Open Book Publishers
This page shows the latest publications (in descending order of publication date) from Open Book Publishers.
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Last updated: 2026-06-05 01:00:29
May 2026
The Politics of Open Infrastructures: Power, Governance, and Justice in Digital Knowledge Practices
Editor: Katja Mayer
Editor: Astrid Mager
Editor: Renée Ridgway
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0528
This volume examines how openness is designed, governed, contested and lived in contemporary digital knowledge infrastructures. From open source software and internet standards, to citizen science platforms, public sector data systems and alternative computing practices, the book shows that infrastructures are never neutral technical backbones.
A Multipolar Approach to Early Christian Arabic: Vatican Arabic Ms 13 in the Linguistic Landscape of Early Islam
Author: Phillip W. Stokes
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0517
This volume offers the most comprehensive linguistic analysis to date of Vatican Arabic MS 13, a late 9th/early 10th-century Arabic Gospel manuscript. Combining meticulous quantitative study with wide-ranging comparative evidence, this book provides an in-depth examination of the manuscript’s orthography, phonology, morphology, morpho-syntax, and syntax. Through extensive charts, tables, and multiple interpretive frameworks, the author illuminates how linguistic features pattern across every dimension relevant to accurate analysis.
Crucially, the study does not treat MS 13 in isolation. Its features are systematically compared with those of other Christian Arabic manuscripts, Quranic traditions, medieval Arabic registers, early poetry, and modern dialects. This contextualised approach situates the manuscript within the rich linguistic diversity of medieval Arabic and challenges long-standing assumptions about ‘Middle Arabic’ and ‘Classical Arabic’. By demonstrating that many features of MS 13 align with broader scribal and linguistic practices of the period, the book makes a compelling case against the notion that scribes worked towards a single, unified register or variety. Rather, they drew creatively and pragmatically from a diverse repertoire of features and linguistic traditions, revealing a far more dynamic and multifaceted approach to written composition than previously recognised.
An outstanding and field-shaping contribution, this volume provides an essential model for future work on Christian Arabic, medieval Arabic varieties, and the history of Arabic more broadly.
Colour Matters: Exploring Chromatic Materialities in the Long Nineteenth Century (1798-1914)
Editor: Stefano Evangelista
Editor: Charlotte Ribeyrol
Editor: Matthew Winterbottom
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0501
Colour Matters provides a fresh investigation of colour in the long nineteenth century. Across fourteen richly researched essays, the book explores the materiality, politics, and sensory experience of colour—from synthetic dyes and chrome pigments to the role of colour in medicine, gender, empire, and identity.
The Sentencing of Jesus (Gzar-dina de-Yeshu): The ‘Authentic’ Jewish Protocols of the Trial of Jesus
Author: Gideon Bohak
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0497
By reconstructing an ancient polemical text that has previously been known only in a fragmentary manner, and by situating it both within its Late Antique context and in the context of previous scholarship, this book makes a significant contribution to the study of Judaism, and of Jewish-Christian relations, in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
Benjamin Franklin, Orthoepist and Phonetician: Vol. 1: Language, Literacy and Social Mobility in Franklin’s World
Author: Gary D. German
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0470
This book offers a groundbreaking exploreation of Franklin’s little-studied linguistic legacy – his Reformed Mode of Spelling (1768/1779).
Distributing Knowledge: Openness, Equity, and Higher Education Transformation
Author: Richard F. Heller
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0520
Inequity is deeply embedded in higher education: in who can access learning, whose knowledge is created and valued, who gets published, and who ultimately benefits from universities’ work. Distributing Knowledge argues that the sector is falling short of its public mission—and that incremental reform is no longer enough.
Benjamin Franklin, Orthoepist and Phonetician: Vol. 2: Colonial American Voices and London Norms: Franklin’s Quest for an Orthographic Reform
Author: Gary D. German
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0537
Benjamin Franklin has been hailed as an inventor, scientist, printer, author, philosopher, diplomat, philanthropist and political activist and, especially, a founding father of the United States, but few are aware he was also a phonetician. This volume offers a groundbreaking exploration of Franklin’s little-studied linguistic legacy—his Reformed Mode of Spelling (1768/1779). In this short treatise, Franklin outlined a plan for a radical, phonetically-based modernization of the English spelling system that would simultaneously serve as a pronunciation guide for what he envisaged to be ‘correct’ English as well as a practical scheme allowing the unlettered and foreigners to learn to read and write ‘within a week’. The social and sociolinguistic reasons for its inception as well as what that model entailed linguistically are the focus of this book.
April 2026
From the Margins: Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity
Editor: Ladan Rahbari
Editor: Olga Burlyuk
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0508
From the Margins: Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity is the much-anticipated second volume following Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity and Resilience in Europe published in 2023, and available at https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0331. This new collection deepens and expands the conversation on the lived experiences of migrant academics navigating global academia.
Maintaining the autoethnographic and narrative approach of the first volume, From the Margins brings together diverse voices that challenge the Eurocentric framing of academic mobility by extending the focus beyond Europe to contexts such as the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Africa, and the Middle East. Through deeply personal, creative, and reflexive narratives, the contributors delve deep into the notions of privilege, migration, and precarity, revealing how academic hierarchies and colonial legacies shape everyday experiences of belonging, vulnerability, and resilience.
Bridging scholarship and storytelling, this volume offers an intellectually rich and emotionally resonant exploration of academia’s margins, inviting readers to rethink what knowledge, care, and solidarity mean within and beyond institutional borders. This volume appeals to scholars and students across migration, sociology, postcolonial, gender, race, and border studies, as well as to university leaders and diversity officers. Its interdisciplinary and creative format—including poetry and prose—makes it both accessible and engaging for academic and general audiences alike.
Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: A Phenomenological View
Editor: Sencer Yeralan
Author: Philip Aka
Author: Derek Baker
Author: Azra Branković
Author: Eka Gegeshidze
Author: Laura Ancona Lee
Author: Christos Michalakelis
Author: Mbulaheni Nthangeni
Author: Efthymia Staiou
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0525
Artificial intelligence is increasingly embedded in the everyday practices of higher education, shaping assessment, governance, labor, and institutional legitimacy. Rather than presenting a technical guide or policy checklist, this volume instead offers a reflective, multi-voiced examination of what AI means for higher education’s purpose, identity, and future. Its phenomenological grounding shifts the focus from operational questions of implementation to deeper inquiries into how AI reshapes institutions, knowledge, and the academic self.
Harvesting the Sea in Southeastern Arabia: Volume 2: Comparative Lexicon of Fish and Other Marine Species
Author: Miranda J. Morris
Author: Erik Anonby
Author: Janet C.E. Watson
Editor: Erik Anonby
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0538
Along the shores of southeastern Arabia, traditional marine knowledge is fading as languages and ecosystems come under increasing pressure. This second volume of Harvesting the Sea in Southeastern Arabia brings together marine species terminology and associated knowledge in the five coastal Modern South Arabian languages (MSAL) and the Kumzari language of the Musandam Peninsula in eastern Arabia. The materials, collected by the authors in periods between the 1970s and the present, are a testament to communities’ longstanding intimacy with the sea and their resilient livelihoods in the face of often difficult conditions.
Over 2000 marine species names are inventoried, featuring many bony fish and cartilaginous fish, but also including mammals, reptiles, invertebrates, and plants. Terms for fish at various life stages and vocabulary associated with marine species are also provided. The lists are organised in the format of a comparative lexicon, where individual species are compared across the six languages, and as an annotated alphabetical lexicon with a searchable companion file, presenting additional insights collected over the course of fieldwork.
Along with its relevance for communities where this knowledge is being lost as species die out and livelihoods change, this book is an essential resource for anyone interested in learning from the languages, cultures, and ecosystems of Arabia.
The American Archipelago: A New Edition of Oscar Handlin’s Classic Anthology, ‘This Was America’
Author: Oscar Handlin
Editor: Kenneth Weisbrode
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0495
The collection at hand, Handlin’s classic anthology ‘This Was America’, first published in 1949, gathers Europeans’ travel accounts and perspectives on America from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Rather than presenting a single narrative, Handlin emphasizes variety: contrasting impressions of liberty and inequality, restlessness and rootedness, optimism and critique by people arriving from diverse European backgrounds. His free translations and selective introductions guide readers subtly but leave interpretation open. Over time, these essays shift meaning depending on context—once read as a celebration of American life, they now invite more critical reflection. This new edition reimagines America not as a singular whole but as an “archipelago”: a collection of diverse experiences, perceptions, and contradictions. The metaphor underscores the interplay between unity and multiplicity in American identity.
Pietro Giannone. Autobiography. The Tragedy of a Historian and the Inquisition: Translated with commentary by Thérèse Ridley
Translator: Thérèse Ridley
Contributions by: Thérèse Ridley
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0483
This edition, translated and annotated by Therese Ridley, not only renders the full autobiography accessible to English readers for the first time, but contextualizes it within modern Italian scholarship. Each chapter is enriched with appendices that include critical sources, commentary, and related correspondence, illuminating the people, events, and philosophical struggles that defined Giannone’s world.
Beyond Popular Science
Author: David H. Silver
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0526
Beyond Popular Science is not a popular science book. It is not a textbook. It is not an academic monograph. Instead, it occupies a rare and deliberately unconventional space: a work for readers who enjoy scientific storytelling but are no longer satisfied with simplifications that smooth away the real substance of modern science.
March 2026
Spaces for Action: A Repository of Tools and Methods for a Socially Situated Architectural Education
Editor: Guido Cimadomo
Editor: Ingrid C. Vargas Díaz
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0503
‘Spaces for Action’ provides a hands-on guide for teachers and students looking to make architectural learning more engaging, collaborative, and socially meaningful.
The book brings together over 80 creative tools that can be adapted to different classrooms, communities, and design challenges. The tools are grouped by teaching approaches—like cooperative teamwork, experiential learning, and transformative practices—and by the stages of the design process: identifying challenges, generating ideas, and putting them into action. Each entry gives a clear overview of what the tool is for, how it works, and what you need to make it happen. You’ll also find tips on group sizes, resources, and possible collaborators, making it easy to bring these methods straight into practice.
Ottoman-Era Documents from the Cairo Genizah
Author: Jane Hathaway
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0502
This groundbreaking volume marks a rare and transformative contribution to studies of the Cairo Genizah, a vast trove of documents generated by Egypt’s Jewish community between the 10th and 19th centuries. While the Cairo Genizah has long yielded extraordinary insights into Jewish history in the greater Mediterranean region, attention has focused overwhelmingly on documents from the ‘classical’ period (11th–13th centuries). Documents from the later period, when Egypt was ruled by the Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire, remain woefully underexplored. This book helps to change that, presenting a meticulously curated collection of later Genizah documents that expand the boundaries of current scholarship.
Make/Unmake: Play at the Centre of Culture Change
Author: Anna Beresin
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0511
Anna Beresin’s ‘Make/Unmake’ is an engaging and deeply original exploration of children’s play as a powerful cultural force. Drawing on ethnographic research and vivid travel writing, the author journeys to the Midlands region of England to observe three remarkable play-based programs: the Maker{Futures} Mobile Makerspace, the Pitsmoor Adventure Playground, and the GLUE Collective. She captures the voices of playworkers, teachers, and artists and documents the ingenuity of children turning objects into tools of imagination and change.
Historicizing IQ Testing: Intelligence Assessments and their Role in Norwegian Society from the 1900s to the Present
Editor: Håkon Aamot Caspersen
Editor: Jon Røyne Kyllingstad
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0471
Intelligence testing has shaped modern society in profound ways, influencing education, psychology, law, and governance. This volume offers the first comprehensive study of the history of IQ testing in a Nordic country, shedding new light on its development, adaptation, and societal impact in Norway.
February 2026
Africa in Russian Imperial Culture: Race, Empire, and Representation (1850-1917)
Author: Anita Frison
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0504
This volume uncovers how Sub-Saharan Africa was imagined in Russian culture from 1850 to 1917. Drawing on travelogues, ethnographic studies, fiction, and museum collections, Anita Frison reveals how Russia—though lacking formal colonies in Africa—nonetheless engaged deeply with Western colonial discourse.
A Society of Meta-Organizations
Author: Héloïse Berkowitz
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0505
Our contemporary societies are made of meta-organizations — organizations composed of other organizations. These range from international bodies like the International Whaling Commission, to national industry or business associations like the crowdfunding association Finance Participative France, to local associations such as fisheries co-management committees in Catalunya. Meta-organizations have become a defining feature of how actors coordinate, govern and make collective decisions. But what exactly makes them distinct, and why do they matter — both in theory and in practice?
Neomania: How Our Obsession With Innovation is Failing Science, and How to Restore Trust
Author: Krist Vaesen
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0507
Drawing on metascience as well as the philosophy and sociology of science, Neomania offers a critical analysis of how this ethos has permeated the norms and institutions of modern science. The book traces its historical emergence, diagnoses its systemic consequences, and articulates a reform agenda centered on coordination, shared research programs, and epistemic integrity—an agenda that goes well beyond the principles of Open Science.
al-Dānī’s al-Taysīr fī al-qirāʾāt al-sabʿ: A Translation with Linguistic Commentary
Author: Marijn van Putten
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0475
Al-Taysīr fī al-Qirāʾāt al-Sabʿ by the 11th century Andalusian scholar ʾAbū ʿAmr al-Dānī is one of the most influential descriptions of the seven reading traditions of the Qurʾān. It is the work on which the later didactic poem by al-Šāṭibī was based, which still stands as the basis for the teaching of the reading traditions among Muslim specialists. This book makes the highly technical genre of the Qurʾānic reading traditions accessible through a rigorous translation of al-Dānī’s work with extensive elucidating footnotes. Besides a full translation of the text, the book also includes an in-depth introduction, which lays out the history of the reading traditions, details of their transmission, the technical terminology of the Qirāʾāt genre, and summarises the linguistic principles of the reading traditions using modern linguistic terminology and illustrative tables.
January 2026
Science in the Salon: Atoms and Animals in Madeleine de Scudéry’s ‘Conversations’ (1680–92): An Essay and Translation
Author: Helena Taylor
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0465
Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701) was a celebrated seventeenth-century novelist and essayist, yet her engagement with natural philosophy and the sciences has been largely overlooked. This volume presents the first English translation of ‘The Story of Two Chameleons’ (1688) and situates it within Scudéry’s broader scientific and philosophical writing. Beyond this seminal text, the book explores her reflections on atomism, natural history, and epistemology, revealing her critical engagement with cutting-edge theories of her time, including a challenge to the Cartesian ‘animal-machine’ hypothesis.
Passivisation in Semitic, Iranian, Armenian, and Beyond
Editor: Paul M. Noorlander
Editor: Hiwa Asadpour
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0516
This volume brings together research on passive voice constructions in low-resource languages of Western Asia, a region marked by extraordinary linguistic diversity as well as a long history of cultural suppression and marginalisation. The contributions showcase the passive voice in Semitic, Iranian, Armenian, Greek, and Turkic languages, many of which are endangered, understudied, or confined to diaspora communities and disappearing language islands. Education and cultural expression in these languages remained heavily restricted across parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, underscoring the urgent need for documentation and revitalisation.
Heroines of Greek and Roman Myth: An Intermediate Latin Reader
Author: Maxwell Teitel Paule
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2026
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0496
This volume offers students a fresh approach to reading Latin through the lens of women’s stories in classical myth. The stories, carefully adapted from ancient sources, progress in grammatical and stylistic difficulty, beginning with accessible prose and gradually building toward the complexity of authentic classical Latin. Drawing on Dickinson College’s Latin Core Vocabulary, the book ensures that learners are practicing the most useful words, while less common terms are glossed in-line to promote fluid reading rather than constant translation.
December 2025
Broken: Illness and Disability in Antônio Francisco Lisboa, Camilo Castelo Branco, Clarice Lispector, Victor Willing, Paula Rego and Ana Palma
Author: Maria Manuel Lisboa
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0500
‘Broken: Illness and Disability in Antônio Francisco Lisboa, Camilo Castelo Branco, Clarice Lispector, Victor Willing, Paula Rego and Ana Palma’ traces the lives and works of six major artists and writers from Portugal, Brazil, and Britain through the lens of ‘being broken’—in body, mind, or both. Spanning from the eighteenth century to the present, the volume explores how sociopolitical and somatic factors such as mental illness, psychological abuse, arthritis, genital mutilation, and multiple sclerosis shaped their creativity, while also reflecting broader national, social, sexual, and political pressures.
More with More: Investing in the Energy Transition: 2025 European Public Investment Outlook
Editor: Floriana Cerniglia
Editor: Francesco Saraceno
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0499
This outlook offers a timely and insightful exploration of Europe’s energy transition, a process that lies at the heart of today’s environmental, economic, and political debates. It examines the diverse commitments undertaken by European countries as they navigate the challenges of decarbonization and the shift to sustainable energy systems. By analyzing both the policy frameworks and the concrete instruments adopted to reach ambitious climate and energy goals, the book sheds light on the strategies shaping the continent’s future.
Solidarity in Contingency: Rorty’s Constructive Project
Editor: Elin D. Huckerby
Editor: Marianne Janack
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0487
Richard Rorty (1931–2007), once dubbed ‘the man who killed truth’, is best known for challenging the idea that philosophy provides foundational knowledge. Yet beyond the controversy lies a vital, underexplored side of Rorty’s work: his constructive vision for fostering democratic solidarity in a world shaped by contingency and uncertainty. This volume shifts focus from defending Rorty to applying his insights for today’s fractured, post-truth culture.
November 2025
Education 2.0: Chronicles of Technological and Cultural Change in Egypt
Editor: Linda Herrera
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0489
Education 2.0 offers a compelling portrait of Egypt’s bold attempt to overhaul its public education system amid sweeping political and technological transformation. Drawing on extensive oral history interviews, this book traces the launch and rollout of the ‘New Education System’ initiated by the Ministry of Education in 2018, designed to modernize curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment in the digital age and change the ‘culture of learning’. The volume moves fluidly from macro-level state planning to the lived experiences of teachers and students, exploring the promises and pitfalls of top-down reform.
A Place of Dreams: Desire, Deception and a Wartime Coming of Age
Author: Alison Twells
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0461
This book is a compelling blend of mystery, history, and creative non-fiction, that brings to life the wartime story of Norah Hodgkinson (1925-2009), a working-class schoolgirl, later clerical worker, and a prolific diarist. The book opens with a sailor’s letter of thanks for a pair of socks that Norah had knitted for the Royal Navy Comforts Fund in 1940―a gift that led to an exciting romance with the sailor’s dashing airman brother. But as the author pieces together Norah’s diary entries and the sailor’s letters, questions emerge about the men’s identities and intentions. ‘A Place of Dreams’ uncovers a dark tale of male rivalry and wartime anonymity, and a young woman’s appetite for life and love amidst unexpected dangers.
Joyce’s Choices: New Textual Parallels in James Joyce’s ‘Dubliners’, ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, and ‘Ulysses’
Author: R. H. Winnick
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0429
This major new study of the textual parallels that permeate James Joyce’s three most widely read works––‘Dubliners’, ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, and ‘Ulysses’––documents and discusses some eight hundred instances, just over seven hundred of them in ‘Ulysses’ alone, of previously unrecognized, unidentified, or misidentified echoes, most of them verbatim, of antecedent texts ranging from major and minor works of English, Irish, Italian, French and other literatures to the poems, plays, popular songs, hymns, comic operas, triple-deckers, dime novels, penny dreadfuls, and print advertisements of his own day.
A Portrait of Samuel Hartlib: In Search of Universal Betterment
Author: Charles Webster
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0486
The 2013 digitization of the vast Hartlib Papers archive highlighted the pressing need for a comprehensive modern study of Samuel Hartlib (1600–1662), a central figure in seventeenth-century intellectual life. Though educated in Eastern Europe, Hartlib spent his adult life in London, where he became a prolific correspondent and chronicler. His Ephemerides, spanning 1634 to 1660, and his extensive correspondence with leading thinkers across Britain and Protestant Europe offer an unparalleled window into the era’s religious, political, and scientific ferment.
The Intertwined World of the Oral and Written Transmission of Sacred Traditions in the Middle East
Editor: Alba Fedeli
Editor: Geoffrey Khan
Editor: Johan Lundberg
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0498
In the medieval Middle East, the scriptures of Christianity, Judaism and Islam were transmitted in written and oral form. The means of written transmission and the textualisation of the oral reading of these scriptures exhibit many parallels, which reflect cultural contact and convergence across the various religious communities. This volume is the outcome of a project, funded jointly by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, that aimed to bring together strands of research related to various aspects of the transmission of these sacred texts in order to reach a deeper understanding of the intertwined world of the three major religions of the Middle East at their formative periods of development during the early Islamic centuries.
Allocation, Distribution, and Policy: Notes, Problems, and Solutions in Microeconomics
Author: Samuel Bowles
Author: Weikai Chen
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0466
This work provides a problem-based and policy oriented approach to teaching microeconomics, development, labor, environment, public economics and topics in business, management and public policy to upper level undergraduates, masters and doctoral students.
October 2025
Xouth, The Ape: A Tale of Manners
Author: Iakovos Pitsipios
Translator: Neo G. Christodoulides
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0493
‘Xouth, the Ape’, published in 1848 by Iakovos Pitsipios is a pioneering and satirical Greek novel that deftly blends humour, cultural critique, and biting social commentary. The novel is set in the aftermath of the Greek War of Independence. The story follows a young Greek man, desperate to present himself as a European aristocrat, who finds himself entangled with Xouth—an ape who is, in fact, a German travel writer transformed as punishment for his vanity and prejudices.
Performance Research Methods: Interdisciplinary Methods for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies
Editor: Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink
Editor: Laura Karreman
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0469
‘Performance Research Methods’ is the first comprehensive guide to contemporary methodologies in performance studies, offering a clear and structured overview of the tools currently shaping research in theatre, dance, and performance. While many volumes focus on individual methods, this book uniquely surveys a range of approaches, presenting their historical background, analytical potential, practical application, and interdisciplinary relevance.
Hylo Narrans: Echoes of Material Marronage
Author: Kevin Toksöz Fairbairn
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0476
This book explores the acoustic agency of brass as a vital medium through which histories of extraction, resistance, and collective creativity resonate. Blending metalwork, experimental instrument-building, and philosophical inquiry, the book listens closely to brass not just as material, but as storyteller—what the author calls hylo narrans, echoing Sylvia Wynter’s invocation of homo narrans. Grounded in their practice spanning artisanal craftsmanship and industrial labor, the author examines how materials respond, resist, and reshape meaning within the workshop, the concert hall, and the broader social fabric. By introducing chimeracords—hybrid sound objects forged from factory detritus—and their affordance for sonic experimentation, Hylo Narrans challenges Western narratives of purity, utility, and control, inviting readers to consider alternative storylines posed by materials-in-flight.
Grammar of Etulo: A Niger-Congo (Idomoid) Language
Author: Chikelu I. Ezenwafor-Afuecheta
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0467
This work provides the first detailed linguistic description of the grammar of Etulo, a language spoken in Nigeria by a minority group in Benue and Taraba states. This description establishes Etulo as a tone language characterised by a predominant SVO word order, non-inflectional morphology, prominent aspectual values, obligatory complement verbs and verb serialization, among other features. This grammar also serves as a foundation for further description of the Etulo grammar and for the development of pedagogical materials needed in Etulo language teaching.
Польові зйомки: Оцифрування документальної спадщини у складних умовах
Editor: Джоді Баттерворт
Editor: Ендрю Пірсон
Editor: Патрік Сазерленд
Editor: Адам Фаркухар
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0480
Цей посібник обов’язково треба прочитати, якщо ви плануєте розпочати науковий проект з оцифрування. Посібник відповідає специфікаціям проєктів EAP (Програма збереження архівів, що перебувають під загрозою зникнення) Британської бібліотеки, він наповнений хорошими практичними рекомендаціями щодо планування та реалізації успішного проекту з оцифрування в потенційно складних умовах.
A Grammar of Jordanian Arabic
Author: Bruno Herin
Author: Enam Al-Wer
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0410
The present grammar is based on empirical data collected over more than three decades. It investigates the phonology and morphosyntax of Jordanian Arabic, with a focus on the traditional sedentary varieties of Central and Northern Jordan, locally known as Balgawi and Horani.
September 2025
Sensing Violence: Reading with the Marquis de Sade
Author: Will McMorran
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0488
What does reading fictional violence do to us as readers? To find out, this provocative and original book turns to the works of an author synonymous with sexual violence: the Marquis de Sade. Drawing on psychology, cognitive literary studies, and empirical research, it argues that reading is a fundamentally embodied act – and one that implicates us far more than we might like to think in fictional depictions of violence.
Representation Theory: A Categorical Approach
Author: Jan E. Grabowski
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0492
This volume offers a fresh and modern introduction to one of abstract algebra’s key topics. Guiding readers through the transition between structure theory and representation theory, this textbook explores how algebraic objects like groups and rings act as symmetries of other structures. Using the accessible yet powerful language of category theory, the book reimagines standard approaches to topics such as modules and algebras in a way that unlocks modern treatments of more advanced topics such as quiver representations and even representations of Hopf algebras and categories.
Questions on the Posterior Analytics (Second Redaction)
Editor: Iacopo Costa
Editor: Gustavo Fernández Walker
Editor: Ana María Mora-Márquez
Translator: John Longeway
Translator: Matthew Wennemann
Author: Simon of Faversham
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0468
The commentary edited here, together with the accompanying translation, offers new insight into Simon of Faversham’s philosophy—a fascinating chapter in the history of late medieval thought. It also deepens our understanding of the philosophical discussions on demonstration and related topics that took place during the early period of Europe’s university history, and of the ways in which these discussions drew on earlier philosophical developments in non-European traditions, notably the Islamic philosophical tradition.
Careful Village and Other ‘Khashag’ from Tibet: The Amdo Comedies of Menla Jyab
Author: Menla Jyab
Translator: Timothy Thurston
Translator: Tsering Samdrup
Editor: Timothy Thurston
Editor: Tsering Samdrup
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0452
This volume offers a unique glimpse into the world of khashag, a vibrant genre of Tibetan spoken comic dialogues from the area Tibetans call Amdo, with the first ever publication of 11 annotated translations of scripts by its leading performer, Menla Jyab. Emerging in the 1980s during a period of cultural revival in Tibetan communities, khashag fused traditional Tibetan expression with influences from Han Chinese xiangsheng (crosstalk), evolving into a medium of sharp societal critique and joyous entertainment. Menla Jyab, a pioneering performer, used his platform in radio, television, to craft comedies described as ‘having meaning in every line’.
Models in Political Economy: Collective Choice, Voting, Elections, Bargaining, and Rebellion
Author: Martin J. Osborne
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0490
This volume explores topics that lie at the core of political economy: collective choice, voting, elections, bargaining, and rebellion. It presents the main formal models used to study the behavior of individuals and groups in political contexts, from choosing public policies and participating as voters and candidates in elections, to staging revolutions. Complete mathematical proofs are provided, to clarify the assumptions and deepen understanding.
Interprofessional Approach to Refugee Health: A Practical Guide for Interdisciplinary Health and Social Care Teams
Editor: Emer McGowan
Editor: Djenana Jalovcic
Editor: Sarah Quinn
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0479
As global displacement reaches unprecedented levels, health and social care professionals increasingly find themselves supporting people with refugee experience whose health and wellbeing needs are complex, urgent, and often unmet. This timely and practical book provides essential guidance for professionals—particularly those new to working in this context—on how to deliver compassionate, culturally responsive, and effective care to forcibly displaced individuals and communities.
August 2025
‘Casina’ by Plautus: An Annotated Latin Text, with a Prose Translation
Translator: Catherine Tracy
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0482
This edition features the complete Latin text of the play, richly annotated with grammatical and vocabulary notes to support comprehension. A clear prose translation accompanies the original, offering accessible insight into the humor and intrigue of the play. The introduction provides historical and cultural context, situating the farce within ancient Athenian and Roman comedic traditions.
Jerome’s Sources in His Translation of the Hebrew Bible
Author: Paul Rodrigue
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0474
At the close of the fourth century CE, Jerome of Stridon—renowned Latin scholar, theologian, and priest—undertook the monumental task of translating the Hebrew-Aramaic Bible into Latin. The result of this effort, now known as the Vulgate, has long been regarded as a foundational text of Western Christianity. In this volume, Paul Rodrigue investigates the sources that Jerome may have drawn upon in the process of translation.
City of Capital and Labour: The Making and Transformation of Industrial Manchester
Author: Tom Saunders
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0459
This compelling book explores the evolution of industrial Manchester, offering a fresh perspective on its built environment through the lens of architecture, archaeology, and social history. Richly illustrated and designed for both academic and general audiences, it sheds new light on Manchester’s transformation during the Industrial Revolution, highlighting how the city’s physical form shaped and was shaped by its socio-economic and cultural dynamics.
Sounding the Bookshelf 1501: Music in a Year of Italian Printed Books
Author: Tim Shephard
Author: Oliver Doyle
Author: Ciara O’Flaherty
Author: Annabelle Page
Author: Laura Ştefănescu
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0473
This volume explores how everyday texts in Renaissance Italy engaged with music, sound, and hearing. Of the 358 known editions printed in 1501, only a few contained formal music notation or specialist theory. Yet a surprising wealth of musical knowledge emerges from religious texts, classical commentaries, lifestyle guides, poetry, and more. These sources—rarely penned by professional musicians—reflect the broader cultural presence of music in early 16th-century life, touching on themes like music’s moral influence, its role in education, and its scientific understanding.
July 2025
Characters in Film and Other Media: Theory, Analysis, Interpretation
Author: Jens Eder
Translator: Jens Eder
Translator: Stephen Lowry
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0283
Characters are central to the creation and experience of films and other media. Their cultural significance is profound, but they also raise a wide range of questions. This book provides a comprehensive theory that guides the analysis and interpretation of characters across four dimensions: as represented beings with physical, psychological, and social characteristics; as artefacts with aesthetic structures; as meaningful symbols; and as symptoms of socio-cultural origins and effects. Integrating insights from film, media, and literary studies as well as philosophy, psychology and sociology, the book offers a broad range of approaches for understanding characters and the emotional responses they evoke.
The Economics of Cultural Loss: Harm and Resilience in North American Indigenous Communities
Author: Mukesh Eswaran
Foreword by: Ronald L. Trosper
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0477
Why do North American Indigenous Peoples face such grave conditions in health, poverty, and mortality—including alarmingly high rates of suicide, alcoholism, and drug abuse? In this groundbreaking book, Mukesh Eswaran confronts these urgent questions through the lens of economics, focusing deeply on an underexplored aspect: the erosion of Indigenous culture. While empirical studies have shed some light on Indigenous struggles, Eswaran argues that mainstream economic theory fails to grasp the unique realities of Indigenous communities. His work introduces innovative models that incorporate cultural and communal values—particularly the sacredness of land and the importance of extended family and communal life—as foundational components of Indigenous well-being.
‘Wisdom and Greatness in one Place’: The Alexandrian Trader Moses ben Judah and his Circle
Author: Dotan Arad
Author: Esther-Miriam Wagner
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0352
The manuscript collections of the Bodleian Library contain a corpus of dozens of documents from the archive of Moses ben Judah. A leader of the Jewish community in Alexandria, he was also a prominent businessman and in contact with individuals from Cairo to Sicily. This collection of documents at the Bodleian likely did not emerge from the Cairo Genizah, but from another depository, and appears to have been buried at some point.
Reading: Performance and Materiality in Hebrew and Aramaic Traditions
Editor: Hector M. Patmore
Editor: Hindy Najman
Editor: Stefan Schorch
Editor: Jeroen Verrijssen
Editor: Hanneke van der Schoor
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0457
This volume contains the proceedings the ‘Reading: Performance and Materiality in Hebrew and Aramaic Traditions’ colloquium, hosted at the University of Oxford in 2023, and jointly sponsored by the Oriel Centre for the Study of the Bible and the European Research Council project, ‘TEXTEVOLVE.’ The aim of the colloquium was to investigate Jewish approaches to the reading of texts, with a focus on reading practices that were applied to Hebrew and Aramaic texts in antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
Surveillance and Control of Dengue Vectors in the United States and Territories
Author: Roberto Barrera
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0472
‘Surveillance and Control of Dengue Vectors in the United States and Territories’ offers a comprehensive exploration of the challenges and strategies involved in managing dengue vectors, particularly Aedes mosquitoes, in the US and its territories. With over 13 million dengue cases reported in the Americas in 2024 alone, this timely book synthesizes critical information on vector species, transmission cycles, and effective surveillance and control methods.
Stories of Hope: Reimagining Education
Editor: Sandra Abegglen
Editor: Tom Burns
Editor: Richard F. Heller
Editor: Rajan Madhok
Editor: Fabian Neuhaus
Editor: John Sandars
Editor: Sandra Sinfield
Editor: Upasana Gitanjali Singh
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0462
Bringing together a diverse range of educators and practitioners, this collection showcases real-world innovations that challenge the status quo and offer glimpses of a more humane and inspiring educational future. From rethinking systems and curriculum design to fostering imaginative collaboration and exploring the role of technology, the book highlights practical, hopeful interventions that are already making a difference.
June 2025
When Katherine Brewed, a Play: Telling the Story of the Peasants’ Revolt and Today’s New Radical Theatre
Contributions by: Mark O’Brien
Author: John Cresswell
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0456
In the sweltering heat of 1381, England’s feudal foundations trembled as the Peasants’ Revolt erupted—a rebellion that would forever echo through history. Triggered by an oppressive poll tax but fuelled by deeper injustices, this uprising saw land workers, artisans, and commoners rise to challenge the authority of landowners, church, and crown. ‘When Katherine Brewed’ brings this momentous event to life on stage, blending historical fidelity with a bold, radical perspective.
‘Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By’: Jews of Conscience on Palestine
Editor: Susan Landau
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0481
This volume is a timely and powerful collection of Jewish dissent against Zionism and the impact of Israeli statehood on the indigenous Palestinian population. Bridging history, politics, theology, and conflict studies, this book traces a moral and intellectual tradition of resistance from within the global Jewish community—one rooted in values of justice, equality, and compassion. From early twentieth-century critics like Ahad Ha’am and Hannah Arendt to contemporary scholars, rabbis, journalists, and activists, the voices gathered here challenge the dominant narratives that conflate Judaism with Zionism.
Gender-Based Violence in Arts and Culture: Perspectives on Education and Work
Editor: Marie Buscatto
Editor: Sari Karttunen
Editor: Mathilde Provansal
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0436
This book offers a groundbreaking exploration of the pervasive issue of gender-based violence (GBV) within the realms of art and cultural production. This collection of essays delves into both the overt and subtle forms of GBV. It spans sexual harassment, assault, and the everyday sexism ingrained in creative workplaces and art schools, in both professional and private dimensions. The book covers a wide array of artistic sectors—opera, visual arts, music, and theatre—across diverse global contexts, from Europe to Asia and North America.
Uncovering European Private Law: A Student Handbook
Editor: Marija Bartl
Editor: Laura Burgers
Editor: Chantal Mak
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0448
Aimed at bridging a crucial gap in legal education, Uncovering European Private Law provides a comprehensive introduction to the evolving field of European private law. This innovative handbook addresses the interplay of national, European, and transnational rules governing relationships between private actors, including individuals and businesses. Designed with students in mind, this volume not only covers foundational concepts but also explores cutting-edge developments in areas such as contract, tort, property, and company law.
Housing, Heritage and Urbanisation in the Middle East and North Africa
Editor: Lilia Makhloufi
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0460
This book explores the interconnection between housing, heritage and urbanisation. Bringing together architects, archaeologists, urban sociologists, urban designers, urban planners and landscape architects, this multi-authored and interdisciplinary volume presents diverse case studies from the Middle East and North Africa, shedding light on the past, present and future of residential spaces.
May 2025
Oral Poetry
Author: Ruth Finnegan
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0428
This book offers a comprehensive introduction to the vast field of ‘oral poetry,’ encompassing everything from American folksongs, contemporary pop songs, and Inuit lyrics, to the heroic epics of Homer, biblical psalms, and epic traditions in Asia and the Pacific. Taking a broad comparative approach, it explores oral poetry across Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, and the Americas. Drawing on global research, Ruth Finnegan, the author of the seminal Oral Literature in Africa, sheds light on key debates such as the nature of oral tradition, the relationship between poetry and society, the differences between oral and written forms, and the role of poets in predominantly non-literate contexts.
Qur’an Translations in the Eastern Bloc and Beyond
Editor: Elvira Kulieva
Editor: Johanna Pink
Editor: Mykhaylo Yakubovych
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0444
This book offers the first comprehensive exploration of Qur’an translations across the diverse landscapes of the former Eastern Bloc, from Uzbekistan to the German Democratic Republic. With a focus on how Islamic texts have been shaped by state policies, ideological shifts, and religious identities, it traces connections between these regions and the wider world, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and China. This volume draws on perspectives from both Sunni and Shia traditions, as well as contributions by non-Muslim scholars. Through archival research and close textual analysis, the contributors demonstrate how translations of the Qur’an have served not only as religious texts but also as reflections of profound transformations in national and religious identities in communist and post-communist societies.
Bioethics: A Coursebook
Author: COMPOST Collective
Author: Daan Kenis
Author: Mayli Mertens
Author: Franlu Vulliermet
Author: Varsha Aravind Paleri
Author: Yanni Ratajczyk
Author: Emma Moormann
Author: Christina Stadlbauer
Author: Bartaku Vandeput
Author: Nele Buyst
Author: Lisanne Meinen
Author: Kristien Hens
Author: Ina Devos
Author: Ilya Gordon Villafuerte
Author: Joke Struyf
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0449
This coursebook offers an expansive exploration of bioethics, an interdisciplinary field examining ethical, social, and legal dilemmas in medicine, life sciences, and beyond. It challenges conventional boundaries, embracing Van Rensselaer Potter’s vision of bioethics as a global, holistic ethics of life—integrating human health, environmental considerations, and transdisciplinary insights.
A Field Guide to Cross-Cultural Research on Childhood Learning: Theoretical, Methodological, Practical, and Ethical Considerations for an Interdisciplinary Field
Editor: Sheina Lew-Levy
Editor: Stephen Asatsa
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0440
This volume addresses the critical gaps in developmental research on childhood learning by advocating for a more inclusive and cross-cultural approach. Recent studies highlight a concerning over-reliance on data from post-industrialized western countries, raising questions about the broader applicability of findings. This book seeks to provide a comprehensive solution, bridging the gap between theory and practice.
Imagery of Hate Online
Editor: Matthias J. Becker
Editor: Marcus Scheiber
Editor: Uffa Jensen
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0447
This edited volume explores the evolving role of visual and multimodal expressions in spreading hate ideologies within digital communication. In digital spaces, hate speech is increasingly conveyed through memes, images, and videos, blending textual and pictorial elements to perpetuate harmful stereotypes and other exclusionary narratives. While historical perspectives on hate imagery are well-documented, this collection emphasises the pressing need for contemporary analysis of visual and multimodal communication in digital environments.
April 2025
Improvising Otherwise: A Decolonial Feminist Approach to Improvisation in Early Modern English Culture
Author: Fatima Lahham
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0451
This volume redefines how we approach early music and cultural histories, intertwining feminist, decolonial, and creative perspectives. Fatima Lahham delves into the improvisational practices of early modern England, situating them within a rich tapestry of musical sources, theological texts, travel narratives, and natural histories. Inspired by Sara Ahmed’s notion of the “feminist ear,” the book amplifies voices and histories often unheard, re-examining the cultural interplay between England and the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century.
Coral Conservation: Global Evidence for the Effects of Actions
Author: Ann Thornton
Author: William H. Morgan
Author: Eleanor K. Bladon
Author: Rebecca K. Smith
Author: William J. Sutherland
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0453
Coral Conservation: Global evidence for the effects of actions provides an essential resource for anyone dedicated to conserving or restoring corals. This comprehensive synthesis of global scientific evidence examines the effectiveness of conservation and restoration actions targeting stony, soft and cold-water coral species inhabiting a diverse range of marine habitats in tropical, temperate and arctic waters from shallow coasts to the deep sea.
Women Writers in the Romantic Age
Author: John Claiborne Isbell
Translator: John Claiborne Isbell
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0458
This groundbreaking book offers a comprehensive review of six hundred and fifty women writers from over fifty national traditions, spanning Europe and the Americas during the transformative years of 1776 to 1848. Framed by revolutionary upheavals, the book explores how women writers shaped and reflected Romanticism’s global currents. It fills a critical scholarly gap, connecting disparate traditions and uncovering voices often overlooked in male-dominated literary histories.
Tragedy and the Witness: Shakespeare and Beyond
Author: Fred Parker
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0435
As he dies, Hamlet pleads with Horatio to ‘report me aright … tell my story’. This book deals with the task of bearing witness to anguish, atrocity, and madness, as these are staged in the tragic theatre. Focusing on the relationship between the protagonist and the onlooker or witness, it explores how the tragic figure, often and understandably viewed as alien or culpable or profoundly strange, struggles to be understood. Centred on Shakespeare, its wide-ranging approach also introduces works by (among others) the Greeks, Racine, Ibsen, Pirandello, Kafka, Beckett, and Kane.
Active Speech: Critical Perspectives on Teresa Deevy
Editor: Úna Kealy
Editor: Kate McCarthy
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0432
‘Active Speech’ is a groundbreaking collection of scholarly essays and practitioner interviews focused on the work of Irish playwright Teresa Deevy. Acts of recovery in the 1980s and 1990s challenged Deevy’s exclusion from the literary canon, reclaiming her contributions as significant to Irish drama and theatre. The recent resurgence of scholarship and productions evidences that, as a deafened woman and Irish playwright, Deevy’s creative power continues to disrupt and tilt the canon of Irish drama, theatre, and performance.
Humans, Dogs and Other Beings: Myths, Stories, and History in the Land of Genghis Khan
Author: Baasanjav Terbish
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0450
Step into the windswept steppes of Mongolia and explore a world where humans and animals have coexisted for centuries in a delicate, profound dance. This groundbreaking book examines the complex relationships between the Mongols and four animals—dogs, marmots, cats, and camels—shedding light on a nomadic culture that is deeply intertwined with its natural environment. Drawing from rich ethnographic accounts, historical records, and personal memoir, the author, of Mongol origin, offers a vivid narrative that intertwines cultural insights with intimate reflections.
March 2025
Αncient Greek II: A 21st-Century Approach
Author: Philip S. Peek
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0441
In this elementary textbook, Philip S. Peek draws on his twenty-five years of teaching experience to present the ancient Greek language in an imaginative and accessible way that promotes creativity, deep learning, and diversity.
Color, Healthcare and Bioethics
Author: Henk ten Have
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0443
This book explores the profound, yet often overlooked, role of color in healthcare and bioethics, arguing that color is far more than a visual or aesthetic element—it actively shapes human experience, perception, and ethical reasoning.
Music, Religion and Politics at Worcester Cathedral, 680-1950
Author: Richard Newsholme
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0437
This book provides a comprehensive history of music and liturgy at Worcester Cathedral, from its foundation in the seventh century to the mid-20th century. The author delves into how political shifts, public opinion, and national trends have influenced changes in the cathedral’s practices over time, while also highlighting the distinct local dynamics at play.
Interconnected Traditions: Semitic Languages, Literatures, Cultures—A Festschrift for Geoffrey Khan: Volume 2: The Medieval World, Judaeo-Arabic, and Neo-Aramaic
Editor: Aaron D. Hornkohl
Editor: Nadia Vidro
Editor: Janet C.E. Watson
Editor: Eleanor Coghill
Editor: Magdalen M. Connolly
Editor: Benjamin M. Outhwaite
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0464
Geoffrey Khan’s pioneering scholarship has transformed the study of Semitic languages, literatures, and cultures, leaving an indelible mark on fields ranging from Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic dialectology to medieval manuscript traditions and linguistic typology. This Festschrift, celebrating a distinguished career that culminated in his tenure (2012–2025) as Regius Professor of Hebrew in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, brings together contributions from a vast and representative array of scholars—retired, established, and up and coming—whose work has been influenced by his vast intellectual legacy.
Interconnected Traditions: Semitic Languages, Literatures, Cultures—A Festschrift for Geoffrey Khan: Volume 1: Hebrew and the Wider Semitic World
Editor: Aaron D. Hornkohl
Editor: Nadia Vidro
Editor: Janet C.E. Watson
Editor: Eleanor Coghill
Editor: Magdalen M. Connolly
Editor: Benjamin M. Outhwaite
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0463
Geoffrey Khan’s pioneering scholarship has transformed the study of Semitic languages, literatures, and cultures, leaving an indelible mark on fields ranging from Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic dialectology to medieval manuscript traditions and linguistic typology. This Festschrift, celebrating a distinguished career that culminated in his tenure (2012–2025) as Regius Professor of Hebrew in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, brings together contributions from a vast and representative array of scholars—retired, established, and up and coming—whose work has been influenced by his vast intellectual legacy.
Feeling Colour: Chromatic Embodiment in Film Culture, 1950s–1960s
Author: Bregt Lameris
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0380
The shift back from quasi monochrome to coloured motion picture during the 1950s and 1960s famously provided moviegoers the dazzling opportunity to more fully engage their senses, all the while opening new modes of affective possibilities for filmmakers. Set against the intersection of media studies, emotion theory, biology, and digital humanities, Feeling Colour: Chromatic Embodiment in Film Culture (1950s-1960s) delves into the role colour played in the oft-fraught relationship between cinema and its audiences. This transnational analysis of an extensive range of midcentury cinematography examines the multilayered effects which extend beyond the silver screen, offering a high-level theoretical elaboration and in-depth historical exploration of both experimental and mainstream movies.
Troubled People, Troubled World: Psychotherapy, Ethics and Society
Author: Michael Briant
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0416
Therapists endeavour to be non-judgemental and, indeed, are no more qualified to pass judgement on others than anyone else; do they nevertheless learn anything about ethics from their disciplined listening?
The same question was asked after the war about the persecution of the Jews and other minorities, and it’s a very live issue again, faced as we are by movements like ISIS, or Putinism in Russia, that cause great suffering in the name of religious or moral regeneration - a bewildering paradox that David Astor, former editor of The Observer called ‘the scourge’.
Can psychotherapy throw any light on it, or contribute any ideas as to how we might contain, if not prevent, the barbarism it sanctions? Can it offer any insights into a different, more inclusive kind of ethics, and if so, can we glean any guidance from it as to how we might further it?
These are the questions the author explores, drawing on psychoanalytic thinking on these issues for over a century and illustrated by his work with individuals over four decades.
February 2025
Bacterial Genomes: Trees and Networks
Author: Aswin Sai Narain Seshasayee
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0446
In Bacterial Genomes, the evolutionary and regulatory processes that shape bacterial life are brought to life. This textbook offers a conceptual exploration of how bacterial genomes are organized, how they evolve, and how their genetic information is interpreted through intricate molecular networks. Drawing on both cutting-edge research and the historical milestones that shaped microbiology, it illuminates how bacteria navigate the intersection of genetic adaptation and ecological resilience.
The Field Guide to Mixing Social and Biophysical Methods in Environmental Research
Editor: Rebecca Lave
Editor: Stuart Lane
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0418
Despite ongoing debates about its origins, the Anthropocene—a new epoch characterized by significant human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems—is widely acknowledged. Our environment is increasingly a product of interacting biophysical and social forces, shaped by climate change, colonial legacies, gender norms, hydrological processes, and more. Understanding these intricate interactions requires a mixed-methods approach that combines qualitative and quantitative, biophysical and social research.
Two Early Byzantine Bible Manuscripts in Christian Palestinian Aramaic: Codex Climaci Rescriptus II & XI
Author: Kim Phillips
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0455
Despite the ubiquitous use of Greek by the Christian church of the late antique Southern Levant, many Christians in the region also—or only—spoke Aramaic. Today, this dialect, known as Christian Palestinian Aramaic (CPA), is relatively sparsely attested in the form of regional inscriptions and, particularly, in the form of vernacular translations of Greek biblical, liturgical and theological texts. These translations survive predominantly as undertexts within palimpsest manuscripts.
Codex Climaci Rescriptus (CCR) is one of the most important palimpsest manuscript sources for the recovery of CPA texts.
Phenomenography in the 21st Century: A Methodology for Investigating Human Experience of the World
Author: Gerlese S. Åkerlind
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0431
Phenomenography offers a distinctive approach to studying human experience of the world, by highlighting different ways in which the same phenomena (concepts, objects, events) are experienced within any group of people. Phenomenography focuses on the relationship between meaning—people’s holistic understanding of phenomena—and structure, that is the part-whole structure of people’s awareness of phenomena. This structure of awareness then forms the basis for identifying differences in the experienced meaning of phenomena, and how awareness needs to change to allow new meanings to emerge—whether educationally, historically, culturally or socially.
New Words to Old Tunes: Genres and Metrics of Lebanese Zajal Poetry
Author: Adnan Haydar
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0424
New Words to Old Tunes: Genres and Metrics of Lebanese Zajal Poetry introduces the rich tradition of Lebanese oral poetry, offering an in-depth study and analysis of its metrics and genres. It presents a novel framework for the proper scansion of meters and emphasises the previously overlooked roles of musical and poetic stress. It details nearly twenty zajal genres, including popular songs that use zajal metrics, and integrates musical notations and web-streamed audio links to enrich the reader’s experience.
Harvesting the Sea in Southeastern Arabia: Volume 1: Regional Studies
Editor: Janet C.E. Watson
Editor: Miranda J. Morris
Editor: Erik Anonby
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0409
Traditional livelihoods and the ecosystems that sustain them are dying out around the world. This book is a collection of research on the relationships between people, their environment, their expertise and their languages along the ecologically fragile coasts of the Arabian Peninsula.
These studies are the outcome of many years of collaborative fieldwork with local communities in three main regions of southern and eastern Arabia: the Musandam Peninsula, Dhofar and al-Mahrah, and the island of Soqotra. Bringing together oral literature, traditional scientific knowledge, and marine subsistence at the peripheries of the Arabian seaboard, the volume makes a major contribution to the documentation of the indigenous Modern South Arabian languages (MSAL), regional Arabic, and the Kumzari language, as well as to a greater understanding of their speakers’ mastery in harvesting the seas.
January 2025
The Samaritan Pentateuch: An English Translation with a Parallel Annotated Hebrew Text
Author: Moshe Florentin
Author: Abraham Tal
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0415
This new translation into English seeks to introduce the reader to the character of the Samaritan version of the Pentateuch, while emphasising the fundamental differences between it and the Masoretic version.
The translation is based on a grammatical analysis of each and every word in the text according to its oral pronunciation, informed by examination of the Samaritan translations into Aramaic and Arabic as well as other Samaritan and non-Samaritan sources.
Oral Literary Worlds: Location, Transmission and Circulation
Editor: Sara Marzagora
Cambridge,UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0405
The discipline of world literature has traditionally focused on written literatures, particularly the novel, with little emphasis placed on the unwritten verbal arts, despite the significance of oral literary expressions around the world, in the past as in the present. This volume redresses this gap by putting the discipline of world literature into dialogue with scholarship on orature and folklore. It asks, what does world literature look like if we start from orature, from oral texts and utterances, and from the performances and audiences that support it?
Arabic in Context: Essays on Language, Dialects, and Culture in Honour of Martin R. Zammit
Editor: Anthony J. Frendo
Editor: Kurstin Gatt
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0445
This Festschrift, Arabic in Context, is a tribute to the remarkable scholarly legacy of the Reverend Professor Martin R. Zammit. It celebrates his extensive contributions to the fields of Semitic Studies, Arabic linguistics, and comparative Semitic philology.
Navigating Our Way to Solutions in Marine Conservation
Editor: Larry B. Crowder
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0395
Navigating Our Way reflects the broader insights and diverse voices revolutionizing marine conservation. This volume brings together an array of scholars, practitioners, and experts from multiple fields, creating a network of trans-disciplinary and multi-cultural perspectives to address the complex problems in marine conservation.
The Art of Becoming Infinite: Mou Zongsan’s Vertical Rethinking of Self and Subjectivity
Author: Gabriella Stanchina
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0442
In addressing fundamental questions of self-consciousness and self-identity, the book contextualizes Mou’s philosophy within contemporary discussions in neuroscience and cognitive science. By placing Mou’s ideas in dialogue with Western thought—examining thinkers like Husserl, Kant, Hegel, and Lévinas—as well as with Daoist and Confucian vision of mind, this work opens a pathway to understanding selfhood beyond purely epistemological boundaries.
Learning Statistics with jamovi: A Tutorial for Beginners in Statistical Analysis
Author: Danielle Navarro
Author: David Foxcroft
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0333
Based on Danielle Navarro’s widely acclaimed and prize-winning book Learning Statistics with R, this elegantly designed textbook offers undergraduate students a thorough and accessible introduction to jamovi, as well as how to get to grips with statistics and data manipulation.
Being in Shadow and Light: Academics in Post/Conflict Higher Education
Editor: Dina Zoe Belluigi
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0427
Academia and its citizens, during periods of political violence and social conflict, are often overlooked. When attention is given, the focus tends to be on student activism, access to higher education, or curriculum development. The experiences of academics affected by conflict remain under-researched, despite the crucial role they play as educators and in generating, documenting, preserving and challenging knowledges. This is particularly concerning given that academics have−and continue to be−at risk as targets of sanction, persecution and oppression.
December 2024
The Birds That Wouldn’t Sing: Remembering the D-Day Wrens
Author: Justin Smith
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0430
This compelling book offers a unique perspective on D-Day and its aftermath through the personal testimonies of the Wrens who worked for Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay during Operation Overlord. Drawing on public and private archives, it reveals the untold stories of the women serving in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), balancing their wartime contributions with the strictures of secrecy and censorship. The narrative is framed by letters from these Wrens, which provide intimate glimpses into both the personal and professional challenges they faced during World War II.
Genetic Narratology: Analysing Narrative across Versions
Editor: Dirk Van Hulle
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0426
Genetic Narratology is the first full-length volume to merge genetic criticism with narratology, offering an innovative approach to understanding literature. By examining the creative process behind literary works through drafts, manuscripts and revisions, this book reveals how narratives are shaped in real time.
Breaking Images: Iconoclastic Analyses of Mathematics and its Education
Editor: Brian Greer
Editor: David Kollosche
Editor: Ole Skovsmose
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0407
These twenty essays explore questions of mathematics as a topic of philosophy, but also the nature and purpose of mathematics education and the role of mathematics in moulding citizens. It challenges the biases and prejudices inherent within uninformed histories of mathematics, including problems of white supremacy, the denial of cultural difference and the global homogenization of teaching methods. In particular, the book contrasts the effectiveness of mathematics and science in modelling physical phenomena and solving technical problems with its ineffectiveness in modelling social phenomena and solving human problems, and urges us to consider how mathematics might better meet the urgent crises of our age.
Investing in the Structural Transformation: 2024 European Public Investment Outlook
Editor: Floriana Cerniglia
Editor: Francesco Saraceno
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0434
The fifth volume in the European Public Investment Outlook series explores how Europe can drive structural transformation through strategic public investment. Reflecting on the lessons from the 2008–2020 polycrisis and recent economic challenges, this timely book examines fiscal policy’s role in both stabilization and long-term economic development.
November 2024
Knowledge: A Human Interest Story
Author: Brian Weatherson
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0425
In this book the author argues for a groundbreaking perspective that knowledge is inherently interest-relative. This means that what one knows is influenced not just by belief, evidence, and truth, but crucially by the purposes those beliefs serve. Drawing from classical Nyāya epistemologies, the book asserts that knowledge rationalizes action: if you know something, it is sensible to act on it—and the best way to square this with an anti-sceptical epistemology is to say that knowledge is interest-relative.
No Prices No Games! Four Economic Models
Author: Michael Richter
Author: Ariel Rubinstein
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0438
While current economic theory focuses on prices and games, this book models economic settings where harmony is established through one of the following societal conventions:
• A power relation according to which stronger agents are able to force weaker ones to do things against their will.
• A norm that categorizes actions as permissible or forbidden.
• A status relation over alternatives which limits each agent’s choices.
• Systematic biases in agents’ preferences.
These four conventions are analysed using simple and mathematically straightforward models, without any pretensions regarding direct applied usefulness. While we do not advocate for the adoption of any of these conventions specifically – we do advocate that when modelling an economic situation, alternative equilibrium notions should be considered, rather than automatically reaching for the familiar approaches of prices or games.
Diachronic Diversity in Classical Biblical Hebrew
Author: Aaron D. Hornkohl
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0433
According to the standard periodisation of ancient Hebrew, the division of Biblical Hebrew as reflected in the Masoretic tradition is basically dichotomous: pre-exilic Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH) versus post-Restoration Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH). Within this paradigm, the chronolectal unity of CBH is rarely questioned—this despite the reasonable expectation that the language of a corpus encompassing traditions of various ages and comprising works composed, edited, and transmitted over the course of centuries would show signs of diachronic development. From the perspective of historical evolution, CBH is remarkably homogenous. Within this apparent uniformity, however, there are indeed signs of historical development, sets of alternant features whose respective concentrations seem to divide CBH into two sub-chronolects. The most conspicuous typological division that emerges is between the CBH of the Pentateuch and that of the relevant Prophets and Writings. The present volume investigates a series of features that distinguish the two ostensible CBH sub-chronolects, weighs alternative explanations for distribution patterns that appear to have chronological significance, and considers broader implications for Hebrew diachrony and periodisation and for the composition of the Torah.
Digital Humanities in the India Rim: Contemporary Scholarship in Australia and India
Editor: Hart Cohen
Editor: Ujjwal Jana
Editor: Myra Gurney
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0423
This varied collection delves into illuminating examples of Digital Humanities research and practice currently being undertaken by academics in India and Australia, and seeks to understand the shared challenges as well as the points of similarity and difference between them. From the influence of Netflix on International Relations to contemporary digital adaptations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, via detours into erobotics (empathic robots) and the cultural specificity of online dating, these essays convey the distinctive breadth and imagination of research in this field.
Digital Humanities is a relatively new discipline in the India Rim, and this novelty has created space for innovative research ideas, as well as the use of traditional methodologies and software in different ways within these unique cultural spaces that could potentially influence how Digital Humanities is conceptualised internationally.