IAS News

Essay Writing Skills in German and English as a Second or Further Language: A Practical Guide

This study guide, published in 2025 by the University of Warwick Press, is the result of a collaboration between Andrea Klaus (SMLC Warwick) and Yuliia Lysanets (Poltava State Medical University/ Institute of Advanced Study Warwick Visiting Fellow).

A former IAS Fernandes Fellow has recently published Ascensiunea autorului în epoca globalizării digitaleLink opens in a new window (The Rise of the Author in the Age of Digital Globalization), available through the Babeș-Bolyai University Bookshop in Cluj. They have also co-edited the latest issue of Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai PhilologiaLink opens in a new window (Vol. 70, No. 3, September 2025).

Living with Ghosts is Roxanne's first monograph. This book moves the field of study of Arab women’s writing on from the Anglophone preoccupation with the “bravery” that it takes to put pen to paper, and instead focuses on what the pen actually does. This book shows that Arab women writers innovate and utilise Gothic forms to “live with the ghosts” of foremothers, who represent lost knowledges about violence and feminised heritage. Examining contemporary Arab women’s writing from the 1970s to the present through the lens of world-literary systems and feminist theory, this book details aesthetic patterns between decades, nations, and authors. The works of canonical Arab feminist authors such as Nawal El Saadawi and Hanan Al-Shaykh are put in conversation with those of contemporary authors such as Adania Shibli, Joumana Haddad, and Mansoura Ez Eldin. These works are linked through their creative feminist theorisations of loss and living.

Early Career Fellow Hatice Gundeslioglu has published an article 'Mental Health Problems Among UK Undergraduates: A Comparison Study of Autistic and Non-autistic Students'Link opens in a new window

The aim of this study was to examine whether the relationship between a set of risk and protective factors (e.g., selfesteem, stress, intolerance of uncertainty, autistic symptoms) and mental health problems differed between autistic and non-autistic undergraduates enrolled in UK universities across genders.

An interdisciplinary seminar series Our ‘Irrational’ Past, organised by Dr Dino Jakušić, is coming back in 2025/2026! The series brings together a number of interdisciplinary scholars in order to reflect on the history, misconceptions, and presuppositions that underlie the state of academic disciplines as they exist today. The aim is to challenge commonly accepted narratives regarding how our disciplines historically developed into their present shape. We will also investigate how theories and worldviews of the past which we would no longer accept still play a role of unquestioned presuppositions within contemporary science and academia.

While the speakers for the 25/26 seminars are still being organised, please feel free to check out the talks from 24/25Link opens in a new window.

Moreover, if you are interested in presenting, or would like to suggest a speaker for the upcoming series please contact Dino Jakušić.

Dr Dino Jakušić (IAS P2K) has recently published an article entitled Christian Wolff and Positive Academic Freedom Link opens in a new windowfocusing on how academic freedom was conceived of during German Enlightenment and what we can learn from it today.

“In this article I argue that it is possible to find a positive account of academic freedom or of “freedom to philosophise” within Enlightenment thought. I focus on the case of Christian Wolff and his discussion of libertas philosophandi. I start by contextualising Wolff’s life and philosophy and discussing the negative aspect of his freedom to philosophise. I then present a case for an additional positive version understood as epistemic autonomy. Finally, I explain Wolffian epistemic autonomy within the context of his wider theory of cognition."