New Releases by Veronika

EN // Global History Dialogues: Border-Crossing aims to provide a platform for showcasing the role that oral history can play in diversifying the vantage points from which, about which, and through which we approach global history. Border crossing is conceptualized as extending beyond the mere physical act of traversing administrative and political boundaries. It encompasses social, and cultural, real and imagined, material and intellectual crossings, providing a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted nature of border dynamics. This open access book purses three goals. Firstly, it enables student-researchers from South America, Asia and Europe, to uncover microhistories that are close to their hearts and communities and yet resonate with global border-crossings. Secondly it provides space for educators of oral global history to reflect on their practice in nontraditional classrooms. Thirdly, it holds space for guest contributors from the University of Potsdam, who share intimate reflections on displacement, emplacement and life across borders. These conversations generate innovative deliberations about the possibilities and limits of the nexus between oral history, global history, student-research, and pedagogy. The medley of voices included in this volume speaks from multiple perspectives. The linchpin bringing many of the authors together is the Global History Dialogues project of the Global History Lab at the University of Cambridge. This timely intervention contributes to rethinking the way we tell and teach global history and oral history and, in the process, invites the reader to consider multiple ways of negotiating, overcoming, and transforming borders. DE // Grenzüberschreitungen // Global History Dialogues: Border-Crossing bietet eine Plattform für Forschungsansätze, die die Rolle der Oral History zur Diversifizierung der Perspektiven hervorhebt, wie wir Globalgeschichte betrachten und verstehen können. Grenzüberschreitungen werden dabei nicht nur als das physische Überschreiten administrativer und politischer Grenzen verstanden. Vielmehr werden in diesem Band soziale und kulturelle, reale und imaginierte, materielle und intellektuelle Grenzen ins Zentrum des Interesses gestellt. So wird ein differenziertes Verständnis der facettenreichen Formen von Grenzdynamiken geboten. Dieser Open-Access-Band verfolgt drei Ziele. Erstens ermöglicht er studentischen Forschenden aus Südamerika, Asien und Europa, Mikrogeschichten zu entdecken, die ihnen und ihren Gemeinschaften nahestehen und zugleich mit globalen Grenzüberschreitungen in Resonanz stehen. Zweitens schafft es Raum für Lehrende der Globalgeschichte, die auf die Methoden der Oral History zurückgreifen, um ihre Praxis in unkonventionellen Kursräumen zu reflektieren. Drittens bietet es Gastautor:innen der Universität Potsdam die Möglichkeit, persönliche Reflexionen über Entwurzelung, Verortung und das Leben über Grenzen hinweg zu teilen. Diese Beiträge regen zu innovativen Überlegungen über die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des Zusammenspiels von Oral History, Globaler Geschichte, studentischer Forschung und Geschichtsdidaktik an. Das zentrale Element, das viele der Autor:innen zusammenführt, ist das Projekt Global History Lab an der Universität Cambridge. Dieser innovative Band trägt dazu bei, die Art und Weise, wie wir Globalgeschichte und Oral History begreifen und lehren, zu überdenken, und lädt Lesende ein, über verschiedene Möglichkeiten nachzudenken, wie Grenzen verhandelt, überwunden und transformiert werden können. --- The series Global History Dialogues is edited by Marcia C. Schenck. Editor of the Global/Oral History Conversations section: Johanna Wetzel https://globalhistorydialogues.org/

In this second volume of the new franchise crime series - The Swiss Franchise Detectives - Lars Van de Velde is called to the Zug headquarter of the Happy People, a fitness franchise. It relies heavily on robotics and artificial intelligence, but is being blackmailed. Obviously, not all franchisees act in accordance with the system. During his investigations, with his assistant Morita Miramoto, in Berlin and Hamburg (Germany) as well as Unterägeri and Zug (Switzerland), Lars has to experience first-hand how robots can help, but also endanger human lives. The main protagonists Loretta Lombardi and Lars Van de Velde are always on the case when black sheep appear in the franchise economy. The multicultural investigators and their colorful team of assistants solve mysterious cases and fight for the good in franchising - with wit, humor and physical commitment. An entertaining crime-franchise.

In a world where time has split into Before and After, the protagonist finds himself at the epicenter of an impending catastrophe. The city he loved and dedicated his entire life to is on the brink of destruction. In these final moments, before the sirens have even wailed, he already knows that the end is near. The feeling of cold, piercing to the bone, and the sounds of the city slowly dying gradually envelop his mind, extinguishing the last sparks of optimism. Sitting on a bench by the embankment, he writes his final thoughts in a notebook, understanding that his words may never be read. But in these lines, he tries to leave a mark, even if ephemeral, in this dying world. Time flows like sand through his fingers, and he feels a strange calm, accepting his fate. His writings are a cry of the soul, an attempt to capture the moments before the inevitable end.

Please don''t ask me what the stories are about. Honestly, I really don''t know. It''s not like I don''t wanna tell you or anything, I just can''t explain it. I mean, I guess the stories are about being a human being and everything that comes with that. Like growing up and all the memories and feelings and all that shit. And how living is basically a constant struggle or something like that? Or maybe let me rephrase it: I think my main topic is life and living includes having emotions and changing and falling in love and experiencing heartbreak and anxiety and depression and wishing for things and dreaming about things and regretting things and having interactions with other people and, I mean, obviously so much more. And I guess all of these things, and the writing and thinking and talking about it ... that''s what the stories are about. Happy?

A new, exciting and entertaining crime series from the Swiss city of Zug. The Swiss franchise detectives Loretta Lombardi and Lars Van de Velde are always on the case when black sheep appear in the franchise economy. The multicultural investigators fight for justice with wit, humor and physical commitment, supported by a colorful team of assistants. An entertaining crime novel set in the franchise economy with plenty of Swiss ambience. The first case, The Disappearance of Alexander Schober, involves innovative bio-hacking and sustainable brother rooster chicks for a food franchise in Zug and Ascona/Ticino, as well as private and professional relationship entanglements.

Global geopolitical tensions have risen in recent years, and European energy prices have been volatile following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some analysts have suggested that these shifting conditions may significantly affect FDI both to and from Germany. To shed light on this issue and other factors affecting German FDI, we leverage two detailed and complementary FDI datasets to explore recent trends in German FDI and how it is affected by geopolitical tensions and energy prices. In doing so, we also develop a new measure of geopolitical alignment. Our main findings include the following: (i) the post-pandemic recovery in Germany’s inward and outward FDI has been weaker than in the US or the rest of the European Union (EU27) as a whole; (ii) Germany’s outward FDI linkages with geopolitically distant countries have been weakening since the Global Financial Crisis; (iii) the relationship between Germany’s outward FDI and geopolitical distance has become more pronounced over the last six years; (iv) Germany’s outward FDI to China-Russia bloc countries is more sensitive to recent geopolitical developments compared with that to US-bloc countries; and (v) Germany’s outward FDI in energy-intensive sectors decreases as destination countries’ energy costs increase, but energy costs do not appear to have a statistically significant effect on outward FDI in non-energy intensive sectors.

Als die ehemalige Polizistin und Wiener Detektivin Stella Marini zwei neue Fälle übernimmt, ahnt sie nicht, dass die ihr ganzes Leben für immer verändern werden. Plötzlich besteht ihre Frau-plus-Hund-Detektei noch aus einer Sekretärin, ehemals Tänzerin in Nachtclubs, dem amerikanischen Partner Barry Denton, der aussieht wie ein Model für Indianerfilme und dem arbeitslosen Hacker Tippi.Mit dieser Truppe stolpert das Büro Denton-Marini bei den Ermittlungen zu einem verschwundenen Ehemann und dem Mord an einem Wissenschaftler in die undurchsichtige Welt der US-Geheimdienste. Barrys Schwester Sam, die als Reporterin in Afghanistan einem fiesen Agenten der USA auf der Spur ist, bringt weiteres Licht in die Sache, als sich herausstellt, dass der vermutlich auch in Stellas Ermittlungen eine Rolle spielt. Das Aufdröseln der Kriminalfälle, die anscheinend zusammenhängen, führt das Team und ihre Mitarbeiter von Wien über Ramstein bis nach Washington. Und was Sam in Afghanistan aufdeckt, beschäftigt sie bis in die Gegenwart – dem unrühmlichen Abzug der Besatzer und Blitzübernahme des Landes durch die Taliban.

This book combines well-known theoretical elements of various disciplines to form a broad picture of the role of ideologies in conflicts, in particular "the supply and demand side" of the ideological market: namely, why individuals choose particular ideologies and how radical groups, and organizations use them to address individuals'' specific needs for the purpose of recruitment. This allows better understanding of the socio-psychological dynamics of social conflicts--why adopting particular ideologies is reasonable given certain socio-economic conditions; why individuals stick to destructive ideologies; and why they embrace major personal risks to join radical groups and advance the goals of these groups.

Virginia Woolf as a Process-Oriented Thinker: Parallels Between Woolf’s Fiction and Process Philosophy introduces Virginia Woolf as a nondualist and process-oriented thinker whose ideas are, despite no direct influence, strikingly similar to those of Alfred North Whitehead. Veronika Krajíčková argues that in their respective fields, literature and philosophy, Woolf and Whitehead both criticized the materialist turn of their time and attempted to reattribute importance to experience and undermine long-rooted dualisms such as subject and object, the animate and the inanimate, the human and the nonhuman, or the self and the other. By erasing the gaps between these dualities, the two thinkers anticipated the poststructuralist thought with which Woolf has been anachronically associated in the last decades. Krajíčková shows that there is no need to analyze Woolf’s fiction via critical and philosophical theories that developed much later. This book demonstrates that Woolf and Whitehead’s ideas may help us adopt more ecologically friendly, selfless, intersubjective, and harmless modes of being in the present day. Both figures emphasize the intrinsic value and importance of each constituent of reality and teach us to appreciate the aesthetic values dispersed throughout our environment.

Viral Language considers a range of different types of public communication and their discussion of the Covid-19 pandemic as a way to investigate health communication. The authors introduce and apply a range of approaches informed by linguistic theory to investigate experiences of the pandemic across a variety of public contexts. In doing so, they demonstrate how experiences of health and illness can be shaped by political messaging, scientific research, news articles and advertising. Through a series of case studies of Covid-related texts, the authors consider aspects of language instruction, information and innovation, showcasing the breadth of topics that can be studied as part of health communication. Furthermore, each case study provides practical guidance on how to carry out investigations using social media texts, how to analyse metaphor, how to track language innovation and how to work with text and images. Viral Language is critical reading for postgraduate and upper undergraduate students of applied linguistics and health communication.

This book addresses an under-researched area within populism studies: the discourse of supporters of populist parties. Taking the 2019 European elections as their case study, the authors analyse how supporters in eleven different countries construct identities and voting motivations on social media. The individual chapters comprise a range of methods to investigate data from different social media platforms, defining populism as a political strategy and/or practice, realised in discourse, that is based on a dichotomy between “the people”, who are unified by their will, and an out-group whose actions are not in the interest of the people, with a leader safeguarding the interests of the people against the out-group. The book identifies what motivates people to vote for populist parties, what role national identities and values play in those motivations, and how the social media postings of populist parties are recontextualised in supporters’ comments to serve as a voting motivation.

This book explores, for the first time, the influence of Anacreon and the Anacreontic tradition on Horace''s Odes and Epodes. It focuses first on the original fragments of Anacreon and their reception in Horace, paying attention to the central themes of wine, love, and satire. In a second part, the possibility of conscious Horatian reception of the earliest Carmina Anacreontea (and the broader Anacreontic tradition) as distinct from the original is discussed and shown to be highly probable. This imitation of imitation can be labelled, in Gérard Genette''s words, as "literature in the third degree". As a significant predecessor of Horace, Anacreon can be described as no less than the central pivot between Archilochus and Hipponax, on the one hand, and Alcaeus and Sappho, on the other. He represents the tie between Horace''s iambic and lyric personae and is thus a much more encompassing predecessor than any one of the other four above-mentioned counterparts.

This Element shows how two social movements, lesbian separatism and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), reflect the changing and complex (anti-)feminist ideologies of their time. The authors outline the historical and political background of those discourses and how they are influencing contemporary gender relations. The materials analysed comprise ten manifestos, which are examined with a combination of data-led discourse analysis and theory-led argumentation analysis. The manifestos are similar in that both sets of authors construct homogenous in-groups and out-groups as well as dichotomies between them. There are some differences though in how this is linguistically realised and who is classified as an out-group. Both groups cast social actors in particular roles and establish ethical norms, but strategic planning and utopias are more prominent among lesbian separatists. Freedom, advantage and authority are central in each group''s argumentation, but lesbian separatists also stress humanitarianism while MGTOW focus on financial matters.

Zooming in on commercial surrogacy in Russia and Ukraine, Intimate Strangers addresses market expansion into the intimate spheres of life that play out on women''s bodies as mothers and workers. Veronika Siegl follows the inner workings of a surrogacy market marked by secrecy, distrust, and anonymous business relationships. She explores intended mothers'' anxious struggles for a child in light of stigmatized infertility and the aggressive biopolitics of motherhood; the uncertain but pragmatic pathways in and out of fertility clinics as surrogates navigate harsh economic realities and resist being objectified or morally judged; and the powerful role of agents and doctors who have found a profitable niche in nurturing and facilitating other people''s existential hopes. Intimate Strangers discusses these issues against the backdrop of ultra-conservatism and moral governance in Russia, the rising international popularity of the Ukrainian surrogacy market, and the pervasiveness of neo-liberal ideologies and individualized notions of reproductive freedom.

What are the attitudes of online media users to the vast collection of personal data held by commercial platform companies? Do previous experiences of state surveillance have an impact on these attitudes? Do they differ for those brought up in the surveillance regime of Estonia during the Soviet Union era, or who experienced the surveillance apparatus in Portugal under authoritarian dictatorship? Do Swedish media users without authoritarian surveillance experiences differ in their attitudes to commercial surveillance? These questions are discussed in this final report from the project Social Media Surveillance and Authoritarianism (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, 2020-2023), a three-country comparative study (Estonia, Portugal, Sweden). The project aimed to analyse the role of past experiences of state surveillance on attitudes to dataveillance, that is, the commercial surveillance stemming from online media that is at the heart of data capitalism. The report accounts for the aims, objectives, theoretical and methodological points of departure and and presents empirical examples of the results.

This book examines the development of world trade during the COVID-19 pandemic, also taking international trade between the Czech Republic and the Russian Federation into account as a case study. Using an advanced method of artificial neural networks, it evaluates a long time series and predicts the development of trade between the two countries. The book further analyzes the specifications of export items on both sides and the dependence of the Czech Republic on Russia in terms of raw materials, which is not sustainable. It discusses the need for a political and business consensus, as well as a long-term investment plan to address this issue. Finally, it sheds light on the Czech companies actively operating in Russia, especially in the engineering, automotive, energy, and food industry. The book predicts the future bilateral trade relations between the two countries and the expected decrease in the demand on the side of Russian customers. The book will appeal to students, scholars, and researchers of economics and finance in general, macro- and microeconomics, statistics, and trade analytics in particular, as well as professionals and international trade companies interested in a better understanding of world trade developments and the future trade scenarios between the Czech Republic and Russia.

The aim of this monograph is to present the current situation of Rusyns in those European countries where, according to official or estimated statistics, their number is the highest - Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Serbia. In presenting the situation of the Rusyn population in these countries, an attempt has been made to indicate the number of Rusyns in the countries under study and at the same time to point out the problems of obtaining accurate data on Rusyns. Another aim of the research was to find out what the main elements of Rusyn ethnic identity are - here, regardless of geographical differences, religious affiliation or Byzantine rite (Catholic or Orthodox) stood out in the first place. The research also focused on the use of the Rusyn language and changes in its status, the possibilities of teaching the Rusyn language and the interest in teaching it among the Rusyns themselves. In addition to these two main aspects of Rusyn identity, other key elements of Rusyn material and non-material culture were also investigated. Emphasis was placed on the use of primarily qualitative methods to refine the available quantitative data. The results presented in this publication are based on both field research and research with Rusyn respondents conducted remotely via electronic communication in 2014-2019. Although this is a five-year period, it is possible to compare the individual Rusyn communities in the five countries studied, at least in part, synchronically (i.e. here and now).

Multilateralism has served as a foundation for international cooperation over the past several decades. Championed after the Second World War by the United States and Western Europe, it expanded into a broader global system of governance with the end of the Cold War. Lately, an increasing number of States appear to be disappointed with the existing multilateral arrangements, both at the level of norms and that of institutions. The great powers see unilateral and bilateral strategies, which maximize their political leverage rather than diluting it in multilateral fora, as more effective ways for controlling the course of international affairs. The signs of the crisis have been visible for some time – but recent crises indicate an acceleration of the on-going disintegration of the multilateral system, such as Brexit, growing resistance on the part of States to international monitoring of compliance and the radical change in the US foreign policy during the presidency of Donald Trump which saw the US withdraw from several multilateral agreements (e.g. the Iran Nuclear Deal and the Paris Agreement), leave some international organizations or bodies (e.g. the United Nations Human Rights Council or the World Health Organization) or paralyze some others (e.g. the World Trade Organization (WTO)). Tackling the debate surrounding the crisis of multilateralism and the related transformation of the underlying international legal order, The Crisis of Multilateral Legal Order analyzes selected aspects of the current crisis from the perspective of public international law to identify the nature of the crisis, its dynamics, and implications.

How curious do you think you are? This book will help you to explore and expand your curiosity potential. Just like Alice in Wonderland, you will become ‘curiouser and curiouser...’ Are you ready? Let’s discover a brand new, curious YOU...

Agnes lives in the virgin forest tribe of Magreys. Each member of the tribe is born with an exceptional gift. As soon as a Magrey discovers and masters their gift,there comes the time to perform it during a Full Moon Celebration and to promise not to misuse it and serve for the good of the tribe. The only catch is that a Magrey must do so before reaching the age of twelve years old or they turn into a Shadow.Agnes just celebrated her eleventh birthday. And unlike the others, she still has no idea what her gift is.So, she sets out on a dangerous journey to the Forbidden Mountain. To the very same mountain from which her father never returned five years ago. An adventurous story about a journeyto find her inner self lets the reader ponder such questions as:How do you make sense of your time on Earth,which is ridiculously short?How do you follow your heart?How do you not cling to all the things that we have borrowed in our lives?How do you find happiness in the mundane?How do you awaken kindness to your own body?How do you take care of your soul and not let others hurt you?And how do you come to terms with your own mortality? Veronika Hurdová:“I strongly believe that developing andpampering our own unique skills is the right wayto make the world around us a more beautiful place.” The book is intended for children from eight to one hundred years old.

The mechanical properties of cells are largely determined by the cytoskeleton. The cytoskeleton is an intricate and complex structure formed by protein filaments, motor proteins, and crosslinkers. The three main types of protein filaments are microtubules, actin filaments, and intermediate filaments ( IFs ). Whereas the proteins that form microtubules and actin filaments are exceptionally conserved throughout cell types and organisms, the family of IFs is diverse. For example, the IF protein vimentin is expressed in relatively motile fibroblasts, and keratin IFs are found in epithelial cells. This variety of IF proteins might therefore be linked to the various mechanical properties of different cell types. In the scope of this thesis, I combine studies of IF mechanics on different time scales and in systems of increasing complexity, from single filaments to networks in cells. This multiscale approach allows for the simplification necessary to interpret observations while adding increasing physiological context in subsequent experiments. We especially focus on the tunability of the IF mechanics by environmental cues in these increasingly complex systems. In a series of experiments, including single filament elongation studies, single filament stretching measurements with optical tweezers, filament-filament interaction measurements with four optical tweezers, microrheology, and isotropic cell stretching, we characterize how electrostatic (pH and ion concentration) and hydrophobic interactions (detergent) provide various mechanisms by which the mechanics of the IF cytoskeleton can be tuned. These studies reveal how small changes, such as charge shifts, influence IF mechanics on multiple scales. In combination with simulations, we determine the mechanisms by which charge shifts alter single vimentin filament mechanics and we extract energy landscapes for interactions between single filaments. Such insights will provide a deeper understanding of the mechanisms by which cells can maintain their integrity and adapt to the mechanical requirements set by their environment.

The collection of scientific articles and papers in art, culture, and cultural hetitage of Lebanon, Bulgarian, Romanian and Russian scientists.

This book reviews the current state of epigenetics and proteomics of leukemia and introduces the methods that are important to process and evaluate these factors in leukemia. In particular, epigenetic modifiers and their inhibitors in leukemia treatment as well as approaches to the epigenetic treatment of leukemia are covered. Various computational methods for proteome analysis are also described in detail, including 2DE fractionation and visualization, proteomic data processing, image acquisition and data anlaysis, and more. Protein localization in leukemia is also covered, in addition to the future of leukemia therapy. Epigenetics and Proteomics of Leukemia is an ideal book for advanced biomedical scientists and students, medical doctors and students, bioinformatics and health informatics researchers, computational biologists, structural biologists, systems biologists, and bioengineers.

This Element provides an introduction to the hiddenness argument, as presented by John Schellenberg, and its up-to-date discussion in a comprehensible way. It concludes with a brief assessment of where things stand, from the author''s point of view, and why divine hiddenness should not reduce a reflective theist''s confidence in theism.

Stories convey more than just knowledge. They touch, inspire, and create closeness. Stories reveal something of ourselves and can thus guide us when we encounter similar situations. In this book, 30 authors share their experiences from the world of Agile. They are experienced Product Owners, Scrum Masters, executives, Agile Coaches, consultants, and organizational developers. They tell true stories from their everyday work and personal lives: about the first steps and tensions in teams, conducive and obstructive leadership, losses and fears, amazing developments, clear values, and attitudes. These stories invite us, the readers, to learn from each other as human beings. With the purchase of this book, you support Flying Hope e.V.

Veronika Groke interrogates the concept of the comunidad indígena (indigenous community) in the context of the history and social life of a Guaraní community in eastern Bolivia. While this institution is today firmly embedded in Bolivian politics and society, different people and interest groups have varying understandings of its meaning and purpose. By showing the comunidad to be a multifaceted complex of diverging and sometimes competing ideas, desires, and agendas, Groke provides new insight into contemporary political tensions related to culture, identity, and development

During the last decades, the industry has been undergoing extensive digitization leading to complex ensembles of humans, machines, autonomous agents, and sensors. With this new setup comes the challenge of how to appropriately support work-practices of industrial operators who now need to monitor and control complex industrial processes through remote interfaces. Information overflow and restrictive interfaces are two significant problems that operators face in their daily routines. In this PhD, I explore approaches to visualization and interaction that would reduce industrial operators'' information load and enable them to perform their duties in an efficient, reliable, and safe manner. Industrial users and industrial settings are the starting points of my research. In this thesis, I describe multiple examples of custom-tailored data visualizations that reduce the operator''s visual load by consolidating large amounts of data into compact overview displays with often nontrivial data presentation. With respect to interaction, I propose several tangible and tactile interfaces, as well as concepts for natural interaction, that let the user freely interact with the control station and the information it depicts. Finally, I propose several concepts of adaptive systems that adjust to the operator''s context to ensure their high situational awareness and convenience of interaction. Even though this thesis is primarily intended for the community of interaction designers, I expect it to be of interest to a broader audience due to its relation to the user experience field. To a certain extent, everyone can resonate with the user''s problems because, in our everyday life, we all are users of some technology and services. Furthermore, for a lay reader, this work can be seen as a comprehensive introduction to how the industry works and what role the human plays there. Under de senaste årtiondena har industrin digitaliserats i stor utsträckning och består nu av komplexa strukturer där människor, maskiner, autonoma agenter och sensorer samspelar. Människor arbetar ofta som operatörer i industrin, med uppgift att övervaka och styra maskinella processer på distans från kontrollrum. Den omfattande digitaliseringen medför nya utmaningar för operatörerna i och med att mängden tillgänglig information växer samtidigt som kontrollrummens användargränssnitt är otillräckliga för de ändrade förutsättningarna. I den här avhandlingen utforskar jag nya former av visualisering och interaktion som skulle kunna hjälpa operatörerna hantera de växande informationsmängderna och sköta sitt arbete på ett effektivt, tillförlitligt och säkert sätt. Jag presenterar flera exempel på skräddarsydda datavisualiseringar som minskar belastningen på operatörerna genom att kombinera stora mängder data i kompakta, icke-triviala presentationsformer. När det gäller interaktion föreslår jag flera fysiska och taktila interaktionsformer som kan göra operatörernas arbete mera fritt och självstyrt. Jag presenterar slutligen koncept för adaptiva system som anpassar sig till operatörernas arbetssituation för att skapa smidig interaktion och stödja hög situationsmedvetenhet. Avhandlingen vänder sig i första hand till interaktionsdesignområdet, men jag räknar med att den kan vara av intresse för en bredare publik i och med att den behandlar användarupplevelse. Vi använder alla tekniska produkter och tjänster i någon utsträckning och bör därför kunna relatera till industrioperatörernas utmaningar. Mitt arbete ger också en inblick i hur människans arbetssituation ser ut i dagens industri.

Scholars of state socialism have frequently invoked “nostalgia” to identify an uncritical longing for the utopian ambitions and lived experience of the former Eastern Bloc. However, this concept seems insufficient to describe memory cultures in the Czech Republic and other contexts in which a “retro” fascination with the past has proven compatible with a steadfast critique of the state socialist era. This innovative study locates a distinctively retro aesthetic in Czech literature, film, and other cultural forms, enriching our understanding of not only the nation’s memory culture, but also the ways in which popular culture can structure collective memory.

On March 10, 1948, world-renowned composer and pianist Ernst von Dohnányi (1877−1960) embarked for the United States, leaving Europe for good. Only a few years earlier, the seventy-year-old Hungarian had been a triumphant, internationally admired musician and leading figure in Hungarian musical life. Fleeing a political smear campaign that sought to implicate him in intellectual collaboration with fascism, he reached American shores without a job or a home. A Wayfaring Stranger presents the final period in Dohnányi’s exceptional career and uses a range of previously unavailable material to reexamine commonly held beliefs about the musician and his unique oeuvre. Offering insights into his life as a teacher, pianist, and composer, the book also considers the difficulties of émigré life, the political charges made against him, and the compositional and aesthetic dilemmas faced by a conservative artist. To this rich biographical account, Veronika Kusz adds an in-depth examination of Dohnányi’s late works—in most cases the first analyses to appear in musicological literature. This corrective history provides never-before-seen photographs of the musician’s life in the United States and skillfully illustrates Dohnányi’s impact on European and American music and the culture of the time.

In this book, Veronika Rybanska explores how ritual participation affects the cognitive abilities of children. Rybanska argues that, far from being a simple matter of mindless copying, ritual participation in childhood requires rigorous computation by cognitive mechanisms. In turn, this computation can improve a child''s ''executive functioning'': a set of cognitive skills that are essential for successful cognitive, social and psychological development. After providing a critique of existing literature on religion and ritual, Rybanska presents a new interdisciplinary approach that draws from anthropology, psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Using cross-cultural examples, including a comparison between Melanesian culture and Western culture, Rybanska shows that some of the most socially important effects of rituals seem to be universal. The implications of this research suggest that we should rethink multiple aspects of child-rearing and educational policy, and shows that the presence of some form of ritual during childhood could have positive evolutionary benefits.