and border carceral regimes more broadly, testifying to their inherent harms.

The contributors critically examine how COVID-19 intensified state control, abandonment, and marginalisation while highlighting inspiring acts of resistance and solidarity. Combining abolitionist and no-border perspectives alongside critical scholarly analysis, the book offers urgent insights into dismantling oppressive detention infrastructures and building caring communities.

Essential reading for academics, practitioners and activists committed to social justice, human rights and imagining abolitionist futures beyond borders and systems of incarceration.

This book exposes how policing and licensing practices shape UK nightlife as a racialised space, with harmful consequences for Black and Gypsy and Traveller communities. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with key nightlife stakeholders, it reveals how governance structures – from police-led meetings to licensing decisions – work to suppress racialized night-time events and Black male performers.

Through critical analysis of police diversity training, the discriminatory actions of door staff and security teams as well as street-level policing practices, this study offers a timely intervention into debates on race, surveillance and nightlife. It is essential reading for scholars of policing, racial justice and night-time economy studies in the UK and beyond.

This book offers an interdisciplinary holistic analysis of refugees’ and forced migrants’ paths towards higher education (HE).

Co-authored with writers from refugee backgrounds, it documents over a decade of HE programmes’ experiences in the United Kingdom, France, Jordan and Lebanon.

It offers a new theoretical understanding of educational bordering and de-bordering practices - political, socio-economic, psychosocial and epistemic - guided by a social justice-oriented, anti-racist, refugee-centred approach.

Introducing OMNI - Open, Multimodal, Narratively based, Inclusive - framework as a means to act for refugees’ educational justice, this vital work provides a transferrable best practice model for educational institutions, NGOs and policymakers.

This book exposes the strategies that make migrants’ lives unliveable and explores their resistance to this violence. Drawing on years of research across Europe, the author captures the lived reality of asylum seekers, refugees and other marginalised migrants, including their struggles with constant evictions, detention, push-backs, deportations and violence.

Blending feminist, intersectional and decolonial perspectives, the book reframes exhaustion as both a tool of governance and a site of struggle. By amplifying neglected voices and envisioning politics grounded in solidarity, care and friendship, this is a powerful call to rethink how movement, borders and resistance are understood.

This powerful book examines the global asbestos industry's devastating impact on health, communities, and ecosystems, exposing how corporations and governments collaborate to silence victims while prioritizing profits. Drawing on research from Brazil and Italy, it reveals how race, gender and social privilege determine which harms are recognized and which are tolerated.

Grounded in Black feminist and decolonial thought, the book uses the asbestos industry as a lens to expose colonial male-dictions—narratives that shield powerful actors from accountability. Beyond a story of victims versus corporations, it offers a radical reimagining of state-corporate harm through memory and transformative justice.

This vital book exposes the devastating ways families are treated after their loved ones have been killed by a relatively powerful perpetrator; revealing how families are harmed; silenced by the criminal justice process and invisible in both criminology and the mainstream media. Drawing on landmark cases such as the Grenfell fire, it explores the failures of de-regulation and how institutional perpetrators fail to be held accountable.

Centering the voices of secondary victims—those left behind after corporate harm—it highlights the ways in which justice is avoided, and the effect of this on the families. A vital contribution to zemiology and the study of corporate crime, this book confronts the true cost of crimes committed by the powerful.

Popular media is a powerful mirror and maker of meaning around suicide.

This book brings together scholars from across disciplines to examine how suicide is mythologised, politicised and challenged across film, TV, young adult literature, digital platforms, online communities, and more. From news coverage of celebrity suicide to social media interventions with at-risk youth, this wide-ranging collection explores suicide’s intersections with class, gender, chronic illness and cultural identity.

Bridging academic analysis and lived realities, this volume offers vital tools for understanding, teaching and reimagining how suicide circulates in the stories we consume and create.

The law on the financial consequences of divorce needs to be reformed. This accessible yet authoritative text moves beyond the complexity of current case law to propose concrete legislative solutions centred on equal partnership principles. With the abolition of fault-based divorce and government consideration of financial remedies reform underway, this analysis could not be more relevant.

Drawing on rich research, including new interviews on nuptial agreements, Thompson offers a compelling alternative to existing reform proposals that reveals surprising realities about finances on divorce. By re-evaluating what equality means and how it is perceived, this is a book about how the road to reform can be strategic yet fair. Offering evidence-based insights, it proposes a unique and pragmatic approach to reform.

This groundbreaking book offers a powerful sociological and criminological exploration of disability, autism and mental health within the criminal justice system (CJS). Through life stories and critical analysis, it exposes the stigmatisation, miscommunication and injustices faced by neurodivergent individuals and their families. Drawing on care ethics and the concept of ‘careless’ and ‘careful’ spaces, the book reveals how structural inequalities shape everyday experiences and responses to difference.

With a focus on the emotional, practical and socio-political landscape, it addresses an overlooked area of research into the CJS. It offers new insights for policy, practice and research—insights that respect complexity, encourage empathy and make the invisible visible.

Much has been said about the concept of the ‘left-behind’ in modern Britain and the role that this played in Brexit, but why have the many problems facing coastal communities been overlooked by the media and national policy?

With evidence that coastal areas have generally borne the brunt of deprivation and may be the last to recover from the current economic downturn, the need for a sustainable model of coastal regeneration has never been greater. This book explains the factors behind the decline of coastal areas, provides new data on the ways this has manifested with respect to economic, social, health and education outcomes and suggests how policy reform can create dynamic, thriving coastal communities.

This book delivers a compelling analysis of how Central and Eastern European nations work to reclaim their political and national identities after decades of communist rule. It reveals the historical, cultural and political factors that make nationalism particularly salient in the region, examining its various manifestations and far-reaching implications.

Filling a significant gap in current scholarship, the book positions nationalism as a driving force behind the region’s political and territorial transformation and current challenges. In particular, it demonstrates how rising populism and authoritarian regression in the region can be connected to nationalism.

A fresh, sustainability-focused take on building organizations.

In a world facing growing social, political and environmental challenges, our organizations are no longer serving us well. This book offers a fresh framework for rethinking organizations. It is built on four generative dynamics—purposing, democratizing, cooperating and commoning— underpinned by a planetary mindset. Grounded in real-world examples and the latest research, it explores how these dynamics can spark new modes of organizing. With a focus on overcoming barriers and inspiring change, it’s a compelling call to reimagine organizations for a future that sustains people and the planet.

The idea that a wave of distrust has swept over established democracies in recent years is commonly accepted. This book presents a contrary view. Drawing on various datasets, it reveals a disconnect between the popular commentary and the empirical reality.

The Trust Gap suggests that the most extreme cases — such as the US and the UK — distort our thinking about trust. It looks beyond trust in government to examine trust in a range of institutions, including courts, universities and the media. In doing so, it suggests that while countries such as the US do face a crisis of trust, many established democracies demonstrate resilience rather than vulnerability.

Using the framework of trust gaps, this book offers a stocktake on the state of trust in the 21st century, contributing a more nuanced and hopeful account than the headlines suggest.

What does it mean for the social sciences to take colonialism seriously – not just as an issue of the past, but in terms of its continuing consequences in the present? While calls to decolonize the curriculum are increasing, few resources show what this means in terms of the everyday categories and concepts of the social sciences. This textbook addresses that gap by rethinking key themes—migration, citizenship, inequality, and the environment—through a critical engagement with colonial histories.

Developed from the Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project (CSCP) and written by scholars committed to transforming their teaching and research, the book challenges long-standing assumptions and provides practical, classroom-ready resources. It enables teachers and students to approach familiar topics from new angles, opening space for more rigorous and inclusive debates.

Pedagogical and distinctive features include:

• Structured chapters with learning objectives, summaries, discussion questions and reading lists;

• Thematic case studies that complement conceptual chapters;

• Links to rich digital resources, including videos and teaching tools from CSCP, Global Social Theory and Discover Society;

• Ready-made materials adaptable for undergraduate and sixth-form teaching.

Together, it makes an essential guide for anyone seeking to broaden the scope and depth of social science education.

What role does journalism play in shaping how we understand climate change and the planet we live on?

This thought-provoking book explores how media systems have helped construct our idea of the “human” Earth, from early nature reporting to today’s digital climate dashboards. Drawing on insights from the humanities and social sciences, it offers a fresh look at how news, data and storytelling influence public thinking in the age of the Anthropocene.

Building on the work of influential thinkers, the book asks how journalism can evolve to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world.

How can we make the digital performing arts truly accessible?

Written by experts at metaLAB at Harvard, this pioneering study explores the urgent need to rethink digital access in the performing arts. Drawing on comparative research across the US, UK, EU and Australia, it examines how the COVID-19 pandemic exposed both the potential and the shortcomings of digital programming, particularly for disabled and marginalized audiences. Through rich case studies and critical legal analysis, it advocates for a new global framework that balances copyright protection with the human right to culture.

This is an essential resource for policy makers, arts leaders, disability rights advocates and legal scholars seeking a more inclusive digital future.

Between 1934 and 1939 a wave of violent strikes and riots swept across the Caribbean. Roger Seifert explores how British political parties, trade unions, and pressure groups of the labour movement responded to these colonial struggles.

Using diverse primary sources, Seifert shows similarities between these disputes and solidarity (or otherwise) with Caribbean workers. The book explores deep ideological divisions on labour, colonialism, and political rights within the British Left, which still shape politics today.

A timely study of racism, empire, and class, this is essential reading for anyone interested in labour history, trade unionism, and global inequality.

Many rail against “woke” ideology. Others dismiss the backlash as a rebranding of conservative concerns. Taking a third way, this book argues that social justice ideology centres identity and direct action and expands concepts of harm, distinguishing it from liberalism. Drawing on the latest datasets, the book offers a sober, evidence-based account of the ideology’s emergence.

As women and minorities have gained visibility and new generations have come of age, progressive ideologies have shifted under pressure. Post-2008 economic crises weakened liberalism, giving social justice ideology mass appeal.

Amid polarized debates over “woke” culture, this is a vital resource for scholars and students seeking an objective study of social justice ideology beyond the usual culture-war framing.

Despite global advances in children’s rights, young people are routinely disregarded, overpowered and excluded. This persistent discrimination – known as adultism – permeates family life, education, urban design, legal systems and political discourse.

In this groundbreaking book, the authors provide a comprehensive introduction to adultism from an academic perspective while also emphasising its practical implications. Drawing on rich, real-world examples and research, they analyse it as a systemic form of discrimination, exploring how it evolved and is reproduced through language, institutions and everyday practices.

Timely, accessible and urgent, this book offers a vision for resistance and transformation, outlining how adultism can be challenged – by both adults and young people – to co-create a more equitable future.

As nationalist and populist movements gain traction worldwide, democracy faces growing threats. In many cases, large cities have emerged as strongholds of progressive and democratic values, pushing back against authoritarian pressures.

This timely book explores the evolving power struggle between cities and central governments, particularly in countries led by populist regimes. It examines key issues such as decentralisation, financial autonomy and participatory governance, showing how cities are leading the fight against democratic backsliding. As local governments become "laboratories of democracy”, this collection highlights their crucial role in protecting civil liberties and fostering political engagement in an era of rising extremism.

What happens when death becomes part of the journey of international migrants?

This book examines how mortality is woven into the experience of displacement and migration. From perilous border crossings to the business of repatriation and contested burial grounds, it reveals the hidden geographies and politics that underpin the death of migrants in transit or abroad. Drawing together diverse research across disciplines, it offers a cohesive framework for understanding the industries, rituals and emotional labour surrounding migrant death.

Whether through bureaucratic processes, artistic productions, activist mobilisations or collective mourning, death becomes not an endpoint, but a powerful force shaping how migration is lived, governed and remembered.

What happens when your personal information is weaponised against you online?

This groundbreaking book offers a novel examination of doxxing—the malicious sharing of private, identifiable and sensitive information—through a feminist and post-humanist lens. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 18 victim-survivors, it reveals the deeply gendered harms of privacy abuse, from public shaming and reputational damage to the erosion of informational autonomy.

Challenging conventional understandings of digital abuse, the book foregrounds the lived experiences of those affected and calls for urgent, victim-centred reforms. A vital resource for scholars and advocates, it reimagines data rights in a digital world increasingly shaped by surveillance and control.

Understanding Contemporary Childhood introduces students to the ways in which childhood is socially constructed by a range of social, cultural and political forces. Accessibly written and assuming no prior knowledge, it outlines key social theories to show how ideas and approaches are influenced by different ways of understanding children and society and how this creates childhoods which can differ markedly from previous generations.

With chapter guides, help with written assignments and suggestions for further reading, the book:

• provides an accessible, yet critical account of established theories of childhood, such as the importance of attachment, emphasis on learning and the role of play;

• explores crucial emerging issues, including transgender rights, the rise of misogyny, social media influences and the impact of the climate crisis; and

• will equip students with practical study skills guidance to critically engage with ideas about how society shapes childhood today.

Whether new to the subject or deepening your critical perspective, this book equips readers with the tools to understand and interrogate the complex realities of childhood in the 21st century.

What is it like to cross the Mexico–US border every day just to go to school? Imagine waking before dawn, crossing an international border alone and navigating a school system that wasn’t built for you.

This book follows former transborder learners—students who lived in Mexico before the pandemic and studied in the US —as they go about their daily routines. From militarised checkpoints to exclusive classroom dynamics, these young people reveal a border that is lived, felt and constantly negotiated.

Through their voices, the book challenges dominant ideas of security and control, offering a powerful case for transborder policies rooted in care, connection and the everyday realities of youth who live between nations.

This groundbreaking book reveals how complex stories—ranging from war memoirs and political polemics to propaganda and prize-winning fiction—can shape our understanding of ideologically motivated violence. Drawing on the rich tradition of aesthetic education, it offers an original theory connecting the aesthetic, ethical and political dimensions of narrative. The author demonstrates how literature and documentary writing can unmask techniques of neutralisation, expose fictionality and suggest responses to violence and harm.

Uniting criminology, philosophy and literary studies, this timely and accessible book makes a bold case for why narratives matter in tackling terrorism, war and crimes against humanity.

Bringing together leading scholars and activists, this edited collection calls for a return to the ‘mode of production debate’ to address often-overlooked dimensions: gender, race, and Eurocentrism.

The concept of mode of production is placed in dialogue with Marxist debates on domestic labour, racial capitalism and the ways in which Eurocentrism has shaped the historiographies of capitalism. In doing so, the book offers novel approaches to studying the origins, modalities and contradictions of capitalism.

Advancing an integrated framework that incorporates class, gender, race and ethnicity, the book opens pathways to new research for better understanding, resisting and transcending capitalism.

Leading international experts review recent social policy developments in this latest edition of the longstanding Social Policy Review series.

Available Open Access and published in association with the Social Policy Association, this edited book provides a comprehensive review of the past year’s key policy trends and most significant scholarship. Featuring expert contributions around elections, parties and comparative perspectives, it critically examines emerging issues, policy responses and theoretical advancements in the field.

Essential reading for academics, researchers and students in social policy, social welfare and related disciplines, this book is an invaluable resource for those seeking to engage with contemporary social policy debates.

Pride events have become a powerful global symbol of LGBTQIA+ visibility, celebrated in settings ranging from urban centres to remote villages across the Global North and South.

Drawing on decolonial theories, this book examines the complex relationship between Pride and modernity while addressing pressing issues such as accessibility, grassroots activism and environmental sustainability in a post-pandemic era. Challenging Eurocentric narratives of progress, modernity and human rights, the author introduces the concept of ‘Kaleidoscope Modernities’ to reveal the diverse meanings Pride embodies worldwide.

Essential for understanding the shifting landscapes of LGBTQIA+ rights and cultures, this book offers a bold, fresh perspective.

This book offers a new conceptual framework for understanding biodata across different temporalities and global contexts. Moving beyond data as mere information, the authors explore how biodata reshapes human lives, scientific practice and global struggles for justice.

Bridging anthropology, infrastructure studies and technoscience, the book introduces a critical vocabulary for understanding biodata not just as a technical artifact, but as a set of lived, shifting relations that are embedded in histories of racialisation, colonial dispossession and the digital transformation of health.

Today's complex research challenges demand effective teams, yet researchers rarely receive training in teamwork skills crucial for collaborative success.

This book fills that gap, outlining theory and providing practical actions that equip researchers with tools to build and sustain effective teams. Drawing on organizational psychology, team science and the authors’ own experience, it offers concrete practices for fostering collaborative innovation, managing diverse perspectives and achieving high-impact outcomes.

An essential reading for researchers, administrators and facilitators seeking to build high-performing teams, this indispensable resource enables researchers to effectively work across different disciplines and sectors to meet the evolving demands of funded research.

This book explores the political economy of Chinese and Japanese infrastructure financing in Indonesia, examining how Chinese and Japanese actors utilize diverse modes including Official Development Assistant, commercial loans, export credits, business-to-business investments, and public–private partnerships to ensure profitability and manage risks.

Moving beyond traditional views of these financing modes as geoeconomic statecraft, the book exposes readers to a new perspective by situating infrastructure financing in the context of capitalist development. It reveals how contestation, conflicts, and compromise between socio-political forces including different segments of Japanese and Chinese capital, state actors, and civil society actors in Indonesia give shape to distinct modes of financing. Through detailed case studies and interviews across Japan, China and Indonesia, it uncovers the interplay between these forces and how their relations are sustained through regulatory complexes underpinning large-scale projects.

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

How can we make the digital world safer, more responsible and accountable?

This innovative book offers an original framework for understanding digital responsibility, blending insights from law, technology and policy. Through a series of case studies showcasing work from early career researchers, it highlights the diverse groups, values and governance challenges shaping digital environments across jurisdictions. From crafting effective policies to designing ethical digital products, this book equips policy makers, practitioners and academics with the tools to minimise harm and enhance accountability and responsibility in the digital age.

This is a vital resource for navigating the complexities of digital responsibility in a pluralistic, globalised world.

A century after the state's foundation, Ireland faces an acute homelessness crisis with families and children increasingly affected. This book uncovers how decades of housing policy, financial decisions and social factors have shaped today’s housing insecurity. It is the first to take a historical approach, tracing the roots of homelessness back to key policy decisions taken over the past century.

By understanding how we got here, it offers crucial insights into breaking the cycle. Essential reading for policy makers, scholars and anyone concerned about Ireland’s housing future, with lessons for other jurisdictions, this book reveals why solving homelessness requires rethinking how we build and fund housing.

This book examines the impact of World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) economic restructuring programmes during active conflicts.

Using a critical political economy perspective, the book explores how these restructuring efforts affect vulnerable communities’ survival amid violence. Chapters provide a detailed case study of Ukraine during the War in Donbas, analysing the controversial reforms in agriculture, gas and pension sectors. The resulting analysis offers valuable insights into how these reforms have influenced Ukraine’s political economy and the survival of conflict-affected populations since the 2022 Russian invasion.