The Italo-Ethiopian war, Italian colonial rule and ethnic relations in the Borana borderlands of southern Ethiopia, 1935–1941

Although the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935–1941 has received some attention in Ethiopian academic historiography, the existing studies exhibit several limitations. These include issues related to limited spatial coverage, focus on a limited range of issues and the deployment of the problematic ‘collaborator-resistor’ framework in examining people's varied responses to Italian rule. This article seeks to redress some of these shortcomings by focusing on developments in Ethiopia’s southern province of Borana. In particular, the article examines how Borana’s predominantly pastoralist population was impacted by Italian colonial rule and how pastoralists used the resources available to them in advancing personal, family and group interests. I argue that rather than being mere pawns of the colonial state and its representatives, Borana’s pastoralists were active agents who sought to advance their interests within the limits of colonial rule. The article is based on oral interviews in Borana and archival materials drawn from the British Foreign Office and the Kenyan National Archives.

Prospects for the development of metropolitan areas in Ukraine

This article analyses the development of approaches to regulating metropolitan areas in Ukraine and evaluates the prospects for establishing metropolitan governance. It opens with a review of experiences in Central and Eastern European countries, offering a comparative context for Ukraine’s ongoing transformation. Through examining these regional trends, the study identifies shared challenges and policy directions influencing metropolitan regulation. The case study of the Lviv Agglomeration underscores the importance in establishing consistent institutional frameworks for metropolitan governance in Ukraine, which is important for post-war recovery and reconstruction.

Two decades later, same rhetoric: how the discourse on terrorism risks eroding human dignity

This article examines the official political discourse that immediately followed the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, and compares it to that which followed the al-Qaeda attacks of 11 September 2001. These two series of attacks resulted in massive human losses amongst the civilian population and took place in the territories of two key allies, the United States and Israel, and major trends in their rhetorical approach of terrorism, and their reaction to it, can be highlighted. Through critical discourse analysis and the lens of critical terrorism studies, it highlights five dominant rhetorical patterns shared by political leaders in both contexts: polarisation and Manichaeanism; retribution and revenge; existential threat framing; assimilation of adversaries to broader populations; and dehumanisation. These rhetorical strategies, the article argues, have tangible consequences—not only shaping public sentiment and legitimising extraordinary wartime measures, but also undermining the principles of international humanitarian and human rights law. The analysis illustrates how such discourse can blur the line between combatants and civilians, fostering conditions in which violations of international law are more likely to occur or be tolerated. Drawing parallels between the U.S. “war on terror” and Israel’s military response in Gaza, the article warns of the continued risks posed by invoking the term “terrorism” as a legal and moral justification. Ultimately, it calls for greater scrutiny of counterterrorism discourse and urges the international community to resist narratives that obscure legal boundaries and compromise human dignity.

Filling in the blind spot? Problematisations of ‘right-wing extremism’ in German federal-level P/CVE policy

This article interrogates how “right-wing extremism” is problematised in German federal-level policies to prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE). While scholarship has critiqued European P/CVE for its disproportionate focus on “Islamist extremism” and its “blind spot” regarding “right-wing extremism”, comparatively little work has examined how the latter is problematised once it enters the policy agenda. Employing Carol Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to Be? (WPR) policy analysis method alongside a critical race theoretical framework, I analyse 15 German federal-level P/CVE and anti-racism policy documents published between 2016 and 2024. I identify three dominant problem representations of “right-wing extremism”: 1) as a threat to the democratic order, 2) as ideological vulnerability and 3) as institutional failure. These representations, I argue, depoliticise racial violence, obscure structural white supremacy and reproduce Cold War–era logics of anti-left and anti-totalitarian governance, rendering “right-wing extremism” an external aberration rather than entangled with a shifting “societal centre”. The article takes up the metaphor of “filling-in” - used to describe how the visual system compensates for blind spots – to analyse how German P/CVE policy “fills in” its blind spot on “right-wing extremism” using conceptual tools drawn from its history of countering “left-wing extremism”. Drawing on Charles W. Mills’ concept of the Racial Contract, I propose moving beyond the “extremism” frame to theorise this phenomenon as a historically grounded form of racial violence arising from structural white supremacy. Such a rethinking offers a sharper analytical lens and opens space for an emancipatory politics that centres those most harmed by both state and non-state racial violence.

Book review of The War on Terror by Andrew Thomson and Rubrick Biegon, Newcastle upon Tyne, Agenda Publishing, 2025, 224 pp., £19.99, Paperback, ISBN 9781788217941.

On present and absent photographs as the silent heroes of synthetic and social memories

This article outlines a visual research practice that integrates traditional photography and generative AI to investigate historical silences — specifically, a family episode from WWII marked by absence and loss. Departing from conventional photojournalism, the project Silent Hero explores how synthetic images, generated through Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), can engage with archival voids and memory transmission. The work interrogates whether the risks associated with deep fakes can be recontextualized as opportunities for speculative historical witnessing. Central to this inquiry are the artist book Seeing Against Seeing, which juxtaposes AI-generated WWII images with Ernst Friedrich’s 1924 anti-war book War Against War! and the film No One is Forgotten, where synthetic images are shown to living WWII veterans, prompting emotional recollection and reimagining of historical trauma. The essay situates these methods within a broader framework of multi-modal and multivocal knowledge production, critically examining the ethical and creative potential of non-human intelligence in reshaping visual narratives. Ultimately, this research proposes that emerging technologies, when used with intention, can generate new forms of memory work, specifically ones capable of disrupting dominant historical narratives and offering alternatives to fixed representations of conflict and loss . 1

“They are deconstructing the city”: a typology of media narratives on tactical urbanism

The present article examines the role of the media in (re)producing positive and negative discourses on tactical urbanism, through a case study of recent tactical urbanism measures in Barcelona. To this end, the article analyses 106 news items on tactical urbanism, published in two newspapers with contrasting ideological viewpoints. Through an inductive coding process, I map arguments put forward in favour of or against tactical interventions, and identify five main narrative frames on tactical urbanism (three negative and two positive): 1) “Disorder and decadence;” 2) “The war on cars;” 3) “Strangling the city;” 4) “The new hygienism;” and 5) “Reclaiming the street.” Negative frames criticise tactical urbanism primarily on aesthetic and procedural grounds, while positive frames tend to justify it through appeals to public health. In the Discussion, I suggest that emphasising the experimental nature of tactical urbanism might contribute to mitigate the polarisation of media frames on the topic.

In sickness and in health: ‘dissonant’ history, heritage, and tourism in the Czech spa town of Jáchymov

This article considers the small Czech spa town of Jáchymov as an example highlighting dissonance in heritage, tourism, and memory politics. The article begins by reviewing the complex and turbulent history of Jáchymov, a town that was ‘shaped by uranium’ during the twentieth century. Initially, the presence of naturally radon-infused springs enabled Jáchymov to develop into a popular and prosperous spa town, known for its healing waters. However, following the Second World War and the rise of Communism, Jáchymov became notorious as the site of several brutal forced labour camps, where prisoners were used to mine uranium on an industrial scale. This article considers how Jachymov's reputation as a place of wellness and healing both conflicts and intersects with the darker legacy of human suffering and trauma inflicted upon the region. In recent years, efforts to revive spa culture and health tourism in Jáchymov have been challenged by attempts to memorialise the communist-era forced labour camps and the growth in dark tourism this has engendered.

Queer tourist venues as sites of clandestine operational cover in World War II Paris

The interconnections between queerness, espionage, and space expose the problematic nature of homosexual covert agents in international relations. This article considers the intersection of sexuality, queerness, war, and tourist space as a means to understand the complex interactions between same-sex desire and the operational objectives of an undercover agent of the United Kingdom’s Special Operations Executive, Major Denis Rake, on mission to France as a radio operator between 14 May 1942 and late April 1943. In the mid-1940s, a queer geography was already established in Paris by the time of the German occupation. During this same period, however, the Vichy government made efforts to constrain and limit queer culture in Paris. Rake’s employment at le Boeuf sur le Toit as a drag performer for German tourists enhanced his operational cover, obscuring him from German surveillance.

Propaganda weapons or souvenirs? Tourism publications for German servicemen in Europe, Africa and North America during World War II

Historians have long highlighted how Nazi Germany weaponised wartime tourism in occupied France for ideological purposes. Scholars often focus on the bimonthly German guide to the French capital Wohin in Paris: Der deutsche Wegleiter (1940-1944). This article broadens the scope by introducing a range of other tourism publications for German servicemen in France, North Africa, and the United States, including the Kleiner Führer durch Amerika produced as part of the U.S. re-education programme for German prisoners. The article argues that this peculiar genre of tourism literature was influenced by pre-war publications and therefore often inefficient in conveying ideological content in times of war. Instead, German servicemen valued these publications mainly as souvenirs and mementos of their long military journeys during and after the Second World War.