This epilogue considers the approach and conception of this collection, highlighting key analytical strands in the essays while also suggesting possible avenues of further research. It spotlights the global nature of their analysis, which offers one structural framework – individual scientific personas and the often transnational networks which they inhabit – as a possible avenue to imagine a so-called global Space Age. The epilogue also investigates possible frames for further analyses, particularly regarding gender and translation. Men dominate the pantheon of space personas, which, I argue, is a function of the way popular discourses about space travel are still dominated not only by patriarchal and often misogynistic tropes, but also by how we define ‘technology’ itself as essentially a male domain of activity. More broadly, we need further investigation of multiple and gendered erasures involved in the creation of male space personas. Similarly, the kinds of tools, work and strategies the space personas deployed to translate their visions across different social, discursive, cultural and temporal domains require attention. In particular, one can imagine that the afterlife of these personas will be susceptible to change and alteration as their messages, reputations, and principal attachments are continually reshaped by historical change, popular culture, and academic currents.

Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, the first Cuban, Latin American, and person of African descent to travel to space, has experienced a significant evolution in his persona since his historic flight aboard Soyuz 38 in 1980. This article explores three pivotal phases in this transformation: first, his portrayal in the media as a pioneering Cuban cosmonaut, which positioned him among the socialist elite of the Space Age; second, the controversy regarding the identity of the first Black person in space, which brought renewed attention to Tamayo’s achievements; and third, the ongoing reconfiguration of his image through social-media platforms, allowing for broader engagement with diverse audiences. By applying the principles of persona analysis to a multilinguistic set of historical documents and images related to Tamayo, this study illustrates the malleability of his self-fashioning for different audiences and how it has adapted to reflect changing sociopolitical contexts and the evolving landscape of public representation in the digital age.

This article brings together different strands of literature to explore how time operates in international law as a technique of inclusion and exclusion. The question of reparations for enduring colonial and ecological injustices provides a useful entry point to examine, at a more granular level, the temporal foundations of the field and their distributive outcomes. Concepts of restitution, compensation, satisfaction as well as the doctrine of causation in the law of state responsibility, encode a specific understanding of time. This understanding, I argue, is embedded in a modernist worldview characterised by linear, abstract and universal notions of time. Calls for reparatory justice for colonial and climate wrongs attempt to defy and interrupt law’s forward motion by binding together interconnected (though unequal) pasts, presents and futures. In examining how international law reacts to those claims, and manages the conflict between law’s temporal abstractions and the concrete tempos of those seeking redress, this article reinvigorates the conversation on the politics of time in international law.

As Poland began to expand towards the east in the 1340s, a large-scale settlement initiative commenced on the former Polish-Ruthenian borderland in the Carpathians. This initiative, along with integration of German and Polish colonists, resulted over time in the emergence of a Polish cultural group known as Forest Germans (in Polish Głuchoniemcy). In 1871-1989 Polish-German conflict led to the relevant ethnonym and choronym being removed from both Polish academic and popular discourse. As a result, no systematic geographical research into the location and borders of their settlement region was carried out. All we have are its dispersed, imprecise geographical descriptions from the period between the second half of the 17th century and the first half of the 20th century. Despite the erasure of this term from discourses and obstruction of the process of self-determination by the local population as Forest Germans at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries primarily for political reasons, the existence of a community which can potentially be identified today as Forest Germans at the former Polish-Ruthenian border is a fact. This article outlines the problems, challenges as well as the very process of delimiting Forest Germany, along with a general outline of its boundaries.

The article summarizes the history of the Russian–Ukrainian encounters in memory politics from the 1990s to the start of the 2020s. It compares and contrasts Russia’a and Ukraine’s perceptions of the issues, goals, tasks, and methods of historical policy. Having a shared history and similar challenges in developing identities and tackling the politics of commemoration, the cultural elites and governments of both countries approached the task of identity-building from opposite perspectives. These differences stemmed from different interpretations of one’s nation’s place and role in world history. The article summarizes all critical points of disagreement regarding how the two countries understood their shared past and interpreted it. It observes the history of the joint initiatives between Russia and Ukraine to reconcile confronting narratives. The analysis shows how the shared past perceived and conceived in divergent ways amounted to the mnemonic anxiety and securitization of the collective memory clash of antagonistic versions of the past and triggered the conflict and war.

We outline a framework for comparative analyses of minority education and present four illustrative Central and Eastern European (CEE) cases: Bulgaria, Estonia, the Republic of North Macedonia and Romania. The fourfold typology we develop relies on literature on minority rights and diversity management and proposes a holistic approach, differing from narrower legal analysis. We investigate education as part of larger macro-approaches of minority policies and focus on the interrelation between educational equity and identity reproduction. In our case studies, we employ a diachronic perspective, focusing on historical dynamics and pathways of educational policies, aiming to identify both gradual change and more radical shifts in institutional processes. The concept of de facto discrimination plays an important role as well: next to the historical analysis of legislative and policy changes, we use various statistics to measure educational equity. We rely on the 2022 PISA results, a tool popular in the comparative research of educational systems but underutilized in the fields of minority rights and minority policies. In our comparative inquiry, we argue that the educational systems of CEEs diverge in terms of minority identity reproduction, but few of them can be labelled as integrative, as intercultural elements are rather weak, while education usually fails to provide equity for minority students.

The article investigates perceived and objective inequalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, focusing on Republika Srpska amid rising societal tensions, bolstering the secession narrative, and political mobilization. Aimed at identifying objective inequalities that might fuel grievances causing societal upheaval, the findings reveal no significant disparities between Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Despite the absence of objective economic, social, or political inequalities, a perception of disparity persists among Bosnian Serbs, driven by the nationalist rhetoric of local leaders. Hence, the research underscores the gap between perceived inequalities and objective disparities, challenging conventional beliefs about the causal chain from objective horizontal inequalities to social mobilization by demonstrating how unfounded grievances can still drive tensions and secessionist agendas.

Global challenges such as climate change demand transnational responses, including from legal clinics. Building on earlier community legal clinic and international human rights clinic models, transnational legal clinics combine the objectives of legal clinics with the framework of transnational law to work across domestic and international planes. This article focuses on a Canadian–Peruvian legal clinic collaboration to research and draft an amicus curiae brief for landmark climate litigation in Peru. While the global north–south axis of collaboration raises structural challenges, adopting a transnational approach unites participants around the principle of solidarity and decentres assumptions about expertise. A transnational approach also contributes to the progressive development of law, in this case by offering insights into remedies in climate litigation. Overall, we argue that transnational legal clinic collaboration can spur participants’ reflective learning and make substantive contributions to the growing number of climate cases.

How do autocracies use nationalism to normalize and contain unsettled times? The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 marked a decisive point in Russia’s politics from which there could be no return to an antebellum normality. Rather than attempt to mobilize the Russian public to war, state-run television sought to normalize the war as a banal reality for domestic audiences. Drawing on a content analysis of 1,575 reports from the state-run First Channel [Pervyi Kanal] from 2022 to 2024, this article argues that the Ukrainian regions occupied by Russia — the so-called “new regions” — are crucial to this strategy through their incorporation into banal nationalist depictions of Russia. In turn, televised depictions of residents in the “new regions” confer emotional weight and moral examples for ordinary Russians through their everyday practices: their fortitude in voting for Putin despite ongoing attacks; through their shared excitement in acquiring routine aspects of daily life from passports to pensions; and through their embodiment of Russia’s future. In the process, media depictions normalize imperial nationalist justifications for Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory in terms of the distinctiveness of the Russian people, Russia’s civilizing mission, and presentation of its war as defensive.

Councils of National Minorities (NMCs), connected with the concept of non-territorial autonomy, have been recognized in research as a safeguard of minority rights, offering potential solutions to ethnic tensions. NMCs could be important actors in countries such as Serbia where tensions over the Kosovo issue are still present. Despite various studies on NMCs in Serbia, the specific role of women in these councils and their contribution to peace-making has not been a primary focus. This 2024 research in Serbia examines the involvement of women from NMCs in challenging male/state-centric discourses on women as peacemakers through inductive thematic analysis of interviews with female NMCs’ representatives. The focus of the analysis is on intersections of nation and gender, the impact of women in NMCs on reducing tensions and fostering peace, and the gendered nature of these processes. This study contributes to understanding the role of women from NMCs in peacebuilding using non-territorial frameworks.