Ali Smith’s novel Autumn (2016) immediately acquired near-canonical status in academic discussions of ‘BrexLit’, i.e., literary responses to the 2016 British referendum on leaving the European Union. This chapter considers the functions of Autumn’s self-conscious references to the Victorian genre of the ‘Condition of England’ novel. It argues that the older genre’s central premise – the idea that England is divided into ‘two nations’ – is explored in Autumn as a potential pattern for making sense of the current political situation. However, Smith dismisses the standard solutions offered by that genre’s conventions, especially the dialogue between the divided ‘cultures’ within the nation, as model responses. In the process, ‘genre knowledge’ (Gattungswissen) and ‘form knowledge’ (Formwissen) are exposed as conventions disappointing the hopes placed in them. Still, the function of literature and art as repositories of historical models for problem solving is affirmed: the post-referendum ‘Remainers’ are presented as deeply disorientated, and the novel suggests that a cure for their despair may be found in a ‘shared’, cosmopolitan and European archive, rather than in an isolationist national tradition.

Saharan historians have often argued that women were integral to the local Islamic scholarly culture. These women frequently took on crucial roles such as teaching, writing, counselling, spiritual guidance and legal orientation. However, only very few historical sources document these activities. Starting from a list of authors, the analysis focuses on cultural remembering techniques that help preserve local intellectual achievements and illustrates how women were systematically excluded from local documentation of erudition. The author argues that due to established gendered practices within the traditional local Islamic scholarly culture, texts written by women were most likely to be at risk of disappearing. This is a classic example of historical amnesia at work. Nonetheless, approved details about women’s presence in Islamic intellectual life led to the conclusion that in the Saharan intellectual tradition, there is an “absence in the presence” of female Islamic scholarship.

This collection of essays documents the formative decades of African history across two countries by following the career of a British historian-cum-archivist Paul Jenkins (born 1938 in Sutherland) from West Africa to Central Europe. It retraces his academic path from Ghana to Switzerland while engaging his curiosities in, contributions to, and impact on the development of African history since the 1960s. The volume reflects on Paul’s academic services throughout the 1960s and 1970s, mainly at the University of Ghana (1965–1972) and subsequently at the Basel Mission Archive and University of Basel (1972–2003) in Switzerland – as key sites where he established himself as a teacher and promoter of African history. These episodes led to lasting bonds of intellectual friendships between Paul and an array of inter-/national and -generational scholars of Africa, several of whom are contributing to this volume. Significantly too, the volume highlights the importance of resources Paul curated during the early 1970s, notably his “Abstracts of the Basel Mission’s Gold Coast Correspondences”, through which he increased access to the rich collections of the Basel Mission Archive for scholars of Africa. Altogether, the essays celebrate, engage, interrogate, and push beyond Paul’s numerous past publications and ongoing academic work.

This paper investigates the effect of mining activities on health care, income and water deprivations in Africa. By combining household data with mining locations, we conducted an econometric analysis to assess the impact of mining on self-reported water security, health, and economic opportunities for 142,838 households. Our study utilizes the presence of active and inactive mines to measure the effects of household exposure to mining activities. We observe that proximity to active mining sites is associated with self-reported improved water security, access to health, and economic opportunities. Instrumental variable estimates support a causal interpretation of our results. Specifically, households located within a 50?km radius of active mines reported a 4% lower probability of lacking clean water. Our findings also reveal that robust local institutions not only enhance water security but also mitigate the negative health impacts associated with mine closures. These results suggest that strengthening local governance can amplify the potential benefits of mining operations. Therefore, we recommend the strengthening of local government institutions to foster the resilience of vulnerable mining communities.

Traditional recommendation proposals, including content-based and collaborative filtering, usually focus on similarity between items or users. Existing approaches lack ways of introducing unexpectedness into recommendations, prioritizing globally popular items over exposing users to unforeseen items. This investigation aims to design and evaluate a novel layer on top of recommender systems suited to incorporate relational information and rerank items with a user-defined degree of surprise. Surprise in recommender systems refers to the degree to which a recommendation deviates from the user’s expectations, providing an unexpected yet relatable recommendation. We propose a knowledge graph-based recommender system by encoding user interactions on item catalogs. Our study explores whether network-level metrics on knowledge graphs (KGs) can influence the degree of surprise in recommendations. We hypothesize that surprisingness correlates with specific network metrics, treating user profiles as subgraphs within a larger catalog KG. The achieved solution reranks recommendations based on their impact on structural graph metrics. Our research contributes to optimizing recommendations to reflect the network-based metrics. We experimentally evaluate our approach on two datasets of LastFM listening histories and synthetic Netflix viewing profiles. We find that reranking items based on complex network metrics leads to a more unexpected and surprising composition of recommendation lists.

This experience report summarises the findings from an online survey dataset consists of 102 respondents from 33 countries from the global North and South. Using an independent non-parametric t-test, we found a significant difference in the way both sides used certain technologies and platforms to collaborate with their colleagues, as well as the factors affecting their ability to work from home during the pandemic.

The contemporary currency hierarchy is neither natural nor neutral: It’s an imperial construct. This paper traces the origins of today’s currency hierarchy back to the violent imposition of imperial money. Through a longue durée analysis of Nigeria (1861–1960), this paper demonstrates how British imperialism dismantled pre-colonial monetary plurality and imposed Sterling, institutionalised in 1912 via the West African Currency Board (WACB), an institution requiring 100% Sterling reserves. Archival evidence reveals three mechanisms to establish imperial money: (1) legal demonetisation of pre-colonial currencies; (2) overvalued Sterling distorting domestic prices; (3) tax collection and wage payment. These processes restructured labour and production across the colonised regions, birthing a disarticulated economy, where Nigeria exported raw materials and cash-cropss but relied on imports for basic needs - a template replicated globally then and now. Key findings include first, how imperial money’s monopoly relied on violent demonetization; second, the WACB’s reserves prefigured modern foreign exchange traps; and last, people have continuously resisted to preserve monetary sovereignty. By reframing currency hierarchies as products of imperial extraction, the study challenges IPE’s presentist focus and charts a path for decolonial monetary alternatives.

During the Second World War, 2,700 Greek refugees lived in camps in Eastern Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi. They had escaped from the German Nazi occupation and famine conditions on the Aegean Islands. Their movement through Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda was part of a more extensive network of refugee hosting and transfer, orchestrated by British officials in Cairo and guided by strategic interests in London. This article uncovers this overlooked episode and situates it in the broader history of the thousands of European refugees who found refuge in the Middle East and Africa. It argues that this was part of a more extensive system of imperial refugee management with implications for the history of the British Empire and the international refugee regime. Adding to the historiography of the empire’s war effort, it uncovers the contribution of Africans to hosting distressed European refugees. It further highlights the importance of imperial rule in the emergence of the post-war international refugee regime. Due to the racism of the colonial division of labour and society, European refugees in Africa enjoyed a comparably comfortable situation. The imperial refugee regime cared well for its white subjects, housing them in some of the most privileged refugee camps of the world.

This chapter scrutinises the negotiation of various actors about the governance of the Mauritanian Islamic heritage. In the context of hopes for democratisation and the war on terror, social frictions are fuelled and lead to a quite confrontational mode of negotiating identity and citizenship. The traditional Islamic educational institution, the maḥḍara, plays a crucial role within these debates. Being perceived as an institution for (re)producing local tradition, the maḥḍara and its visions become the focus of conflict, praised by politicians and the ʿulamāʾ (Islamic scholars) as a driver of social peace, feared by security experts as a breeding ground for terrorism, and finally, wished to be reformed by human right activists. The war on terror goes hand in hand with the threat of terror, producing more rumours than facts and spreading feelings of insecurity that foster violent action.

African (postcolonial) societies function as collectivist group-based cultures. The worth of the individual is often measured in terms of the worth of their group. The individual, therefore, prioritises the defence and preservation of the group’s face even above theirs. Using data collected from an out-of-studio radio programme in Cameroon, I demonstrate how individual lives and faces are often subsumed into the group’s face in these interactions that take place in the public sphere. Relying on the postcolonial pragmatics framework, I analyse this specific Cameroon English discourse for markers of collectivist group values and social norms, and for how interlocutors factor these into their social interactions. They adopt and perform asymmetrical kinship, social affective roles and tasks, give and take advice, and reproach and accept blame in line with societal norms built on interlocutors’ age, social status, social hierarchy and sometimes gender. Performing these potentially (individual) degrading acts in public shows how strong allegiance is to the collectivist group, its culture and norms.

This volume explores an understudied aspect of courts: The extent to which informal institutions and relational networks (e.g., professional, clientelist, family etc.) relations affect how courts are organised and operate. For instance, to what extent can ‘good personal relations’ outweigh professional merits in judicial appointment processes? Or in what ways do international or domestic judicial networks help protect courts against other branches of power?

Informality in international judicial selection practices has been acknowledged but rarely systematically researched. Described as “design innovations” that are hard to grasp, national judicial appointments to international courts (ICs), even in the most established democracies, are permeated by opacity and secretiveness that remains puzzling to researchers and the legal complex alike. This article presents evidence from three African sub-regional courts to reify the informal dimension of international judicial appointments. Drawing on qualitative research that employs two country case studies, Uganda and Malawi, we demonstrate how the particularly thin formal selection rules leave much leverage to informalities at various levels of governance. Through interviews and judicial biographical data, we reconstruct judicial appointment practices and their dynamics to account for relevant informalities and relations that shed light on the selection of judges to ICs. We argue that appointment practices are less ad hoc or arbitrary than they often appear but mirror the states’ commitment to regional integration, political assessment of the respective regional organisation, and perceptions of the courts’ relevance and ambitions in relation to the political appointers and selectors. Moreover, we raise new concerns about the risk of more silent and subtle backlash against bold regional courts.

Recent scholarship on judicial politics has highlighted the relevance of informal judicial networks and relations as a prerequisite for protecting judicial autonomy and independence. Relational dynamics unravel the concealed but salient ties and entanglements that inform, steer and shape the nature of judicial-executive relations. Our paper keeps in conversation with this strand of research and asks whether and how informalities feature in and influence judicial appointments to African Regional Economic Community (REC) courts. To conceptualise the governance and patterns of judicial appointments, we use an originally compiled dataset comprising all 105 judges who serve(d) on the four operational African Union sanctioned REC courts. We also draw on interview material to divulge the informal dimension of the appointment processes whilst accounting for their variations across regime types. We show that the formal selection rules are particularly thin, leaving much leverage to informal processes at various levels of governance. We, therefore, argue that appointments tell us at least part of the informal selection story from two angles: the merits, ties and efforts that enhance the chances of individuals getting selected, as well as the appointers’ strategies and criteria for selecting specific individuals from a larger pool of candidates.

Recently, there have been significant efforts in the integration of in-situ and satellite observations for effective monitoring of coastal areas (e.g., the Copernicus program of the European Space Agency). In this study, a 15-year diurnal variation of Water Constituent Concentrations (WCCs) was retrieved from multi-sensor satellite images and in-situ hyperspectral measurements using Radiative Transfer (RT) modeling in the Dutch Wadden Sea. The existing RT model 2SeaColor was inverted against time series of in-situ hyperspectral measurements of water leaving reflectances (Rrs [sr−1]) for the simultaneous retrieval of WCCs (i.e., Chlorophyll-a (Chla), Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM), Dissolved Organic Matter (CDOM)) on a daily basis between 2003 and 2018 at the NIOZ jetty station (the NJS) located in the Dutch part of the Wadden Sea. At the same time, the existing coupled atmosphere-hydro-optical RT model MOD2SEA was used for the simultaneous retrieval of WCCs from time series of multi-sensor satellite images of the MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) onboard ENVISAT, Multispectral Instrument (MSI) onboard Sentinel-2 and Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) onboard Sentinel-3 between 2003 and 2018 over the Dutch Wadden Sea. At the NJS, a direct comparison (Taylor diagram and statistical analysis) showed strong agreement between in-situ and satellite-derived WCC values (Chla: R2 ≥ 0.70, RMSE ≤7.5 [mg m−3]; SPM: R2 ≥ 0.72, RMSE ≤5.5 [g m−3]; CDOM absorption at 440 nm: R2 ≥ 0.67, RMSE ≤1.7 [m−1]). Next, the plausibility of the spatial variation of retrieved WCCs over the study area was evaluated by generating maps of Chla [mg m−3], SPM [g m−3], and CDOM absorption at 440 nm [m−1] from MERIS and OLCI images using the MOD2SEA model. The integration of the spatio-temporal WCC data obtained from in-situ measurements and satellite images in this study finds applications for the detection of anomaly events and serves as a warning for management actions in the complex coastal waters of the Wadden Sea

En el mundo contemporáneo, marcado cada vez más por desigualdades, confinamientos y restricciones de movilidad, nos insta analizar fenómenos relacionados con las fronteras, sean políticas, geográficas, simbólicas, sociales, psicológicas o virtuales, que controlan cuerpos y regulan vidas. Dichos fenómenos se encuentran presentes en las fronteras internas y externas de muchos países latinoamericanos. En esta ponencia nos referiremos a situar algunos proyectos que se nutren y retroalimentan de diversos discursos, acciones y posibilidades simbólicas, en zonas intersticiales (de espacio y tiempo) caracterizadas por oposiciones antonímicas, como centro/periferia, superioridad/inferioridad o riqueza/pobreza. Estos proyectos se nombran como arte de frontera, comprendiendo como tal, aquél que procura reconocer y replantear cualquier tipo de límite. Se realiza por artistas que enfocan su interés en espacios impregnados de violencia, incomprensión, conflictos, diferencias, resentimientos y malentendidos. Para analizar este acontecer seleccionamos las fronteras nacionales e intraurbanas pertenecientes a las ciudades de Tijuana (México) y Salvador de Bahía (Brasil). Citaremos artivistas que están atentos a los acontecimientos (políticos, territoriales, sociales, culturales, etc.) y comprometidos en evidenciar una visión crítica de las fronteras. Argumentamos que el arte bajo este enfoque, cuestiona circunstancial y performáticamente los bordes visibles e invisibles, para crear intersticios que generen irrupciones, debates y oportunidades. Este debate va adquiriendo importancia y nuevas dimensiones ante la actual crisis global, ya que la pandemia produce impactos diferenciados, que agudizan las desigualdades estructurales y restringen las movilidades en el espacio público. Por lo tanto percibimos que nos encontramos inmersas en nuevos límites, donde el arte de frontera puede coadyuvar a crear intersticios que engendren estrategias de resistencia, subversión e insurrección creativa.

Despite tremendous strides in the legal and institutional protection of human rights in Africa, which has seen the African Union champion the ever-growing framework of treaties and institutions dedicated to human rights protection, many African citizens still suffer the yoke of human rights abuses. In some cases, their situations seem worse than they were before the advent of widespread constitutional protection. Despite the establishment of these extensive legal frameworks, why do human rights violations still persist on a large scale? The chapters in this book address this core question by focusing on three intractable problems of human rights, which are defined by the seeming impossibility of resolving them.

Human Trafficking is one of the most relevant forms of human rights abuse and has its effects on the African continent in several ways. Overseas transit metropoles, slums, and big port cities, as well as rural areas that are hardly accessible for human rights defenders, are the scenes of action for forced prostitution, exploitative child labor, and forced recruitment of young children to non-state armed groups. Nigeria is just one prominent example with an estimated 750,000 to 1 million people forced into begging, prostitution, domestic servitude, armed conflict and labour exploitation.1 Despite existing international agreements to tackle this issue, numerous legislations at domestic levels, and a broad number of aid projects in this area, there are still notable deficits in the prevention and prosecution of human trafficking. These deficits result from insufficient involvement of communities that are particularly vulnerable to human trafficking in creating strategies to combat this issue, bureaucratic hurdles, and insufficient collaborations between state institutions and civil society organizations.2 This collection of essays gives a voice to upcoming African researchers, who portray systemic failures as well as potential solution approaches. Including African voices has two benefits here: On the one hand, it ensures epistemic justice. On the other hand, through this combination of theoretical and practical approaches, these essays better reflect on-ground realities. The collection at hand comprises five excellent essays submitted in response to the essay writing competition 'Your Voice in Tackling Human Trafficking in Africa.' The competition was organized and advertised by the Chair of African Legal Studies at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, a leading institution in the field, and funded by the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence. The competition addressed students, civil society actors, activists, and young researchers from the African Union's member states. The goal was to provide young people from the continent, whose voices are underrepresented in the global discourse on human trafficking, with the opportunity to share their perspectives. Due to their originality, the selected contributions can all enrich the discourse on African human trafficking.

Introducing the special issue on the memorialization of camps in Africa and beyond, this text discusses key questions of memory studies and the global history of encampment. Whatever their purpose, all camps are meant to be exceptional, transitory and temporary. Camps are often connected to contested histories and memorialization efforts by former inmates or others can lead to controversies and struggles over its interpretation. Building on a range of empirical examples from Africa and beyond, dealing with camps ranging from the most coercive to the benevolent and from the beginning of the twentieth century until today, this special issue invites a comparative, globally entangled and actor-centred view on camp memorialization.

We examine the effect of rising temperatures on regional economic development, using annual sub-national data for over 1500 regions in 152 countries between 1990 and 2017. In a panel setting with region- and country-year fixed effects, we find no evidence of a homogeneous or heterogeneous effect of rising temperatures on economic development as measured by regional per capita income. Additionally, we find no non-linear relationship between temperature and economic development. We also employ a long-difference approach that is attuned to exploring the long-run relationship between rising temperatures and regional income. Results indicate that rising temperatures have a negative long-run impact on regional per capita income for a minority of regions located in countries with weak economic, legal and political institutions. Furthermore, these vulnerable regions experience a decline in long-term population and human capital development. The use of alternative regional per capita GDP data from 1950 onwards yields similar empirical results. Our findings suggest that negative economic effects of temperature increase with time, only becoming apparent in the long run for regions in already disadvantaged countries. Thus, country-specific conditions may moderate regional economic vulnerability to future temperature increases due to global climate change.