Environments associated with migration are often seen as provisional, lacking both history and architecture. As Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi demonstrates in Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement (Duke UP, 2023), a refugee camp’s aesthetic and material landscapes—even if born out of emergency—reveal histories, futures, poli ... Show More
Sep 15
Tom Hulme, "Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life Before Gay Liberation" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Professor Tom Hulme's second book reconstructs the erotic and romantic lives of queer men in Belfast across roughly seventy years, from the recriminalisation of sex between men in the 1880s to the emergence of a mainstream public debate about homosexuality in the 1950s. It follow ... Show More
48m 1s
Sep 12
John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian, "Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026)
In John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian’s Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), the authors put forward a comprehensive new theoretical approach to understanding laughter and the humour we use to inspire it. ... Show More
1h 7m
Nov 2024
Tom Scott-Smith, "Fragments of Home: Refugee Housing and the Politics of Shelter" (Stanford UP, 2024)
Abandoned airports. Shipping containers. Squatted hotels. These are just three of the many unusual places that have housed refugees in the past decade. The story of international migration is often told through personal odysseys and dangerous journeys, but when people arrive at t ... Show More
1h 1m
Mar 2022
Architecture, Climatic Privilege, and Migrant Labour in Singapore
Migration and architecture have emerged as a new topic of research at a global level. Migrant worker dormitories in Singapore, for example, are sites where structural inequities in architecture and legal regulations have had a significant impact on the living conditions of migran ... Show More
20m 31s
Mar 2024
Ali Bhagat, "Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism (Cornell UP, 2024) answers a straightforward question: how are refugees governed under capitalism in this moment of heightened global displacement? To answer this question, Ali Bhagat takes a dual case study appro ... Show More
46m 15s
May 2022
Heba Gowayed, "Refuge: How the State Shapes Human Potential" (Princeton UP, 2022)
As the world confronts the largest refugee crisis since World War II, wealthy countries are being called upon to open their doors to the displaced, with the assumption that this will restore their prospects for a bright future. Refuge: How the State Shapes Human Potential (Prince ... Show More
51m 5s
Sep 2025
Dominic Davies and Candida Rifkind, "Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics" (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2025)
Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2025) by Dr. Dominic Davies & Dr. Candida Rifkind is the first in-depth study of comics about refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, and detainees by artists from the Global North and South. ... Show More
54m 3s
Jul 2024
Laura Robson, "Human Capital: A History of Putting Refugees to Work" (Verso, 2023)
When Americans and other citizens of advanced capitalist countries think of humanitarianism, they think of charitable efforts to help people displaced by war, disaster, and oppression find new homes where they can live complete lives. However, as the historian Laura Robson argues ... Show More
47m 16s
Oct 2025
Hannah Pool, "The Game: The Economy of Undocumented Migration from Afghanistan to Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025)
To seek asylum, people often have to cross borders undocumented, embarking on perilous trajectories. Due to the war in Afghanistan, the rule of the Taliban, and severe human rights violations, over the past decades thousands of people have risked their lives to seek safety. By wh ... Show More
48m 34s
Oct 2025
Hannah Pool, "The Game: The Economy of Undocumented Migration from Afghanistan to Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025)
To seek asylum, people often have to cross borders undocumented, embarking on perilous trajectories. Due to the war in Afghanistan, the rule of the Taliban, and severe human rights violations, over the past decades thousands of people have risked their lives to seek safety. By wh ... Show More
48m 34s