In this article, I argue that public political theorists need to adopt a different attitude and audience. If they are to help their fellow citizens learn collectively to engage critically with their future to take care of it, they must write and talk not only to their fellow theorists but also to their fellow citizens. To do this, they would need to focus on the opposite of the strictures of their specialised academic discipline that rewards internal debate, arcane language, and abstract theorising. They must provide a clear, persuasive understanding and critique of contemporary social, economic, and political narratives and structures of power. What matters is persuasion, not exclusive expertise; a change of attitude, not method; and a plurality of approaches. Perhaps most importantly, what they teach, write, and say must be comprehensively open to all, not beholden to corporate interests and canons, and they must act as “gadflies” in their society—public critics in battles over ideas, values, and power relations. While history is vital for this future-oriented craft, to bow down before predecessors is to miss the radical imaginative potential of thinking (and teaching) collectively in the present to provide for a better future: to change the world by changing oneself and thus one’s fellow travellers in improving how we live and love together. This would also make public political theory genuinely political.

Literary scholars’ expertise is founded on knowledge of a small collection of texts, below which lies the vast realm of archived but long-forgotten literature that Margaret Cohen has called the “Great Unread.” Cohen’s account frames the Great Unread as the exclusive domain of highly trained specialists, while students are, for pragmatic reasons, taught to close-read the established canonical texts. This article argues that there is great value in facilitating the engagement of newcomers with the Great Unread, and in particular, the Global Great Unread. Within a course I created and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I guided undergraduates through exploring the Great Unread of nineteenth-century global periodicals, selecting a short story of interest and creating a digital edition to reintroduce the story to a present-day audience. In crafting editorial materials of various kinds, students independently studied and wrote about global contexts ranging from the linguistic to the cultural to the geopolitical. After the course was complete, students could choose to have their edition published on a website and thus actually become available to a public readership beyond the classroom. Through such initiatives, we can expand our understanding of the ways in which literary scholars and literary study can be valuable to publics on a global scale.

Philosophy of education is a subfield of philosophy that is particularly ripe for engaging in public political philosophy. A closer look at scholars in this subfield who have taken such an approach to their work reveals important questions about and examples of how to engage in public political philosophy well. The questions and their answers offer helpful insights for others assuming this approach in the various fields of philosophy. This essay explores how such philosophers clarify the values and ideologies underlying debates about education and foster dialogs with the public about these concerns. It also describes the personal and professional benefits and risks of engaging in this work. Finally, it considers how public political philosophers of education help the public express dissent about educational policies and practices, while also fostering political hope for improved education.

As technology continues to shape how we engage with the world, museums are increasingly encouraged to adapt in order to appeal to younger audiences. Promoting exhibits through platforms such as Instagram and TikTok can be an effective way to attract visitors, but that doesn’t mean museum spaces themselves need to become more digitally driven. For a generation already saturated with screens, adding more technology to exhibitions may actually detract from the experience. In this essay, I explore the effects that excessive screen use has on us and argue that museums can offer something more meaningful by providing a break from the digital overload. To support my argument, I conducted a straw poll survey to better understand how other young people feel about technology in museum settings.

This article advances a methodological framework for field-based political philosophy that integrates ethnographic inquiry with normative theorising on socioeconomic injustice. Empirically, it draws on qualitative research with individuals reliant on cash in an increasingly digitalised economy, a context in which infrastructural reforms disproportionately disadvantage socially marginalised groups. The approach is characterised by (i) epistemic recognition of lived experience as a source of normative insight, (ii) critical interrogation of social norms and problem representations associated with digitalisation, and (iii) a commitment to addressing epistemic injustice within philosophical practice itself. We argue that grounding normative theory in subordinated perspectives enhances both the conceptual adequacy of theories of justice and their public relevance. Finally, we reflect on the ethical challenges of research communication aimed at societal impact, emphasising risks of affect-driven “politics of pity” and the importance of maintaining analytical integrity in public engagement.

The recent proliferation of the digital video essay as a public, personalized, and creative genre on YouTube testifies to the immense popularity of essayistic practices across the globe today. Some of today’s digital video essays from this platform engage in what I call “postscholarly” criticism, which combines the nonprofessional explorations of literary humanities scholarship with personal, social, and public commentary. My essay broadly argues that, by situating academic scholarship in the global digital public domain, today’s author-critics produce self-appointed sites of popular humanities work. To examine the tension between disciplinarity and publicity of postscholarly video essays, I theorize the influences of the academic humanities on today’s author-critics, along with exploring the amateur and public origins of the video essay production. By drawing on relevant examples, I aim to show the salient traits of postscholarly criticism from YouTube, with a focus on its global transmission. Finally, I raise the question of (post-)professionalism within literary public humanities to promote its distinction from today’s popular public practices of criticism. Overall, my essay invites scholars of the public humanities to study the new digital era of postscholarly criticism as a popular phenomenon with significant implications for the literary discipline and beyond.

This piece examines Gunn’s Superman through a historical perspective, placing it within the context of Superman’s appeal and place in American culture since his first appearance in 1938. I argue that Gunn draws on the work of numerous versions of Superman to craft a cinematic version that hews closely to creator Jerry Siegel’s naive New Deal liberalism while speaking to the need of the moment. In essence, the film’s appeal to “Truth, Justice, and the Human Way” replicates the ideologically slippery “American way” that Superman fought for after Pearl Harbor. Gunn’s spin is that we must invest hope in humanity, and the capacity for empathy and kindness, in the face of soulless amoral power. That such an appeal seems radical says something of the Trumpian moment and the hyper reliance on technology and the devaluing of humanities, which is to say what makes us human.

In 1886, a statue of Antinous, beloved of Roman Emperor Hadrian, was installed at University College London for reasons that remain unknown. Building on queer aesthetic theory, I argue that queer statues such as this can be used to transform the public spaces they adorn from sites of violence into venues for the experience of queer ecstasy. This argument builds on the iconoclastic logic of movements like Rhodes Must Fall, which insist that public statutes simultaneously do violence within our public spaces and reflect a violent politics that extends beyond them. Articulating the histories of the statues that adorn our public spaces offers the public political philosopher the opportunity to enliven these statues with an explicitly queer aesthetic capable of inspiring ecstasy among their audience. It also provides the opportunity to critique the politics responsible for eliding this queerness in the first place and making our public spaces so violent for minoritarian subjects. Exemplifying this work, I utilise Saidiya Hartman’s technique of critical fabulation to offer a narrative of Antinous distinct from the imperial rhetoric that traditionally surrounds his image, transforming his presence at University College London into something ecstatic and reclaiming the public space he adorns in the process.

This article examines the siege of Gaza as a paradigmatic case of Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics, revealing how Gaza operates as a “laboratory of violence” where advanced military occupation, border control, and surveillance techniques are tested and exported. By tracing the intensifying militarization and orchestrated deprivation imposed on its population, this study demonstrates how colonial biopolitics embodied in strict movement restrictions, engineered food scarcity, and segregated medical care undermine human rights and perpetuate chronic vulnerability. These necropolitical practices obstruct key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions), exposing moral and political contradictions within international frameworks committed to “leaving no one behind.” Yet the SDG rubric itself arose within a development discourse entangled with colonial power, making any assessment of Gaza’s “progress” by these indicators ethically and epistemically fraught. Gaza’s predicament exemplifies the destructive potential of protracted conflict and structural violence in derailing global development targets. This article reframes Gaza’s siege as both a localized humanitarian crisis and a global precedent with serious implications for international policy and human rights law. By situating Gaza as a focal point for understanding necropolitical governance, this study seeks to portray the urgency of policy interventions that move beyond rhetoric and have demonstrably challenged and mitigated such regimes in comparable contexts.

The drive for greater public engagement and the turn to social science: each is an important and welcome movement in contemporary political philosophy. However, the relationship between these two boundary-crossing endeavors is not simple or obvious. I suggest that political philosophers have sometimes been too quick to assume that empirically-sensitivity and publicness go together; and I identify some ways in which these features can diverge and even compete. More positively, I go on to outline a modestly public role for political philosophy that is facilitated by in-depth engagement with diverse forms of social scientific evidence.

The transition toward addressing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses serious justice challenges. The just transition framework—originally developed within the U.S. labor movement to safeguard workers’ interests during shifts toward sustainable economies—has been proposed as a valuable framework for guiding the AMR transition. In the AMR context, similar conflicts of interests arise—such as those between farmers’ interest in maintaining routine antimicrobial use and the public interest in preserving their long-term effectiveness. This brief proposes enhancing the just transition framework by incorporating elements of Transitional Justice. Transitional justice has emerged as a practice aimed at addressing past political tragedies and building a more equitable future. While traditionally applied in post-conflict settings—such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa—transitional justice offers valuable tools for navigating conflicts rooted in past injustices and long-term uncertainty. One circumstance that makes transitional justice necessary in the context of AMR is the conflict between opposing views on the role the past should play in planning the transition. In this brief, we highlight key research gaps that the sciences, social sciences, and humanities should prioritize in order to better identify the conflicts and trade-offs that an AMR transition informed by a transitional justice framework must address.

The practice of anthropology is based on the ethnographer “being there” in time and space. And the act of writing is the reenactment of “presence” for the reader. “The field” is a romanticized space for empirical exploration. However, technological innovation and connectivity have enabled easy access to new “fieldsites” and vicarious participant-observation without being “present.” The entertainment media ecosystem is now more heterogeneous than ever and is more relevant in everyday life. The depth with which we immerse ourselves in these imaginary worlds speaks volumes about our withdrawal from other forms of engagement with the people, communities, and social problems around us. Romance and fantasy are a means to escape vulnerability and hopelessness, as well as serving as an outlet for the frustrations of failed social mobility. This essay posits that romance is a method for living today, and enjoyment is empiricism for a public anthropology. Romance is more than a genre; it is a guide to understanding how society functions. There is something deeply human about living through our imaginations to escape our present. Enjoying romance as a method to engage with the world offers insight into political infrastructures, social hierarchies, and elite intrigue. Life is full of afflictions, and romance is more than a salve; it offers a strategy for navigating social relations.

In this article, we present the field of public history, which we define as a process of making history more accessible, participatory, and connected to present-day public engagement with the past. In particular, we discuss how public history invites and develops interdisciplinary collaboration, such as between history and art. We also present the reasons, the practices, and the challenges of co-producing historical projects with non-professional members of the public. As a new paradigm, public history questions and reinvents the role of professional historians who share authority with other actors of the history-making process. We flesh out our arguments with examples from recent public history projects we developed in Luxembourg in 2024.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health challenge that, like climate change, demands urgent, coordinated, multi-sectoral action. Yet, responses to AMR may be ill-suited to local contexts, overlook historical inequalities, or dismiss marginalised knowledge systems. Some of these concerns can be discussed using the concept of a just transition, which aims to ensure that “no one is left behind,” “all voices are heard,” and past injustices are addressed. However, framing justice in these terms is insufficient. We argue for a more multifaceted and broader-scoped understanding of what justice demands in a just transition for AMR. We examine existing justice frameworks in AMR literature and discuss two cases that motivate our call for including both more forms of justice in a multifaceted concept of a just transition and a broader scope of justice. The first case involves over-the-counter antibiotic access in the Kibera informal settlement near Nairobi, highlighting structural injustices resulting from colonial oppression and what an Ubuntu philosophy would show as injustice. The second case concerns veterinary prescription requirements for Maasai pastoralists’ livestock farming in southern Kenya and highlights epistemic and distributive injustices, as well as injustices that befall non-human animals. These examples reveal distinct injustices shaped by socio-cultural and ecological contexts.

Climate change, biodiversity loss, and antimicrobial pollution caused by human activity are placing pressure on global microbiota. However, microbial protection remains mostly absent from international law and global governance frameworks. This policy brief highlights the chronic marginalisation of microbes in international health, environmental, and human rights law, as well as in governance frameworks addressing antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Drawing on recent genomics and humanities research, it argues that policymakers need to abandon interventions designed to control or combat individual microbes in favour of microbiota-oriented governance. This brief discusses three major areas (pollution thresholds, microbial conservation, and the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment) where change is already occurring.

This article reflects on the emergence of volumetric capture as a means to render human experience in three dimensions and how its applications in medicine, performance, and digital archiving are reshaping our relationship to documentation and embodiment. From 360-degree imagery to the advanced rendering techniques of Gaussian Splatting, these tools raise questions about the ethics of visualisation and the power to represent. This article draws on the work of scholars such as Taylor, Schneider, Kenderdine, Holling, and DeNora to challenge the notion of archives as neutral or static repositories and asks: in an age where our movements can be stored and repurposed, how do we navigate the tension between visibility and consent, between preservation and autonomy?

This article details the efforts made to map a project that commemorates the network of women and their collaborators who played a major role in shaping the post-war designed landscapes of the British Welfare State. It argues that despite the value attached to some parks and green spaces created in the twentieth century, many more have been overlooked and remain “unseen,” regardless of what we now know about their health and well-being benefits following the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, the role of an online open-access archive is explored as an innovative tool of public inquiry, in which the complexity of both archives and the passage of time are explored. The Women of the Welfare Landscape Historypin site was not solely focused on landscape architects and landscape architecture but also sought to communicate the perspectives of the communities that inhabit, work in, or recreate in landscapes that these pioneers developed. Through a contextualisation of the role of digital open-access mapping and archiving, along with local and social history, the project demonstrates the utility and opportunity of using an online and publicly accessible archive to show the humanities at work in public life.

This article explores the concept of transfer as it emerges in German-speaking academic discourse and considers its broader implications for the Global Public Literary Humanities. While transfer has become an established term in university policy, especially in Germany, its potential for literary studies remains under-examined. Building on both German and Francophone models, this article offers a nuanced framework that distinguishes between transfer and its synonyms—such as application, practice, communication, cooperation, and mediation—and proposes the concept of transferability as a means to sharpen theoretical and practical awareness regarding the conditions for successful transfer. This article presents a model that identifies both enabling conditions (such as relevance and resonance) and practical forms of transfer, arguing that transferability is shaped by ethical, esthetic, and anthropological considerations. Drawing on examples from current German debates (e.g., #RelevanteLiteraturwissenschaft, collaborative literary festivals, and citizen science projects), the analysis demonstrates that successful literary transfer is always co-creative and dialogical. Ultimately, this article calls for more institutional and structural efforts to enable transferability within literary studies and suggests that increased awareness of its prerequisites and possibilities for implementation can make academic work more responsive, inclusive, and socially engaged. This essay also advocates for extending the debate by incorporating concepts and practices from other linguistic and cultural traditions, thereby advancing the vision of Global Public Literary Humanities as a truly interconnected, dynamic, and transformative field. In doing so, this article hopes to encourage further critical reflection, experimentation, and the opening of new perspectives in research, teaching, and public engagement.

One of the daunting issues in Indian democracy is the complex relationship between the state and tribes. The relationship is known for its integration policy and affirmative action, which is the largest in the world; on the other hand, it is marred by dispossession, contravention of tribal rights, and sometimes state-sponsored violence. Tribes have diverse experiences of the Indian state, which significantly reflect their histories and traditions. To begin with, the founders of the Indian Constitution held backwardness and isolation from mainstream society as characteristics of tribes. However, those communities designated as Scheduled Tribes by the Constitution included communities that once were what anthropologists call a state society. The idea of a tribe in the post-independence period has become more complex as some ethnic communities associated with dynasties and states in the past are demanding tribal status. This development in the present has come at the cost of ethnic conflicts, intractable identity politics, and overstretched affirmative action policies. This article delves into the contestation of tribality in India, examining the relationship between tribe and state.