Recent Publications

'Whose account matters? A challenge to feminist psychologists', an essay by former IAS Fellow Professor Gail Hornstein

Gail Hornstein, Professor of Psychology at Mount Holyoke College and fomer IAS Fellow during the IAS Futures II theme year, has published her latest essay in 'Feminism & Psychology' (February 2013 23: 29-40; Sage). Hornstein's recent research has centered on the history of 20th-century psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. She has a particular interest in patients' experiences.

(11 Mar 2013)

Former IAS Fellow, Professor Sonia Kruks publishes 'Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity'

Political philosopher Professor Sonia Kruks best known for her scholarly work on the political and social ideas of the French existentialists has published her latest work, 'Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity' (Oxford University Press). Kruks developed this study during her Fellowship at the IAS in 2008-09 during the IAS's 'Being Human' theme.

This work is the first full-length study of Beauvoir's political thinking. Kruks here locates Beauvoir in her own intellectual and political context and demonstrates her continuing significance. Beauvoir still speaks, in a unique voice, to many pressing questions concerning politics: the values and dangers of liberal humanism; how oppressed groups become complicit in their own oppression; how social identities are perpetuated; the Limits to rationalism; and the place of emotions, such as the desire for revenge, in politics. In discussing such matters Kruks puts Beauvoir's ideas into conversation with those of many contemporary thinkers, including feminist and race theorists, as well as with historical figures in the liberal, Hegelian, and Marxist traditions.

(11 Mar 2013)

New publication - ‘Evidence-Based Policy: A Practical Guide to Doing It Better’

Former IAS Fellow, Professor Nancy Cartwright (Dept. of Philosophy, Durham University and at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD)) has recently published ‘Evidence-Based Policy: A Practical Guide to Doing It Better’, Oxford University Press, 2012. (Additional information).

Professor Cartwright’s research interests include philosophy and history of science (especially physics and economics), causal inference and objectivity and evidence, especially on evidence-based policy. She is currently involved in a number of interrelated research projects at LSE: 'Evidence for Use' (funded by the British Academy) and 'Choices of Evidence: tacit philosophical assumptions in debates on evidence-based practice in children's welfare services', with Eleonora Montuschi and Eileen Munro (funded by the AHRC), both at the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, and a project on Modelling Mitigation, at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

(8 Jan 2013)

Recent publication

Speleothems (mineral deposits that formed in caves) are currently giving us some of the most exciting insights into environments and climates during the Pleistocene ice ages and the subsequent Holocene rise of civilizations. The book applies system science to Quaternary environments in a new and rigorous way and gives holistic explanations the relations between the properties of speleothems and the climatic and cave setting in which they are found.  It is designed as the ideal companion to someone embarking on speleothem research and, since the underlying science is very broad, it will also be invaluable to a wide variety of others.  Students and professional scientists interested in carbonate rocks, karst hydrogeology, climatology, aqueous geochemistry, carbonate geochemistry and the calibration of climatic proxies will find up-to-date reviews of these topics here.  The book will also be valuable to Quaternary scientists who, up to now, have lacked a thorough overview of these important archives.

Additional resources for this book can be found at: www.wiley.com/go/fairchild/speleothem.

Andy Baker was trained as a physical geographer, and worked at the interface of geology, physical geography, and environmental engineering.   He is currently a Professor at the University of New South Wales and a chief investigator in Australia’s National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training.

(9 Jan 2013)

'The Transformative Humanities: A Manifesto'

The Transformative Humanities: A Manifesto addresses the question: Is there any activity in the humanities that would correspond to the transformative status of technology and politics? It argues that we need a practical branch of the humanities which functions similarly to technology and politics, but is specific to the cultural domain.

In his famous classification of the sciences, Francis Bacon not only catalogued those branches of knowledge that already existed in his time, but also anticipated the new disciplines he believed would emerge in the future: the "desirable sciences." Mikhail Epstein echoes, in part, Bacon's vision and outlines the "desirable" disciplines and methodologies that may emerge in the humanities in response to the new realities of the twenty-first century. Are the humanities a purely scholarly field, or should they have some active, constructive supplement? We know that technology serves as the practical extension of the natural sciences, and politics as the extension of the social sciences. Both technology and politics are designed to transform what their respective disciplines study objectively.

Mikhail N. Epstein is Professor of Russian and Cultural Theory and Co–Director of the Center for Humanities Innovation. He was born in Moscow (Soviet Union) where he worked as a researcher at the Institute of World Literature and directed the Laboratory of Modern Culture. In 1990 he moved to the USA and for twenty years taught at Emory University (Atlanta) as S. C. Dobbs Professor of Cultural Theory and Russian Literature. He has authored 29 books published in English and Russian and 16 books translated into German, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian and Korean. He has authored more than 600 articles and essays, many of which have been translated and published in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Estonian, and Ukranian. Full list of publications includes about 700 items. 

His latest projects are devoted to the development of new approaches in the humanities and their impact on humanity's future.

(9 Jan 2013)