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Fifteen Eighty Four

Academic perspectives from Cambridge University Press

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Building Social Mobility Through Housing

Making housing affordable is now a top priority for countries and subnational governments around the world. While much of the debate appears to be happening in countries like the United States and United...

Tanu Kumar | 11 Aug 2025

Anticolonialism in History as Social Theory

Efforts to “globalize” social theory, overturn the limitations of dominant theoretical perspectives, and rethink the canon have been underway for decades in different academic disciplines. We suggest...

Julian Go, Anaheed Al-Hardan | 11 Aug 2025

Roman Law Versus the Nazis

On February 24 of 1920, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (you know, the Nazis) issued their first party platform. Their demands are mostly what you would expect—conquering the greater...

Zachary Herz | 7 Aug 2025

Coercion will Fail, but Trade will Endure

The first year of Trump’s second term has been a chaotic one for trade, as for so much else. Before inauguration, the President had already threatened tariffs against Denmark to force a “sale”...

Frank J. Garcia | 5 Aug 2025

Doubling Down on Meaning: Using Psychological Theory to Think Through Young People’s Outcomes in Relation to Violence and Peace

Millions young people across the world grow up every day with some variation of violence affecting their lives. Millions more—sometimes the very same young people—may participate in that violence,...

Gabriel Velez | 31 Jul 2025

Exploring the long history of religious diversity in London

A map of Leadenhall Street and Houndsditch which includes several parish churches and synagogues. Excerpt from John Rocque’s 1746 map of London, from David Rumsey maps. June 1780 saw some of the...

Emily Vine | 31 Jul 2025

Welcome to the Colourful World of Onomatopoeia!

A new book that reveals the sound-painted secrets of 124 languages. Boom… plop! Woof! Vroom! Sound familiar? Like something out of a comic book, baby talk, or a cartoon? Not quite! These “funny...

Lívia Körtvélyessy | 25 Jul 2025

Reinach and the Foundations of Private Law

Before his death on the battlefields of the First World War, the young philosopher Adolf Reinach was a rising star—prime assistant to Edmund Husserl; mentor and friend to a generation from Max Scheler...

Marietta Auer, Paul B. Miller, Henry E. Smith, James Toomey | 23 Jul 2025

Coining Meaning: Melville, Money, and American Literature

For anyone interested in the crucial role of money in American literature, it cannot seem anything other than eminently fitting that at the very “navel” of the vessel at the centre of the greatest...

Paul Crosthwaite | 21 Jul 2025

Why were ancient Christians enslaved to God?

Slavery was an inextricable part of Christianity from its origins. Within the earliest gatherings of Jesus-followers in the eastern Mediterranean, enslaved persons and enslavers read sacred texts...

Chance E. Bonar | 21 Jul 2025

From Data to Discovery: Your Complete Guide to Mastering Sociolinguistic Variation Analysis

Have you ever heard someone say: I hate it when people say ‘___’? When a sociolinguist hears that kind of comment, they take it as a good indication there’s something interesting going on. This...

Sali A. Tagliamonte | 17 Jul 2025

“Untied Hands: How States Avoid the Wrong Wars and Why the Sky is NOT Falling”

My new book, _Untied Hands: How States Avoid the Wrong Wars_ opposes conventional wisdom in in international relations scholarship.  Contra widespread thinking, it proposes that states do not “tie...

Dan Reiter | 17 Jul 2025