Journals
2026 EN
Khabbazan Saeed · Hosseini Mehdi · Becker-Reshef Inbal
+2 more
Ukraine is a major global producer and exporter of corn and sunflower. Timely and accurate crop harvest information, during the war when not all planted crops can be harvested, is essential for food policymakers. Due to the ongoing war, in-country assessments are currently limited, making satellite data the primary reliable source for crop harvest monitoring. The goal of this study was to investigate how Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) polarization modes and satellite revisit times influence corn and sunflower harvest date estimations using machine learning (ML) algorithms. We evaluated SAR data acquired in two polarization modes: linear dual-polarization for Sentinel-1 (12-day revisit) and compact polarimetry for RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) (4-day revisit). Three widely used ML algorithms, including Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XG-Boost) were tested to quantify the impacts of polarization diversity and temporal resolution on estimation accuracy. Additionally, the transferability of trained ML models was explored by applying them to a region in Ukraine not included in the training phase. Results indicated comparable accuracy among the three ML algorithms in the training region; however, RF demonstrated better transferability to the unseen region. For Sentinel-1 data, VV and VH backscatter provided similar accuracy to coherence. For RCM data, m-chi decomposition parameters outperformed compact polarimetry backscatter. Combining all SAR data. For corn, Sentinel-1 data with RF provided accuracies of R 2 = 0.58 and RMSE = 12.75 days, while RCM data with XG-Boost yielded higher accuracies of R 2 = 0.74 and RMSE = 10.74 days. For sunflower, Sentinel-1 with RF reached accuracies of R 2 = 0.71 and RMSE = 4.78 days, and RCM data with XG-Boost achieved accuracies of R 2 = 0.70 and RMSE = 5.30 days. A single model for both crops achieved the highest accuracies of R 2 = 0.88 and RMSE = 7.86 days using RCM data. Results demonstrated good agreement between Sentinel-1 and RCM for crop harvest date estimation.
Journals
2026 EN
Wright Lyn · Palviainen Åsa
Anti-Russian sentiment or ‘Russophobia’ has been on the rise around the world since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine (Washington Post, 2022). Negative attitudes towards Russians and the Russian language can potentially influence the desires and practices of Russian-speaking parents in using the language with their children in contexts outside of Russia. This article examines the language ideologies and family language policies of a diverse group of Russian-s peaking mothers in Finland before the Ukraine war. Most of the mothers noted in interviews that some form of Russophobia (e.g. perceived negative attitudes, cutting off funding for Russian programmes, and/or their own stereotypes about Russians) influenced their own use of Russian in certain contexts, their perceptions of their Russian-speaking children, and/or their language education decisions. This article explores an understudied area of family language policy, that is how xenophobia and/or racism in the context of conflict (in this case after the annexation of Crimea in 2014) influence a minority migrant group's use of their home language abroad. By situating mothers’ family language planning and ideologies in the larger sociohistorical context, this paper contributes to an expanded view of family external or non-linguistic factors in family language policy.
Journals
2026 EN
Crozier-De Rosa Sharon
Irish republican feminists across twentieth-century Ireland occupied an ambivalent position in the Global North. The Irish were complicit in imperialism in the non-West or Global South. However, they also operated against an evolving backdrop of colonialism, violence and resistance, spanning the all-Ireland anti-colonial campaign, partition, and postcolonial civil war, as well as the late twentieth-century civil rights movement and ensuing ‘Troubles’ (1969–1998) north of the disputed border. Irish women were, therefore, subject to various iterations of violent patriarchy informed by British imperialism, anti-colonialism, settler-colonialism or postcoloniality. Using the texts of a small number of prominent Irish republican feminists, including Helena Molony (1883–1967) and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington (1877–1946), as well as Bernadette Devlin (1947–) and Roisin Boyd (?–) later in the century, this article examines political women’s attempts to understand their positionality and, through this, formulate their identity. To do so, I am indebted to Global South feminist and ‘feminist of colour’ epistemologies, beginning with Chandra Mohanty’s understanding of relevant terminology as denoting ‘political and analytic sites and methodologies’ rather than geographical or spatial constructs. I hope to use this theorising in a way that does not perpetrate a recolonising of ‘women of colour’ knowledge.
Journals
2026 EN
Elkahlout Ghassan
This article examines the forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza as a core mechanism within Israel’s settler-colonial strategy. Drawing on historical analysis, international legal instruments and original qualitative research, the study analyses how Israeli policies employ military force, structural deprivation, and legal manipulation to facilitate Palestinian expulsion, presented under the rhetoric of voluntary migration. By tracing the evolution of displacement from the early Zionist movement to the current genocide (This paper uses ‘genocide’ for the current Israeli assault on Gaza and ‘Naksa’ (Arabic for catastrophe/setback) for the six-day war in 1967, reflecting their systemic nature.) in Gaza, the article highlights the enduring logic of elimination embedded within settler-colonial practices aimed at erasing Palestinian presence while deflecting legal accountability. The study also engages comparative insights from other cases where displacement and demographic restructuring have been used to consolidate political control, including the experiences of Indigenous communities in North America, South Africa’s apartheid regime, and territorial fragmentation in Northern Ireland. In addition to archival and legal sources, the analysis incorporates first-hand testimonies drawn from 82 interviews with Palestinian families evacuated to Qatar since October 2023. These findings contest prevailing narratives of voluntary migration and underscore the urgency of addressing displacement as part of a broader system of structural violence and settler-colonial domination.
Journals
2026 EN
Erdemir Emre
This article sought to answer the research question, ‘How have public perceptions of China in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) changed after 7 October 2023?’ Following Hamas’s attack on Israel with ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ on 7 October 2023, the MENA region entered a new period of conflict. In response to this attack, Israel’s ‘Operation Iron Swords’ (Swords of Iron War) was launched against the Gaza Strip, escalating into a war whose effects were not limited to the region but spread internationally. In the current context, this study aims to analyse perceptions of China, which became increasingly prominent in the MENA region with the Arab Spring, within the framework of public opinion. To accomplish this, the methodology compares public opinion surveys conducted in MENA before and after 7 October 2023. Using survey data from three different research companies, the goal is to understand the factors that shaped perceptions of China in the region after this date. The article argues that the MENA public’s perception of China after this date cannot be understood solely through the country’s soft power and anti-colonial policies towards the region, but rather must be seen through local frustrations caused by Western powers’ misconduct.
Journals
2026 EN
Uluer Ahmet Göksel
This article examines the Welfare Party (WP)’s rejection in 1992 of Turkish troop deployment to the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission in Somalia – a Muslim country torn by civil war and humanitarian crisis – despite the WP’s position as the leading force of Turkey’s Islamist-conservative movement at the time. Drawing on a poststructuralist analysis of discourses in newspapers, parliamentary records, and journals, the study argues that the WP’s opposition – conceptualised as a practice of ‘double resistance’ – to the ‘Western/US-led’ intervention not only bolstered its popularity but also aligned its domestic and foreign policy narratives, reinforcing an identity-based resistance against political rivals. By foregrounding a civilisationalist discourse rooted in Ottomanist, national, and Islamic identity, and by framing the West/US as hypocritical and malevolent, the WP simultaneously carved out political space in the domestic struggle against Kemalist tutelage and centre-right/left ruling parties, while also enhancing its electoral appeal through conjunctural opportunities.
Journals
2026 EN
Cha Taesuh
This essay revisits Louis Hartz’s critique of American exceptionalism to analyse the United States’ contemporary alliance strategy, with a focus on recent political developments in South Korea. Drawing on the failed martial law declaration by President Yoon Suk Yeol, it highlights the enduring influence of colonial and Cold War-era legacies on US–ROK relations and critiques the familiar US framing of global competition as a binary struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. Central to the discussion is the ‘Hartz Trap’, a concept that underscores the limitations of a nation ‘born equal’ in comprehending the complex historical and political realities of non-Western nations that have had to become so. I contend that Washington’s imperialist monologue impedes the development of a more reflective and sustainable alliance architecture in the ‘Rest’. By offering a historically grounded analysis and policy recommendations, this piece seeks to guide US policymakers in fostering equal and inclusive partnerships in an increasingly post-Western world.
Journals
2026 EN
Oztarsu Mehmet Fatih · Ibrahimov Rovshan
This article analyses Azerbaijan’s foreign policy transformation through middle power theory and role theory, contending that the country aspires to, and selectively performs, behaviours associated with middle powers rather than having fully attained such status. The existing literature often emphasises Azerbaijan’s structural limitations and reliance on energy diplomacy, overlooking its growing agency and regional leadership aspirations. This study employs a qualitative single-case design and applies theory-guided process tracing to examine key turning points such as the 1994 Contract of the Century, the 2020 Karabakh War, and recent multilateral engagements, supplemented with supportive statistical data. These events are analysed across three dimensions: national role conception, role performance and structural constraints. The findings suggest that Azerbaijan seeks to enact roles such as ‘active independent’ and ‘bridge’, while navigating pressures from major powers. The case contributes to debates on aspiration, perception and categorisation in emerging states, while also highlighting alternative frameworks such as niche diplomacy or subsystemic power.
Journals
2026 EN
Shah Abdur Rehman · Qazi Afsah · Rehman Shah Syed Mujeeb ur
This study dissects the calculated response of Pakistan’s Deobandi religious seminaries (madrassahs) and Islamist groups towards the establishment of Islamic Emirate 2.0 by their ideological brethren and strategic protégé in Afghanistan. Drawing on three rounds of interviews with experts and scholars relevant to Deobandi madrassahs and Pak-Afghan security affairs, and content analysis of selective Deobandi literature, we develop a socio-psychological explanation for this puzzle that relates to madrassahs’ social cognition. We argue that a combination of two factors explains this behaviour. The primary catalyst was the changing behaviour of the Pakistani state, specifically its shift in policy regarding the unimpeded deployment of madrassahs as a tool of geopolitical goals (the contrast between pre- and post-2001 policies). The second factor was the treacherous change in the nature of so-called ‘holy war’, which forced the madrassahs to adapt. Together, these two factors challenged and shifted the collective habitus of Deobandi madrassahs, creating dissonance in their self and social cognition, thereby compelling the seminaries to learn and adapt in their best interests. Beyond exploring this puzzle, our research bears interdisciplinary relevance for the broader scholarship and policy questions related to militant movements, ideological violence, and socio-political psychology.
Journals
2026 EN
Rivero Yeidy M.
In the 1960s, Spanish-language radio thrived in New York City, targeting Puerto Ricans as its primary audience. This ethnic group began arriving in large numbers after World War II, soon becoming the largest segment of New York City’s Latino population. Amidst this demographic trend, in May 1965, WHOM, the first station dedicated to Spanish-language programming, promoted Mini: El ángel del barrio [Mini: The Angel of the Neighborhood]. Mini told the story of a seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican orphan’s struggles as an immigrant in New York City’s El Barrio, where she moved in with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. While Mini reflected Puerto Ricans’ post-World War II migration to New York City, its portrayal was unstable. The signature Puerto Rican phrase, ‘ay bendito’ appeared in almost every script, yet Mini’s cousins had a Cuban accent. Such inclusion of Cuban accents expanded the representation of New York City’s Latino community during the 1960s. Through its production, narrative, and voices, Mini became a symbol of Spanish-Caribbean peoples and cultures. Drawing from archives in New Orleans, Miami, and New York City, this project contributes to the scholarship on foreign-language radio and Spanish-language media in the U.S.