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Fifteen Eighty Four

Academic perspectives from Cambridge University Press

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A Swing from Fear to Fantasy of China is Happening Again, Right in Front of Our Eyes

Just two years ago, many political elites and policy experts in the United States and other Western countries concluded that the Chinese model of development had failed as China’s economic growth...

Ho-fung Hung | 15 Jul 2026

Frenzy in Early Modern England: Madness, Brain Disease and the Soul

In the last decade of his life, my paternal grandfather suffered from undiagnosed vascular dementia. During those years, we saw sudden changes in his speech, mood, personality and behaviour, ranging from...

Philippa Carter | 15 Jul 2026

Interstellar Travel

Human-built spacecraft have visited every single planet in our solar system, as well as several comets and asteroids. We have landed robotic spacecraft not only on Venus and Mars but also on Titan, the...

Coryn Bailer-Jones | 15 Jul 2026

From fear to confidence: tackling mathematics anxiety in university students

If students have already passed mathematics at school, why do so many still experience mathematics anxiety at university? For a significant number of learners, mathematics anxiety does not disappear with...

Meena Mehta Kotecha | 14 Jul 2026

What do NATO and the MCU’s Avengers have in common?

“There may be a causality. Our very strength invites challenge. Challenge incites conflict. And conflict breeds catastrophe.” -Vision, in Captain America: Civil War Who your friends are shapes...

Kyle Beardsley | 13 Jul 2026

Capitalism Creates Abundance. Democracy Must Share It.

We live through a strange paradox. Liberal democracy and the market economy produced the greatest expansion of prosperity in history — yet faith in both is fraying at once, pressed by authoritarianism,...

Gabriel Cepaluni | 13 Jul 2026

Questioning the Self and Nature: The Early German Romantics

A few years ago, I started to question the role and status of the human being in the natural realm. Although we know very well that we are animals, we feel that we occupy a special place in nature—at...

Giulia Valpione | 13 Jul 2026

Out of the Margins: Late Antique Craftworkers in the Making

While a university student, by chance I took an elective course in glassblowing. One of the first things I remember is learning how to hold the heavy metal blowpipe. Against the soundtrack of a loud and...

Hallie G. Meredith | 13 Jul 2026

The Art of Non-Conviction

Have the courage of your convictions. Be a person of conviction. Carry conviction. Stand tall in your conviction. As these idioms attest, we have a strong cultural conviction that conviction is a virtue...

Yasmin Solomonescu | 9 Jul 2026

Educational technology is entering a new stage of evolution

For years, the EdTech ecosystem has been moving towards greater maturity. Researchers are producing stronger evidence about what supports learning. Governments are formalising procurement and demanding...

Natalia I. Kucirkova | 7 Jul 2026

Don’t they know I’m right?

In a moment, I’m going to tell you about my book. But before I do that, I’d like to ask you to perform a quick intellectual exercise: think of something that, in your view, is really terrible....

Jesse Mirotznik | 7 Jul 2026

Miswanting

Can money buy happiness? What is the value of things? How do people measure that value, whether we are speaking of consumer products, health, activities, or time? Free markets have a simple answer:...

Cass R. Sunstein | 6 Jul 2026