This open access book explores the relevance of the concept of technology assessment (TA) on an international and global level. Technologies play a key role in addressing global challenges such as climate change, population aging, digitization, and health. At the same time, their use increases the need for coordinated action and governance at the global level in the field of science, technology…
This is an open access book. This edited collection aims to document the effects of Covid-19 on film festivals and to theorize film festivals in the age of social distancing. To some extent, this crisis begs us to consider what happens when festivals can’t happen; while films have found new (temporary) channels of distribution (most often in the forms of digital releases), the festival format…
Spaces, too, have a history. And history always takes place in spaces. But what do historians mean when they use the word "spaces"? And how can spaces be historically investigated? Susanne Rau provides a survey of the history of Western concepts of space, opens up interdisciplinary approaches to the phenomenon of space in fields ranging from physics and geography to philosophy and sociology,…
This open access book focuses on how the design and use of innovative learning environments can evolve as teaching practices and education policies change. It addresses how these new environments are used, how teachers are adapting their practices, the challenges that these changes pose, and the effective evaluation of these changes.
Despite China’s rise to the status of global power, many Chinese youths are anxious about their personal future, in large measure because the rapid changes have left them feeling adrift. This book, available in open access, provides a manifesto of intellectual activism that counsels China’s young people to think by themselves and for themselves. Consisting of three conversations between Xi…
This open access book explores the role of the ILO (International Labour Organization) in building global social governance from multiple and mutually complementary perspectives. It explores the impact of this UN´s oldest agency, founded in 1919, on the transforming world of work in a global setting, providing insights into the unique history and functions of the ILO as an organization and the…
This open access book is about Mozambicans and Angolans who migrated in state-sponsored schemes to East Germany in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. They went to work and to be trained as a vanguard labor force for the intended African industrial revolutions. While they were there, they contributed their labor power to the East German economy.
This open access book considers the concept of the hinterland as a crucial tool for understanding the global and planetary present as a time defined by the lasting legacies of colonialism, increasing labor precarity under late capitalist regimes, and looming climate disasters. Traditionally seen to serve a (colonial) port or market town, the hinterland here becomes a lens to attend to the times…