A linguistic rift runs down the North Atlantic. On its American side linguistics seems to begin and end with phonology, syntax and semantics. On the European side, the picture is much more complex, as linguistics includes things like metalexicography, lexicology, language contact studies and such. There are, of course, exceptions, but such is the overall picture. Slavic linguistics is not immune. The two traditions, each on its own side of the Pond, have seemed to live their separate lives. When we were tasked with editing the Cambridge Handbook of Slavic Linguistics, our idea was to bring the ..read more

Adolf von Harnack in May 1923, public domain. The term “essence of Christianity” has an archaic feel about it, not unlike colloquial phrases such as “made in the shade” or “butter and egg man.” According to the Google Books Ngram Viewer, the phrase peaked around 1850—thanks to the George Eliot’s translation of Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity—and declined sharply after 1905. In German, the peak occurred in 1903, due to the mass popularity of Adolf von Harnack’s Das Wesens des Christentums (which translates as The Essence of Christianity), published in English as What Is Christian ..read more

It is rather appropriate that our book on conjugated polymers comes out 30 years to the month since I arrived in Cambridge to start working on them for the first time. When I joined Andy Holmes’s group in April 1994 polymer, OLEDs were a new and exciting field and were still some years away from commercialisation. Now OLED displays (some of which contain polymers) are ubiquitous and other conjugated polymer based organic electronic devices are on the cusp of commercial realisation. So a book covering the design, synthesis, and use of conjugated polymers is surely timely. Like Andy, I had train ..read more

Beginning in the 1850s, the United States took its first, incautious steps toward developing an overseas empire in the Pacific. In the end, the empire would help defeat Japan during World War II. The bloodiest and most infamous battles of the Pacific War were fought on possessions gained by American imperialists. The first American shots of the war were fired at Pearl Harbor; the first major invasion of American territory happened in the Philippines; the first major U.S. victory occurred at Midway; and Samoa was a linchpin in the allied communication line, running from Midway to Fiji to contin ..read more

A century ago, every democratic regime was in Western Europe or in a country settled by Western Europeans. The picture is now more varied. Non-Western countries such as India and Jamaica have been democracies for more than half a century, despite lacking many factors often cited as prerequisites for democracy. But stable democratic experiences are exceptional. In countries such as Uganda and Malaysia, democratic competition at independence gave way shortly afterwards to military coups or autocratic consolidation by the incumbent. Many other countries, such as Angola, Kuwait, and Niger, were au ..read more

As I write this, England has had the wettest twelve months since 1871 (although it has seemingly been drier in Scotland, where I live – even if it does not necessarily feel that way). Weather stories, including those dealing with extreme weather, are increasingly a feature of our news cycles, as part of the ever more visible processes of climate change we face today. Concern about the weather is of course not a new phenomenon, and societies over time have sought out various different technologies to ameliorate its harmful effects. A couple of years ago I received a little  jolt when one o ..read more

It’s not often that people nowadays invoke an ancient Greek philosophical concept but – without knowing that this is what they’re doing – this is precisely what happens, in certain parts of Britain, when people criticise someone else’s lack of common sense. In Yorkshire, in particular, you’ll still often hear someone voice this kind of criticism by saying, “Ee lad” – or lass, as the case may be – “have a bit of nous.” This use of the term nous to mean “common sense” does pick up one aspect of what ancient philosophers meant when they used this word, but this was not the main thing that they ha ..read more

Imagine if the government ranked banks according to their investments in the oil and gas industries or rated and labelled food and clothing companies based on their poor carbon footprint. Would you react to this type of “naming and shaming” by avoiding companies that contribute to global warming? Surveys suggest yes. This is the concept of “regulatory shaming.” It involves publishing adverse regulatory information about corporate activities to influence their behaviour. The underlying premise is that stakeholders––ranging from consumers, investors, employees, and the public at large––can have ..read more

Introduction from Professor P. Cane and Dr H. Kumarasingham, Editors of The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom On 6 March 2024, The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom was launched in the House of Lords. This is the first publication of its kind and the culmination of over 7 years of work, consisting of 2 volumes, 42 chapters, 40 authors and over 1000 pages. The multi-disciplinary intellectual contribution and expansive range on offer are what makes these volumes a distinctive and important resource to comprehend not just the United Kingdom’s constitution ..read more

When going to my hospital work, I pass a well-kept peaceful and quite large grass area surrounded by a fence. A memory stone declares that this is a mass grave of cholera victims from the 1850s. As a researcher in fluid balance, I sometimes think about how little doctors knew about this topic 175 years ago. Sadly, these deaths were preventable. Moreover, a religious detail did add to the tragedy. In those days, the hospital area was situated outside the city, which means that the victims were not buried in “sacred soil” close to the church. For good, times have changed. Today we know a lot mo ..read more